Newspapers
Update: the Pensacola Beach Blog has an example of the quality control in his local Gannett paper.
Avedon Carol of Sideshow pointed to this nice summary, What’s really wrong with newspapers, of the major problems of newspapers. It also applies to the broadcast media, because the same forces that are killing newspapers, are killing local radio and television stations.
In a nutshell, while the media is complaining about losing audiences of readers, viewers, and listeners, they are eliminating the single reason people would become a member of their audience – content.
I have no source of local news other than rumor. The local radio stations are almost all owned by a single company out of Mississippi, and they don’t “do” news. The single television station was bought by Sinclair Broadcast Group along with the ABC affiliate in Pensacola, so the local news content on television has just about disappeared. All of the local newspapers are owned by the same libertarian whackos who have been replacing substance with fluff and firing all of the long-time local reporters. Most of what is labeled “local news” are press releases from various public agencies. I almost never agreed with their editorial policy, but bought the paper for actual local news reports.
I can get AP news on-line, but the AP isn’t going to tell me that Racetrack Road will be torn up next week for sewer repairs, and, now, it is highly likely that won’t appear in the local newspaper either. You aren’t going to get that news without reporters, and they are letting reporters go to “improve the bottom line.”
It isn’t just my local puppy trainer, the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, all of the national newspapers, are marching down the same path to suicide to please “investors”. People buy newspapers for a lot of reasons, but they subscribe for content. People looking for a job, apartment, car, etc. might buy a paper to check the ads, but the solid economic foundation of a paper and the basis for its advertising rates are the subscribers.
Media consolidation is just speeding up the process of the destruction of the entire media world. They are dying of a million cost-cutting slices.
12 comments
Sad, but true.
I still subscribe to our local fishwrapper mainly to get the grocery sales papers – which I can now access on-line.
The only actual local news we get is a small, weekly that is run pretty much single-handedly by one woman and one reporter sharing the load. If it happens outside a five mile radius, it qualifies as ‘foreign’ news. But to get subscribers, even they have to load up on fluff.
We are pretty lucky here in the northern metro Atlanta area to have two local papers that are weeklies but they do cover the local stuff….even police reports. If you have an event for your club or organization then they will send a reporter if notified in time(especially if there is food).
The Atlanta-Journal Constitution is trying to survive and they have added a local section a couple of times a week and they manage to get the big local stories.
Bryan,
As you say, the same applies (with a vengeance) to radio. It is absolutely execrable; and in few places is it worse than in north Florida. Between the holy roller preachers, crazed right-wing ranters, and the approved play lists which may as well be aired (and often are) by a computer stuffed in some closet in St. Louis, there’s nothing on the AM dial but dreck. The only local signals that save the FM dial around here are university affiliates WUWF-FM (Pensacola) and WHIL-FM (Mobile).
The Reagan administration bears a large part of the blame for eviscerating the Fairness Doctrine and undermining cross-ownership and media concentration rules. But Congress, the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration have much to answer for, too.
As Ben Bagdikian says, the result is a “crisis in democracy.” But you won’t see the media mentioning it, much less reporting about it in depth or naming the names. It’s just too profitable to keep the public in ignorance.
I still subscribe to the Los Angeles Times, but no longer read it from cover to cover. I get most of my news from the net, which means I read other newspapers from around the world: the AP, CBC of Canada, Spiegel Online, Asia Times Online, BBC, The Guardian, al Jazeera etc etc …. in short, papers which support real journalism and allow me to read and compare. I no longer accept any one paper’s viewpoint but google it.
It’s amazing what we DON’T hear or read in the US media nowadays, isn’t it?
The sad fact is that most newspapers are relying on the Associated Press for national news, so there is no diversity. While they never seem to run out of money for opinion people, reporters are marginalized, and as media consolidation increases, there are fewer reporters every day.
Access to information is decreasing every day while the conduits for it expand. Why read a newspaper with no news in it? Everything is being run as a corporation, not a business, and few people understand the difference.
Radio has long been atrocious, but newspapers are generally sliding downhill. My local paper has bright spots (both papers, actually) though the paper for my metropolitan center is sadly horrid, relying on past glories to try and get more subscriptions.
It’s to the point where the only reason I subscribe to my local rag (the San Jose Murky News, the “Murky” describing their journalistic efforts — I mean, we’re talking about folks who put a *LOST CAT STORY* on page 1!) is the comics page. Well, that and the fact that newsprint makes a great medium for putting under my motorcycle in the garage so that I don’t get oil on the pavement from the chain or while changing oil.
The locals are the only hope for the survival of journalism, Map. The big papers have all become just an excuse for advertising.
The Mercury News was once required reading in the IT business as they carries stories about the Valley. At least newsprint can be recycled. I stopped BYTE when I could no longer find any stories among the ads and the local recycling stopped taking magazines.
Well, the Murky does carry the Friday Fry’s ads, which are the only *other* reason I still subscribe to the Murky. Since they got taken over by MediaNews, their already-low journalistic standards have plummeted as they’ve gone through wave after wave of layoffs in the pressroom (both reporters and copy editors). So I learned about, e.g., the doings around Microsoft and Yahoo, via the Internet, not via the Murky…
The shareholders don’t care about the product as long as they make their money, so what can you expect? The only market anyone seems to pay attention to any more is the stock market, and the only product too many companies have is their stock.
bryan
i work in a newsroom (i am not a journalist) and one day i will write about what really goes on — it makes me sick sometimes.
news is now fluff that connects the commercials
Just about everyone who cares has figured that out, DC, and I am really sad to report it, because I remember a time when it wasn’t like this, when there was fact checking, when there was investigative reporting, when Presidents couldn’t ignore the law.