Road To Irrelevance Is Trendy, Entertaining, All Downhill
Not too long ago, David Lawrence, publisher of the Miami Herald, circulated a memorandum to his staff that the Herald, flagship of the Knight-Ridder chain, intended in the future to “focus its newsroom resources on nine subject areas that readers have told us are especially important and useful.” The nine “subject areas” are: local government, education, sports, the environment, consumer news, Florida news, health and medicine, Latin America and crime.
There is nothing wrong with any of these “subject areas,” except for the fact that they exclude certain others - politics, the economy, world affairs and so on - upon which (to use professional lingo) newsroom resources have traditionally been focused. For this, Lawrence has been lampooned by his colleagues, and severely criticized as well. This is yet another instance, say detractors, of the dumbing-down of newspapers, of the rise of corporate group-think at the expense of professional judgment.
Maybe so. My own view is that Lawrence, who is otherwise an intelligent and capable fellow, has probably attended one too many meetings of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, where such visions of the future are a virtual addiction, or drunk too much of the elixir of focus groups. His critics ought to think twice before condemning him, for David Lawrence’s memorandum is nothing more than the logical conclusion of conventional wisdom in newspaper circles.
For the past few decades, newspaper executives have looked at two statistics and grown pale: Large afternoon newspapers in America have nearly all expired, and most people claim that their primary source of information is TV news.
Reaction to these facts is all around us. Since afternoon newspapers were in direct competition with the TV evening news, and the evening news won, morning newspapers have done all they could to duplicate the experience of watching TV news. This has taken the form of front page color photos and flashy graphics, “human interest” stories in place of hard news, crime, disasters and sweeps-week-style series on predictable topics: A week in the life of a welfare mom, the troubled Catholic Church, an immigrant’s shattered dream.
It is as if the virus of USA Today has infected the entire industry.
Added to this has been all the wearisome symptoms of political correctness: Foreign-language pages (hello, Quebec!), inordinate attention to favored minority groups, the wolf of ideology in sheep’s “diversity” clothing.
Tough, cigar-chomping newspaper editors, who boast of having brought down corrupt politicians, quail at the judgment of community focus groups.
Focus groups, I should explain, are institutionalized gripe sessions. Everyone, everywhere resents the local paper, and editors have found that if you convene a selection of, say, chamber of commerce types, they will complain that the paper is unfair to business, or gay activists will grumble that reporting of their doings isn’t “positive” enough. The theory is that once the newspaper begins to respond - with “favorable” coverage, preferably matching correspondents with their beats by race or sex - such ill-disguised promotion will make everybody happy and sales will rebound.
It hasn’t happened.
No matter how shamelessly newspapers pander to their critics, no matter how low the common denominator may descend, no matter how restrictive the favored “subject areas,” readers are deserting the printed page.
For that matter, newspapers are abandoning their historic obligation. The conclusions of focus groups are self-fulfilling: People are only human, and if you ask them if they want more, rather than less, news about the deficit debate, or Chinese foreign policy, or the Iowa caucuses or massacres in Bosnia, they will probably say no. It is the function of newspapers to explain the importance of such issues and events, and their relevance to the everyday lives of readers, not furnish an excuse to substitute happy talk.
The sad truth is that when newspapers compete with television on television’s grounds, they have already lost the battle. If people want TV-style entertainment, they will not seek out a printed imitation; they prefer the real thing. Indeed, most people (including me) regard television as their primary source of news: I check up on CNN before bedtime like everyone else.
The strength of newspapers, now as in the past, remains in their capacity to deliver information: To illuminate the news, furnish background, provide details. In a world of high-tech, labor-saving devices, people have more, not less, time to indulge; and newspapers (unlike TV) have the space to enlighten, and not just divert, their customers.
The alternative is insulting and unrewarding: Crime, disasters, dysfunctional families and all-Loni Anderson, all the time.
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