Remember Ye Olde Newspaper This Monday

If good looks was a minute/ You know that you could've been an hour- Smokey Robinson, 'The Way You Do The Things You Do'

Monday is ‘Buy A Newspaper Day’. The idea is that everyone buys a copy of their daily paper for one day. Tuesday America can go back to their “So What?” attitude. Let me put this as bluntly as possible- the only people to blame for the destruction of the newspaper industry is the newspapers themselves. The same with the auto industry. The same with the music industry. Why should we feel sad about an industry who chose not to keep up with the times and make hard decisions?

What I worry about with the death of newspapers is where the kind of investigative reporting we often find in major papers will go. Great journalism takes passion and training. It won’t be replaced overnight by citizen journalists. That being said, I have faith that, since the market abhors a vacuum, new outlets will fill that void, even if in a piecemeal fashion.

What I find most galling is the amount of back-slapping that continues as the newsprint ship sinks. One of the early lessons taught to any actor with a death scene is just die. No need to grandstand. The audience knows what death is. Don’t overdramatize it. Newspapermen are staging the world’s longest Irish wake for their profession. You can read effusive praise for print scribes in both the New Yorker and Atlantic today. From Steve Coll in the former:

…there is just no substitute for the professional, civil-service-style, relentless independent thinking, reporting, and observation that developed in big newsrooms between the Second World War and whenever it was that the end began-about 2005 or so. And those qualities arose from the scale of those newsrooms, and the way the quasi-monopoly business model and high-quality family owners shielded them from political or commercial pressure-not perfectly, but largely. Yes, the big papers failed, as in the run-up to the Iraq war, but they succeeded much more often. They practiced a kind of journalism that, on the whole, was better for a democratic constitutional system than any journalism ever practiced before, anywhere.

From James Warren in the latter:

In journalism’s new Internet-dominated landscape, in which attitude and attack are often valued more than precision and truth, handiwork like [Bill] Crewdson’s is seen as taking too long and costing too much. His situation is hardly unique—the other investigative reporter at the Tribune’s D.C. bureau was told to leave at the same time, as was the top investigator at the Washington bureau of The Los Angeles Times, which is also owned by the Tribune Company. But as an example of journalism’s very best, Crewdson’s dismissal is a symbol of the extent to which the news media are imploding. And that implosion is a development with far-reaching implications.

Hurry, Auntie Em! It’s a twister! Pick up Chicken Little on your way! Please, people.

The news media is imploding. That’s about all Jim Warren is right about in his speech. I know I didn’t go to Medill or the Missouri School of Journalism. But I’m pretty sure news does not need a journalist to make it news. Newspapers began as a means for people who owned printing presses to make money. Plain and simple. Journalism remains a craft used to sell stuff. Let’s not romanticize it. And Mr. Coll brings up Watergate in his piece. Watergate happened thirty-eight years ago! Most media consumers, like  myself, weren’t even born yet. If your last hit was thirty-eight years ago, you should be playing the Merrilville Star Plaza. And that’s where newspapers find themselves.

Yes, you mishandled the Iraq war. But you also mishandled the recent Gazan invasion. You continue to mishandle the economic stimulus package. Does anyone understand what this package contains? I’ve searched the Tribune (to which I continue to subcribe, why I don’t know) for a week for some good analysis on the package-what it contains, who’s going to get the money, what will be the predicted results. Nothing. I consider myself a pretty informed person, but I couldn’t begin to explain to you the financial devices that caused this current crisis or who’s exactly to blame. America is a misinformed country because today’s journalists cannot do their jobs. Major media companies do not want an informed populace.

The Jim Warrens and Steve Colls of the world made a deal with the devil. They were given the opportunity to advance through the goliath media companies who owned their paper. They were given seats at networks owned by their papers. They loved the money and the camera time. Mr. Warren speaks of the introduction of opinion replacing news. Do you know who most of the talking heads are? Ex- print journalists! Like Mr. Warren himself, who does talking head spots on MSNBC. Jim, you doth protest too much.

The solution is upon us. If the current economic calamity has taught us anything it is that bigger is not better. Smaller publications, like Shambollocks!, are where people will get their news. We don’t sell stuff. We are here because we love to write and because we feel that an important niche is left unfilled. We depend on feedback and trust with our readers. Do we have a staff investigating new Illinois governor Pat Quinn right now? No. But someone is. And we will get you that news when it happens.

Why do it if there’s no money? Well, Mr. Coll is right. Daily news will go non-profit. We will depend on our readers for survival, just like NPR and universities. Yes, it is revolutionary. But it is the future. Users will sponsor the media that survives. And unlike Mr. Warren, I believe users know better than professionally trained hacks, or bottom-line concerned CEOs.

Breaking up is hard to do, Mr. Coll and Warren. But this time it’s you, not us.

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