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Locally focused reporters the nation over were affirmed in their despair this week by the New York Times declaring it “National Crisis” in Media week. What with this GateHouse group and Gannett, the original super-chain, merging and probably laying off far more reporters than have ever been fired before despite the Nice Words executives say about their commitment to Doing The Work at these times. When everyone knows that it’s about the $$$.
“CRISIS.”
What is a crisis? Headline writers have been using the word as a synonym for “disaster” and “catastrophe” as long as I can remember.
Let us return with our pedant hats on to the original Greek, and in that august language, krisis means “decision.”
Not a bad thing, not a good thing, simply a time when decisions must be made. Brittle assumptions fall apart. What is old can be made new.
Instead of disaster! Look at this as an opportunity! (the motivational speaker proclaims).
Reading the stories about Journalism’s Decline, the reaction from Concerned Persons is always that less reporting is a very bad thing. Democracy will suffer. Who will watch the powerful? The PEN America report cited by the Times cites Hard Data, telling us that governments without a local newspaper spend more, do less, and generally get away with doing what they want. Without putting more money into local reporting, we will lose an “informed citizenry, an accountable government, and a healthy civic life,” according to that organization’s CEO.
With all due respect to those earnestly reporting away in newsrooms quieted by years of layoffs and “reductions,” it’s my earnest contention that journalism — as institution and as practice — is just as in need of a fire to wipe out the overgrowth of stultifying habit and orthodoxy as any other profession in our decadent late capitalistic world.
I can sympathize with people losing jobs, (though not empathize, exactly, as my two firings in my 20s were due to hotheaded young man rage conflicting with old stodgy publishers) while saying that the profession as it stands could use a good shaking up.
Reading the stories — just about any story — on the Decline without any background or historical context, one is led to think at some point in the first two paragraphs that through the ‘90s, newspapers were uniformly a united front against corruption and deceit, blazing a light forth for democracy and equality. If meddling Craigslist hadn’t taken all the classified ad money, newspapers would have never fired a soul. (The consolidation-friendly Telecommunications Act of 1996 probably didn’t help either.)
The PEN press release has a typical line of this genre: “the industry has lost $35 billion in ad revenue, sparking a 47 percent reduction of newspaper staff.”
Never is there a mention that many publishers enjoyed 20, or 30, or perhaps in some cases even 40 percent profit margins for years, numbers that blew away dang near any other industry during their heyday. There was a reason men such as Murdoch got into the news game — that tycoon once described profits from news as “rivers of gold.”
A.J. Liebling was writing in the 1950s about more American cities seeing their news provided by a “single-ownership” — i.e. local monopolies — as the rabid competition of the late 19th and early 20th century press game gave way to consolidation. Morning and afternoon papers combined their operations; independent owners sold out to chains like Gannett that kept expanding until they were so large that, when those margins started shrinking in the 21st century, a hedge fund could buy up hundreds of papers at a shot and then send their staffs packing.
The loss in “civic engagement” decried is a loss of the kind of engagement encouraged by monopoly owners deadset on maximizing profits: the kind of engagement that boils down to the old “vote or don’t complain” mentality preached by true believers in our republic’s status quo operation. I’ve got no problem with voting, myself; one also has to wear blinders to believe that voting changes a whole lot. Newspaper chains encouraged watchdog reporting so far as it watched higher taxes, “government waste,” anything that might cut into those precious profits.
I have been a True Believer in the power of the press. One doesn’t go two years of homeless-ish life, couchsurfing and petsitting and asking for money and sleeping illicitly at an office, to keep publishing a local news source without some belief in the press as change agent.
Sometimes an investigation or scandal does make some people change their ways. Sometimes the Powerful Person keeps on doing what they’re doing. Either way, it’s not enough to keep the advertising dollars churning. You need content, and more of it. And that means the crime stories people, trained to love their fellow beings’ downfall, love to share. That means fluff (some of which can be fun), that means running press releases from agencies with an angle.
More dollars to employ more reporters would be nice, sure. Let’s not pretend that every minute of that hard-earned time is spent crusading for peace and justice.
Like art and music, food and drink, the marketplace will always make reporting suffer when it’s subjected to its everyday demands.
One of the many conclusions I’ve come to doing the independent, local news gig is that people, in their everyday lives, are always going to be the best reporters. They’re going to be the ones with tips, the ones who see governments and companies doing wrong before the most talented reporter could catch what’s happening. People who pay attention, taking in the whole world around them is what we need. No publishers needed.
I could go on at unholy length about this topic. Know this, though: If you need a couch to crash on, unemployed reporters of the world, my parents have two.
Here’s a song I wrote that’s about the news game. Or so it turned out. If you dig all this, follow along.