Below the Fold

Newspapers: Making the Case for Free

(Originally posted at www.edelmandigital.com)

The future of newspapers may well be in Colorado, once home to the late “gonzo journalism” provocateur Hunter S. Thomson and today home to no less that 12 free dailies. All of these papers are very local, and perhaps more importantly, successful. This trend is even more interesting in light of tough times at the “real” state papers like the Rocky Mountain News and the Denver Post.

This isn’t a Colorado-only phenomenon. Palo Alto, Calif., in the heart of Silicon Valley and arguably Ground Zero in the “print is dead” movement, has two free daily newspapers. A free paper in Santa Monica, Calif., may soon expand.

Online advertising, pay walls, premium subscriptions – newspapers are trying anything to find new business models. But the future of print’s survival may be in Free.

Yes, free. No subscription, purely ad-driven free newspapers; hyper-targeted to neighborhoods and towns, not cities or regions. And rather than published in the morning when the news is at its most stale and competes for attention with people’s Facebook and Twitter feeds, these papers can come out in the late afternoon (for you old-timers, afternoon papers used to be commonplace in the United States.) A free, local, afternoon paper gives you analysis, context and hometown perspective to the news of the day.

“Most revenue for newspapers comes from advertising sales that subsidize the per-paper cost,” Curtis Robinson, editor of the free Portland (Maine) Daily Sun, says on the paper’s web site. “We just work on the model — like broadcast TV and nearly all Internet sites — that people want free news and that advertisers want to reach that readership. Media gurus sometimes assert that free dailies are the “transition” from traditional print media to online-only news — which sounds okay, except that free dailies did well before the Internet.”

The Case for Free (and Local)

It’s a popular conceit that people ever paid for content via their newspaper subscriptions. What they actually paid for was the means of distribution — paper, ink, presses, gasoline, tires and so on.

Advertisers were brought along for the ride – the more subscriptions a paper had the more ads that could be sold, which meant more pages and then, you guessed it, higher distribution costs.

This worked fine until the Internet Age. Newspapers made the mistake of looking at the Internet as simply another means of distribution, figuring that people would come to their web sites and read the news, and more importantly read the ads that helped pay for the web servers.

But search trumped any vision of people reading the news only at a newspaper’s web site. Now they could read the news on Google, Yahoo!, MSN or via RSS and Twitter feeds directly on their computer desktops or mobile devices. New media companies like Google saw value in the content, not the distribution, and traditional newspapers have been trying to catch up ever since.

Free may be the answer. And by staying hyper local – or a “micro daily” as Robinson says – the old distribution costs are greatly reduced. The paper is now attractive to readers and to advertisers, who see greater value in ads targeted to their most likely customers.

The editors of the free Palo Alto Daily Post put it more bluntly on their web site (where you won’t find any news):

“Giving away news online is a dumb way to do business. News is valuable. We put our news in print. The news creates demand for our paper, and increased readership makes our ads more effective than advertising in any other medium.”

Still Much Work to Do

The latest “State of the News Media” report from the Pew Project on Excellence in Journalism offers few surprises: Big-city papers continue to have the worst of it. But small dailies and community weeklies are generally doing better. “The latter come closer to the late-20th century position of newspapers as the dominant source for local information and the place for local merchants to advertise,” the report said.

The New York Times launched regional supplements to its San Francisco and Chicago editions, and even ESPN got into the act, starting regional sites in Chicago, Boston, Dallas and Los Angeles, challenging papers there for the hearts and minds of local sports fans. Yet these new products still don’t give locals what they really want – high school sports coverage, City Hall and Neighborhood Association news, or why that helicopter was circling overhead last night.

All of this news can and should be delivered online and via mobile devices, especially when it comes to time-sensitive information or live events. And location-tagging services like Foursquare and Gowalla will make the news event more local, and therefore more relevant.

The future of newspapers is still comprised more of bits than atoms; this transition can’t be stopped, nor should it be. But local print dailies have a place and a purpose. They appeal to young and old and everyone in between.

In a world drowning in fragments of fleeting “content,” print is the king of context and narrative. And free is the way forward for print to remain relevant – and survive.

The Last Newspaper

Daniel headed for the darkest corner of his local Starbucks, the Last Newspaper clutched snug against his chest.

He opened it slowly, carefully, as if he were cradling an ancient parchment. The crinkling sound it made drew a few stares, and then a few more as those around him realized that they were sitting just a few feet from history.

Daniel pretended not to notice. He wasn’t much for attention or conversation. But even he couldn’t deny the significance of this stubborn relic that had struggled against the future and lost.

So he didn’t cringe when several customers put down their Kindles and slid over to his table. After all, he had heard the questions over and over for months as he executed his daily routine of “offline” media consumption. He knew that this day would come, when the Last Newspaper rolled off the press and he alone would be left to feel the ink seep into the creases of his fingertips, turn the oversized pages and engage in a forgotten literary ritual.

The questions often took the form of puzzled amusement:

• "Isn't the news old by the time you read it?”
• "How do you search?"
• "What do you mean you had to pay for it?"
• "Why would you want a bunch of content you don’t care about?
• "I’ve got all the news that’s fit to click right here."
• "What is ‘ink’”?

Daniel took it all in stride. He nodded politely, laughed lightly, and answered what he could with all the patience and quiet pride of a museum curator.

He reminded his rapt audience that what they now refer to as “content” used to be called “stories,” delivered by trained individuals known as “storytellers” and “journalists.” These people didn’t work for companies like Google or Amazon as they do now, culling “content” from armies of information aggregators and feeding it into computers which analyze and pull out the relevant information by keyword. Before news was fully automated, Daniel said, individuals wrote entire stories themselves. They researched and crafted linear narratives – unheard of today, he admitted, but at the time people found value in following a certain flow.

Of course, people had more time back then, too. The move from stories to content was slow as well, and its tipping point went largely unnoticed. Before anyone knew what was happening, stories became shorter, sliced, repurposed and packaged as do-it-yourself news. Where once we read stories, we now consumed content.

Maybe this is why it happened, Daniel thought, as the crowd went back to the soft glow of their Kindles and mobile media devices. Maybe the descent from stories to content was the fait accompli of the printed page. 

Stories are personal and transformational. Stories have definition and character. Stories are history personified.

But content is cold, distant. Content is a commodity – a finite consumable of fleeting value. Content is artificial intelligence.

When storytelling is reduced to content, ideas die.

And with that, Daniel stood, folded the Last Newspaper back under his arm and walked away, leaving the future behind for the last time.

Journalism's Next 100 Years

I got a call from the University of Missouri Journalism School, my alma mater, reminding me of the 100th anniversary celebration this year. Founded in 1908, Missouri was the world’s first journalism school and is still regarded as one of the best.

Yet while overall it was a great first hundred years for American journalism, it’s the next 100 I worry about. Or in the prescient phrase uttered by ABC News anchorman Charles Gibson at Pennsylvania’s recent Democratic presidential debate, “the crowd is turning” on how professionals report the news.

History is the art of hindsight, so writing about an event before the ink dries and the digital bits settle is at best unfair. Nevertheless, you don’t need Galileo’s vision to see that the Pennsylvania debate marked another in series of dark turning points for the news business.

The financial pain we’ve known for while – as this year’s State of the News Media study revealed, advertising revenue is still going down, as are pre-tax earnings, profit margins and stock values. Even online newspaper advertising, while up 20 percent in 2007, is growing slower than online advertising as a whole, and is 10 percent lower than last year.

Newspaper owners answered with widespread staff layoffs, leading to less local reporting and therefore fewer readers which – you guessed it – resulted in less revenue. It’s also meant narrower reporting, with issues like Iraq and the presidential elections representing the majority of coverage. And it’s meant an unhealthy attraction to transient stories that are the equivalent of chewing gum, the media smacking its lips long after the gum has lost its taste.

All this came to a head in Pennsylvania. What should have been a debate about the future of the country became a Fox-style reality show about flag lapel pins. And the people responded, with boos in the audience and thousands of comments on ABC’s web site. The media itself became the story – a story prompted by ordinary people now with extraordinary access to the once powerful press.

Last year’s YouTube debates will be remembered for authentic questions about real-life issues from a mosaic of American culture. The ABC debate will be remembered as the day modern journalism died in a cacophony of tabloid-style interrogations, punctuated by the nervous laughter of a once proud newsman, gasping to stay afloat in a sea of discontent.

ABC should have known better. It should have known that news in the next 100 years will be more “service” that product, something that people will look to for intellectual guidance. News is a conversation, or as the BBC’s Richard Sambrook has said, a partnership – and in this sense, ABC failed its partners miserably.

Consider this: When asked about his debate performance, ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos said, “The questions we asked…are being debated around the political world every day.” A commenter on ABC’s web site said, “"Some of us actually live in the real world and care much more about real issues like food and gas prices.”

This is where we need to start the next 100 years of American journalism – in the real world. The crowd is turning, indeed.

                           

I got a call from the University of Missouri Journalism School, my alma mater, reminding me of the 100th anniversary celebration this year. Founded in 1908, Missouri was the world’s first journalism school and is still regarded as one of the best.

Yet while overall it was a great first hundred years for American journalism, it’s the next 100 I worry about. Or in the prescient phrase uttered by ABC News anchorman Charles Gibson at Pennsylvania’s recent Democratic presidential debate, “the crowd is turning” on how professionals report the news.

History is the art of hindsight, so writing about an event before the ink dries and the digital bits settle is at best unfair. Nevertheless, you don’t need Galileo’s vision to see that the Pennsylvania debate marked another in series of dark turning points for the news business.

The financial pain we’ve known for while – as this year’s State of the News Media study revealed, advertising revenue is still going down, as are pre-tax earnings, profit margins and stock values. Even online newspaper advertising, while up 20 percent in 2007, is growing slower than online advertising as a whole, and is 10 percent lower than last year.

Newspaper owners answered with widespread staff layoffs, leading to less local reporting and therefore fewer readers which – you guessed it – resulted in less revenue. It’s also meant narrower reporting, with issues like Iraq and the presidential elections representing the majority of coverage. And it’s meant an unhealthy attraction to transient stories that are the equivalent of chewing gum, the media smacking its lips long after the gum has lost its taste.

All this came to a head in Pennsylvania. What should have been a debate about the future of the country became a Fox-style reality show about flag lapel pins. And the people responded, with boos in the audience and thousands of comments on ABC’s web site. The media itself became the story – a story prompted by ordinary people now with extraordinary access to the once powerful press.

Last year’s YouTube debates will be remembered for authentic questions about real-life issues from a mosaic of American culture. The ABC debate will be remembered as the day modern journalism died in a cacophony of tabloid-style interrogations, punctuated by the nervous laughter of a once proud newsman, gasping to stay afloat in a sea of discontent.

ABC should have known better. It should have known that news in the next 100 years will be more “service” that product, something that people will look to for intellectual guidance. News is a conversation, or as the BBC’s Richard Sambrook has said, a partnership – and in this sense, ABC failed its partners miserably.

Consider this: When asked about his debate performance, ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos said, “The questions we asked…are being debated around the political world every day.” A commenter on ABC’s web site said, “"Some of us actually live in the real world and care much more about real issues like food and gas prices.”

This is where we need to start the next 100 years of American journalism – in the real world. The crowd is turning, indeed.

                           

Making Newspapers Matter: The Tragic Value of Content

“Hey Gary: After a year of unanswered emails to the editor of the Portland, Maine, Press Herald pleading for better local reporting and editing...I started a blog a month ago…” T.C. Munjoy, Pressing the Herald (http://pressingtheherald.blogspot.com/)

ONE MORE BLOG IN THE WORLD is not the end of traditional journalism. Even the target of Mr. Munjoy’s citizen reporting, the Press Herald of Portland, Maine, will unlikely feel any pain, at least in the short term. But what Mr. Munjoy and countless others have done by starting blogs for the purpose of either enhancing or supplanting local news is nothing less than apocalyptic.

Consider this one simple fact: Mr. Munjoy distributes his product on a platform he uses for free. If he ever decides to charge a fee, it will be for his blog’s content, not its distribution.

And herein lays the Achilles Heel of newspapers: their costs are all in the distribution, not the content. In fact, contrary to what newspaper executives may want you to believe, newspapers have never charged for their content – which is why the newspaper industry is, and for the foreseeable future will be, in serious trouble.

The Big Mistake
Five cents, 10 cents, 25 cents, 50 cents…whatever the cost of your daily paper, that cost goes to pay for the means of distribution. Paper, ink, presses, gasoline, tires, vending machines and so on – all means of distribution. The same goes for advertising – the more ads you can sell, the more pages you can print, the more there is to distribute.

Obviously some of this revenue goes to pay for reporters and editors, but in a purely business sense, the content they produce merely allows the company to distribute a product. And as I said, that’s how newspapers make money, by distributing their product.

This worked fine until the Internet Age. Newspapers made the mistake of looking at the Internet as simply another means of distribution, assuming that people would come to their web sites and read the news, and more importantly read the ads that helped pay for the web servers and Net access fees.

But search trumped any vision of people reading the news only at a newspaper’s web site. Now they could read the news on Google, Yahoo, MSN or via RSS feeds straight to their computer desktops. The new media companies like Google saw value in the content, not the distribution, and traditional newspapers have been trying to catch up ever since.

Some newspapers tried to charge for content, but having not placed any value there before it was difficult to make that case now (there is, however, a legitimate argument over whether news aggregators can publish copyrighted material without permission.) Niche publications did better than mass market ones, but with the free content genie out of the bottle and more and more information available from more and more sources, content itself became commoditized.

As the public turned more selective, news turned more subjective. After all, if you want people to value content, you have to make it stand out. But in trying to save their business model, newspapers have injured journalism.

Where we are Today
Television had its role in this tragedy as well. In the Golden Age of TV news, daily broadcasts were not expected to make money. News was seen as a loss leader, its existence seen as nothing less than fulfilling a sacred public trust.

But television was also a business, and as profits rose from the entertainment side of the house, pressure mounted on the news divisions to earn some of that valuable ad revenue. So television news, because it came into people’s homes for free, looked to its content to attract viewers – to entertain them if not inform.

And this is where we are now, in print, on the airwaves and online – a journalism where placing value on news content means a world of infotainment and hyperbole, of diversion and distraction.

There is plenty of good work to be sure, but how long will it last? How long will newspapers focus efforts on the “paper” part of their monikers instead of the “news” – on supporting an obsolete distribution infrastructure rather than new business models that place value on content that is truly valuable?

We don’t have the answers yet – but like any good journalist, getting to the answers starts with asking the right questions. Let’s hope there are some good journalists left to ask them.

Good luck, Mr. Munjoy. The future of quality journalism may someday turn its lonely eyes to you.

Social Media Tools and Modern Technology Only Tell Part of the Story

The Riverside Press-Enterprise in Riverside, Calif., requires its entry-level reporters to shoot video of their stories in addition to the written versions. The directive is optional for older or more established reporters, but the message is clear: Get with the future or get out.

There is some truth and I’m sure even noble purpose to this obvious attempt to remain relevant. And the Press-Enterprise is hardly alone – these are trying times for the soul of newspapers everywhere, and 2007 will be different only in terms of magnitude.

Newspapers are not dead; the traditional newspaper is. But technology itself is not enough to resuscitate the dying patient that is today’s printed press.

What newspapers lack is not video or blogs, podcasts or RSS feeds, avatars or consumer/citizen/user/customer/whoever-generated content. Newspapers no longer tell us stories – especially those stories we need to hear.

We get snippets, digests and broad strokes. We get opinion without context, commentary without research and sound bite upon sound bite upon sound bite. Like almost every other form of media, the newspaper has been “Tivoed” and revamped to address our mass cultural Attention Deficit Disorder, so much so that we know more about Tom and Katie than Shiite and Sunni (and care more about the former as well.)

Nevertheless, there is still a thirst for story that newspapers can quench. While the Internet version of news excels at the short pass, the print version needs to go long with stories that awaken people’s emotions, not their modems. In fact, this approach is not just for print but for the online newspaper as well. With an unlimited amount of space, there is plenty of room for good storytelling.

And yes, these stories, when warranted or possible, will need to include video and graphics, and audience engagement via commenting and other social media norms, among other things. All media is multimedia, and that goes for newspapers, too.

But rather than shoot video for video’s sake, tomorrow’s journalists need to learn how to be visual and audio storytellers. Just using the technology doesn’t make you relevant or hip – you can shoot all the video you want, but if it doesn’t tell a story, then you are wasting the audience’s time.

When I was in journalism school I had to choose whether to study print or broadcast journalism. But today there are no print journalists, TV journalists, radio journalists or Internet journalists. There are just journalists reporting across all mediums, in all forms, and in real time. The main universal thread is story, which should be every journalism student’s major and every professional’s focus.

This is where we are headed in 2007 – a world without a mass media, without a common tongue to tell our human tales. What we have instead is a world with many mediums, affording countless opportunities to reach more people in more ways than ever before.

This is our great challenge as communicators – and our greatest hope for a meaningful future.

Making Newspapers Matter: The “Age of Engagement”

When I went outside this morning I saw something I thought I would never see in my life – an empty driveway.

No newspaper. I checked the bushes, nothing. I asked if someone had brought it in already, but no. I wondered if the delivery person forgot or was sick, but then I remembered.

It was my fault. I canceled delivery of the Los Angeles Times for the first time, and I may never go back.

I will still read the news every morning, but it will be online. I read more newspapers in a day than most people read in a week or even a month (though to be fair, those same people watch more local network television news in a day that I will watch in a lifetime.) Yet my habit is now fed mostly by RSS, live bookmarks and Google Alerts.

This isn’t to say that I have given up on print in general or newspaper journalism in particular. I am a big proponent of the belief that print is going through a transformation, not Rigor Mortis. Print will be here 50 years from now – it will look different, perhaps more niche and subservient to its networked, online counterpart, but print will be here and journalists will be here. And some of those journalists will be doing the best work of theirs or any other generation.

I do wonder, however, if any of those journalists will be working for the Los Angeles Times. The Chicago-based Tribune Company, which owns the Times, has reduced my hometown paper to a shell of its former independent self. And this, more than anything else, is why I canceled my subscription (in fairness, I still read the Times online and get the Sunday paper, though that’s mostly because I haven’t yet figured out how to live without the color comics.)

At a time when other major metro papers like The Washington Post are investing in new media and recommitting to excellence in the face of declining readership, Tribune is cutting staff and virtually ignoring the digital elements that will advance the Times and keep it viable.

And it’s not just the big papers – smaller, local newspapers like the Naples (Fla.) Daily News and the Riverside (Calif.) Press-Enterprise, where all entry-level reporters are required to shoot video as well as write copy, are making the transition to digital and embracing our social media culture with aplomb.

We are living in journalism’s Age of Enlightenment – or perhaps a more apt phrase would be the Age of Engagement (while reader-generated content is important, I still believe most people don’t want to be reporters, they just want a voice in the news process.) But regardless of terminology, this is most certainly not the time to dig trenches and raise the castle gates.

What Tribune has yet to realize is that an enlightened society has no need for castles or kings. Nobody owns the news anymore – and while it may not seem like it, this is good news for newspapers, professional journalists, and the public.

News-Record Editor Gives Sound Advice to Prospective Hires

John Robinson, editor of the Greensboro (NC) News-Record, wrote an insightful piece on his blog about what he looks for in students coming out of journalism school. The only reason I got hired for my first newspaper job was because I went to the University of Missouri J-School (seriously, that’s what my boss told me), but I think Robinson’s list is more inclusive and definitely more modern.

Some of Robinson’s criteria include:

• “Innovative thinking – The last thing we need are traditional thinkers. Want to write long series on ‘important’ issues of the day. Get in line. Those journalists are vital, and we have them. Want to help create new and different ways of speaking to readers? See a new way to marry our desire to commit journalism and the public's desire to get news and information how, when and where it wants it? Batter up!”

• “Read newspapers. You'd be surprised at the number of applicants who readily acknowledge that they don't read a newspaper. I know that young people get much of their news online -- and I do expect you to be able to name the journalism bloggers you read -- but, really, you need to be reading a paper version of the product if you want to come and work for one.”

• “Understands community. Don't plan to get involved in the community? Don't plan to go to church or temple or join a book club or volunteer or sample the downtown night spots or build a Habitat House or serve food at the soup kitchen? Well, to cover the community right you need to be part of it. And when you talk with and listen to readers on your blog, on the comment section of the stories you write, on the telephone, you'll have a clue.”

You still can’t go wrong with a Missouri graduate. Short of that, however, I hope other editors take these reasons to heart and consider them when interviewing new recruits or even experienced reporters. More importantly, I hope our journalism schools do a better job preparing students for the future of news.

Real Journalism in a Virtual World: Interview with Second Life’s Metaverse Messenger Publisher Katt Kongo

“…Print is here to stay. People just need to find new ways to use it.” – Katt Kongo, Publisher, the Metaverse Messenger

While real-world journalism struggles for new legitimacy and relevance, virtual world journalism is flourishing. I’m talking about real reporting, written by real reporters covering real stories and issues. After all, online communities are no less significant than the “real” ones in which we live and work, and the need for news coverage is no less vital online, either.

At the head of the virtual journalism class is Katt Kongo, publisher of the Metaverse Messenger newspaper in Second Life. Kongo is a journalist with years of “real life” experience who has won awards for her reporting and photography. Now she is reinventing journalism in Second Life (SL), both with the Messenger and by teaching basic journalism skills to interested SL residents.

The following interview is revealing for those who are unfamiliar with SecondLife, and encouraging for those who believe that journalism’s best days still lie ahead.

BTF: When did you start publishing the Metaverse Messenger and why?

KK: “I started publishing the M2 in August of 2005. I decided to start the paper because I wanted to do something in SL to make a little bit of money. It was important to me to be self-sustaining in SL and not take money from my family to purchase L$ (Linden Dollars, SL’s in-world currency) with. I also wanted to do something I love. So I started thinking about what I love doing most. The answer to that was newspaper work.”

BTF: What kinds of stories do you look for?

KK: “I look for stories that would educate and inform readers, and even occasionally entertain them, like the recent article on the group of residents whose religion dictates the worship of (SL founder) Philip Linden. Generally speaking, if an article would interest me, it would also interest the M2 readership.”

BTF: How much news do you find yourselves and how much is sent in by residents?

KK: “I would say 80% of the articles in the M2 are generated by staff members, with readers sending in or informing us of the remaining percentage.”

BTF: Second Life is a visual, interactive medium. So why start a newspaper, which is "print?" Are there plans for more visual, audio or video journalism in the future?

KK: “Our motto is ‘A real newspaper for a virtual world,’ so we strive to be as like a meatworld (real world) newspaper as possible. A print format, even though it's electronic, is part of that. And print is here to stay. People just need to find new ways to use it. Yes, we do have plans to add other news formats.”

BTF: Is journalism in SL all "citizen" journalism,  it is professional journalism, or a mix of both? 

KK: “I'm a journalist, with a degree and many years of experience. There are a few staff members with some journalism experience. The majority, however, are simply talented writers.

“I just opened a center to give my staff members, and any interested SL residents, a basic education in journalism, basically what would amount to an Associates' Degree. I also hope to pull in universities to teach distance courses on journalism.”

BTF: Can you have a community, even a virtual one,  without a newspaper? How does a newspaper help residents "function" better  than simply connecting with each other, having a calendar of events and other  pure "informational tools" -- in other words, why do you need journalism in  SL?

KK: “I feel that there are certain aspects needed for a community to exist, and one such aspect is a way to spread news, whether it's a newspaper or word of mouth. The larger a community grows, the more efficient its means of sharing news should be. A newspaper helps residents function by providing a tool which they can then use to make decisions with -- where to buy the best clothing, what to do on a Friday night, how to use new SL features, and more.”

BTF: Are your ads supporting the newspaper, or is it still a "labor of love?"

KK: “The ads support the newspaper with its current budget. However, I would like to expand the budget by paying staff members better, and adding full time staff to the M2 roster.”

BTF: What should real world journalists and public relations  professionals learn from what you are doing in SL? Are there any lessons or  experiences you've had that resonate for communications in the real world? Or to put it another way, can you apply SL journalism skills to get a job at a real-world newspaper?

KK: “Think outside the box. Learn the rules of journalism, but know there may be a time when you have to make up new ones. A new world, whether it's a virtual one or a meatworld existence, will require new innovations in journalism.

“Every experience has held a lesson for me. One specific example: when you give people a chance, sometimes you will be disappointed. But many times, people will take the opportunity you give them and create a marvelous thing. Don't be afraid to hand out chances.

“I think the majority of my staff writers could easily get a job working for a ‘real life’ publication. All of them have strong interview skills, and have developed good newspaper writing skills. As for myself, I might eventually start publishing a small town newspaper. After publishing a paper for a virtual world, reality would be a snap.”

Visit the Metaverse Messenger in Second Life at Sido 169/183/26.

Newspapers: Where Words are Born, Not “Where Words Go to Die”

Author Seth Godin, in a post about how to be a successful non-fiction writer, said, “a non-fiction book is a souvenir, just a vessel for the ideas themselves. You don't want the ideas to get stuck in the book... you want them to spread.”

I thought about this statement as I stared at the pile of newspapers in the back of my car. These non-fiction “vessels for ideas” lay unopened, unread and unimportant in a world where people move too fast and information is in a constant race to keep up. When a newspaper yells “Fire!” everyone has already left the theater, running to soak in the next story on television, the Internet, mobile phone or other modern convenience that trumps ever-declining newspaper readership.

Newspapers have an unenviable task: No matter how much work reporters and editors do in a day, they can’t overcome the “dead zone” between the time the paper has to go to press and the time it arrives on our driveways. It may only be a matter of hours, but that’s long enough for a Tsunami to kill thousands or Mel Gibson to get pulled over for drunken driving. Newspapers, unable to compete for scoops in a world without pause, are almost always O.O.A. – Obsolete On Arrival.

This doesn’t mean, however, that newspapers are, as some believe, “Where words go to die.” Quite the opposite: If words are representations of thought – or as Godin might say, “vessels for ideas,” then newspapers are where words are born.

Newspapers are at their best in afterthought and analysis, in forming opinions and offering perspective. And while they can’t "do" breaking news anymore, they can break big news, such as the stories about covert domestic wiretapping and secret government prisons. The best newspapers give us words that live far beyond their vessels' unceremonious trips to the recycle bin.

Newspapers need to do a better job of spreading their ideas to other mediums. This will require newspaper companies to stop thinking of paper as The Paper – it’s the newspaper’s function that matters most now, not its form. The Los Angeles Times should always be the Los Angeles Times, whether it’s in the back of my car, on my Google home page or in my IPod.

As long as newspapers continue to spread ideas – to write words that live – then they will matter. They will avoid becoming relics and will progress into a new future: A future, perhaps, without newsprint, but with plenty of news.

Former Santa Barbara News-Press Columnist Speaks Out; N-P Publisher Becomes (Lou) Cannon Fodder

"Wendy McCaw may own the paper, but she doesn't own the news." -- Anonymous Santa Barbara News-Press executive

And on the Seventh Day, it all went to hell.

One week since editors and a long-time columnist walked out on their jobs, Santa Barbara’s media establishment is still firing salvos across a deepening chasm – reporters and community activists on one side, the rookie publisher and amateur owner on the other. The News-Press debacle may just be a bump in the road or a harbinger of greater journalistic tussles to come, but either way, the controversy continues to shine a light on the darker aspects of modern news.

The most detailed account so far of what happened on The Day the Journalism Died comes from Barney Brantingham, the aforementioned columnist (disclaimer: I used to work in Santa Barbara and knew Barney professionally.) Brantingham wrote about the experience in the Santa Barbara Independent, which also happens to be his new employer.

You should read the article for yourself – it’s interesting, revealing, inspiring and sad, and I am sure, knowing Barney, it is also the truth. Here’s a brief excerpt:

Last Thursday, I watched in dismay as (Editor Jerry) Roberts was escorted out of his office by (Publisher Travis) Armstrong. According to one witness, Armstrong barged into Roberts’s office saying, “I want you out of here now,” or words to that effect. This was quite a spectacle: A longtime San Francisco reporter and editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, a journalist of the highest reputation in the nation, kicked out by Mr. Poison Pen.

Many of us in the newsroom that day shook Jerry’s hand. Staffers rushed up, women were in tears, Metro Editor Jane Hulse threw her arms around Roberts, sobbing. Armstrong, widely despised in the community and clearly uncomfortable with the love and respect being shown the editor, growled, “Come on, Jerry, you have to leave the building now.”

As he hustled Roberts down the hall and toward the door flanked by Human Resources Director Yolanda Apodaca, sorrow turned to anger. Hulse yelled, “Fuck you, Travis. Haven’t you done enough?” The gathered staffers took up the chorus: “Fuck you!”

Cannon Blast
Perhaps the most damning comments about the demise of the News-Press, however, are from former Washington Post reporter and famed Reagan biographer Lou Cannon (another disclaimer: I’ve met and interviewed Lou on a few occasions, and consider him to be a real mench.)

Cannon, a Santa Barbara County resident, wrote a letter to Armstrong that was also published in the Independent. Following is some of what Cannon, one of the most respected journalists alive, had to say:

People don’t trust the news when it is merely an expression of opinion. In order to sell more newspapers and raise advertising rates, publishers realized they needed the readers’ trust. That is how modern newspapers evolved.

…It doesn’t take a big-time newspaper to practice honest journalism. Earlier in my career, I worked for the Merced Sun-Star, whose owner, the late Dean Lesher, was often (and accurately) described as idiosyncratic. But he understood the purpose of a newspaper. When one of the community’s most prominent attorneys (who had also represented the newspaper), was arrested for drunken driving, the lawyer wanted the news suppressed. Mr. Lesher refused to do it. Years later when I became editor of another Lesher paper, the Contra Costa Times, I asked what he expected of me. “Treat everyone without fear or favor,” he said.

Lesher was right. Cannon is right, so is Brantingham, and so are the editors who walked out.

Journalism has problems – declining readers and viewers, public mistrust and unprecedented economic pressures, not to mention the Nancy Graces of the world. But journalism still has principles, it has ethics, and it has journalists who are willing to endure great personal hardships to do what they believe is necessary to preserve the public trust.

I have one thing to say to these journalists, wherever they are: Thanks.

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