Today offers a multipart Register Watchh™ for the October 2nd issue of the paper. In this first post, I’ll survey the newspaper in transition.
Bye Bye Bylines. The most notable change in the paper is the absence of bylines, anywhere on the front page. America has traditionally celebrated a free press, and countless films, books, and stories champion small, plucky newspapers. We’re right to do that – America’s an exceptional place, in part, because she’s a free place.
In all those cases of small-town pride, the newspaper’s a careful, loving work, where the editors, reporters, photographers claim ownership over the whole paper. (That’s true of most blogs, too – they are typically the work of one person, the same person, sometimes writing under a pseudonym, as was common earlier in our history.)
When the Register goes from prominent editor to no bylines on the front page, it’s a sign that the Register‘s not the sort of hometown paper America’s lionized elsewhere. It’s part of a larger chain, lacking the quaint charm and plucky skepticism of government befitting heroic, small-town papers.
All of the principal stories on the front page read like press releases. They’re not even edited to alter that suspicion. In the above-the-fold story entitled “City receives Transportation Enhancement grants for two projects,” the third paragraph begins, “Special thanks to Mary Nimm and Matt Amundson who wrote the grant applications for the city….” Is the paper offering thanks, as an editorial, or is this someone else’s work, unedited to disguise original authorship? I can’t tell. [I will assume that Amundson and Nimm deserve thanks. That’s not my concern; it’s that this newspaper does so little to meet simple reportorial standards.]
Someone once wrote to me and remarked that perhaps the Register does not pay well, and that’s the problem with finding good, interesting writers. I have no idea about compensation that the Register offers reporters, editors, etc.
I’ll offer two replies: (1) there are surely writers and editors who would have done more for this paper for less than it pays now, whatever that is, and (2) the Register‘s not been unwilling to take an active point of view, infused in the supposedly neutral stories it runs on most pages. There’s been ample energy for particular ideas presented as news stories, however the chain compensates.
More to come…