Great line in Matt Welch’s column in Reason about the folly of bailing out newspapers: “Blaming the customer is the second-to-last refuge of any crappy industry, business, or organization (the last refuge being asking for a handout on Capitol Hill).”
Yeah, yeah — same old, same old. All this crap about bad mainstream journalism, good new media is getting very old. And for Welch’s comment about a journalist sitting in the corner who hasn’t filed in four months, Where the hell does that come from? All the journalists I work with would love to have just an hour A DAY free from having to do any phoning/writing/posting.
And for you, Jeff, I know very few of those journalists who are blaming the reader. They are just trying to do as good a job as they can, anyway they can, under some very trying circumstances.
So, the newspaper industry is dying. Whoopee! Let the triumphalists have their time in the sun. What I would really like to see are MEANINGFUL ways to keep publications going, and to keep something of this industry persisting. I think it will, but so far I haven’t seen anything meaningful either in these spaces or elsewhere I look that shows what the bridge will be. Lots of talk and Powerpoint stuff, but nothing that provides anything that people can use now.
Enough of the blame and bullshit!
Brian, another name for “triumphalist” might be “person with a migraine from repeatedly banging their head into the wall after being told by their newsroom colleagues ‘We can’t do that because …’ “.
But, hey, that’s merely rehashing the last 10 years of failure. So in the spirit of “enough blame and bullshit,” how ’bout:
- Write a blog. A real one, not just the leftovers from the notebook, but one that engages with (even argues with) the audience
- Don’t just point the online producers to thirty of your archived stories about a topic. Distill them into a wiki-style snapshot of the ongoing story. Oh, yeah: come back to that Wiki and update it every time the story moves forward. And engage the users in the comments section.
- Photographers: I respect the 20-minute mini-documentary you lovingly spent two months producing. Y’know what? I’d rather have you spend five hours messing around (with delight!) in Merlin or whatever archive system you have to pull together a photo narrative of “some topic through the ages.”
- Volunteer to spend an extra 10 minutes to write a search-engine-friendly version of the headline and lede of a story (less time than the inevitable argument/grousing session about why it’s not in the top slot on the home page).
/rant
-tgd
And for Welch’s comment about a journalist sitting in the corner who hasn’t filed in four months, Where the hell does that come from?
Um, personal experience from drinking with my newspaper colleagues?
Blaming journalists for the decline of newspapers is like blaming dining car stewards for the decline of the passenger rail industry in the 20th century. It’s a combination of new technology and complacent, listless management that’s mostly to blame for our current predicament, not Wiki-adverse reporters.
That said, I agree that ombudsmen and editorial boards and other self-righteous vestiges should be first in line for the chopping block before any Metro reporter. Also, can we stop with the bitching about the decline of newspapers in the pages of newspapers? I too would cancel my subscription to a product whose creators keep telling me its in decline.
So, the newspaper industry is dying. Whoopee! Let the triumphalists have their time in the sun.
It’s always curious to me how criticizing certain aspects of newspaper mentality is immediately misconstrued, by certain segments, as glorying in their demise. As I mention explicitly in the column, I unabashedly love and cherish newspapers, and actively root for them to succeed.
Blaming journalists for the decline of newspapers is like blaming dining car stewards for the decline of the passenger rail industry in the 20th century. It’s a combination of new technology and complacent, listless management that’s mostly to blame for our current predicament, not Wiki-adverse reporters.
To make your analogy more apt (and complicated), I think you have to acknowledge that much of newsroom management is composed of former dining car stewards.
Also, I wouldn’t say that management (talking about the ownership side here for a moment) has been listless as much as it has been panicked, confusing the cost savings made by dumb cuts and page-reduction for a strategy. My alma mater the L.A. Times, for example, has been anything but “listless” this past decade, and is mostly the worse for it, though the paper has been making great strides the past year or two with truly embracing (and earning money from) the digital side of publishing.
Matt,
Most of my experience with journalism over the last 20 years has been with B-to-B outfits, not newspapers as such. I edited publications, and now I write for them. They might not strike many newspaper journalists as real pubs — rags used to be the epithet, I believe — but I’d argue that’s where much of the real journalism is done on issues now, at least the kind that gets to the nitty-gritty. And there is no-one in that side of the industry who has time to sit in the corner and not file for four months. They’d be out of the door well before that.
That being said, the other 10 years I’ve been in the business were in newspapers. I recognize some of the mentality you are talking about. But I think you are fooling yourself and others with your comments. Perhaps that’s how you see some part of the business, from interaction with your drinking buddies. But does that mean every part of the journalism business should be tarred with the same brush? That might not be what you intend, but that’s the effect of all the crap and blame-making that comes from you and other nay-sayers. And I stand by the use of those words.
That being said (again), I also agree that something must be done. That doesn’t mean people aren’t trying, though. Many of the outfits I work with have been trying to find out what works on the online side for 10 years or more (and much more diligently than the narrow-minded way Jack Shafer describes). But how do you translate that movement in today’s climate with the kind of business realities many of these publications face i.e. 90 percent of their revenues coming from print ads (which online cannot replace), large debts, ownership by private equity firms that expect loans to be repaid etc.?
All I’m looking for is some idea of how — realistically — those publications can make the transition and hopefully keep employing some journalists. That’s what I haven’t heard much of so far. Most of the argument I have read and heard is about how woeful the industry has been, how bad journalists are etc. etc. If that’s all anyone has to offer………
> I would really like to see are MEANINGFUL ways to keep publications going, and to keep something of this industry persisting.
Publish something that I’m willing to pay for that I can’t get elsewhere for less money than you want to charge.
Note that I can get “NYT-quality” opinion for free.
Andy,
So the stories published in the NYT, WashPost, LATimes, Times of London, Guardian, Telegraph, Independent, Heretz etc, etc. can all be gotten somewhere else, for free? Please let me know your outlets, those who are doing their original reporting, where I can find that?
Is Robinson confused about what I actually wrote or is he claiming that those outlets can only publish opinion?
The fact that I’m not willing to pay much for opinion does not mean that I won’t pay quite a bit for certain forms of “not opinion”. In fact, I will.
However, if you’re CNN, I’m somewhat skeptical of your “original reporting”.
I wouldn’t say that management (talking about the ownership side here for a moment) has been listless as much as it has been panicked
In recent years, I agree that it’s been panicked. But while the web was still developing into the medium it is today, I would argue that management was more content to “see where this Internet thing is going” rather than to lead through innovation and the development of new business models. Even today most of the supposed “innovation” newspapers are practicing on the web is just the recycling of old ideas.