Although I write an occasional freelance newspaper article I have largely said adios to the industry which was my career for almost 20 years. To be brutally honest, I can say there is quite a lot I don’t miss about working for a newspaper. Being even more forthright I also must confess to being very happy not having to depend on an industry in so much economic turmoil which is likewise fused with never-ending hand-wringing.
Newspapers are in trouble today. That is no lie. But then a lot of businesses and industries are in trouble. Many newspapers are owned by large corporations and many corporate entities have been faltering lately with the current economic crisis.
One only has to look at the news to see how that business seems in such a fiscal freefall. Gannett, which publishes USA Today and other papers, told their employees company wide that they must take one week’s furlough without pay. That, supposedly, is everyone from the janitor to the editors to the suits.
The long-dwindling number of two newspaper towns seem headed to one paper standing.
These problems for newspapers have been a long time coming. Most cited as demons by my publishers in the early 1990s were declines in classified advertising brought about by free classified papers. Then came Wal-Mart which was stingy with buying ads in general in the local paper. In more recent times advertising has no doubt been hurt by Craigslist and other online ad venues.
Then there was the cost of newsprint. Oh yes, that old evil newsprint cost which meant salary freezes, a cut in new hires, the continuation of that crappy old computer system, and so forth.
If you believe in gravity then it makes perfect sense why newspapers are going in the hole. Other businesses sink, businesses depending on those businesses sink and the papers depending on those aforementioned businesses for advertising revenue finally don’t get the money coming through the pipe.
Then finally there is the Internet itself. That is a much more complex problem than just in the business end of print media.
First of all, papers are finally getting the hang of how to make money off the Internet. With a combination of economic woes and new technology some newspapers such as the Christian Science Monitor are going mostly or completely online. But others are certainly struggling because of the technology.
The media, but print in particular, has never done a good job of, or completely evaded, explaining their business model to the public. A friend of mine who likes to rail against the “liberal media” repeats the common misconception that media only seeks to sell more papers. But the news itself is, relatively speaking, a small part of the news business when one looks at the big picture. Advertising is what makes the media world go around. So it might look like a paper is trying to dig up dirt or inflame passions so it will produce more revenue but that happens only if it generates more advertising.
Other problems exist in today’s newsrooms some of which are economic and others aren’t, or else those problems might have an economic component. For instance, a typical career path for a newspaper reporter when I thought about such a career realistically was working for a small newspaper, then a medium-sized one and then a larger one and perhaps on to a metro. And such a path existed 20 or less years ago. But the economics of the situation quickly changed to where editors started hiring new J-school grads to work on the metro papers because they could pay them less. That has had a definite negative influence on quality.
Editors themselves nowadays often hit a quick path upward as well. But even as that happens, some of the more experienced editors seem to lack the all-around knowledge that such a job takes.
Finally, there is a non-economic reason I am glad to no longer work for a newspaper. That is because the powers that be have allowed feedback through interactive online forums to become a depository for the vilest, most ignorant language imaginable. And those thoughts are mostly produced by people who react with their modicum of education to something they read yet the knowledge they possess to make an argument is many times a product of Fox News University or Rush Limbaugh College. The last paper I worked for placed e-mail addresses and phone numbers of reporters under their stories. I didn’t like it then but it did eventually prove mostly helpful not so much in receiving feedback as it was for learning about other news.
Today, it seems, newspapers just let people write whatever it is they please. They accuse people including the reporters or editors of all kinds of sins without any foundation. Even worse, they showcase for everyone to see just how stupid many of the people who read that paper can be.
Am I the pot calling the kettle black. Well, no I don’t think so. This is my own little self-contained world. If someone wants to argue, fine but it won’t change anything.
Personally, I think it is great if you like your interactive newspaper, but I think a cooling-off period needs to exist before someone interacts.