News on the State of the News - big and small
Submitted by: cho on Wed, 04/30/2008 - 04:44
tags:
Set Up Buzz!
From yesterday's Wall Street Journal, specifically from Andrew LaVallee's article Newspaper-Circulation Drop Sharpens, we learn that of the big ten newspapers, for eight, the numbers are sharply down -- ranging from a drop of 5.13 percent (LA Times) to a drop of 1.79 at the Houston Chronicle. Down 4.70%, The Arizona Republic, where my dad worked for 30 years, lost almost as much circulation as the Los Angeles rag did. As LaVallee reports:
Most of the nation's biggest newspapers saw circulation tumble at an increased rate, a sign that the migration of readers online may be picking up speed.
Just two of the ten showed gains, and those tiny. USA Today is up .27% and The Wall Street Journal is up .35%.
[Though, it would be interesting to research the cost of those subscriptions. In an attempt to lull me back after I balked at the $300 year subscription rate for the WSJ, they got me with their $99 special... a 2/3s off bargain basement sale that would make K-Mart proud.)
But while the big national guns are struggling, the health of the little guys at the community level tell a different story.
From our friend Bill Densmore over at Media Giraffe.
Down at the roll-up the shirt sleeves and just do it level, the newsbiz is just fine, thnky.
“When big-media Cassandras come to our conventions and prognosticate about the future of journalism being interactive and hyper-local, we just grin at them, because that's what we've been doing all along. Sure, we're moving more of our activities on-line, but that's not the key thing. The key thing is that people are engaged with what we're doing. The high school kids are interested in our paper because they and their friends are in it all the time. When I write an article about something people are interested in, I know I'm going to hear from a lot of people. Some will e-mail, some will write letters, some will chat me up at the local diner, and some will telephone the office. Most of these people I already know, some may be just joining the civic conversation. My challenge is to find ways to have all these people be heard in some way. Sometimes they are quite articulate and can write a letter to the editor for publication. Others are not too good with language. When they have legitimate concerns and insights, it's my job to find a way to give them a voice.
The rest of the article is interesting. The paper in question is for sale. GreylockNews.COM
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Same ol
Media companies will eventually catch on to the utility of these tools, at which point the serious level shake out will begin. So far they aren't even close.
I scoff at their ignorance, and fart in their general direction.
and they need to beware of the
holy hand grenade of antioche.
antioche?
Chanson de?
Monty Python
the Holy Grail... and the rabbit.
:-)
so I completely butchered the spelling?
I just don't get
the hyper local aspect. I guess it's just me but I hardly ever watch, read or listen to the local news.
local pubs
In small areas, folks like to know what is the menu for the seniors, why the roads have potholes, what was taken from the town offices during the vandalism over the weekend. Who is coming home from Iraq.
A lot of these small towns don't have any coverage in the big papers. So it's a vacuum to be filled. And since there are "local advertising dollars" from the tag sale classifieds to the John Deere dealership down off the town square, there's also money to be made.
Gate
The key is - as always - for the regionals to seek out and incorporate the locals. Be the portal.
Oh
We have other solutions like the coffee shop, telephone and gas stations. Guess we are behind the curve.
Pubs as in places to drink
reality dulling beverages... not pubs as in publications ... but i figured you knew that.
About the NYTimes:
If You Don't Show Up, Everybody Talks About You WaPo
If you have time....read this whole piece...it's pretty informative!
Thoughts on My Own Experience
When I started to write for our local newspaper I was surprised by the people I met and interviewed. There is a lot of idealism out there. People who, in different ways, want to make a difference. Those that I was attracted to and sought out, were the ones who were not looking for $ rewards but wanted to contribute to the quality of life for the community. The arts are one way but there are a lot of activities here. Some are connected with historical preservation, then there are service clubs, the tremendous library outreach, debating groups, and of course political clubs and institutions like the NAACP. And WWII veterans who by and large were sold on Bush and the Iraq war but had interesting stories to tell.
I think that one can do local coverage and give people a voice and allow for controversy without being to "cute" about it.
Sometimes there were serious issues that were kind of painful. A local event that featured a reenactment of the town's historic past appeared to some black members of the community to be to light-minded and they saw it as derogatory. I thought the people who wrote and produced the show in no way meant to be demeaning, and the bitterness was sad to see. The script was changed but hard feelings were slower to die down. Now I decided not to cover the dispute in our newspaper because I didn't want to harden people's positions. I did explain the situation to my editor and tried to cover a parallel event by leading historians in our black community about historical court documents dealing with freedman during the pre-civil war period, (I offered it as a freebie) and they didn't want to find room. Then they watered down my coverage of the entire event, eliminting the reenactment entirely--because they transformed my article from a feature to the front page.
I think it was an interesting situation. I don't think I was wrong to try to go gently with the story.
In general I was very careful to help people to express their meaning. In other words if someone misspoke or spoke rashly and I could see that their remarks would look differently in print than they might want--careless remarks that might sound bigotted by otherwise decent people for example or things that were about private lives. I am good at getting people to talk and I was always interested in them and their lives, so I was especially careful to go over with them at the end of an interview what was and was not on the record.
But then I didn't chose to be an investigative journalist.
Another instance that was a judgement call involved a meeting that was billed as a gathering between members of the Muslim community and others like the NAACP and liberal church groups. When I got there I had to sit and listen to a viciously anti-semitic speech by an Arab speaker who was a disgrace. And I found out that the actual sponsorship was a nasty super-"radical" group who insinuated themselves into local churches and got sponsorship for the meeting under false pretences.
I had the choice of going after the speaker and exposing him or not covering it at all. There were under 30 people including about five from the NAACP and me and a friend, who were really upset at things. I figured why give these people publicity. And I dropped the article. I didn't want to put the NAACP and others on the spot for being conned, as I was, about what the meeting was about.
I enjoyed my job a lot and I think people respected my work, and many say they miss the changes in the paper, but I know that I did not meet the putative standards of "objective" journalism and going for the jugular.