11 responses to
“The great big essay.”

1. 

   alex said on March 14th, 2006 at 9:12 pm

   Fort Wayne’s so con­ser­v­a­tive… thirty thou­sand peo­ple still read the News-Sentinel just so they can bitch about the fact there’s absolutely noth­ing in it.

   That’s the impres­sion I get talk­ing to my folks, who still sub­scribe for no other rea­son I can dis­cern. It’s a daily rit­ual. After spend­ing the entire five min­utes it takes to get through it, the con­ver­sa­tion inevitably turns to what a dis­sat­is­fy­ing expe­ri­ence it was.

   My dad mar­vels over the sports sec­tion, which actu­ally still has writ­ers. But who’s run­ning the show? Recently they filled enor­mous space with Olympic pre­lim­i­nar­ies that are of absolutely no inter­est to him or any­one. The next day, how­ever, when results were eagerly awaited there was zilch.

   I wish the damn thing would die already so that the old folks would take the Journal-Gazette and find some­thing else to talk about like actual news.

2. 

   jcburns said on March 15th, 2006 at 2:07 am

   So you’re say­ing you sent them a bun­cha printed out pages, and they retyped it all in and posted it on their web­site? Yee-gads. The hor­ror! The waste of interns!

3. 

   Jeff said on March 15th, 2006 at 7:48 am

   When i read that pub­lish­ers are cut­ting cer­tain cir­cu­la­tion seg­ments to gen­er­ate higher quar­terly prof­its (22.5%? What other busi­ness even comes close? Other than Microsoft . . .), i lose all my mild sym­pa­thy for the strug­gles print is going through.

   I can’t see how they bridge the gap from cur­rent eco­nomic mod­els for adver­tis­ing to mak­ing a rea­son­able profit on-line some­how, or add staff and resources for more dynamic web pres­ence that can carry some adver­tis­ing or whathaveyou to py bills. Peo­ple want con­tent, and would rather not pay for it, but we’re in a bub­ble­bath today that Times­S­e­lect and other pins are pop­ping. But now i see even bet­ter why i keep see­ing sto­ries in my local Gan­nett paper that end not only in mid-story, but with almost daily fre­quency in mid-sentence! Appar­ently copy edi­tors are trained by their abu­sive “spouses” to fear depart­ing the tem­plate more than end­ing a sen­tence with “and then (no period, either)”.

4. 

   Jim said on March 15th, 2006 at 8:46 am

   I think the main rea­son the News-Sentinel has sur­vived is because it’s per­ceived as the conservative/Republican paper, ver­sus the liberal/Democrat Journal-Gazette. I know that’s why my par­ents sub­scribed for decades. Those 30,000 read­ers prob­a­bly read the News-Sentinel (or, for the really old-timers, “the News ‘n’ Sentn’l.”)

   There’s def­i­nitely a gen­er­a­tional shift that directly affects pm papers — it’s been going on for years. My dad came home from work every day, sat in his chair and read the News-Sentinel while he watched the 6pm news on WKJG (not WISE!) and then the NBC Nightly News with John Chan­cel­lor (never Cronkite). It was like clock­work. I think if he had shifted his pat­tern, the earth would have stopped spin­ning.

   But most peo­ple aren’t like that any­more. They don’t come home from work and read the paper. If they read one at all, they read it at break­fast or on the way to work. And adver­tis­ers like morn­ing papers because they have a longer “life” — once read, they sit around for the rest of the day where peo­ple will see the ads. With an evening paper, once you’re done with it, you tend to throw it out quickly.

5. 

   nancy said on March 15th, 2006 at 9:00 am

   PMs are also a vic­tim of the death of man­u­fac­tur­ing. They were the sta­ple paper for the blue-collar work­ing class, who heard the fac­tory whis­tle at 3, 4, maybe 4:30 at the lat­est, and had that chunk of leisure time before din­ner. Jim, I don’t know what your dad did for a liv­ing, but you just described the pro­to­typ­i­cal p.m. news­pa­per reader.

   And Jeff, you want to know what other busi­ness comes close to news­pa­per prof­itabil­ity? Try local tele­vi­sion. Own­ing a broad­cast license is like hav­ing a license to print money, and makes news­pa­pers look like dogs — 50 per­cent is an eas­ily reached profit stan­dard in broad­cast­ing. Which is why so many of them have been snapped up by cor­po­ra­tions since dereg­u­la­tion in 1996. Tech­nol­ogy keeps mak­ing them more prof­itable, since they can now run vir­tu­ally on autopi­lot.

   A colum­nist at the Dis­patch did a funny piece once on a Sun­day wire story that had been trimmed to fit and lost its end­ing. The story was about a woman who had been falsely accused of tam­per­ing with Hal­loween treats, and ended with a quote, some­thing like, “But that wasn’t the worst part. It wasn’t the inves­ti­ga­tion. It wasn’t the police. It wasn’t the money.” And then, the end.

   It’s like play­ing “Shave and a Hair­cut” with­out the last two notes.

6. 

   MichaelG said on March 15th, 2006 at 11:11 am

   It’s a very fine arti­cle, Nance. It got me think­ing about one of my fave top­ics. A dozen times I went “right on!” or “yeah, but” or “wait a minute” or “what about this”. I enjoyed your take on the pub­lish or not dilemma con­cern­ing the Mohammed car­toons (“Way to keep your read­ers away from your scari­est com­peti­tor.”). At the same time, news­pa­pers are emi­nently find­able, sue­able, fire­bom­bable and demon­strate­in­fronto­fa­ble. Blogs are all hid­den some­where in someone’s bed­room. It’s easy to see how the papers might have been intim­i­dated.

   What is the future of the news­pa­per? If I had the answer, my con­sult­ing fees cup would run­neth over. I cer­tainly fit the demo­graphic of a news­pa­per reader. Age 55 is well in the rear view mir­ror. I like read­ing a paper. I like the touch of a paper, the smell, the view of all the stuff on the page includ­ing the Macy’s ad. I like to hold it and fold it and shake it and turn the pages. I like dis­card­ing one sec­tion and pick­ing up the next. Yes­ter­day I went through the first few sec­tions know­ing that the sports pages had the NCAA brack­ets and analy­sis. The antic­i­pa­tion was enjoy­able — I had delib­er­ately avoided look­ing at any on-line NCAA stuff because I know the brack­ets look bet­ter on newsprint than on my screen. I look at very lit­tle sports stuff on line. Sports are TV and news­pa­per to me.

   At the same time, I have my daily list of sites, news­pa­per, TV, blogs and other that I view on line (I find Woot a hoot). I’ve bought tons of stuff on line includ­ing my car. But mar­ket­ing is another story. News­pa­per peo­ple have to look at how to com­bine the net, print, cell phones and lord knows what other new stuff that’s com­ing down the pike. There is an easy appar­ent break down, cell phones for the brief (scores), the net for the break­ing and print for analy­sis, expose’ etc. But this model doesn’t even hold up. Pic­tures I print off the net are supe­rior to those I cut out of the paper. The papers have all been trum­pet­ing that blog­ging isn’t jour­nal­ism and that blog­gers aren’t jour­nal­ists. The papers claim that only they have the resources to main­tain cor­re­spon­dents in far flung places and to run long term inves­ti­ga­tions. This may be some­what true as far as it goes for the moment, but look at Josh Marshall’s grow­ing blog empire for exam­ple. He’s got blog­ging, analy­sis, opin­ion and he’s even hired inves­tiga­tive reporters. No one blog­ger has far flung for­eign cor­re­spon­dents yet, but then there are indi­vid­ual blog­gers all over the world who pro­vide superb local news and insight. Read River­bend or any of the other Iraqi blog­gers lately? Excel­lent busi­ness and legal analy­sis beyond what you see in the local rag or the NYT, LAT and WAPO are eas­ily avail­able on the net. At the same time the news­pa­pers, pre­fer­ring to accept offi­cial hand­outs, have done a hor­ri­ble job of chas­ing down and elab­o­rat­ing upon many sto­ries with national and inter­na­tional import — leav­ing in depth cov­er­age to the blog­gers. Look at your pal in Fort Wayne for exam­ple.

   As alluded to in the first para­graph, news­pa­pers have enor­mous invest­ments in their phys­i­cal plants and blog­gers don’t. As such, papers are wed­ded to an oblig­a­tion to main­tain, pay for and oper­ate that phys­i­cal plant. This means they’re stuck with print­ing. It’s easy to see how they can be scared, con­sid­er­ing the huge finan­cial oblig­a­tions they carry. And as with so many scared oper­a­tors, they aren’t play­ing to win, they’re play­ing not to lose. That atti­tude tends to fore­close cre­ative think­ing and bold action. In the end, it is still going to come down to prod­uct. How­ever news­pa­pers com­bine paper and elec­trons or even jet­ti­son print­ing, how­ever blogs evolve, con­sumers will grav­i­tate to the prod­uct that suites them.

7. 

   MichaelG said on March 15th, 2006 at 11:17 am

   OK, the mens’ brack­ets were Mon­day and yes­ter­day it was the wom­ens’ brack­ets. But you get the idea.

8. 

   Jeff said on March 15th, 2006 at 6:21 pm

   So how long before we see the major ero­sion of TV news oper­a­tio. . . .oh, right.

   I still star­tle friends by point­ing out that there are, on the major Colum­bus sta­tion (CMH-4 for Nance and the Ohioans), maybe 6 full timers on air not count­ing meterol­o­gists, and every­one else is a part-time, no ben­e­fits, under $25,000 wog. It seems impos­si­ble until you make them think about Reporter H or Cor­re­spon­dent D — how many days a week do you see them? Aver­age age is what?

   And the cov­er­age is “live from our park­ing lot or a spot within 2 miles” pretty much always, unless its a “shoot­ing on the east side.”

   When boot­leg stream­ing video with snarky voiceover becomes eas­ier and more afford­able, will vid­blogs start to show up on the plasma screens of mid­dle Amer­ica? I guess what you’re say­ing is, soon, and TV will charge the same ad rates well into the depar­ture of actual view­ers until some­one points out the Empirical’s new nudity, some­time after we’re down to three national news­pa­pers and a slew of shop­pers left in piles by the gro­cery cart rack.

9. 

   basset said on March 15th, 2006 at 9:53 pm

   CMH is the “major” Colum­bus sta­tion? when did that hap­pen? I always thought BNS would be the blow­torch for­ever.

10. 

    alex said on March 15th, 2006 at 11:10 pm

    Jim, if the Journal-Gazette is liberal/Democrat then the Wall Street Jour­nal is Wiccan/Feminazi. Fort Wayne’s so con­ser­v­a­tive that even the lib­eral mys­tique of the J-G has appar­ently sur­vived the paper’s trans­for­ma­tion into a fairly well right-of-center lap­dog for the likes of local GOP chair­man Steve Shine who holds a lot more sway there than his Dem coun­ter­part. Shine pulls a trans­par­ent ploy against the Dems and it’s news. Kevin Knuth of the Dems pulls a trans­par­ent ploy and it’s called a trans­par­ent ploy. The J-G also fea­tures blowhard neo­cons like Jonah Gold­berg. Then again, in Fort Wayne, even Jonah Goldberg’s too lib­eral for the real hard-core Chree­schun con­stituency so I can see why some might still con­sider it lib­eral.

11. 

    Jim said on March 16th, 2006 at 8:08 am

    I didn’t say it was liberal/Democrat — I said that’s the per­cep­tion.