09-22-2009, 08:50 PM
http://www.newsreview.com/chico/content?oid=1234759
When I think about the fate of daily newspapers and the future of journalism, I immediately think about the first California Newspaper Publishers Association awards ceremony I attended back in the early 1980s. My paper in Chico had won for Best Weekly Newspaper, so I went down to the Hotel del Coronado in San Diego to accept our award.I was excited.
I’d been publishing alternative newsweeklies in Santa Barbara and Chico for 11 years at that point and knew dozens of alternative-newspaper publishers. But I hadn’t yet met any daily publishers. I had this idea that they would be like modern Renaissance men—skilled at business, but also well-versed in politics and the arts. Mostly, I thought, they’d be passionate about the role their newspapers played in their communities and in the life of the country.
Boy, was I disappointed. The subject that seemed to rivet publishers’ attention most was golf. And when some of them discussed their newspapers’ operations, things got even worse.
On the whole, they seemed to dislike their employees, especially the union representatives. They described their printing presses as “iron” and the papers as “product.” And the remark I was stunned to hear over and over was something like, “Sure, we support our editorial product—we need to put something between the ads.”
The experience brought home to me how leadership must stay aligned with mission or an industry will fail. Publishers of dailies had begun to prioritize profit, not journalism. That’s because economic and political forces had established ground rules that allowed this to occur. Decisions about how many reporters to hire, whether to open a bureau, how many papers to print, which stories to cover—all these choices were made within the context of these forces.
This shouldn’t have come as a shock to me. After all, economic and political influences had shaped how we had been creating alternative newspapers for decades.
It has recently dawned on me that this context has been mostly missing from the current discussion about the future of journalism. As the daily-newspaper industry continues to decline, it’s important to understand that these same forces will determine how journalism will develop as we move into a post-daily world.
When I think about the fate of daily newspapers and the future of journalism, I immediately think about the first California Newspaper Publishers Association awards ceremony I attended back in the early 1980s. My paper in Chico had won for Best Weekly Newspaper, so I went down to the Hotel del Coronado in San Diego to accept our award.I was excited.
I’d been publishing alternative newsweeklies in Santa Barbara and Chico for 11 years at that point and knew dozens of alternative-newspaper publishers. But I hadn’t yet met any daily publishers. I had this idea that they would be like modern Renaissance men—skilled at business, but also well-versed in politics and the arts. Mostly, I thought, they’d be passionate about the role their newspapers played in their communities and in the life of the country.
Boy, was I disappointed. The subject that seemed to rivet publishers’ attention most was golf. And when some of them discussed their newspapers’ operations, things got even worse.
On the whole, they seemed to dislike their employees, especially the union representatives. They described their printing presses as “iron” and the papers as “product.” And the remark I was stunned to hear over and over was something like, “Sure, we support our editorial product—we need to put something between the ads.”
The experience brought home to me how leadership must stay aligned with mission or an industry will fail. Publishers of dailies had begun to prioritize profit, not journalism. That’s because economic and political forces had established ground rules that allowed this to occur. Decisions about how many reporters to hire, whether to open a bureau, how many papers to print, which stories to cover—all these choices were made within the context of these forces.
This shouldn’t have come as a shock to me. After all, economic and political influences had shaped how we had been creating alternative newspapers for decades.
It has recently dawned on me that this context has been mostly missing from the current discussion about the future of journalism. As the daily-newspaper industry continues to decline, it’s important to understand that these same forces will determine how journalism will develop as we move into a post-daily world.