Peoria Pundit

It’s something about the trees.

Maybe it’s the leaves. Maybe it’s the bark. But there is something about trees that weakens America’s fragile democracy.

That is why we must routinely cull some of the trees. Because when we cut some of them down, our democracy is strengthened and America’s otherwise inevitable slide into totalitarianism is postponed.

Or so thinks Phil Luciano.

In today’s column, Luciano asks readers for their opinion on what should be done to save newspapers. Because, as Luciano writes, newspapers — and not any other form of the news media — are the pillars of our democracy.

It’s complete bullshit. Journalism on television and the Internet would not exist without newspapers leading the way, he says. Therefore preserving newspapers is essential to preserving democracy itself. It’s big talk for a columnist who who wrote, I think, three columns during the past month about missing dogs (you see, it doesn’t matter what crap you put ON the paper, as long as those evil, anti-democracy trees are chopped down and pulped into paper).

What arrogance. If newspapers vanish, free market forces virtually guarantee that someone would start providing news in a different medium, most likely the Internet, which is a vastly less expensive way to distribute news to readers.

But members of the Big Media like things just the way they were. They want to preserve the institutions of journalism, not journalism per se. They can’t imagine journalism being done any way other than the way  they do it.  So all of their solutions tend to be more about propping up what already exists rather than about creating new ways commit acts of journalism. Lone writers posting news about their neighbors onto their Blogger or WordPress sites is not part of their journalism mix for these people.

One solution that’s been tossed out is to give newspaper customers some sort of tax rebate or credit. Another would let newspapers become non-profit organizations, which would keep them from endorsing candidates. Yet another would make newspapers immune to antitrust legislation. This is probably the stupidest of the many ideas being bandied about. But any solution that exists only to prop up the dying carcass that is newspaper journalism is a solution that will not work. We need to allow constructive destruction and let newspapers fail so they can evolve into online-only news organizations.

I’m reading Clay Shirky’s fine essay on the state of the newspaper business, and I came across this paragraph:

Society doesn’t need newspapers. What we need is journalism. For a century, the imperatives to strengthen journalism and to strengthen newspapers have been so tightly wound as to be indistinguishable. That’s been a fine accident to have, but when that accident stops, as it is stopping before our eyes, we’re going to need lots of other ways to strengthen journalism instead.

I’ve said this for years. The value of a newspaper isn’t that it’s printed on paper. It’s that the newspaper employs a staff of people to go out and gather the news. The printing press is simply a means of delivery. Until the Internet came along, it was a pretty good business to be in, the owning of a printing press.

The Sun-Times Media Group is closing a bunch of “unprofitable” newspapers: The Algonquin Countryside, Arlington Heights Post, Cary-Grove Countryside, Des Plaines Times, Elk Grove Times, Hoffman Estates Review, Mount Prospect Times, Palatine Countryside, Proviso Herald, Rolling Meadows Review, Schaumburg Review, and Wheeling Countryside. Which means there are 12 communities in the market for community-based news online news organizations.

Yellow Dog Democrat has an idea for newspapers editorial writers who argue (anonymously, of course) that there ought to be a special election to pick the replacement for Barack Obama in the U.S. Senate:

My solution? Since they want a special election, newspapers should drop their opposition to closing the sales tax loophole on printer’s ink, a $40 million per year taxpayer giveaway to the newspaper industry. That way we can pay for the special election without raising taxes on working families or cutting the services they depend on.

The cost of a special election is estimated at about $50 million.

And in related news: THE GOVERNMENT IS SUBSIDIZING NEWSPAPER PUBLISHERS TO THE TUNE OF $40 MILLION A YEAR.

This offends me on three levels.

First, it’s an egregious example of corporate welfare.

Second, it’s a political favor to newspapers publishers that taints the reputations of journalists who strive on a personal level to be independent of the government.

Third, it’s unfair to online and broadcast news organizations, who are competing for the exact advertising dollars. I’m not aware of any sales tax break I get when I buy a computer, or when I pay my cable Internet bill.

Earlier this week, I received an anonymous tip that Pekin Times editor Rick Wade has left this paper. I published it as a blind item. Commenters claiming inside information verified it was Wade who lost his job, although some of the details of the circumstances are disputed. And there has been no denial from either the Pekin Times or their corporate parent, GateHouse Media.

But here is the sad part, from a journalistic perspective. Not one word of the situation has appeared in the Pekin Times. At least, not the online version. I’m not driving to Pekin to examine the dead-tree version, nor should I have to.

The era in which a newspaper could chose to hide it’s dirty laundry without expecting the news to get our anyway is long past. When a newspaper fires it’s top editor, the public needs to be informed of the act.

Do the people who call the shots at GateHouse think Pekinites do not have the Internet? Do they think the witnesses to the firing have not passed along the details to friends and family?

I don’t want to pile onto the Pekin Times during what is probably an uncertain time, but from a position of reader advocacy, I’ve gotta wonder how committed the newspaper is to accuracy and fairness.

UPDATED: Commenter Jared Olar says the Pekin Times is now reporting on the incident:

There’s something about Rick Wade’s firing in the Daily Times now. It’s about a verbal and physical altercation between Rick Wade and Mike Vetroczky, the paper’s business manager, after Rick had been told he was being fired. It doesn’t give any information about why Rick was fired, though, and doesn’t even mention that Rick had been the paper’s editor and Mike is the business manager.

Originally published on December 5, 2008 at 12:36 am

NOTE: The following post first appeared on Oct. 4, 2007. Recent posts about staff departures at the Journal Star, and more misery in the newspaper business, made me think it was time to revisit the idea of what newspapers need to do to adapt and survive. That list doesn’t include shedding reporters. I’ve done some minor editing and added a few small suggestions.

I’m still thinking about my post about Scott Adams belief that it’s an economic fact that online will eventually replace print media. There have a been many predictions about the demise of the newspaper. Some of the dates in those predictions have come and passed. But ad sales DO continue to decline. Newspapers DO continue to lay off staffers, or not replace reporters who quit or retire.

Maybe they will still be around five years from now. Maybe not. But they almost certainly won’t be printed on paper 100 years from now. The only question is exactly when the last dead-tree newspaper will be printed. The trick for newspapers is to be one of those that make the transition to online.

Here are some radical ideas. All are based on the premise that the decline of print and the rise of online is NOT something to be staved off. Instead, it is something to be embraced and encouraged. It lowers fixed costs and lets news organizations devote the more of their resources toward paying people to gather the news, instead of killing trees and tossing paper on porches:

1. Hold a meeting of all employees. Tell them that effective immediately, their paychecks are coming from an online news organization. Tel them that job of print-only reporter/editor has been eliminated. Tell them they all have jobs as reporters for your Web site, as long they are willing to commit to it, and make the necessary adjustments to their newsroom culture. Oh, and if you are thinking of using this as an excuse to do away with unions or to outsource jobs, I hope you get hit by a bus. You would deserve to.
2. Make the following changes in your newsroom culture: Abandon the conceit that good journalism is defined as something that happens only in newspapers, and that since online journalism isn’t on paper, it cannot be good journalism. Readers do not buy your newspapers because it’s printed in paper. Ink on paper is a medium. The product the readers are buying is the reporting.
3. All deadlines are now “as soon as you get a story done that is reasonably free of spelling errors and typos.” Then put the article on line ASAP. Additional details can be added as they come in. Back in the ancient times, they called this “beating the competition.”
4. Take all feature content out of the dead-tree version of the newspaper. This includes the comics page, the bridge column, cross words, sports stats, stock prices, etc. Don’t give anyone ANY reason to go out and buy a copy of the paper. Put it ALL online instead. Your print version should be a stripped-down version of the online version, not the other way around.
5. Raise the price of single issues. The Peoria Journal Star charges $1 on weekdays. Double it. Then triple it if sales don’t drop enough. If senior citizens complain and stop buying, then, well, screw them. The survival of your news business is at stake. Senior citizens aren’t going to be customers in 10 years anyway, to be blunt about it. Besides, if my mother can get the news online, so can yours.
6. Restrict ad sales in the newspaper only to those who also buy ads online. After a year or two, stop selling ads in the newspaper altogether. Wean your advertisers off dead trees because it is in your interest to do so.
7. Start charging people to gain full access to your online content. Do it now. Don’t wait. Online subscriptions should be far less than the cost of a daily newspaper subscription. It should cost customers less because it costs media companies far less. Putting your local content online stinks for free stinks. It is stupid. You paid people to produce it, you paid syndicates for the features. You have the right to make a buck, and people WILL pay because your newspaper is STILL the only place they can get that much local content and the quality content I’m assuming your employees produce. And if you’re NOT producing high-quality content, you are screwed anyway. I am continually astounded at how many genuinely smart people in the news business think no one will subscribe to a news site for $5 a month, but will instead pay $365 a bloody year to buy newspapers out of ugly little news boxes.
8. Make sure the amount of news online on any given day exceeds the amount in the dead tree edition. Also, there’s no real reason to NOT give your online readers access to more comics and columns that you could fit in your newspaper. Stop thinking in terms of limited space. Remember, it is the ONLINE edition that has to be the premium version of your news content.
9. Train your reporters and editors to write for online. Readability is now the only consideration. Learn how to avoid journalistic shorthand. Stop thinking in terms of limited space. Think in terms of answering as many questions as possible, and giving readers the resources to find out more.
10. Do not hire bloggers to replace reporters. Guys like C.J. Summers and myself have a watchdog role to play, but the meat and potatoes of journalism is the full-time reporter who covers a beat. There is no substitute for an experienced beat reporter who knows where the bodies are buried and who works for a newspaper that likes to uncover the corpses (not that there aren’t bloggers who aren’t capable of digging up a body or two). Going online-only lets your newspaper spend money on reporters, not to ship rolls of paper and barrels of ink to your plant, then to deliver copies of your paper door to door. It’s the 21st-frigging-century for crying out loud. However, if you want to pay bloggers to provide added value and hits to your online product, feel free. Call me.
11. Take down the firewall between today’s online news and your archives. If anything, charge for new stories, and give away yesterday’s news for free instead. It is stupid that newspapers do the opposite. Make access to old stories at minimum easy to access as today’s stories. Someone reading about last night’s city council meeting should be able to click on a link to last week’s council meeting, AND the one five years ago when they discussed the very same issue.
12. You shall read and try to understand all 95 theses of the Cluetrain Manifesto. Perhaps THEN you will understand why unsigned editorials fail in the 21st century.
13. Slapping Google Adsense onto your online site isn’t going to cut it. Learn how to sell online ads to LOCAL customers. Most online ads link to customer Websites. If your good customers don’t have good Websites, perhaps that’s a business opportunity for you.
14. Change your hiring policies. If an applicant has no blog, don’t interview them. The same with applicants with no HTML skills.
15. Want to civilize your reader comments? Limit comments to paid subscribers.

First, we have one of the best newspapers in the country trying to sell itself:

The McClatchy Company, burdened by debt and a steep slide in newspaper advertising, wants to sell one of its most-prized properties, The Miami Herald, according to people briefed on the company’s plans.

McClatchy, the nation’s third-largest newspaper chain, has approached potential buyers for The Herald, said these people, who asked for anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the issue. But they said they knew of no serious offers for the paper, reflecting the evaporation of major investors’ interest in buying newspapers.

The Community Word is the ONLY locally owned newspaper in Peoria. I especially recommend Roger Monroe’s column and Bill Knight’s column. One is conservative; the other liberal. And both of them have ticked me off this month. Monroe questions whether Colleen Callahan qualifies as a journalist because she covers agriculture. Knight says it’s a mistake to even consider the issue of crime when evaluating state’s attorney candidates.

Bernie Lunzer, the freshly elected president of The Newspaper Guild, told Editor & Publisher that the time has come for the union to explore how to help create an “alternative” model of newspaper ownership, which everyone is taking to mean ownership by the employees or their union:

A new guild committee to review alternative ownership is forming and is expected to meet initially later this month, with regular meetings to follow. He cited the need for new ownership options in the wake of difficulties at Tribune, Gatehouse Media, and Journal Register Company.

“We want to review and consider new ownership models,” he added. “We want to make sure we can give it every opportunity before we start to lose value. We may see more models that are Web-based products.” [Emphasis mine]

Asked if the guild itself could become an owner or part-owner of a newspaper, Lunzer said: “We don’t want to preclude anything going forward if there is a chance of success. The feeling is that if the old system is dying off, what is the new system?”

My advice to TNG: There is a reason investors are abandoning newspaper companies. A business model based on the relative scarcity of printed presses doesn’t work in the Internet age. Everyone has access to a virtual printing press.

The value trained reporters bring to the table is the ability to gather news. Likewise, advertising representatives bring their ability to sell ads. Those ads can appear on a Web page just as easily as they can on a paper.

By publishing on the Internet alone — a development that almost everyone who looks at the issue says is inevitable anyway — is a great way for these new “models” to avoid having to come up with a huge investment.

I’m just wondering newspaper union workers are ready to abandon the cherished myth that it ain’t journalism unless it happens on paper.

Dave Barry, is a great columnist for the Miami Herald. I found this column on the trouble newspapers have
attracting readers to be especially funny, perhaps because I find myself wondering how to do just that every week.

Dave Berry,newspapers,newspaper readers