Vanity Fair:
My suggestion to newspapers everywhere is to give the public a reason to read them again. So here's an idea: get on a big story with widespread public appeal, devote your best resources to it, say a quiet prayer, and swing for the fences.
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There's no shortage of corruption and ineptitude to uncover in our society. If newspapers would get back to doing what they were designed to do -- inform the public -- then readers would remain loyal.
One of the problems with media is consolidation. Once a newspaper becomes a cog in a giant machine, instead of it's own, local, independent entity, then the needs of advertisers becomes more important than the needs of the public, so investigative journalism gets thrown under the bus as profit becomes the driving force.
It's time to break up the big media companies and take back ownership OUR airwaves and OUR right to know the truth.
If newspapers would start showing some backbone and start ruffling some feathers by asking hard questions they will find readership. (Though I'm not ready to forgive the New York Times for all their politically correct missteps for the last 8 or so years.)
The secret lies in two words: Question Authority. It's what the Founding Fathers intended.
I stopped subscribing to newspapers myself when I realized they were nothing but a propaganda arm of the far right. There was no honest reporting. Many things were left out--- such as anti-war demonstrations and other forms of dissent. The only place to find out what was really going on was the internet.
Bush and Cheney would never have gotten away with all the things they got away with if we had had a free press.
He stole my idea! :)
I was just having a conversation with a friend about this the other day. The only way, I said, that papers will survive is if they develop a symbiotic relationship with bloggers instead of trying to compete with them. Blogs do a fairly decent job of gathering news tidbits from here and there, but what newspapers should do, while they still have any resources remaining, is "swing for the fences," as Carter writes. Focus on long-term, in-depth investigative reports that an independent blogger just doesn't have the time or resources to do. Take whatever is remaining, and do something impossible for anyone else. News papers have these capabilities in terms of money and (wo-)manpower *for now.* They should be reframed as, essentially, local Newsweeks. Cut the frequency of the output and stop just reprinting AP articles (that I can easily find on line).
My metaphor was that the paper needs to be a shark and the blogger are like lampreys, but the lampreys need to be the sort that shout, "Look what awesome stuff this shark just did!" But right now, investigative departments are being cut-- basically the stuff that makes print media so potentially powerful. So we're seeing more big lampreys with littler lampreys on them...
I don't mean this to be a slander against bloggers, either. And some are able to do some very good primary reporting-- but I'm talking about sustained, time-consuming laser focused investigative work.
I love that advice!
Graydon...
Our city's paper has been going downhill for 2 years. It continues to circle the drain. A couple of years ago it was purchased by an out-of-state "newspaper group" that supposedly would cut costs and increase quality by operating numerous newspapers. Instead, the local edition just reads like a franchise sheet of some big corporation serving its profit interests. Every month the paper is skinnied down more. There's less and less national news coverage, and whatever is there is reduced to being not informative. International coverage is long gone. Local stories are bland and read like quickies. Special interest stories are reproduced from what was seen on the internet 2 weeks earlier. Editorializing is done via headline crafting for those who can't read smaller print. Opinion pages are split between extreme rightists and mainstream liberals, all out of date. The weight of the delivered product is the same; it's just filled with more and more advertising supplements. How does this square with the bemoaned, "catastrophic reduction in advertising revenue"? I keep thinking, "give us a reason to keep buying your paper!"
Ditto to advice to cover news -- stop telling your reporters that each story is really an analysis piece. Hire smarter reporters with better work ethics who really will check facts and not be so lazy about the "equal time" principle. Stop relying on so many unnamed sources who use reporters to spin us all.
But here's some more superficial advice. Stop using space in the newspaper to tell me that more info is available on the web. Tell me the story here and now IN the paper or be quiet. As if I had time to read both your print copy (which I prefer because it transports better and is easier to navigate) and then go to your website. Why am I paying for your paper if I can find this on the website? Between my local papers, the NYT and even t.v. news, no one seems to want to just tell the story -- everyone wants me to then go to their websites --- not going to happen in most instances.
Second, stop wasting pages 2 & 3 telling me what's in the paper [I'm talking to you NYT, among others]. That's two precious pages where you could actually be reporting. I know lots of these things save on staff and on actual paper, but they don't encourage me to keep reading on a daily basis.
Here's a thought. Be honest with your reporting and stop trying to slate the story to one side or another. Facts shouldn't have a side. Stop putting out talking points as well. If you know a writer is clearly just carrying a party line (right or left) get rid of them and explain why.
Still in the end for me they are to much of a physical mess. If they came packaged like a magazine that made for easy reading I'd be more incline. Why that change was never made I still don't understand. Ever buy a newspaper that you thought was complete only to find sections simply missing either because someone had taken them or dropped a pile and they simply fell out? Ever see people buy papers on Sunday for the store sections and watch as they pull different flyers out of other papers to stuff them in theirs? It's not just the content but for many it's the presentation and delivery.
Then again maybe I just feel this way.
Stop having corporate entities as backers would be a step in the right direction. What good is a news source that's afraid to run a story that might p!$$ off their corporate owners?
It really is as simple as newspapers taking the profession of journalism seriously again. Stop printing things that you know are factually wrong or intellectyally dishonest simply because it pleases the corporations that own you. Stop being used as mouthpieces for political parties and promoting the fake dichotomy that opposing views are always equally legitimate. When a reporter is caught lying or with conflicts of interest, or simply wrong too many times, fire them instead of promoting them. Stop trading your integrity for mere access and distance your reporters from the political people and undustries they are supposed to be impartially scrutinizing. Take a stance on truth. Don't disseminate ill researched inflamitory information just to boost sensational readership.
Do these things and I'll be happy to pay for a newspaper.
yes sir, and that is the truth and fact...
I work for a newspaper/magazine company and I completely agree. Whatever happens to the big newspapers, they had plenty of warning and chose to believe they were invincible and did very little to make themselves more relevant to today's culture. Life moves on.
How about HONEST investigative reporting? Truth telling would be nice. The old guard have spent 8 years as stenographers for the WH talking points. Do they even remember wHY they became journalists? When someone like Jeff Gannon can get a press pass to the WH, and is called upon to ask questions, something is wrong. Not one of them questioned WHO he was!!! That story alone would have sold a lot of papers, but nobody thought it was interesting, having a male prostitute in their crowd, acting as a journalist!!
Bravo! it's all about the content. Some newsgroups lost the drive for great content and just went for the money. Those deserve to fail.
I concur.
This story about and actual story is right on the money, both figuratively and literally.
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Posted: 06- 2-09 11:41 AM