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The Newspapers Are All Over
By Centinel | January 14, 2008
Note: Larry Wilson was kind enough to author the following review for the FC Blog.
Charles Madigan’s -30-: The Collapse of the Great American Newspaper, a newish volume on just that, is precisely the kind of book I don’t read anymore. And yet Centinel kindly — and, yes, anonymously — dropped it by the office last month so that I could review it, and thus I was forced to peruse the damn thing. I have put off my reaction to it long enough.
Since I have been an American newspaper editor for 25 years, you might think this is the kind of book I should be reading if I am concerned for the fate of my profession. And that’s where you would be wrong, for complicated reasons. Because I am of course interested in the fate of the inky broadsheets I love. A portion of my bookshelf as big as Dallas is devoted to hardbound tomes on daily journalism. I teach the craft at the Annenberg School, as much to stay in touch with the zeitgeist of the scribbling classes as to impart wisdom and war stories to young people nutty enough to consider becoming reporters themselves.
But in the last six months or so I have simply stopped reading publications such as Editor & Publisher, the Columbia Journalism Review, the American Journalism Review, to all of which I was for decades addicted. That’s because the lead story in each periodical is always the same, every week in E&P, every month and bi-month in the others. How many more times would it be interesting to read that the sky is falling, and that there is nothing to be done about it? I’m done with all that. Newspaper readership, from the greats to the crummies, is down – check. The Internet has changed the way Americans get their news – check. Readers don’t want stuff that is edited by professionals for their consumption, being force-fed the headlines someone else has decided are important – check. They bookmark on their computers their favorites sites about what they’re already interested in – the Boston Red Sox, skimboarding, mycology – and they read about that, not about the cod liver oil some guy in a green eyeshade thinks is necessary daily medicine – check. Young people think that the news is what Jon Stewart says it is – short, plus snarky. Check.
Consequently, newspapers are in financial difficulty, and have cut back on both newshole and the journalists who used to fill it while we try to figure out what to do. Tell me something I don’t know, babe.
-30- — that’s old-guy shorthand for the end of the story – is a compilation, mostly from the past year or two, of 15 such essays on the decline and fall. Consequently, I had already read a number of them before I gave up such for Lent. Mostly, they are fine. Many of the writers are some of the best analysts in the business, most especially The New Yorker’s press critic Ken Auletta, who writes here on the interesting question, “Can the Los Angeles Times Survive Its Owners?,” and Michael Wolff, the Vanity Fair columnist famous for disastrously testing the waters of Internet commerce himself, which he chronicled in his dot-bomb book Burn Rate.
But, no, there’s nothing new here, and yes, I’m cynical about it all. It is especially maddening in that I continue to believe that Americans who decline to read a daily newspaper or four simply don’t know what they’re missing. The reporting, writing and editing at the best national papers – at the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times – creates in-depth, accessible information without which you cannot fully understand our world. The local journalism at smaller dailies such as our own provides insight into the politics and people of our communities without which you can’t understand our own back yard.
Who would want to do without that, for 50 cents a day, less for subscribers? Since the answer is essentially everyone under 40, no wonder I throw up my hands in disgust. The last essay in the book, “How to Tune Back In” by David T.Z. Mindich, correctly near its close laments the fact that government “supported by an uninformed citizenry is not a democracy; it is a sham. This is our crisis.” And at its very end, it issues a clarion call: “Let us work deliberately and forcefully to hand the mantle of responsible and informed leadership to the next generation of Americans.”
Problem is, dude, hand it to them though we might, they don’t want the mantle. When they drop it, it’s going to be broken, and mighty ugly if we try to just glue it back together. While we wait to see what happens, there isn’t any real harm done by hoping against hope that one of the possible models for the daily newspaper of the future – all online or in print, as the delivery system is not the point here – works. That would be either ownership by a network of disinterested billionaires willing to put up with less revenue than the cash cows newspapers formerly were, or ownership on an NPR model, with subscribers showing their support for their local rag in the same way we now show it for a KPCC – some paying a token amount, some the big bucks for the perhaps dubious privilege of mingling with the editors over canapes and listening to august invited speakers discussing the great issues of the day.
I wonder, though, still, if we couldn’t turn it all around by recalling the glory days of newspapering; if, perhaps, this kind of reflection from the greatest American newspaperman of them all, H.L. Mencken, in his “Thirty Five Years of Newspaper Work,” wouldn’t bring back the readers if only in the hopes of some kind of reincarnation:
“Indeed, the only do-gooder I recall unpleasantly was a Quaker homeopath named O. Edward Janney. A slim, stooping, pale, furtive-looking fellow, he was fascinated by whores, and devoted himself to vice crusading.”
Seen any prose like that on Craigslist lately?
Larry Wilson is public editor of the San Gabriel Valley Newspapers, overseeing the opinion pages in print and on the web for the Pasadena Star-News, San Gabriel Valley Tribune and Whittier Daily News.
Last 5 posts in Media
- Local Journalism Flourishing? Ad Revenue Still Plummeting? - July 23rd, 2008
- Fire Blogging in Big Sur - July 8th, 2008
- Pasadena Websites With Imperial Ambitions - July 8th, 2008
- Farewell, Ed Barrera - July 4th, 2008
- It Hurts to Be a Journalist - July 1st, 2008
Topics: Media |
January 15th, 2008 at 1:41 am
I’m in my 50’s and don’t spend the money to buy papers. I read everything pretty much for free. I can in fact read it here.
I don’t need the newspaper elite to impart their wisdom on me when I know, from vast years of experience and reading the words of egotists like Wilson, that I’m not going to agree with them anyway.
If you can tell anything from his writing it’s that Wilson, as always, feels he’s smarter than the common man.
You’re not Larry.
Local Boy
January 15th, 2008 at 6:21 am
Here’s the thing: local blogs like “Pasadena’s Political Underbelly” provide a much better coverage of local government than mid to small size newspapers do. Newspapers exist to tell people what’s going on. Ben Franklin’s Philadelphia Gazette was financed by selling copies on street corners, not by leasing out half the newsprint to advertisers. Fed up with established media channels, a new breed of journalists are literally giving it away to the whole world using a medium with far lower costs. The downside is that the bar is raised for anyone seeking to be a professional journalist. Like TV and radio, the internet creates in the public the expectation that content is and should be free. Advertisers also are empowered through the internet to know exactly how much revenue comes from a specific ad, lowering the market value. What the writers in -30- are so panicky about is not only the loss of their own jobs (a legitimate concern) but the extinction of an entire class of citizen: the professional journalist, an investigator with the ability to call on major economic powers for legal assistance against hostile public officials and entrenched corporate interests. Publius and Centinel had the ability to stand up to Alvarez-Glasman, but who would Mark Felt have gone to who would keep his identity secret from Nixon (who really was willing to go outside the law)? It was months after the Watergate break-in that TV journalists began paying attention to it in any detail.
We do not live in a democracy. We live in a republic based on democratic principles. We elect people to run the government for us in much the way we hire people to do our taxes, mow our lawns or educate our kids. Professional journalists claim to be “the watchdog,” informing the public of what happens to ensure that nothing worse occurs. But their own credibility is cut when scandals come down the pipeline of reporters falsifying stories or of genuine scandals of government officials descending into partisan tabloid journalism. Larry Craig was treated the same way in the press as Britney Spears. And what the hell is going on with the media coverage of the Spears family? Those girls look like they are on the verge of total psychological collapse, and the media (at all levels) is having a field day. There has been less coverage of the New Hampshire Primary then of that family’s troubles. What ever happened to the press not photographing FDR in a wheel-chair?
January 15th, 2008 at 9:21 am
People DO want news. Just look at the youth turnout for Obama. The problem is that newspapers have stopped sharing news. Instead, they share their biases. Far too many journalists, especially at the LA Times, now view journalism as a calling for “doing good for XYZ” rather than doing good through simply sharing the news.
In reality, the majority of “journalists” today are just as biased as the average high-quality blogger. But the blogger is up front about his/her bias, and provides direct links to the source material. When’s the last time the LA Times did that?
Everyone of every age continues to want to know what is going on in the world (how many 19 year olds followed presidential politics when you were 19, Larry? Probably about the same number as today).
The problem is that newspapers have buried the news underneath pundits and biased journalists, at the same time as many people have turned to the internet for news.
Reconnecting the news with the public is the new challenge. So far, the amateur blogs are winning.
January 15th, 2008 at 9:22 am
My mistake, however: I meant to start with a giant Thank You to Larry for writing this. It obviously took a lot of work and time, and I for one thank him for his time and insights!
January 15th, 2008 at 9:52 am
You gotta admit that most blogs, even this one, still depend on newspapers to actually do the reporting, which they then unpackage or add to it.
Thanks to Larry for the review.
January 15th, 2008 at 10:21 am
thanks to all for insightful comments. i was just sitting down to add a StiffArm-like post when i saw his (or hers). that would be the only point that i think i would add to this: whether the professional, full-time journalists are on tv, radio, online, in print, makes no difference — but if they (we) weren’t there, with the time and wherewithal to travel to iraq, d.c., sacramento or city hall to report, there would be little fodder for us bloggers to comment on. blogging and other new media adds immensely to the picture, and occasionally even breaks news, and that’s great. but without financial support (whether it’s buying a paper or subscribing to npr or whatever) from the public, the reporters on the scene couldn’t be there. i don’t see how the absence of journalism from the scene helps the future of the republic.
January 15th, 2008 at 11:20 am
Thanks to StiffArm and larry, I will just say ditto to both of them.
I’ve said it before here, but I prefer to get my news from the newspaper; I read blogs to get different viewpoints on the news. Both serve me well, but I have yet to see a blog that attempts to report the news as objectively as a mainstream newspaper, flawed as it is.
January 15th, 2008 at 11:25 am
“Seen any prose like that on Craiglist lately?”
Larry I have not, and don’t think we will, anytime soon. The quality of writing no longer has any real importance….folks just want information and are willing to forego quality writing to get it.
Our society has changed and newspapers no longer offer the entertainment value they once provided in the average person’s life….folks just aren’t sitting down and enjoying a good read of the paper. Even kids in school are reading less and less…getting their information from alternative sources such as the net.
Entertainment and information are flying at us faster than the speed of light, or the internet, to be more accurate.
I don’t think papers are doomed…just doomed as we know them. The delivery and content will have to change….we just haven’t arrived at that final format quite yet.
January 15th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
I don’t think newspapers can compete with online information sources. Newspapers can provide the in-depth analysis and detail that’s lacking on the web. And also, as Larry points out, newspapers can offer thoughtful, informative and well-written pieces.
The scary thing is when newspapers try to compete with online by trying to be “faster to read” and “easier to read.” (Those quotes, by the way, are from Monday’s Pasadena Star-News, in trying to explain why all the sections of the paper are moving around. Again.) I don’t want a paper that’s fast and easy to read. I want to spend some time with it, enjoy it, and learn something. If I want fast and easy, I’ll go online.
January 15th, 2008 at 4:06 pm
MA,
that’s the paradox for journalism. Costs increase, advertising flees to online and us right in the middle.
January 15th, 2008 at 11:24 pm
1) Newspapers are not dead.
2) Quality of writing is absolutely important and appreciated by me, an ordinary reader.
3) There is nothing like print on paper. It can be trusted, held up to scrutiny and ridiculed. It is a page that cannot be altered.
There are very few media outlets that can be relied upon for delivering the actual news. Not due to the dying art of style or of fact checking, more to the narrow (and narrowing) filtration system.
Broadcast news is vacuous. Cable news is a propaganda machine that makes me feel dirty even to following a story via YouTube.
The Associated Press is pretty much the only service that has been consistently accurate and dependable. Tsk, not local. If you think their reporters just hammer out a straight list of facts with no style then you haven’t read a report from Linda Deutsch.
Speaking of dirt and of style, a dirty old man that lived just down the road once remarked on it this way:
To do a dull thing with style is preferable to doing a dangerous thing without it. - C. Bukowski
What’s more dangerous: a newspaper or a blog?
January 15th, 2008 at 11:30 pm
Oh, and hats off to Mr. Wilson.
January 16th, 2008 at 2:00 pm
With all due respect Miss H. I disagree. This second line you wrote below isn’t close to being true.
3) There is nothing like print on paper. It can be trusted, held up to scrutiny and ridiculed. It is a page that cannot be altered.
A paper can’t be ridiculed or intelligently dismembered by a letter writer and than see that letter printed. The editors won’t argue back, except maybe on a blog like this, where their subscribers might not se their words. You won’t see it in their paper and if you can show examples of where they have, with facts and not smarmy babble, please direct me to where I can find it.
The PSN and SGVT, like other bigger papers, throw in the trash letters from writers that attack their position with facts because they don’t have the INTEGRITY to say they were wrong on a position or supposedly well investigated story. Weak letters disagreeing with them is all you’ll ever see.
Telling half the truth, whatever side of the social and political spectrum a paper resides on, is how many papers operate. That’s why I stopped writing to them. They have no dignity or sense of fair play.
Local Boy
January 16th, 2008 at 2:17 pm
dear bill, we never throw letters in the trash –not ones that are signed and with a telephone number for contact, at least. we publish virtually every local letter that comes in to the tribune, the star-news and whittier that isn’t libelous or anonymous. we very much welcome your letters, and look forward to publishing them. best, larry
January 16th, 2008 at 5:32 pm
Are Disagreeable Letters “Trashed” at the Pasadena Star News?
Go to http://pasadenapundit.com to find the answer
January 16th, 2008 at 5:51 pm
but that’s not the answer. it’s an assertion, one that happens to be incorrect. i have never seen that letter. now that i have, we will publish it. p.s. todd ruiz doesn’t write columns, but he does write news stories, along with a blog.
January 16th, 2008 at 5:53 pm
Well I guess the link answers you well enough Larry.
Nice try.
Local Boy
January 16th, 2008 at 5:59 pm
After Note:
A Trash Can Clown was just discovered behind the Star News building - see photo at Flickr here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jacobkrejci/255697304/
Rumor has it that a costumed Clown Trash Man is going to show up at the Doo Dah Parade in place of PSN Public Editor Larry Wilson.
And who says the Pasadena Pundit is humorless?
January 16th, 2008 at 6:01 pm
Maybe you’re not seeing all the letters Larry.
Local Boy
January 17th, 2008 at 1:59 pm
monrovia bill and all: i’ve checked and that letter was indeed not received. we would have quickly published it if it had been. but i copied it off the pundit’s web site and it goes in the paper for friday. if you ever send in a letter and it seems to have been lost in the hopper or you’re just concerned that it hasn’t quickly appeared, write me at larry.wilson@sgvn.com and i will expedite it. as we have for the 20 years i’ve been at the paper and i’m sure well before that, we especially welcome views thought to be at odds with those of the editorial page, and put a rush on those letters, cranky assertions here to the contrary notwithstanding. thanks, lw
January 17th, 2008 at 9:19 pm
It is not a generational thing to be disinterested in the world that used to be described best by daily newspapers. It is just that there is far more competition for everyone’s attention than there used to be before the internet. And those younger than 50 didn’t grow up with the habit of reading a newspaper.
Since the mid-90s a lot of people rely on web surfing to find out things.
The internet has blown open the filtering mechanisms we relied on in the past.
It is kind of like what happened to radio when television hit town.
Newspapers will be an online phenomenon with print being strictly a niche play.
January 24th, 2008 at 4:42 pm
The Chicago Sun-Times has gone through a couple rounds of firings and everyone is afraid of losing thier job. The reason? The Internet.