Posted on 12/11/2004 1:39:07 PM PST by 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.
I agree with Pitts.
If they were not stupid,they would not be buying and reading the propaganda organs that print his drivel and he would not have a job.
Think of reporters and commentators as the “factory” that produces a product. The managers of that factory want to sell lots of papers so they can charge high rates for their advertising space. Unfortunately for them, their “factory” makes a product that fewer and fewer people want.
It’s like Ford continuing to make the Pinto when the public is going for SUVs. And, because of their ideological biases, the “factory” keeps making the Pinto because that is the perfect car and that is what everyone should be driving.
Pretty soon, no more Ford. That is reality in a free society.
Great post Nick. You should send him that via e-mail. It's lpitts@herald.com
Is it possible that the press has not gotten worse in the last 150 years?
Samuel Clemens was in the belly of the beast. It has not changed that much.
We all do no end of feeling and we mistake it for thinking. And out of it we get an aggregation which we consider a boon. Its name is public opinion. It is held in reverence. It settles everything. Some think it is the voice of God.
- "Corn-pone Opinions" essay, 1900 Mark Twain
That awful power, the public opinion of a nation, is created in America by a horde of ignorant, self-complacent simpletons who failed at ditching and shoemaking and fetched up in journalism on their way to the poorhouse.
- "License of the Press" speech Mark Twain
That's what I was trying to illustrate. Be it selling papers or getting a lot of hits on a Web site - the goal of the publishers is to get ad revenue, not to live up to some standard of "journalism".
If a reporter gets to do a really honest story, he or she should consider it an exception and not the norm.
I just included the real reason in the spirit of helpfulness.
It is not uncommon for me to find this in the first paragraph. When you make up facts you are going to get tossed.
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