All the news that's fit to be requested (Newspaper Readers are Stupid: Lenard Pitts)

Miami Herald ^ | 12/10/2004 | Leonard Pitts

[moneyrunner]

All the news that's fit to be requested

By LEONARD PITTS JR.

lpitts@herald.com

Dear Colleagues:

Have you had enough bad news?

I don't mean the bad news we report. No, I'm talking about the bad news that is reported to us, the steady diet of doom and/or gloom that goes with working for a daily newspaper these days.

I'm talking about reports that, despite all the focus groups we study, all the redesigns we commission, all the shorter stories we write and all the bigger typefaces we employ, newspaper readership is still falling like a boulder from a skyscraper.

It's increasingly difficult to escape a sense that in a video-driven, semi-literate world, people who transmit information via words on paper are uncomfortably akin to those who transmit it via stone tablets. The demoralizing truth is, the folks we purport to serve seem to be saying they can get along just fine without us.

Well, cheer up. It turns out you'll still have a job in 10 years after all. I have seen the future of American journalism.

You have, too, if you read a story that ran in USA Today. It was about Las Noticias Ultimas (i.e, The Latest News), a newspaper that has, we are told, become Chile's most popular by adopting a radical new strategy:

It allows readers to choose the news.

Here's how it works: The paper has installed a system whereby every link that is clicked on its website is recorded for the newsroom to see. This gives reporters instant, ongoing feedback on which stories are most interesting to readers. Editors assign follow-ups to those stories and look for more like them. Stories that fail to generate reader interest are killed.

USA Today reports that in one recent week, the most popular stories among Chilean readers included a report on where the U.S. secretary of state ate dinner while in the country to attend a trade meeting.

Readers also gave a thumbs up to a story on which international delegations were the biggest tippers. This report, we are told, was accompanied by a photo of scantily clad waitresses.

CLICK FOR GOOD STORY

There's more. Publisher Augustine Edwards says he will soon offer a financial incentive for his staff to write stories readers want to read. A reporter's salary will be based on how many clicks he or she racks up online.

Colleagues, I can hear you harrumphing from here. This will never happen in a U.S. newsroom, you say. U.S. newsrooms have higher standards. We take our profession too seriously for that.

All I can say is that you must work in a different newspaper business than I do.

The one I work in has been hijacked by bean counters. It is a place where costs are cut with the mad glee of an ax murderer and editors are required to prostrate themselves each morning before the altar of the holy profit margin.

It's entirely possible for me to imagine newspapers in that industry following the Chilean lead.

SACRIFICES

After all, what would we have to sacrifice to do it? The need to make informed judgments about what matters and what does not? The obligation to be a watchdog of the public interest? The mind-set that says maybe you publish a story because a reader needs to know a thing even if he doesn't know he needs to know it?

Get over yourself. How 20th century can you be?

As Edwards puts it, 'I am not of the school that says, `Eat porridge, it's good for you.' I'm focused not on what people should be reading, but on uniting them around what they want to be reading.''

In other words, no more stories about budget deficits, congressional hearings, international summits and other boring stuff nobody really cares about. From now on, no news but fun news.

Welcome to the future, guys. Enjoy.

If you need me, I'll be running a little bed and breakfast outside Modesto. Look me up if you're ever in the area.

[moneyrunner]

Dear Leonard,

Loved your column this morning: “You decide, we report.”

It illustrates just why “readership is falling like a boulder from a skyscraper.”

First, Leonard, writing for a newspaper is not a “profession.” It’s a job.

Second, Leonard, your paycheck comes from the revenue generated by the ADVERTIZING in the newspaper. Your job is to be interesting enough to get the reader’s attention so that she will see the ads.

She – the reader – is the CUSTOMER. She is not semi-literate nor is she video-driven. Those people don’t read your newspaper. She is well aware of the contempt in which you hold her. In this very column you tell he she’s a dolt who is only interested in trivia. It has long amazed me that the newspaper business is the only business that hold holds customers in blatant contempt, telling them to their faces how stupid they are.

She is not a student come to learn at the master’s knee. She does not have to show up for class. Furthermore, she questions your credentials as your tell her what to think about war and peace, deficits and congressional hearings, race and religion. She is aware of your bottomless ignorance when you write about things she knows about, and suspects that this ignorance carries over to everything else you write.

She is well aware of your personal bigotry and prejudice; has access to alterative media and has long ago abandoned the plantation.

Leonard, the era of the monopoly newspaper and the alphabet networks is over. Thanks to the internet and other alternative media you will have to compete for people’s attention. If you don’t, those paychecks will stop. By the way, do you have any idea of the work it takes to run a B&B?

By the way, my wife reads the paper for the ads.

[cyborg]

I read the papers for the ads too *LOL*

[Admin Moderator]

Newspaper Readers are Stupid: Lenard Pitts

To help prevent multiple postings, please do not change titles.

[roadcat]

The one I work in has been hijacked by bean counters. It is a place where costs are cut with the mad glee of an ax murderer and editors are required to prostrate themselves each morning before the altar of the holy profit margin.

Ah, bean-counters, I love them (not!). Back in the late 70's I worked as a computer programmer for this bean-counter manager. I prided myself on writing the shortest, leanest, program routines. Mine took a fraction of the time as compared to my colleagues' programs to run, while doing the same job or better. So this manager held weekly meetings and asked for counts of the number of lines of coded - added, modified, or deleted. And rewarded those with the highest counts. Of course, I changed my ways and started adding thousands of lines of useless code to my programs so I could be patted on the back, too. Then, I joined my co-workers on falsifying the counts in the reports we gave to our boss. He never caught on and we parted ways several years later.

My daughter is a magazine editor and writer, and is caught between her ethical ideals and the demands from idiot chiefs. Like you, she understands that it is a job and that professionals are not necessarily appreciated, especially in the print media. By the way, my wife also gets the paper for the ads and not much else.

[moneyrunner]

I read the paper for the editorials. They amuse me, as Pitts did today.

Blogging may have been started as a way of talking back to the asshats who hold those few coveted jobs of getting paid to give their opinions to many. Now, anyone can do it. That makes reading people like Pitts all the more amusing.

[newsworthy]

It's increasingly difficult to escape a sense that in a video-driven, semi-literate world, people who transmit information via words on paper are uncomfortably akin to those who transmit it via stone tablets.

Tell me what I want to hear, not what I need to know---the modern mantra. It's so much fun to sell oneself to a dictator.

It's always amusing to hear liberals bemoan problems for which they are chiefly responsible.

[carlr]

My local paper carries Mr.Pitts so I am somewhat familiar with his bitter rantings.

He seems her to be saying that newspapers are dying.
I would suggest that at the least this would make him an accessory to the murder.

[crazyhorse691]

Newspapers in our house are best used as a training ground for puppies. Puppies just don't seem to have much pride and relish the feel of fresh newspaper underfoot.

[Beckwith]

newspaper readership is still falling like a boulder from a skyscraper.

What's important about this statement is that the population is increasing dramatically as readership falls.

Newspaper readership is measured as a percent of the population. Between 1970 and 1990, the adult population increased by 38% but the number of readers increased only 15%. Since 1990, as Miles Groves pointed out in his Sept ‘97 Presstime “Forecast," the actual number of adults reading newspapers has dropped every year, despite an ever-increasing adult population.

The NORC data show that in 1967, 69% of those now 54 to 68 years old reported reading a paper on seven out of the last seven days. The NAA 1997 data show that 49% of that age group read a daily six out of the last seven days (five out of the last five weekdays plus last Sunday). That’s a drop of 20 percentage points in thirty years. The NORC data for 1975 show that 53% of those now 41 to 53 years old reported reading a paper on seven of the last seven days. The 1997 NAA data show that 29% of that group reported reading a daily six out of the last seven days. That’s a 24 percentage point drop in eighteen years.

These facts lead to simple projections for the future. A straight line formula shows that if the ‘61 to ‘88 trend continues, the year 2078, at the latest, would see the end of daily newspaper reading in the United States. Using the 29 studies available from ‘61 to ‘97 pushes the predicted drop-dead date out to 2098. In either case, that marks the year when there will be no more daily newspaper readers.

Source: Newspaper Association of America (NAA)

http://www.naa.org/artpage.cfm?AID=1593&SID=1020

[speekinout]

So this manager held weekly meetings and asked for counts of the number of lines of coded - added, modified, or deleted. And rewarded those with the highest counts.

It's long been known that "you get what you measure". And sometimes the intent of measurements gets lost as the orders move down the chain. In your example, it could be that higher-ups were rating this manager on "productivity". They probably did not get what they wanted (which was likely products they could sell)

In Leonard's example, it's likely that the higher-ups wanted revenues from ads. They aren't trying to educate the public or win Pulitzers. They want hits on the sites so they can sell advertising. If every article was titled (name political figure here) is suspected of being a (choose one: cross dresser, child pornographer, etc) they'd no doubt get just what they want.

[Rockingham]

Good post, and good replies. Pitts seems genuinely surprised that newspaper readership is falling, which is like someone jumping off the roof and being surprised at falling to the ground in spite of the pixie dust that he sprinkled himself with.

The core audience for the news in newspapers is educated males, and especially white educated males. But over the last two decades, in search of an expanded readership and circulation, newspapers scorned their core news audience. Instead, they chased after women with dumbed down news and softer lifestyle features and courted minorities with accommodating reporting. Since those groups tend to be liberal, the political and cultural slant in newspapers tilted Left. Political correctness took hold,and gay favorable and anti-Christian editorial attitudes logically followed.

Of course, just as other businesses have found, when you alienate your core customers by changing the product in ways that they do not like, those customers tend go elsewhere or stop buying. The recent economic downturn exposed much fraud and folly by many leading US businesses. The same process is now underway for newspapers.

Mr. Pitts and the rest of the bewildered in the newspaper business could take a clue from the one exception, the newspaper that has shown consistent growth in circulation, earnings, and influence: the Wall Street Journal -- loaded with hard news, politically and culturally conservative, and written for an educated and heavily white male audience. Rather than embrace such horrors, I am confident that Mr. Pitts and like-minded colleagues will reach for another helping of pixie dust.

[whereasandsoforth]

I am a loyal consumer of The Dallas Morning News. I buy one everytime I need a cheap dropcloth. Usually in the spring. A nice big fat Sunday addition.

[D Edmund Joaquin]

The "news" in papers isn't even news. It's on the web a week before they print it

[listenhillary]

On the two Chilean stories he mentioned, which Chiliean stories did he not mention?

[Monti Cello]

The need to make informed judgments about what matters and what does not? The obligation to be a watchdog of the public interest? The mind-set that says maybe you publish a story because a reader needs to know a thing even if he doesn't know he needs to know it?

This is the best summary of media elitism I've seen.

[beyond the sea]

The paper has installed a system whereby every link that is clicked on its website is recorded for the newsroom to see. This gives reporters instant, ongoing feedback on which stories are most interesting to readers.

Readers must still pick from the stories that are available. Why not just make them up like SeeBS and the NYSlimes.

[DainBramage]

"This will never happen in a U.S. newsroom, you say. U.S. newsrooms have higher standards"

DEEP VOICED ANNOUNCER: "Said in a believable manner.... Straight face optional" BWAAAAaaa

[Nick Danger]

what would we have to sacrifice to do it? The need to make informed judgments about what matters and what does not?

That's one thing, yes. In particular, we're all real tired of every leftist with a press release, or three leftists on a street corner waving signs, being treated as a momentous event that we all need to know about.

So Students for a Green Tomorrow think we should all get rid of our cars and get bicycles. So what? Let's see if they still think that after they get a job. In Winter.

The obligation to be a watchdog of the public interest?

That would be nice. When are you going to start? A man who recently ran for President claimed to be a war hero. Yet records he refuses to disclose may well indicate he was separated from the Navy under less-than-honorable conditions. Not one of you "guardians of the public interest" in the press showed the least bit of interest in the possibility that we could vote for a serious liar. That's because he was your serious liar. And we know that. And so we don't trust you to be any sort of guardian at all. Because what you mostly guard is Democrats... from bad news.

You just dismissed what I said above as a partisan rant. But admit it: you've never really checked. You have no interest in checking. You already "know," even though you don't know what you don't know.

The mind-set that says maybe you publish a story because a reader needs to know a thing even if he doesn't know he needs to know it?

Not when the record shows that what you think we need to know is every press release from every leftist agitator, and every squawk from every impotent Democratic House member who has a press relations staff.

No, Sir, we do not trust your judgement. You have lost that trust, by abusing it. By trying to shove your politics down our throats in the name of "journalism." So Merry Christmas. And the horse you rode in on.

[listenhillary]

http://www.twainquotes.com

FREEDOM OF THE PRESS
It is a free press...There are laws to protect the freedom of the press's speech, but none that are worth anything to protect the people from the press.
- License of the Press speech

...the liberty of the Press is called the Palladium of Freedom, which means, in these days, the liberty of being deceived, swindled, and humbugged by the Press and paying hugely for the deception.
- "From Author's Sketch Book, Nov. 1870," reprinted in The Twainian, May 1940

[mewzilla]

Someone with one of my local newspapers once told me, when I complained about the content in the paper, that the editorial staff thought the paper's readers were idiots and only interested in fluff. That's what sold I was told.