Neil Henry wrote an interesting article for SFGate about the company’s corporate parent axing 100 journalists amidst the paper bleeding red ink to the tune of $1 million a week. The article isn’t denying that the layoffs were the right thing to do, but highlighted the victimization of print media in general by their sensational digital competitors who somehow rope the dim witted masses (of which I am one) into turning away from the paper presses.
Henry portrays old media reporters as forlorn artists, who do God’s good work reporting and investigating complex stories sans bias or malice. Specifically he states:
“I see a world where the craft of reporting the news fairly and independently is very much endangered; and with it a society increasingly fractured, less informed by fact and more susceptible to political and marketing propaganda, cant and bias.
I see a world in which the pursuit of truth in service of the public interest is declining as a cultural value in our society amid this technological tumult; a world where professional journalism, practiced according to widely accepted ethical values, is a rapidly diminishing feature in our expanding news and information systems, as we escape to the Web to experience the latest “new” thing. ”
As for my two cents on the matter, I didn’t stop reading print because there was too much “truth” in it, I stopped reading because it was boring, with most of the news entirely irrelevant to my live. Why should I have to dig through 5 sections and across page jumps to find the few stories that interest me when a search engine can accomplish this in literally less than seconds?
Henry also sites advertisers abandoning print for the lower costs of the internet. This is entirely true. The internet offers lower rates and analytics for your ad campaigns to boot. I wonder if ad executives for the Guardian have any idea how effective their inventory is?
The truth is that there are more effective ways for journalism to succeed on the new medium of the web. If TechCrunch has taught me anything, its that the process of reporting stories is fragmenting. Journalists have been taught to tell stories by first collecting as many facts as possible, digesting them, and regurgitating the results in the next days issue. This made sense when the transfer of information was fraught with friction. Many reporters were needed to mine stories from the masses and reveal them to the public. That’s no longer the case.
Online reporting is told in through significant pieces over time. Instead of reporting the “whole” story at once, TechCrunch reports seminal developments, drawing in other pieces to complete the picture at that point in time. Still later we can turn back, survey, and tie together the pieces we’ve laid along the way. Being a live format is not only a more effective way to spread information, but helps keep readers engaged, which means you get them back to the site more frequently, which means you sell more advertising. You may look at a newspaper once in the morning, but you’ll check a website 3 or 4 times a day.
As to the decay of truth in journalism, I fail to see how journalists are so impregnable to bias. I love NPR and the BBC, but they definitely lean left of center based on the types of issues they choose to cover, but I don’t care. I find my favorite articles are opinionated because the reporters care about the subject and it shows. It anything the internet allows for more accountability by getting closer to a true marketplace of ideas where writers can engage in open debate and be called out by fact checkers in their comments. There are some really smart people that read TechCrunch, and I’m sure the same is true of the Chron. Why not take advantage of this resource.
I think papers like the Chron serve themselves and us best by adjusting to these trends and conversing with the public to which they pontificate. Step out from behind week old retractions buried in section Z99 and embrace the new formats. At times the name-calling can get nasty, but overall it makes for a much more exciting experience.
May 30th, 2007 at 8:38 am
In interviews on BBB radio 4 this week two media experts were explaining the current travails of the journalist in London and the provinces.
They agreed that leading newspapers wish to go for a 16% profit and to achieve this journalists are let go and the majority retained are on low salaries. This appears to be very much so in the provinces so many local issues are not covered. But also the editors of these newspapers are increasing their already bloated salaries and conducting big piss-ups while sacking juniors. Talk about playing the fiddle while Rome burns.
May 30th, 2007 at 9:57 am
[…] Cutbacks at the Chron are Not the Death of Investigative Journalism […]
May 30th, 2007 at 11:31 am
Cassandra,
You make me feel lucky I don’t work for a newspaper.
As to the coverage of local issues… What should happen is good reporters should put their ear to the wall on local blogging networks like Outside.in and use it as a tool to dig up stories they can investigate further.