Newspaper Disaster? It's All My Fault. I'm The One

The wind shear, hypoxia, and rapid decompression of the newspaper business. The mad scramble for frantic answers, like a meth freaks' weekend convention in Vegas. The lost jobs, dirgeful despair, and sometimes mean sniping over tradition and the present day value of big rooms full of journalists.

The whole thing. My bad.

After all, Will Hearst, friend and then-boss, explained the internet to me back around 1992 when I became editor of the old SF Examiner. I then swiftly snagged Sun Microsystems braniac John Gage to demonstrate this emerging phenomenon to a roomful of Hearst newspaper colleagues. I think he showed us how you could tap on line into Russian satellite images that were eyeballing Washington, weather in Florida and other nifty digital information. The potential for journalism was big, but it probably struck some of us as more of a cool circus act than the actual future.

Tech-illiterate as I was, I also got a colleague around that time to piggyback me onto The Well, the pioneering social networking site out of Sausalito, to participate in an online debate about a story we'd done.

But I didn't understand then. Even with those clues and sitting square in Silicon Valley's bedroom, I really didn't know what was charging down that cliched superhighway right at us like a huge, flaming truck bomb filled with a million electronic ball bearings. And I should have known. I should have helped much more than I did to figure out how best to use that web thing to exponentially boost our role as journalists and better serve and involve our audiences.

(Bill Gates also let the web phenomenon blow by him at first, but he had enough money and power to reel it back into Microsoft.)

Plenty of people, including some associates past and present, and blog commenters, blame me anyway for the general decline of serious civilization. I won't quibble with wrongheaded detail. The Day of Atonement was months ago, but here it is:

I'm sorry. It was a failure of imagination.

Maybe I wasn't entirely alone in this. Talented friends who started out at SF newspapers remain embattled senior editors around the country -- Newark, Portland, Los Angeles, Manhattan. Other SF print alumni are on the scold side -- Mark Potts, Jeff Jarvis, Alan Mutter. But all of us are still leaning heavily on the I-have-a-"someone-will-figure-it-out" dream.

Not to say there aren't plenty of excuses, some legit. The speed of technology has stunned a lot of people, along with quick-changing consumer habits. The economy sucks more than ever before in our lifetimes. Self-abuse and self-righteousness are both dark corners where we can hide.

Even while slamming ourselves for being too complacent, we're also just shell-shocked by what's been happening. Some things are hard to reconcile, like driving down the road on a beautiful day and suddenly coming on a car violently flipped onto its side. Or a dead body. Familiarity goes away and life seems to change in an instant. There it is, but it just takes your mind a minute to get in sync with the altered reality of what's in front of you.

"I thought I had this job till I retired," one Chronicle writer said to me last week, slumped in a chair. So sorry. Nothing is certain and, after years covering countries at war, I should have at least been certain about that.

Now that I've tried to make peace with my shortcomings, what next?

This is the wrong place to get into the thicket of ideas to "save" newspapers -- never mind the argument about whether they ought to be saved as presently constituted. iTunes-like micropayments, non-profit endowments, endless "re-invention," free or fee, jacking up ISP providers, or Google (the only company in the world now trying hard to look smaller than it really is) for content money, ritual suicide. Let's try them all out, except maybe the last one.

One emailer to the Chronicle's Chuck Nevius the other day, who cc'ed me, said he was "not interested in receiving the paper itself" but he would be "willing to pay to help you and your colleagues" continue performing journalism. "How can I contribute to the revenue flow of the Chronicle without receiving the actual paper?" Now there's a guy and a model a P&L publisher could love.

In the meantime, we should look at the problem in simpler terms:

I get two newspapers delivered at home: The Chronicle and the New York Times. The Times hits the step somewhere between 4 and 5 a.m. The Chronicle gets there before 6. Both papers are in existential trouble despite good work and 300 years of accumulated history between them.

So even in the face of the threats to our survival, there are still at least two different people and two entirely different delivery systems in place to get two newspapers to the same address in the same couple of hours. Really? In what rational world does that make sense? Why is that a good idea for businesses on the brink?

And there are probably a few other newspapers my neighbors get, not to mention magazines (also an ailing industry). Stretch that out to cover printing, selling ads, technology and even the journalistic core of what we do. Would you rather sink or have 11 people cover the same football game?

There's a point in there, which applies to our larger dilemma, and it's about cooperation and what we call in California, "harmonic convergence."

The lessons are everywhere.

Yesterday morning, I'm watching "Little Einstein" on Disney with my 2-year-old kid. It's "The Song of the Unicorn," a variation on an old fable where these kids have to save a frozen unicorn from an evil queen so the mythical beast can successfully conduct the 1812 Overture by Tchaikovsky. (Don't ask me. The series teaches kids music appreciation and mine sits still for the whole thing.)

But as the show goes on, I'm thinking: metaphor. The kids, led by the precocious Leo, are journalism. The unicorn is our business and the solutions we seek, and there's a curse on it. The evil queen is..take your pick: the web, the economy, Google, generational shifts. Or just change that we're not handling well.

Without the unicorn, the symphony is a cacophonous mess. "We have to sing together and save the unicorn," Leo tells the others.

The mean queen splits the road to the unicorn so the kids aren't sure which one to take. Sound familiar yet? A monkey (all of us, but don't get riled up) helps the group by trying each road till they find the right one. They even throw a lion in there, ready to attack the unicorn. OK, maybe that's our business models. Whatever.

In the end, everyone cooperates, the unicorn is unfrozen and the rhapsody is successfully conducted. Peace. Beauty. Out.

The End of Days of newspapers has become its own noisy myth-based religion -- or maybe more like a cult -- with high priests, lemming-like crowd stampedes, mass panic and lots of last minute atoning in the form of extra hard work and social/tech experiments. Mr. Jarvis and other robed shamanists are looking through our excretions to see what ails us, to predict the future and provide new potions and balms.

I still don't have the answer, and neither does anyone else, yet.

But talented and shrinking newspaper newsrooms are cooperating with former competitors in New York/New Jersey, in South Florida and in Washington/Baltimore. The NYTimes noted the other day that they "have a content-sharing arrangement" with NBC News "exclusively for political coverage." Bet on that exclusivity to expand.

As Leo on Little Einstein might say, no one is navigating through this dark storm alone.

Even journalism's rooftop snipers, those innovative and entrepreneurial-minded local news web site start-ups, are looking for help from the ranks of professionals.

My old officemate, Eve Batey, ex of SFist, is launching the San Francisco Appeal news web site this week with former Chronicle investigative reporter and editor, Chuck Finnie. The SF-based Public Press, describing itself as non-profit, non-commercial, donation-supported news operation, recently advertised on Craigslist for journalists and ended up hiring former Oakland Tribune editor, Michelle Fitzhugh-Craig, a definite pro. And those sites, like the teetering megaliths of the WashPost and NYTimes, are reaching out to other news content creators in an effort to find the right road and perfect pitch harmony for the future.

Instead of grumbling, we need to look around -- keep that famous journalistic open mind. Help can and should come from anywhere. It's too late to be too proud, or snobbish.

People who want to save the Chronicle should see what contributors to the "Save The Chronicle" Facebook page have to say, or check out the suggestions at the San Francisco Post-Chronicle web site for ideas that might help us avoid being post.

Cooperation is the underlying key, I'm pretty certain about that. And this is true to a degree that the once iconoclastic, individualist, and pugnaciously competitive world of newspaper publishing (think Joseph Pulitzer and W.R. Hearst) has not been so well prepped to handle.

Neither is the Justice Department Anti-Trust division, which itself has still been operating on a 1930s model. There are no threatening monopolies in a graveyard, except a conspiracy of silence, something appreciated only by people who abuse power.

But like the old hippie co-ops, everyone who needs cooperative help has to give something up -- some individuality, some privacy, some ownership -- in the spirit of a larger purpose.

This process will be even messier and more jarring than it already has been. But it's necessary and should not end up in a cannibalistic frenzy where tears and angry spittle lubricate the jaws and an informed and curious public is the biggest loser.

Formerly fierce combatants need to be comrades or it's the gulag for all of us.

Well, as Leo told the kids in Little Einstein, "thanks for looking and listening."

Save the unicorn!

For more, read Bronstein at Large.

Comments

[MacNic]

I feel bad for all the journalists who are still trying to stay in the newspaper business. I am a journalist and I think I will always be. I work as a public relations person now and I love what I do. I get press inquiries from the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, LA Times and national networks. My organization still thinks highly about newspaper coverage and actively seek their attention. They get super excited when a newspaper writes positively or mention us, even if briefly, in their stories. I, however, feel obligated to try to make them understand that if they want real exposure we need to reach out to online newspapers, blogger sites and TV. That's where the media future is. Now that I have been working as a pr, I realize how dificult it is to get a newspapers cover your event or news. I have had press conferences where all the TV stations (even bloggers) show up but the newspaper. I get mad sometimes and I don't even call the paper anymore to find out if they got my press release. Who wants the newspapers when we get TV coverage anyway? I tell myself often. I think that a lot of people feel the same way I feel. Newspapers stopped caring about the news that were important for their communities and they are now paying the price.

[NickfromCali]

Actually, why doesn't Mr. and Mrs. Richard Blum buy the Chron? That way they can make it official!

[DenverJJ]

Mr. B,
Don't be so hard yourself. Sitting in the most tech-savvy place on the planet and you still want to print on paper? Your kidding right? The failure is not your management. You could not have known those, kids in the 1990s, the peach fuzzed smiling ones, with $30 eye glasses that the keep falling over the bridge of pimply noses could be wiser and now richer (no offense) than you. It's not your fault. The failure is in the people reporting the stories, looking at their dead heroes over their shoulders, they missed the internet nerd bus coming at that them. The got run over. They pulled you into by telling you they were still valid. They are buggy whips. They do not think they need to change the way they work: boo-hoo. They failed, not you. They must think like bloggers, not writers. The stories are still the same. The import is the same. Medium is different. They need to think like bloggers: 1 part written/ 2 parts video. Hell even a bad piece of phone footage of a real person making a significant quote about a significant story is worth more than 1000 words about it. With even a tiny ad on top, you will all make money. Are a few J-Schools teaching this? What they teach is more more important than how you manage, I think.
DenverJJ
http://writerswheel.blogspot.com/
http://singleship.blogspot.com/

[stillfresh]

Think like bloggers? That might be OK. But to write like a blogger is have no copy desk. Phil is not going to go for that.

[stillfresh]

Think like bloggers? That might be OK. But to write like bloggers is to have no copy desk. Phil isn't going to go for that.

[DuPageDem]

Nice to hear a newspaper exec come around to reality. Giving away your product in exchange for the specter of Web ad revenue is not a sustainable business model. I pointed that out to execs at my newspapers starting around 1993, but nobody wanted to hear it. Now they -- and me-- are out of work.. The corpse is nearly bare. The Web, TV and radio will have to do their own reporting instead of recycling print coverage.

[redleaf]

"Most of the wounds are self-inflicted," says Phil Bronstein, editor at large of the San Francisco Chronicle, which Hearst Corp. has threatened to close unless major cost savings are achieved or a buyer is found. Rather than engage the audience, he says, "the public was seen as kind of messy and icky and not something you needed to get involved with."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/28/AR2009022801964.html?sid=ST2009022802422

The problem, of course, is that companies like Hearst and Cablevision are still blind to the way people view the newspaper. The community that reads the newspaper has always been the newspapers' biggest asset. Newspapers don't make their money from selling the content to readers (that doesn't even cover the cost of printing and delivery). They've always made their money selling the attention of their community to advertisers. But, when they treat that community with contempt at the very same time that the community has many other options, it should be no surprise that the community goes away.
http://techdirt.com/blog.php?tag=newspapers

[phxmotor]

I quit reading newspapers when none of them challenged Bush in the lead up to the war. The newspapers were COWARDLY after 9/11. The only place I could find out the truth about anything was in the blogs. I'm glad the industry is being punished. They all deserve to go out of business after the way they let Bush and his henchmen tear this country apart with barely a peep. I always liked the Chronicle but now it's time to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Sorry!

[Colmore]

AMEN. They all were extensions of the Bush administration. Too bad they did not treat him the way they are treating President Obama. Here is a truly intelligent, articulate, caring president, being pilloried. The last one was sub-par on every level, yet never challenged. This is what helped make newspapers obsolete. The TV "news" had better wake up, before it goes the same way. Too partisan. The country is on the edge of a cliff, yet nobody blames the last administration for this. They just take every suggestion of the present administration and knock it down. Too late, they really should have done what they were originally intended to do, keep politicians HONEST. Not just democratic politicians, the others also.

[Paprikapink]

Even without being sure what the question is, I have a strong hunch that the answer is Twitter.

[nah415]

Mr. Bronstein:

What you might have done is looked into the future and seen the popularity of the internet for almost everything. You could have offered the paper online for a small subscription fee as a way of gradually working your subscriber base over to the e-version of the newspaper. You would gradually phase out the actual paper version of the Chronicle and sell off your presses and all of the other equipment that is now (or soon to be) archaic and expensive. Once you had transitioned your audience, you could have slowly increased the subscription fee for the online Chron until you were back in the black.

The Chronicle would have survived -- albeit in a new form -- and although you might have had some lean years, you would eventually have been successful.

Maybe it's not too late...

Signed,

A former Chronicle reader
(I couldn't get my paper delivered reliably before I left for work in the morning so I quit you.)

[Archie1955]

I think this article is nothing but an aplogy for the newspaper industry. I personally stopped reading American newspapers and watching American newscasts when I realized that we were not getting coverage of a number of egregious activities performed by the former clown president and his enablers in the American MSM. The BBC and other European and various foreign countries media were telling the stories and ours wasn't. That did it for me. Why should I read a half a story here when I can get the whole thing elsewhere including the internet?

[jade7243]

Growing up, my family spent a few years in Sacramento. Although we subscribed to the Bee, we also subscribed to SF Chronicle and Examiner also. The Bee gave grocery coupons and shopping in addition to the daily news of SAC. The Chronicle and Examiner gave us a taste of the sophisticated city to south that we frequently visited. We were okay with "news" coming a day late (from any of the papers because that was the way it was.)

Newspapers today have lost their ability to be first. TV beats them, the internet beats, IM and Tweets beat them. That's the way it is.

You did miss an opportunity to embrace the changing technology. But instead of beating yourselves (all newspaper folk), change your model. But in all seriousness, don't make me pay. You can still have advertisers (targeted to appeal to me regardless of where I am you can "get local") pay to be associated with your quality product. You can still have great writers, local writers and a geographic focus, and you can incorporate people like me who want to read your product. I just don't want to read it in print form any more. Maybe it's Blackberry or Kindle or my mp3 player or phone in addition to my computer.

Here is the trite, cliche finish: Phil, think outside of the box and off the page. It's new paradigm time.

[RetireGreen]

Phil:
While you figure out what the future holds in store for newspaper, you can prevent layoffs at the Chronicle by using a free layoff prevention tool, developed by a San Francisco company.

http://www.iplanretirement.com/layofftool.html

The founder has been trying to prevent city and school layoffs with no success. Perhaps if the Chronicle can stop layoffs from occurring, it could serve as the model for others, and then you could say "My Good. I saw the future and the future is Green."

[philonous]

This is an admirable mea culpa. Care to comment as to whether the subscription model currently being dished by Amazon on the Kindle device will become the new paradigm?

[TheIndependenceParty]

Phil, I am way over here in PA, and a reader, not a journalist, ... but I have to share a few observations.

I encounter online "newspapers" that want me to buy their wares, ... only to discover the articles they would sell me, are everywhere on the web for free.

Since Bush I, newspapers, the NYT first and foremost, attempted to sell me their investigative reporting, while it was public knowledge that they were covering up for certain figures locally, regionally and nationally. The day of the newspaper as social and political challenger is long over. They are no more independent than lobbyists.

Newspapers and journalists trashed "bloggers" as unreliable and unprofessional, while at the same time, the NYT suppressed their story about warrantless wiretapping by the Bush Regime. That was perhaps the most outrageous turning point in journalistic credibility in American History. For $ 1.50, ... I don't need to be lied to by the Press and the President at the same time!

[philonous]

In that regard, yes, you're absolutely right. Big papers did nothing to help their own cause. At least, once they really needed the money, they could no longer claim that the money would serve some noble cause, or even the greater good.

So, will the Mother Jones model of pay for journalism ultimately succeed?

[shantialoha]

Without newspapers, we save trees, transport time and fuel, ink and a variety of other things we historically spend money on.

I know it's a whole paradigm change, but since we have changed...can't we come up with a way to make the advertising be more effective and thus more desireable?

I actually work at a newspaper and the publishers have their heads in the sand. The web is where people go for information. Let's come up with greater ways to deliver results.

Niche marketing brings focused results. Isn't that what every advertiser wants??

I don't have the answers...but I know I get my news here and a few other sites...not the printed press.

Too many epitaphs will be written if we don't get with the program.

[RetireGreen]

Mahalo. You are absolutely correct. People buy a newspaper for the news not the paper. Get rid of the paper and save the journalists.

[KevinKSF]

As a daily Chronicle reader since 1979 the Chronicle’s problems have been mostly the SF Examiner costing 25 cents and now (in its right wing Republican mouthpiece version) it’s free. Who wants to pay 70 cents for something that’s ¼ the size it used to be? Some Chronicle Political reporters read the Washington Post and practically repeat their CW (conventional wisdom) verbatim. The M&R report that turns every 49ers & Giants story into breathless urgent news.