Rocky Mountain Sadness
Posted: February 27th, 2009 | Filed under: Media | 65 Comments »
There was a time when I was young and ambitious, and I dreamed of working for The Rocky Mountain News. I loved the name — The Rocky Mountain News — it sounded bold and a rustic and crisp as a Coors commercial. More, though, I loved that paper, the tabloid form, the spirited writing, the defiant columnists, the expressive headlines, the way the ink would rub off on your hands when you read it. There was a newspaper war going on in Denver — an old-fashioned newspaper war that raged from the mayor’s office to Mile High Stadium to the mud — and, for me, the News was on the side of the angels. I wanted to enlist.
It almost happened a time or two, though in newspapers lots of things almost happen. Instead, I worked for the News’ sister paper, The Cincinnati Post. We fought our own smaller newspaper war against the Cincinnati Enquirer. It was different, though. In Cincinnati, we Posties knew in our hearts the war was in its final act, and we would lose. In Denver, the fight between the Rocky Mountain News and Denver Post was alive. The city was still in the balance.
Friday, the Rocky Mountain News published its final edition. The Post won. According to reports, the Post is dying too.
It’s a cliche, by now, for newspaper people to mourn the death of a newspaper. We sound — it seems to me — too much like those who mourned the death of the horse and buggy. Progress rages on, and only the sentimental among us believe that we will lose something important in the wake. I love newspapers. I love the way they feel, the way they smell, the way they can put this big and confusing world in some sort of order every single day …
Here is the news from America, and maybe a little bit from the Middle East too.
Here is the news from your neighborhood. Someone was murdered. A family survived a fire. A photo of a dog chasing a Frisbee.
Here is an editorial: Crime is bad. Education is good. George Will uses big words. Maureen Dowd goes for laughs.
Here’s what happened in sports. The local team lost. A high school kid scored 24. The Celtics lead the Atlantic.
Here’s a movie review and a story about tonight’s episode of Lost. Look for people to wear purple this spring.
Dilbert is trapped in an office. A writer advises a wife to be more patient. Horoscope says today’s a good day to work. Jumble.
Here’s a prediction of the weather.
There’s something so comforting for me about the morning paper, even if at the same time I know — absolutely know — that I read the news last night, can find any editorial I want anytime I want it, watched extensive movie clips, already bought purple and not only know weather predictions but studied the radar myself many hours ago. As a child, I delivered the afternoon Cleveland Press, and when it died people explained that the world had changed, there was no place left for afternoon papers. The world has changed much more since then.
That said, it isn’t just the change of the world that killed the Rocky Mountain News and strangles the rest of us. It’s the economy. It’s a fragmented business model. It’s complicated. Conservatives think that liberals kill newspapers, and liberals think that editors without vision kill newspapers, but neither buys a classified ad in the paper to announce a yard sale or a new job, and that’s what really hurts.
The Rocky Mountain News closes today. We know it won’t be the last newspaper to go. We know that the world is leaving us behind. It’s easy to feel sentimental. We don’t know what, if anything, comes next.
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I think the internet, and newspapers and magazines and networks’ decision to publish on it for free, killed newspapers.
…sigh…Sign o’ the Times…
I know that this is a little sad, but I couldn’t help but chuckle a little when reading the the article on http://www.rockymountainnews.com about the decision to shut down the paper. At the end of the article, there was this link:
“Subscribe to the Rocky Mountain News”
I hear that purple is the new pink.
I’d have no problem with the Denver Post going out of business if it meant that Woody Paige would never write another word. Of course, cutting off his fingers might have the same effect without the attendant unemployment. So I guess I’m asking for volunteers.
i’m just worried about where all these free articles on teh interwebs are going to come from when the last of the newspapers shut down.
a lot of the companies that own these papers (in addition to being victims of circumstance (bad economy, interwebs, etc)) didn’t do much to help their cause.
some complain the editors lack vision? i think they are looking pretty 20/20 compared to the publishers.
newsday is going to start charging for online content. i doubt it will work for them (more due to the fact that it’s the 3rd best paper in its market), but it is the right idea.
online ad revenue has not, does not, and never will support a fully-functioning newsroom, at least not in the sense that we think of one today.
the only papers to survive in anything like their current form are going to be the ones that come up with an online strategy that actually generates some cash and uses that to support the few readers who actually buy the physical product, not the other way around.
The Rocky Mountain News was the first real newspaper that I became familiar with that used the tabloid form. Man, I loved how it was so much easier to hold or place on the table and read while eating breakfast. I wonder, not knowing anything about the newspaper business, did their use of the tabloid form have anything to do with this newspaper’s demise?
[...] I love this post by Joe Posanaski who conveys my sentiments of newspapers much better than I ever could. I still buy the Daily News and Post at the ferry terminal while on the way to work out of habit and I get the NY Times and Staten Island Advance delivered to my house which seems now like getting an ice or coal delivery, but I barely read the hard copy papers. As soon as I get to work I sign on my computer and go to my Google Reader for my news of the day and my Daily News becomes a placemat for my cereal bowl and coffee cup. [...]
Completely ignoring the sentimental side of the death of a newspaper, society loses a valuable asset when a paper folds. While national papers like the New York Times, Washington Post, etc., will continue to do outstanding work covering the big issues, and we will never lack for coverage of our favorite sports, who is going to cover the state legislatures and city councils? Those activities are, by definition, local and time consuming, and thus labor intensive and expensive.
Here in New Boston it’s hard to feel like we’ll lose anything. The Globe is unreadable, as it’s editorial and opinion have leeched into it’s new coverage, and the Herald is a joke. As far as I’m concerned, we lost credible newspapers a long time ago.
Before the advent of the internet, the KC Star was my only in depth source for local news and sports. I was a subscriber for years.
Now, I can get what I want from the Star on the internet and, as a bonus, I don’t have to finance a left-wing editorial page.
Craigslist killed newspapers.
Thanks for the posting Joe. I’ve lived in Denver for nearly 11 years now, since graduating from KU, and nearly everyone of those days for those 11 years involved the Rocky in some way. I could take you down to my basement and pull out the coverage of Columbine (I lived 2 miles from the school) and later, of September 11th. I work online, love the internet, love all the new technology – but there is just something about a paper.
The dealth of the Rocky is another klaxon for the end of an era. This is not just the passing of one paper, as you write. A balanced, democratic society needs the news. My worry now is that news with either be so one sided (as many already believe…I don’t) or so distributed among blogs/etc to render it silent…like so many fibers blowing in the wind). I wonder about the future of the medium and I wonder what J-School students at KU and MU are being taught. There will always be a need for good writing – but where will that writing live?
I live in the hinterlands of Kansas and the Kansas City Star recently cut back its circulation so I have to get it by mail.
It’s really not the same as waking up in the morning and picking up a paper off the lawn and reading it over breakfast.
This is a natural evolution of communication, and unfortunately newspapers are going the way of the pony express, telegraph and smoke signal. It is sad, because newspapers created the potential for ‘in-depth’ and ‘objective’ coverage of sports (if there are such things anymore). But now, when you can read about something online minutes after it happened, a newspaper has to be even more ‘in-depth’ and ‘objective’ to make up for the time delay. It’s not going to happen in the short term.
Joe’s right. There are a lot of reasons.
There are a lot of bright people (and some not so bright) in the newspaper industry and no one has figured out the solution yet. Perhaps the biggest problem is that a decade ago, they thought the Internet was a fad and would blow over and so, in a Bud Selig strategy, they ignored it and hoped it would go away. Sadly, some of them are still in denial.
We live in funny times. Things arise and disappear faster than we can keep up with. I wonder if our sense of wonder and nostalgia will speed up with the times or if nostalgia itself will change. Will we become nostalgic for nostalgia?
Now I’m just being silly, but I think this is a funny aspect of life in 2009 that a lot of what we grew up with just doesn’t make sense economically/logistically/survival of the fittestly.
Also, I heartily recommend “Bitter Tea,” one of Joe’s picks this week. Quirky and amazing. It dominated my 2007 until I discovered Elephant Eyelash by Why?
Joe-
For me, this morning provided the clearest example I’ve ever seen of why the Newspaper is dying and there may not be anything it can do to save itself.
I’m a DC-area sports fan who gets the Washington Post every day and opens to the sports section as soon as I sit down on the train. This morning I was treated to news about a Capitals victor above the fold. The two columns from the Posts’ cadre of superstars were a Boswell piece about the Nats’ front office issues and the firing of Jose Rijo, and a Wilbon piece about Maryland’s chances to reach the NCAA tournament.
Of course, there was already a much bigger DC sports news story out there– the Haynesworth signing. I read all about it, including commentary on the deal from respected columnists, on the internet.
Boswell’s piece is also outdated. Baseball Prospectus is reporting rumors that the Nats have almost finished showing GM Jim Bowden out the door and possibly replacing him with Tony LaCava. A much bigger story, and one that has already been explored all over the net. Only Wilbon’s piece was timely, and it didn’t offer any insight I couldn’t get elsewhere.
There’s still a place in the brick and mortar world for work like yours, and Boswell’s, and Wilbon’s. That place is the weekly magazine. The newspaper can’t offer the timeliness of the internet nor the depth of less frequent publications. It has outlived its usefulness.
Forget sports. Just think for a second, who is going to send reporters to war zones and to disaster zones – reporters, not talking heads, people to do long, serious investigative pieces. I worry about this.
Everyone wants everything to be free. Everyone complains about ads, and is so proud of how they block them and don’t see them but no one wants to pay for content.
I don’t get it. How are there supposed to be people who write if people who write can’t make a living writing? Don’t say ‘the weekly magazine’ because they’re dying too.
We will deeply regret the death of the newspaper when there are no more. There will be a hole.
“Will we become nostalgic for nostalgia?”
A few years ago there was a “Happy Days” reunion show on TV. If that isn’t nostalgia for nostalgia, what is?
it’s sad, and as someone who went down with the ship in cincinnati, it’s sad to see another ship going down and not enough lifeboats
there are so many problems, but they start with people like this:
“Before the advent of the internet, the KC Star was my only in depth source for local news and sports. I was a subscriber for years.
Now, I can get what I want from the Star on the internet and, as a bonus, I don’t have to finance a left-wing editorial page.”
Yeah, well, you also financed the stuff you “want from the Star” — but what are you going to do when it’s gone? that time is coming.
the entitled masses who expect everything for free are killing our economy, and they will continue — whether it’s news or music or movies. we’ll see what happens when there are no more customers, there will be no more product that’s worth paying for. mark and his right-wing propaganda put the gun to our head and like barney fife, pulled the trigger and splattered our brains all over the street. and we won’t be there to write about it when he slips on our blood, brains and bone fragments and cracks his own skull
I love newspapers. As a kid, I’d catch the evening Star when it was thrown from the truck. I’d read McGuff’s column first (he would have been a great blogger), but I read the whole thing. I subscribed to the Star when I went off to college. And when I returned to KC a few yeras ago, I started subscribing again. And I kept subscribing despite the fact that I could get it all for free on the web, and despite the fact that I’d usually read most of the stories on the web for free before I picked up the paper.
So it took a lot, and not just love of money, to get me to drop my subscription last fall. But at some point I decided that it didn’t make sense for me to give my money to the Star–it was essentially giving my money to a political campaign I didn’t support.
Let’s not confuse the death of the print edition of newspapers with the death of online news gathering organizations under the same names.
I bet the Post had the Redskins news posted just about as quickly as anyone else did, even if it wasn’t in the hard copy of the paper.
So you don’t subscribe to the paper any more and can find everything in the paper online for free at the paper’s web site. You think that story about your kid’s high school basketball game wrote itself? ESPN didn’t write it. You think Deadspin wrote all the crap they link to every day? You think CNN wrote the story about your shady city government?
No. Newspapers did. And when they start charging for their content like they need to, you’ll either pay or subsist on a diet of ESPN.com and CNN.com, yahoos writing about stuff from the other end of the country who don’t have half the institutional knowledge about your alma mater as the newspaper’s beat writer. Maybe that’s enough for you. Maybe not. I think we’ll find out, though.
This wistful reminisence of a time when newspapers were unbiased, reliable sources of information is just wishcasting. That time and those newspapers simply never existed.
It’s weirdly appropriate that newspapers derive a big chunk of their revenue from obituaries.
The problem isn’t with journalism, it’s with the business model for an ink and paper medium. Our need for good reporting hasn’t disappeared.
JR- You are correct. I was separating the paper from the news agency.
Can’t really blame me, though. The Post separates them too! The .com headquarters are in the Virginia suburbs, while the paper is downtown.
Also, I’m not sure beat writers add the value that you seem to think they do. In fact, I don’t think they offer any value in the internet age at all, since they ask the same questions and have to tiptoe around the front office and star players in order to retain their access. For example, I think you get much better coverage of your alma mater’s teams by perusing their scout.com sites
Matt N – whenever i want to see who died where i grew up (and that’s about the extent of the news from there 99.5% of the time) i go online to the website for the 5-day/week county newspaper there and look through the obits. i guess that’s ironic given the subject of this discussion.
the funny thing is, i can’t imagine that busines will be there forever, either. most funeral homes are starting to put pretty comprehensive websites up… i wonder how long it will be until they start just putting the obits up on their own websites and skipping the newspapers? it would be one less item for them to mark-up and resell, but i imagine that day is coming.
Kevin —
Read Joe’s blog again. Newspapers aren’t dying because editorial pages are “liberal.” If that were the case, the conservative WSJ and the Washington Times wouldn’t be dying on the vine.
Get over this editorial-page red herring. The at-most two pages of an editorial section make up less than 5 percent of the pages of the newspaper.
Online or in print, you should pay, a nominal sum, to read “what you want” in the Star. What other business gives away “what you want” for free? None. That’s the reason this business model is failing.
What about local news? Do you really want to get that from the airheads on the local TV stations?
Todd: Consider this…When a publication becomes known as the house organ or mouthpiece for a particular political point of view, it turns off those that might think and feel differently. This works both ways. The libs pay little attention to the WSJ or the Wash Times just like the neo-cons won’t touch a NYTimes. This really does cut into the overall market share, especially in this era when partisanship is so striking.
Question: Who was the last Republican Presidential candidate that the NYTimes Editorial Staff recommended? The answer is rather telling…
Answer: 1940: Wendell Wilkie!
I agree that newspapers are failing for many other reasons but do not discount this relationship out of hand.
I don’t know, Joe. One might have to be sentimental to mourn the loss of the horse-and-buggy, but the “progress” that the automobile represents is not necessarily always a good thing. It has helped fuel the suburbanization and urban sprawl of America, which now chokes our natural world, destroys natural beauty, and isolates people from each other.
“Progress” does not always mean “better.”
And some guy named “Slim” now owns a large chunk of the New York Times…
I still drop 50 cents a few times a week to read the Daily News. Honestly, you don’t read nearly as many articles online as you do when you’re eating lunch with the newspaper. Maybe because you’re limited to the content of the paper. That’s not really a bad thing; it forces you to absorb everything.
What the entire industry needs to do is work together. You figure the smartest folks from all the papers could come up with something. Why aren’t they?
For example. Fight back against craigslist. Buy up domain names of that city(ie Boston.com = Globe), set it up like the classifieds pages, and provide a safer, more secure option than craigslist. Working together, 2 papers in the city share the main website; click left for the Globe, click right for the Herald. Click right for the Post, click left for the Daily News. Maybe NewYork.com or NYC.com is taken. Sooo, get it!
A kick ass classifieds, user-reviews, chatrooms, links to other cities. A powerhouse website created by the folks who bring us the news.
Which is better? Joining together to survive, or slowly being killed off one by one? The latter doesn’t seem to be working yet.
I’m old school but to me walking out of my front door and picking up the newspaper in the AM (regardless of the weather)is much more enjoyable than hitting the power button on the Dell.
First I delivered the suburban paper once a week then I too delivered the afternoon Cleveland Press for a couple years. I was a little sad when it died because I love reading the newspaper but in reality the morning paper has always been my favorite. We have a nice little daily morning paper here in Wyoming that I read every single morning — even though I read the news on the internet also. Paper is still easier to read than the monitor. Another reason papers have been dying is that we have become more partisan in our views and people cancel the paper if they disagree with it. When there were two papers in a city you got both if you wanted both sides of the story or you got one or the other that you agreed with. Now it is one or nothing. I know many here who cancelled the paper because they disagreed with a story or editorial. Unfortunately there is not an alternative paper. Ah, but there is the internet.
Back in the 1970s, I delivered papers. Riding my bike in the pre-dawn darkness was always kind of cool.
Now, some nearly 40 years later, my dog and I trudge up the long driveway in the 5 AM darkness to pull The Central Maine Morning Sentinel out of the newspaper tube. I don’t know what I would do if I didn’t do that every damn day. They don’t publish on Christmas Day and the dog and I don’t know how to handle that day.
My day can’t really start without flipping through the pages of the local newspaper.
I don’t buy papers anymore because I don’t want to read a document that is written by a staff that is 90 to 95 percent Democratic. The so-called “right wing” papers like the WSJ might, might have rough parity in political outlook but for the rest of the industry its a one-party town. This lack of newsroom balance pervades everything in the paper, even lifestyle and sports reporting.
The adulation for Obama was merely the final straw on a veritable haystack on the camels’s back.
OK guys:
there are so many problems, but they start with people like this:
“Before the advent of the internet, the KC Star was my only in depth source for local news and sports. I was a subscriber for years.
Now, I can get what I want from the Star on the internet and, as a bonus, I don’t have to finance a left-wing editorial page.â€
Yeah, well, you also financed the stuff you “want from the Star†— but what are you going to do when it’s gone? that time is coming.
I would happily, nay eagerly!, pay for the Star, as I did for over 20 years, if they didn’t insult me every day. They laugh at my beliefs, my choices and my home week after week. I wrote a long letter to them documenting just how exasperating it was to have every page and every writer, not just the editorial team, hate my guts. I suggested the use that nice new building to print 2 daily papers–and just be clear about their politics, rather than hiding them not-very-cleverly. They never replied. Nor printed my letter.
They have made it clear they don’t want me as a reader. I am an ignorant intolerant yahoo with dangerous beliefs who should be locked up. When the web Star goes away, I will not miss it much. Amazing how one can adapt to life without the daily paper.
I am 54 years old and lived in 2 city papers until I moved to KC in 1984. Been reading 2 papers a day since I was a child. But several years ago, after yet another egregiously insulting article, I decided I’d had enough. Joe, I buy your books (4 copies so far) to support you. Best I can do.
Seriously, does anyone know why there aren’t more conservative newspaper reporters? Neocons have complained about bias for years but the unabated complaints lead me to believe that nothing has changed. Perhaps some affirmative action is in order!
Like a couple of other people on here, I have grew up on the Rocky Mountain News and I will sorely miss it. I go to college out of state now, but every time I come home the first thing I do is go back and read the past weeks worth of the News. There is something tangible about being able to sit down at the table and flip through the paper that I will sorely miss.
The worst thing about this whole newspaper fiasco is how dramatically breakfast will be affected. Eating a bowl of cereal before work/school will never be the same.
Fully 50% of subscribers to newspapers are over 65 years old. If that isn’t a dying business, I don’t know what is. The good news is that more and more people are reading the news. They are just doing it online.
There are lots of smart people in the newspaper world looking at the problem with their current business model. There is a new sense of urgency in the last few months that I had not seen before. The business types are now willing to take some risks with their premium properties and you will see new attempts in the digital space to not only use the internet to cut costs but to increase monetization of their existing news.
It’s only been in the past 6 months that the newspapers have realized that they need to get out of the manufacturing and distribution business. That, which used to be their license to print money, has now become their boat anchor.
The newspaper business is not dead. You’ll see a bunch of the highly leveraged papers go out of business in 2009. That’s more due to their debt load than anything else. The evolutionary papers will survive, the dinosaurs will perish. It’s the same in any business. Journalism will not die, however the experience will change.
As a recent journalism school graduate, the answer to the political leanings is simple. Journalists are not wealthy, so Republican economic policy doesn’t benefit them, and they are very, very educated, so they are more likely to care about the environment, health care, foreign policy, etc. Also, just my opinion, but as a journalist you are kinda pre-disposed to be anti-establishment and questioning authority.
But that’s not at all the problem with newspapers. Just as an example, the Cincinnati Enquirer has a conservative editorial board and it is dying just like all the other papers.
Matt N,
The reason there aren’t more conservative newspaper reporters is the same reason that there aren’t more conservative teachers, conservative social workers, et al. It’s the same reason there aren’t more liberal bankers, liberal stockbrokers, et al.
When you go out into the world and find that world has traits that don’t agree with your personal beliefs about how the world should be, you can either adapt your world view to accommodate the new information or change the part of the world with which you are interacting to better match your views.
I find it disappointing when people choose to not engage with the world, but as that decision doesn’t usually affect me personally, I can’t really muster up all that much outrage over it.
Joe,
If the Star ever runs into problems just know that I’d pay more for a subscription to this blog than I’ve ever given my local paper.
I think it’s hysterical that this discussion of dying newspapers is devolving to the idiotic liberal v. conservative argument. I work at a newspaper that is always accused of being a liberal rag. Yet we consistently endorse Repubs just as much as Dems. The whole Repub/Dem argument is just silly anyway. It’s two sides of the same coin.
And its true, good newsgathering organizations, whether its on the web or in print, will find ways to survive. RM News was leveraged, and couldn’t handle its debts. Profits are down big-time where I worked, but we still turned a profit last year. Being a privately held company that is part of a larger business that doesn’t depend solely on newspapers helps us too.
Basically, the business model is ass-backwards. We should be giving away the print product and charging for online.
“Journalists are not wealthy, so Republican economic policy doesn’t benefit them, and they are very, very educated, so they are more likely to care about the environment, health care, foreign policy, etc.”
And that, in a nutshell, is the problem. Journos believe that their policy preferences–very liberal policy preferences–are the result of virtue, not bias.
And PaulyOH, what proportion of your newsroom is openly Republican? Who you endorse is irrelevent. It’s the bias that creeps throughout the product that matters.
We live in western Nebraska and have been Omaha World Herald subscribers for more than 30 years. But since February 2, for financial reasons the paper has stopped distribution to their 12,000 subscribers in our part of the state. We’ve tried the mail version, but reading yesterday’s morning edition when the mail arrives at 5:00 p.m. just doesn’t work. We also have a paid subscription to the on-line version, which is certainly faster and more up-to-date. But it’s just not the same. How can you read the sports section on your front porch when you need a computer (even a laptop) to do so? I feel like I’m mourning the loss of a good friend.
Kind of surprised no one mentioned how this will be putting one of the better baseball writers (Tracy Ringolsby) out of work.
Metz, you have it exactly correct. Newspapers aren’t dying, badly-run, debt-ridden newspapers are dying. And will continue to die. Most of the papers that have folded in the U.S. are in two-paper towns. I’ll guarantee that if the Denver Post follows the Rocky, another paper would pop up very quickly. It would be small, aggressive and tightly run and staffed by eager young journalists. It would miss some news stories, it wouldn’t have all the sections we’re used to seeing, it wouldn’t bother with classified and if it concentrated on local news it would succeed. That’s where newspapers need to go; that’s where the one I work at is going (and we just laid 24 people off). Don’t write that obituary just yet.
And Ringolsby says he’s got other irons in the fire and will be just fine.
JOE… nice touch.
As to decline of newspapers – most of these papers have a website – no? Most people log on in the morning and read websites. Some from home, some from work, but either way there is more text than ever.
There is no lack of writing today with the Internet. In fact, some publishers are acknowledging the fact that there are more writers than readers in certain genre(due to the internet).
Fragmentation is negative word for niche. Internet allows more people to put in 2 cents worth.(technology change – old keypads had the cents sign on them – no more).
Time waits for no one, and i think, Tom Waits for no one.
It’s weirdly appropriate that newspapers derive a big chunk of their revenue from obituaries.
————-
i doubt there is a newspaper in the country that gets as much as 5 percent of its revenues from obituaries, and most are probably closer to 1-2 percent.
I can’t handle the conservative/ liberal debate here.
Newspapers aren’t “liberal’ because they are owned by corporations. Conservatives and Republicans do more for the corporations bottom line. You can look it up, as Casey used to say.
For those who think the writers are liberal, they still have to answer to the ownership. Try going against the wishes of the guy who signs your paycheck time and again, and let me know how that works out for you.
Just because the NY Times hasn’t endorsed a Republican for President in over 50 years doesn’t make them liberal. They still endorse Democrats, and that party hasn’t been liberal in my lifetime (45+years).
Liberals have no major news outlet (unless you want to call Mother Jones Magazine a major news outlet. I don’t.) nor political party (the Democratic Party is a center/right organization) in this country. If they did, I can assure you the nation wouldn’t be in the mess it is today.
This week the Toledo Blade has shrunk from 6 columns to 5, becoming a shortsword. A healthy local paper is important to me. And if mine doesn’t have enough red-meat conservatism, I can always turn on the AM radio.
Reg Henry of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette put this in the Blade today:
“Everywhere discussion proceeds on what can be done about the industry. Of course, I have several brilliant ideas. I think readers who subscribe to the print version . . . deserve a VIP level of benefits.
“On the theory that if you want to yell at the umpire you have to be in the ballpark, I would limit letters to the editor to subscribers only. I would have a Letter Writers Ball annually, where Joey and the Eccentrics could entertain the crowd.
“I would also offer subscribers a chance to take a columnist to lunch (I like lobster, by the way) and offer them special seminars on traditional newspaper skills (How to Look Rumpled in Public, Fundamentals of Inflating Reporter Expenses, Using the Words ‘On the Other Hand’ in Editorials).”
Chris wrote:
“Joe,
If the Star ever runs into problems just know that I’d pay more for a subscription to this blog than I’ve ever given my local paper.”
I’d pay $1/week to read the JoeBlog if it were Joe’s full time gig. Find just 2,000 people to do this, and JoeBlog rakes in $100k/year.
Berto: Obviously, your definition of “liberal” and my definition are not even close. To me, your argument is so tied up in knots I don’t know where to start. (I have heard of Mother Jones but have not seen or read it) If nothing owned by a corporation can be considered liberal then I am wasting my time typing this.
Thoughts from abroad . . .
Evening newspapers in my part of the world died because of the spread of the suburbs, the growth of suburban shopping malls and major retailers (the evening papers’ largest supporters) following their customers outwards — they closed down their big central-city department stores and opened numerous smaller branches in the malls. They then switched their print advertising from the afternoon dailies to the suburban “community” papers — most of which had been started as family businesses but were later swallowed by the big operators. The store owners also widened the spread of their advertising dollars among flyers, brochures, TV, radio, sponsorship and so on.
Journalists tend to think they are the heart and soul of newspapers. Now and then they need to be reminded that what they write is just filling the spaces between the real reason newspapers exist — advertising.
Perhaps the apparent conventional wisdom that newspapers are “liberal” is symptomatic of how the newspaper business has weakened over the years. Things may be changing with the Obama administration, but during the Clinton/Bush years, the NY Times and the Washington Post clowned around about Whitewater, Lewinsky, etc….and gave far more harsh treatment to Al Gore than Palin ever got…..Dowd, Brooks, Broder, etc….piled on just as much as Limbaugh and Hannity. Didn’t The Wire sort this out for any of you? Now more than ever, do you think reporters or editorial pages can bite the hand that feeds? I live in Lincoln, and my local paper has endorsed the Rep candidate in each of the last 3 elections. Lincoln, a University/Government town, the “blueberry” in the red state of Nebraska. The idea that newspapers or the media in general has a liberal bias doesn’t stand up well to scrutiny. Its the equivalent of old baseball thinking, i.e., overrating the importance of counting stats like RBIs and batting ave. Check out the Daily Howler or Eric Alterman.
Two and a half years ago, a very nice sports writer from the Minneapolis Star Tribune named Joe Christensen(Twins beat writer, the same guy who provided me a link to this blog) suggested I head out into the world of small newspapers and begin working my way up. So I did. Two years ago, just two years, there still were a good bunch of sports writing jobs out there, and a chance to move up the food chain.
Now there’s nothing. Nada. I work for a 20,000 circ paper in Southern Oregon — a good paper — still doing OK. Family owned. But times are getting strange. Now, along with being a writer, I also am a photographer and a an expert at operating a video camera, and an outdoor writer.
And even more strange, when there is an opening in the sports department, we get applications from writers who got laid off from huge newspapers far most prestigious than ours — writers I’d normally listen to for advice. It’s pretty odd. I love the job. Lord knows I’d hate to work for a living. But the days of moving up have passed me by. How can you move up in an business where talented guys with 30 years experience are dropping like flies wearing anvil backpacks?
Question: Who was the last Republican Presidential candidate that the NYTimes Editorial Staff recommended? The answer is rather telling…
Answer: 1940: Wendell Wilkie!
To set the record straight, they endorsed Dewey in ’48 and Ike twice. But yes, it’s been a while.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/10/23/opinion/20081024-endorse.html
Above, “Brian” made this comment:
“I wonder about the future of the medium and I wonder what J-School students at KU and MU are being taught. There will always be a need for good writing – but where will that writing live?”
I graduated with a BA from the News-Editorial (Newspaper) sequence at MU in May, and here’s what we were being taught when I left:
Newspapers are dying — even the best. The future, which our predecessors were woefully slow in accepting, is in digital media and its application in portable devices. An increasing proportion of working Americans carry little computers in our pockets, and given the transitive nature of business, these will soon be our favorite tools for the procurement of news and information. The key — one that few outlets have mastered — is to offer a smartphone-savvy product. What USA Today was to the local newspaper, these new products must be for media websites. Condensed, repackaged, and redesigned, consumers will be looking for a concise presentation of the news in every format depending on personal preference. Consumers are quickly turning to more numerous niche publications for their news and information — there will be much less emphasis placed on well-roundedness and balanced coverage. The moral in all of this is that newspapers simply need to change their medium and become more specialized, more agile, and most of all, more friendly to people my age. Basically, from 16 – 24. We are the consumers of the future, and the market WILL TURN at our whim. Sorry old-timers. Get used to it.
“The [whatever] WILL TURN at our whim. Sorry old-timers. Get used to it.” Oh, great. Like I don’t hear this enough around home when I try to get into the bathroom.
“WILL TURN,” whatever. Your point is self contradictory, on the one hand everything will be more specialized and more agile, when on the other hand you and your entire childish generation will think as one solid boring mass of group think, whom everyone better start paying more attention to or else.
Every group of 16-24 year olds hopes and prays that they are the generation that means something, that will be the 16 to 24 year old generation that others will write about, like the Salons of France or the Founding Fathers in America.
You won’t be, because your generation likes the Jonas Brothers and High School Musical and pre-packaged, corporate crap, and when the corporations die with the banks you’ll be left holding crappy hand held computers that have to be plugged into the internet.
You suck.
Here’s an article about why you should care about newspapers dying, although I imagine that since it defends the First Amendment, it’ll be derided as “too liberal”.
[...] their daily financial eulogies. And how could they? Their dwindling news staffs spend more time spinning quaint soliloquys about the death of printed media than bothering to focus on newsgathering, much less journalism. [...]
Man, I love how bloggers and commenters take every statement so personally. It cracks me up.
My point had nothing to do with wanting to be written about or hoping to “mean something”, Frank. It was a simple answer to a simple question: Who will be the next consumers of media and journalism? My criticism was aimed at newspaper editors in particular and their unwillingness to meet the obvious trends of their industry and the world around them.
And no, my statement is not self-contradictory. You attempted to contradict it, unsuccessfully, but it certainly wasn’t self defeating.
I also find it quite funny that you feel comfortable generalizing about millions of people you so clearly don’t understand. Feel free to spout your stereotypes and ignorant drivel — that’s one of the things that makes the internet so great, but KNOW THIS: YOU are one of the people who are killing the newspaper as we know it.
So, Frank, I think it’s you who is self-contradictory.
And you DEFINITELY suck.
We romanticize the past, of course. But I never liked newsprint on my fingers. And trying to read, fold and hold a paper on the bus sucked.
Seriously, It’ll be tough for the next 10-15 years, but I believe that journalism will find a way to support itself online. There’s tremendous value in indepth reporting and entertaining writing, and we see that every day out here.
Yes, as a previous commenter noted, if you’re looking for things that killed newspapers, Craigslist is near or at the top. Most papers lived off their classified sections. But it isn’t all that. There’s also corporatization — it used to be good enough that newspapers could turn a 5 percent annual profit. But then comes Gannett and the other stockholder-driven entities gobbling up papers and demanding they make 15-20 percent. The cuts started in the 80s, and that’s when the decline started. It started because the product wasn’t as good.
And let’s face it: The Internet opens up the world. And you know what? A lot of the local guys we grew up reading (sports and news), weren’t that talented or motivated. Complacency and a sense of entitlement was (and reamins) rampant among the media elite. And screw them.
BTW, Posnanski, no one says media elite like Maureen Dowd. Dowd goes for laughs? Really? By calling male Democrats women and female Dems men? That’s not just lazy and kind of disturbing? Dowd is an awful, awful person…