His point was that newspapers were still, in many cases, still viable businesses, as long as those looking to profit by them were realistic in their expectations. Newspapers were not a high-grossing, fast-growth industry, never were and never would be. They are a more measured and steadily producing product – the tortoise to the Internet’s hare – and needed to be seen as such. As long as we tried to keep pace with the electronic media, he said, newspapers would always lose.
That started me thinking about news media in general and how it is failing and why.
A few years back, I made the conscious decision to change the way I get news. I listen to the radio, primarily, and I get about 40% of my information from the internet. I no longer listen to local television news. The quality is simply so abysmal that I cannot bring myself to even tap the button on the remote. So it would seem that I am part of the dirge of newspapers. But I insist I am not and here is the reason I am not:
Where the local television stations are failing is that they are trying to be everything; they want you to rely upon them for local news, weather and sports, but that’s not enough for them, oh no! They want to impress you with their capability to stand side-by-side with the networks and cable agencies. Consequently, they cover things that they not only are incapable of covering, but into which they have no business sticking their noses.
Why, for instance, should my local network affiliate news “authority” pay any attention whatever to a story about President Obama tripping over his shoe lace while on a trip to West Slovenia to discuss a trade agreement for east European kumquats? For one thing, 30 minutes form now, I am going to hear that very same story covered by the national, network news program who has someone actually there on the scene and who witnessed the accident first-hand, rather than showing me saturating feed footage over which the local anchor reads wire copy that he or she may have reworded to make to sound “fresh?”
Not only is this pretentious and egotistical on the part of the local station, it serve no purpose – other than to “tease” me into watching the network program, which is done, ad nausea by the network itself with their constant promos and bulletins.
At the same time, I discover, via word of mouth or a glance at the website of my community, that there are at least a dozen stories that are important to me in my daily life that went entirely unnoticed by the so-called local news source. Where is the story about the city raising my water rates by 25%? Why didn’t I hear anything about the break-in two blocks from my house? Who missed the story about the person whose house burnt down and is still working as a volunteer for the homeless?
Oh, no – there is no room for those stories – there are more important things to cover. We have to pretend – like children playing war or house – that we are a major voice in the news business and you should respect us because of our wide range of coverage, and by the way, pay no attention to that man behind the curtain! He’s really not downloading network feed to splice into our report! He’s just . . . um . . . editing it – yeah! That’s right! He’s just . . .
Stop. Just stop.
To say that there is no longer room for a newspaper – or local radio and television news for that matter – is simply saying that those things that happen in and around our homes is not worthy of such high-minded people as journalists.
About half of my journalistic career was spent at small, local newspapers, some of them published weekly and distributed free to every home in the community, where the biggest news of the week might be high school graduation. In mirror image of current standards, we had no room for Obama’s tumble or the congressional scandal or the threat of North Korea’s attempt to dominate Asian cuisine. They meant nothing to us – unless they happened in our community or somehow had a direct effect on it. For instance, when then-Senator John Glenn came to tour Dayton’s Children’s Medical Center and to meet with medical professionals to formulate legislation for health care reform, you can bet your read end that I was there, up front and with my microphone thrust prominently in the Senator’s face. My community was a small farming town where many people were either self-employed or worked for a small family-owned business. Health care was something that was on everyone’s mind and Glenn was one of two senators from Ohio – it was all very relevant.
But, would I try to keep up with the issue when he went back to Washington and began dealing with the problem on a national basis? No – not until it came home to my home.
The point of this is that, if newspapers and local media are to survive – even flourish – they have to realize just what they are and what their purpose is. They need to focus on fulfilling the needs of their own communities and bringing to that audience those things that are of substance. After all, isn’t that water rate hike more directly effective to my income than the stimulus package coming out of Washington? Shouldn’t I be more concerned – and better informed – about the burglar two blocks from my house than I should a serial killer in Florida?
Additionally, I had a relationship with the people of that community. They could call me and tell me about this issue or that which meant something to them. I could be responsive to their needs and I could reflect their concerns in what I covered; something that simply cannot be done with a so-called "regional" paper.
It’s time – in a lot of ways – that we stopped thinking “big is better” and began to look at things in the perspective of former Speaker of the House, Tip O’Neill, passed down to him by his father: “All politics is local.”
And so it is with news.
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