Why newspapers are dying
Here are the hedlines of todays “Arizona Living” section of the Arizona Republic, the metro daily of Phoenix:
“Wooden Memories”
“Test your hearing”
“Free burrito for teachers”
“Post office food drive”
“Fight Crohn’s and colitis”
“Mom and Estában”
“Healthful salsa non-guilty pleasure”
“Great gifts for teachers”
I’m not going to bore you with what the stories and blurbs were about, other than to note that the big lede spread feature was the first one, “Wooden Memories” (titled differently online), which was about how some people really like holding on to those wood-shop projects they made in high school and which may have been, from that majestic hedline on down, possibly the most boring story ever written. (I can’t say, because I couldn’t read the whole thing.)
The page is a clear example of a key part of what’s wrong with newspapers. Arrogance is part of it, of course; the people putting the paper out every day just don’t give a rat’s ass about the folks who are buying it. And they don’t go out of their way to tell them anything interesting or useful.
But the real problem is the flip side of that: Timidity. It’s clear that everyone involved long ago had any bit of originality or innovation beaten out of them. They know that they can’t go wrong producing and designing the page to appeal to some imaginary doddering grandmother, so they scour the day’s press releases and then sit around and brainstorm to zero in on the bloodless, the trivial, and the utterly mundane.*
In this context, their attention to detail in this quest is indefatigable. Inside there’s a story about the “Guru of Grand Canyon hikers,” which is as clichéd as you’d imagine, and, most impressively, a short filler AP item (”Jump-start day sweetly, swiftly”) about how the Tootsie Roll company has a new product: “Maxxed Energy Pops, a cleverly packed energy drink in the form of a lollipop.” It’s almost hard to believe that life forms above the level of a somewhat dense tree sloth took part in the selection, editing, hed-writing and publishing of that piece of prose.
I love newspapers (I get three a day, not counting Variety), but it’s hard to love an organization that is working that hard to make itself irrelevant. And Phoenix, by the way, is now the fifth-largest city in the country; it’s odd how the sun-belt cities that now make up fully half of the top ten biggest cities in the country have not yet managed to distinguish themselves journalistically. I assume the Houston (fourth) Chronicle is a not-insignificant operation, but you don’t hear much about the papers in San Diego (sixth), San Antonio (seventh), and Dallas (eighth).
*In all fairness, incompetence plays a part as well, on the part of the top editors, who don’t make the section editors put out an interesting product; to the section editors, who are of course deserve the biggest blame; and the reporters who write the crap. In the case of the wooden shop projects, if someone put a gun to your head and said do some journalism on this subject, you would of course run a few photos of an inelegant but beloved footstool or two, add a quote or two from their defiant owners, and then refer people to the web, where you could run a photo gallery and invite readers to send in their own pictures. The relative benefits to that approach are obvious, but of course when the alternative is running a story that no one in the sentient universe would read (indeed, a story that virtually screams, “Why are you paying money to have this crummy newspaper delivered to your home?”), the same could be said about hitting yourself on the head with a hammer.
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Something of a quibble: Those population ranks are for the cities proper. The metropolitan areas rank considerably differently, and I think most major city newspapers are trying to serve the whole metro area. The SMSAs are an imperfect measure of metropolitan populations, but they’re the easiest quick summary I know of, and they rank the sunbelt cities you mention as follows:
4th: Dallas/Fort Worth/Arlington
6th: Houston/Sugar Land/Baytown
13th: Phoenix/Mesa/Scottsdale
17th: San Diego/Carlsbad/San Marcos
28th: San Antonio
Less of a quibble: I think the widely discussed imminent death of newspapers has been somewhat exaggerated. They’ve consolidated massively, but the syndicates that own them are still big profit machines. I agree that they’ve declined into wretchedness and irrelevance.
“Free burrito for teachers”
I laughed out loud at that one. Also, “Healthful salsa non-guilty pleasure” is hilarious. My favorite line from the article (they are online):
“The spicy condiment is packed with nutrients. Too bad we can’t say the same about the cerveza.”
HAR HAR HAR
The death of newspapers… ahh, I am so tired of this debate and discussion. Newspapers are what corporate America has made them.
The problem with newspapers is simple, corporate America is smothering them. Most newspapers, editors and reporters alike, are flustered and do what they have to do to get by. Honestly, I can’t say I blame them… employees spend their days working in an environment that, 98% of the time, is sorely under staffed and under paid.
Corporations, which now own most newspapers, have no problem spending $150,000 + developing employee surveys and / or various monitoring systems to track employees every move but balk at spending $30,000 to fill a beat. Instead they find ways to break up the open slot duties among two or three other reporters. Reporters quit, positions aren’t filled, causing stress. Assistant AME’s quit and their positions are eliminated causing more stress on both editors and reporters… Then they are 2 months late dishing out your annual review. Need I mention that in your past due review they tell you you’re doing a great job but they can’t give you a raise this year because times are tight…and then you get the quarterly report that shows the company made $8 million after expenses…
And we wonder why headlines are boring…
Simply put - there are giant fat fish at the top and there are guppies at the bottom… The giant fat fish ate all the medium size fish as soon as the pond was restocked. They are so greedy and fat they then moved on to eat all the plants and water spiders and now are eating the guppies.
It’s like a software company that made a good product 10 years ago and then refused to change it… only to realize that their competitors, who they laughed at two years ago, have completely overtaken them with a stronger product.
I spent 13 years totally dedicated to the newspaper business. Half of that time was spent in the management end of the business continually trying to ride the fence fighting for my employees daily while trying to motivate and work with people who simply said… “they don’t pay me enough and they don’t care, why can’t we hire, why can’t we replace our 8 year old equipment???”
Last August I snipped the string, gave notice and ended my newspaper career. Do I miss it… hell yes. Will I ever go back??? No.
Oh yeah - they eliminated my position after I left. The person directly under me made it another four months and then quit… they have since eliminated this position as well along with letting four or five more people go in the building… and we wonder why there are boring headlines….
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