The Day Michael Miner Killed Commentary

Find a video follow-up to this post here on my Chicagosphere byline.

Last week, the Chicago Reader's Michael Miner committed a despicable act unworthy of a journalist. In an article entitled "First Thing We Do, Let's Kill All the Columnists," Miner told newspaper commentators that their opinion-bearing work was expendable. He suggested dying papers like the Chicago Sun-Times could save themselves by "refocusing" columnists as news analysts, jettisoning social commentary in favor of playing the angles of hard news items reported by journalists. In Miner's diatribe against commentary, he even went so far as to call out some local columnists by name, essentially inferring their work to be inferior to the work of journalists.

That's unacceptable.

On Monday, in an analysis of the Sun-Times' ongoing buyout controversy published to my Chicagosphere byline, I noted the stupidity of Miner suggesting that the cash cows of the news business -- opinion bearers with the star power to sell newspapers -- be forced to produce output other than the commentary at the heart of their profession, not to mention at the heart of their fan bases. You can click through to read that argument in detail. Suffice it to say here, as Newspaper Death Watch noted last week, news is a commodity, anyone can provide it. Newspapers are bought -- and TV news programs watched and blogs read -- for the added meaning they provide to people's lives. Much of that meaning comes from the work of columnists.

My aim here, however, is not to re-address Miner's argument. Instead, I have a few choice words to say about Miner's act. Besides the aforementioned despicable and unacceptable, a couple of other key adjectives deserve to be at the forefront of discussion today.

In my above-noted commentary from Monday, I suggested that some journalists in Chicago and elsewhere, rather than truly caring about the future of American reporting, are instead myopic, self-interested, and increasingly desperate individuals, prone to point the finger of blame for the failure of the the print news industry at everyone and anyone other than journalists and journalism, themselves. My words sparked a heated comment debate about the future of local reporting and generated several private thank-yous from industry insiders, including one email from a newspaper editor who told me my words rang true -- but that being too close to the issue, no local journalist would likely have had the guts to write them.

Perhaps not, but that doesn't mean local journalists are faint-hearted. It takes a lot of chutzpah to stand up in front of your local colleagues and declare dozens of them to be feckless, as Miner did in last week's Reader. But I wouldn't call that courage. Far from it. Instead, Miner's less than well-meaning suggestion to dispense with commentary and turn columnists into service-oriented seat-warmers for journalists was nothing short of cowardly.

How fearful of change and desperate to return to a defunct status quo of healthy print readership does one reporter have to be to declare that the furtherance of his profession may depend on -- or in fact, even deserve -- the decimation of another profession? I could go on at length about the societal worth of good columneering, but this being Chicago, I think I can nail all that in two words: Mike Royko. Would Michael Miner call the patron saint of American commentary feckless, too?

Of course not. And he doesn't deserve a pass on calling the rest of this town's commentators expendable, either. For far too long in morning newspapers, on the evening news, in virtual flame wars, and at real-life media conferences, Chicagoans have been treated to a persistent, plaintive moan from local reporters crying out for the way things used to be. I felt sympathy at first. Change is never easy, especially when that change involves your livelihood.

Miner ended that sympathy for me, however. His article made me realize how tightly circled the local journalistic wagons have become. He actually thought it was okay to demand that a cornerstone profession of the American news industry be dismantled in order to try and turn back the clock for his own -- and worse, many reporters opining on his column thought his suggestion was okay, too. What's going to be the next desperate proposal to emerge from the pens of scared journalists? Refocus the sports writers? Request a federal bailout? Kill the bloggers?

This wretched culture of blame that seems to infect Chicago journalists, causing some of them to lose all sense of objective responsibility for their own occupational futures, is unworthy of journalism. On behalf of commentators everywhere, I'm here to cry foul. My ability and that of my columneering colleagues to analyze a situation strategically, recognize significance, and write words infused with meaning that elicit understanding from third parties is in no way subsidiary to the work of journalists -- no matter how deeply ingrained the belief is among some journalists that theirs are the only voices that matter in American media.

If that were the case -- and patently it is not -- how come after the seeming daily quota of finger-pointing is fulfilled, the best that some reporters can come up with is a feeble plea of, "Save me"? Occasionally whimpered, as was the cast last week with Michael Miner, with a gun in their hands.

Enough, already. The public petulance is wearing thin. Being career investigators, it's about time reporters dug deep for another argument. Get a new act. Get a life. Get a clue. And if all else fails -- like, for example, your newspaper -- get a job.

Not mine.

Comments

[PerryWhite]

"Miner is not saying to get rid of Richard Roeper or Michael Sneed..."

I am: get rid of Roeper and Sneed - and Ebert, too. Worthless and a waste of money.

[Mike Doyle - Huffpost Blogger]

Moreover, thanks to the Internet's diffusion to the masses of the means of disseminating news and opinion and, again, unfortunately for journalists, reporters no longer have much standing to claim theirs are the only voices that matter. My, how many of them don't like that state of affairs. My writing writing is called a diatribe, yet Michael Miner's article was led off by a graphic of Richard Roeper's disembodied head in a guillotine basket and called out local columnists by name--saying it was time to end their "star turns". I find that more than despicable.

I find it pretty jealous sounding, too.

[Mike Doyle - Huffpost Blogger]

It's always amusing the ways that journalists seek to immunize themselves and their colleagues from criticism. Usually--as with the first two comments in this thread--the tactic begins by accusing the person leveling the criticism that because they aren't a journalist, themselves, they (take your pick): a.) have no right; b.) have no capacity to understand; and/or c.) are simply too uninformed to ever (horrors) question the words of a "trained" reporter.

Frequently--again as with these two commenters--you're also told that because you aren't a journalist, you don't have the ability to present a cogent argument, even if you had the right, intellectual chops, and a treasure trove of (here's a buzz word reporters love) "context" to reference, so you should just shut up.

This highly facetious criticism-deflecting shell game has one goal: to try and get readers to believe only journalists have the right or ability to criticize other journalists. It's a symptom of journalism's high self-regard.

Unfortunately for journalists, it's also baloney.

Everyone has a right to share their opinion. Everyone also has a right, if not a duty to oneself, to question everything they read, take it with a grain of salt, try it on to see if it fits, and call it out if seems to be less than kosher. What's most pathetic here is that this main tenet of journalism--to be skeptical--is always rescinded by journalists when said skepticism is aimed at them.

[selene26]

I have to echo Duncan Moore. I'm a former newspaper reporter who has columnist friends, and I read Michael Miner's column in depth and found it to be probably one of the better ideas for helping to revive the news industry. I mean, calling it "cowardly" and "despicable" is really uninformed. Good columnists are, first and foremost, GOOD REPORTERS. Real news, as any reporter can tell you, is harder to produce than a string of (uninformed, blowhard) opinion; informed analysis, which is what Miner is talking about, is even harder to come by. And if real news is something anyone can produce, why is there such a shortage of it in blogs--might it be because it takes actual WORK to create?

In my conversations with non-journalists, what they say they want from the media isn't more commentary--they want to know what's really going on in the world, so they can sift through it and come to some informed conclusion about who to vote for, what kind of health care reform the country needs, etc.

Frankly, this diatribe sounds like exactly what Miner's being accused of...a desperate attempt to give meaning to the howling wilderness of the blogosphere.

[JDuncan]

Wow, Mike Doyle, for a guy purporting to defend columnists, that is a really dumb column. Did you actually read what Michael Miner wrote? I dug out last week's Reader and read it through twice.

Miner is not saying to get rid of Richard Roeper or Michael Sneed, but to redirect their efforts toward more serious matters. Instead of just filling space with a lot of amusing oddball bits, let them become investigators, explainers and arbiters of the national conversation, in Brent Cunningham's formulation. Certainly these two aforementioned journalists are highly competent writers and reporters with something to say. What could they produce for the Sun-Times if their roles were shifted to a new model of news gathering, analysis, and commentary? It's a very interesting thesis and worth taking seriously.

Your characterization of Miner's tone is completely erroneous. He's anything but "despicable" or "cowardly." If anything his tone is modest and judicious.

And by the way, on a technical note: Miner didn't "infer their work to be inferior." You could say he "implied" that, but in actuality he didn't. Look it up in the AP Stylebook. "Infer" is what you did, again, erroneously.

Finally, a column like yours only serves to remind us of the value that experienced, salaried, professional journalists offer at the height of their craft. If your kind of diatribe style is the future of web-based journalism, then please renew my subscription to the Sun-Times immediately.

-- Duncan Moore, Lakeview