I recommend the entire piece including \u2014 maybe even especially \u2014 those bits that bite the hand that feeds me personally. Talton\u2019s critique of the way shareholder\u2019s demands for ever-increasing profits have triumphed over the needs of readers and the demands of the craft are particularly apt when he applies them to the nation\u2019s largest newspaper chain.<\/p>\n
That chain signs my paycheck, so let\u2019s refer to it here as \u201cGrommett.\u201d Notice I said \u201csigns my paycheck\u201d and not, \u201cI work for Grommett.\u201d That\u2019s not how the job works or what it requires. If you think of yourself as working for Grommett or for any other publisher then you\u2019re not going to do that job well. If you work for a newspaper, you work for the readers of that newspaper, and you serve them best by following the standards of the craft that exist independent of the particular policies or ideologies of any given publisher. Ideally, of course, there wouldn\u2019t be any conflict between working for the readers and working for your publisher, but the newspaper biz is far from ideal.<\/p>\n
The simple creed of \u201cget a great story and put it in the newspaper (or online)\u201d went away. For example, experienced police reporters went away \u2014 even though it\u2019s clear that well-done cop stories draw readers. In their place was a 21-year-old taking dictation from a police public-affairs announcement.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The police briefs are one of the most-read stories every day on our paper\u2019s Web site (almost rivaling the obits some days). Yet if you were to look at our site on Sunday or Monday morning, you\u2019d find at most one or two items in that section. This is not because there is no crime on Saturday night. The criminals do not take weekends off, but the PIOs \u2014 the official police public information officers \u2014 do. So sometime this afternoon all those PIOs will return to their desks and send forth a volley of faxes and e-mails detailing the weekend\u2019s events and thus our Tuesday police briefs will be overflowing with \u201cnews\u201d that is two or three days old.<\/p>\n
Receiving all those faxes and e-mails and rewriting them as news items is similar to the grade-school exercise of writing research reports based on a single entry from the World Book Encyclopedia.<\/i> Working the police beat for our paper* would be excellent preparation for becoming a White House correspondent. Wait for the official to give the official word. The official will tell you what the news is and you can write it down. But be sure to use proper spelling and grammar \u2014 you\u2019re a professional journalist, after all.<\/p>\n
Talton\u2019s critique is more diagnostic than prescriptive, so let me point somewhat in the direction of a cure: Let the sun shine. More transparency wouldn\u2019t be a magic bullet, but it would help serve readers and it would help readers serve newspapers by providing more specific, and therefore more constructive, feedback. (The most common form of reader feedback, currently, is not reading<\/i> newspapers. In response to this, newspapers blindly try to win them back, often by doing more<\/i> of what drove them away to begin with.)<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s the sort of thing I have in mind: Blog the 4 o\u2019clock budget meeting. You\u2019ve likely seen such meetings portrayed on The Wire<\/i> or Lou Grant<\/i> or in All the President\u2019s Men.<\/i> These are the big daily meetings \u2014 usually around 4 p.m. for morning papers \u2014 where all the section editors meet to share what they\u2019ve got for the next day\u2019s paper and to figure out where it\u2019s all going to go and what\u2019s missing and how they\u2019re going to fill in the gaps. This is, in other words, the meeting at which newspapers decide what they think is really important.<\/p>\n
The decisions made at such meetings shape what is and isn\u2019t deemed \u201cnews,\u201d and that in turn shapes our civic and national discourse. What goes on A1 and what gets left out? Britney or Baghdad? Lacey or the local school board? Chondra or Khandahar? Judy Miller\u2019s unsourced assertions or Walter Pincus\u2019 painstakingly detailed debunking? Such decisions are made based on news judgment, on more logistical questions (is there good art?), and on hunches \u2014 sometimes accurate, sometimes baseless \u2014 about what the small group of gathered editors thinks readers are looking for.<\/p>\n
That decision-making process should be transparent. The public has a right to see their sausage being made. Letting them see behind the curtain might make them better appreciate and understand the choices facing and the choices made by newspapers everyday. At the very least, such transparency would foster the idea that newspapers are in the business of providing the public access to information rather than in the business of selectively standing between them and what they want and need to know.<\/p>\n
The highlights and lowlights and sidelights of every newspaper\u2019s 4 o\u2019clock budget meeting should be blogged.<\/p>\n
The odds of this ever actually happening, anywhere, are huge. The valid reasons why this couldn\u2019t happen are nonexistent.<\/p>\n
\u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013<\/p>\n
* I should note that we also have some excellent reporters who actually report<\/i> while working our police beat \u2014 leaving the building and everything. But this is not required, expected or commended by Grommett.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Thank you, Eric N., for introducing me to Jon Talton\u2019s Rogue Columnist. His rant on \u201cWhat\u2019s really wrong with newspapers\u201d treats the newspaper biz the way a real reporter would if he didn\u2019t already work for the newspaper biz. He follows the money. I recommend the entire piece including \u2014 maybe even especially \u2014 those […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":111,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[24],"class_list":["post-1861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-journalism"],"yoast_head":"\n
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