I follow the several newspapers of our immediate area, and every so often I write a post with thoughts on the lot of them. Many people are interested in newspapers, and I’m no exception.
On the left sidebar of this website, I have a link to the AP Managing Editors’ Statement of Ethical Principles. It’s not there because I’m a reporter — I’m not, and don’t wish to be. It’s because some of what passes as press coverage of our area just isn’t very independent — it’s all too cozy.
There are good newspapers in this state, but not as many as we could use.
Here are a few trends to consider.
Newspapers have been having a hard time for a long time.
Recent years may have been hard on the print press, but challenges are longstanding. See, for a quick overview, Jack Shafer’s The Beginning of the End for Newspapers: It was game over for metro dailies by 1965.
(1. Shafer’s writing about metropolitan papers. 2. He doesn’t mean over-and-out, but merely a decline. 3. I don’t wish for the end of newspapers, but for a resurgence of plucky papers.)
My theory: Most local newspapers gave up on being plucky – if they ever were — long ago.
They’ve made a bad and false bargain with readers: We’ll be boosters, if you’ll keep reading. The newspapers have upheld, for the most part, their end of the bargain. Yet, many readers didn’t know they were part of a bargain, and have walked away.
Online classifieds may have hurt the print business, but that’s nothing compared to All-the News-That’s-Fit-to-Bolster-and-Reelect.
As I’ll show tomorrow about a local story, some reporting’s so odd it seems like science fiction.
Smaller print editions.
Newspapers will be physically smaller. One example is the Whitewater Register. It’s owned by an out-of-town chain, and has less circulation than even a few years ago. Other papers will likely follow the Register‘s lead on print size — newspapers aren’t done shrinking. Expect to see smaller papers.
Reporters.
I’d guess that there will be fewer reporters, and more freelancers. That’s a bad sign, as no freelancer will rock the boat, or report a story that displeases local officials.
Coverage.
There will be no effort to challenge any statistics or contentions that officials make. Expect lots of stories where officials’ remarks are unchallenged, or where the only printed questions officials have to answer are easy ones — “To what do you attribute your remarkable vision, insight, and good looks while in office?” If there’s any follow up, it will be a second, allied official declaring that the first bureaucrat was absolutely, positively right. This will be made plain for readers who might misunderstand: “Yes, that first official was absolutely, positively right about everything he said, and might ever say, for that matter.”
What will coverage look like? These papers will approach issues about the same way that a local politician’s ersatz news site, the Whitewater Banner does; the major differences will be the range of stories and design of the newspaper’s online websites. Professional papers will have a sharper online design, and superior composition, but their perspectives won’t be that much different.
It’s not that the Banner will come closer to journalistic independence (of which it has none, as it’s not journalism); it’s that actual papers in our area will decline.
Circulation.
The future of nearby papers will be ones with less circulation (some of whom will issue dodgy circulation figures), but readers more satisfied with that coverage. That’s where the false bargain with readers leads — continued decline in readership, but a remnant that’s contented. Whether that’s enough to sustain all of the print papers is hard to say.
Already, the online editions of some nearby papers have fewer readers than this website. Over three years ago, when I started out, I would never have thought that possible. I would have expected that this blog would always be smaller than all of them, and smaller than the Banner, too. That’s not true anymore, and hasn’t been for over a year. (The Gazette, though, is larger — by a huge amount — than everyone else.)
A strategy of fawning or narrow reporting will erode, and then permanently limit, readership; that’s a decision these publishers are free to make for themselves. They may conclude that less is more, that a contented remnant is enough. A newspaper from Pleasantville will be interesting only to some from Pleasantville, and then not even most living there. It’s all preaching to the same choir. The financial impact is one that papers can assess for themselves. (As I have no advertisers, and wouldn’t look for them any more than they’d want a controversial site, it’s not a constraint that I have.)
Better results would come through a simpler approach, which some still take, but others have abandoned.
There’s the day-to-day of books, pen, paper, keyboard, time having lived in the world, and principles learned from so living. That’s all anyone and everyone should rely upon — of no single day or season, just a continuing endeavor.