In the process of commenting on the way that the Washington Post – a paper presumably interested in goings-on in Washington, DC – seems only interested in the Kwanzaa Diggs shooting on the Op-Ed page, R.S. McCain notes:
Murder is news. Rape, robbery and drug busts are also news. And guess what? Crime coverage, if done right, sells papers. If the Washington Post can’t be bothered to cover a shooting that leaves one teenager dead and two others wounded, what the hell is the point of publishing a newspaper?
Good cops-and-courts reporting used to be a staple of American journalism. Was such coverage sometimes lurid and sensationalist? Sure. But it sells newspapers. The problem is that too many people in our newsrooms for the past several decades have failed to understand that they’re in a business, the object of which is to sell the product and make a profit.
Where I differ with Stacy is that I think that this is only half of the problem; the other half is that the people running the papers today don’t really understand that, by and large, if the American reading public wanted a national paper that defined the news we’d already have one. The New York Times likes to think of itself in such terms; so does the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times had some pretensions along those lines. The fact that all three papers are in financial trouble right now has apparently not been taken into account.
Honestly, I think that everybody involved would be happier if we just established once and for all that the Watergate scandal was a disaster for the newspaper industry; it encouraged an entire generation of reporters to go out there and try to change American society, instead of simply documenting it. Nobody really wants them to do the former. In fact, based on the historical record, what the American people want them to do is to go out and alternatively tweak and praise local power structures via proudly and openly biased articles that make no secret of their own opinions, and that offer no pretense to an objectivity that never really existed anyway. In short, the American people want ‘honest’ yellow journalism for their day-to-day news.
Oh, and box scores.
And comics that aren’t stupid. Some of those can be nationally syndicated, by the way.
Moe Lane
PS: And we can stop requiring specialized college training for journalists any day now. From what I can see, it’s pretty much wasted on them anyway.
Crossposted to Moe Lane.
Moe Lane
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I totally agree
leonidas Saturday, May 9th at 4:33PM EST (link)1. The New York Times, for instance, has turned its back (figuratively speaking) on news in New York City and New York State.
2. The “hollowing out” of their profits began with collapse of their LOCAL HOME TOWN circulation.
3. Who thinks #1 and #2 are connnected??
The one thing you won’t read about the death of the big newspapers is that they put out a lousy product.
But they do.
The Wall Street Journal is not going out of business.
The same cannot be said with certainty (boo hoo) about the NY Times.
Leonidas
5*5...
Justin Spagnolo (standardcandle) (Diary) Saturday, May 9th at 5:55PM EST (link)Consumers typically want objectivity, however, editors think they want framed debate and sensationalism.
Consumers have opinion pages or rather blogs for when they want to reinforce their politcal views. Editors are foolish to think that they do themselves any financial good by framing the media cycle for political leaning… and when the word bias gets thrown in… they go on the defensive… its mental obscurity… I think it comes from narrow thinking.
This reminds me of a quote by Hunter S. Thompson in an interview with The Atlantic… at least the guy knows where he stands…
Link to interview (Profanity Alert reader discretion advised)
“Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives. “ -James Madison
You Might Want Them Back, But I Don't.
farstar99 (Diary) Saturday, May 9th at 9:16PM EST (link)To hell with the whole profession. My degree’s in journalism and I still don’t want these filth bags to have jobs.
Let them fail.
Let them worry and winnow into non-existence.
For once, surrender to reason and have the humility to admit you can’t legislate or cultivate into existence something that is already gone.
Otherwise, put on crinoline and start stringing telegraph cables, so the steamboat captains can read the newspaper stories in St. Joe.
Modern Journalists are terrible because...
kyle8 (Diary) Sunday, May 10th at 9:21AM EST (link)They WANT to be journalists. That disqualifies them from the outset.
They are drawn into journalism because they want to “make a difference”. That mindset is mutually exclusive to just reporting the facts.
The best guy to be a journalist would be that disinterested nerdy guy who went into accounting or actuarials, because he doesn’t give a damn, he just wants to do a good job and get at the truth.
All the others are on a giant crusade to make the world a better place, and we all know where that leads.
“Nothing works like freedom, Nothing succeeds like liberty”
Kyle
Kyle, I think journalists now want to be celebrities.
Danielle Davis (ocleverone) (Diary) Sunday, May 10th at 9:34AM EST (link)Journalism be damned if they can get their names out there in the media..regardless of the quality of their work.
We live in a world of wannabe rock stars and journalist celebrities.
To me, “consensus” seems to be the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies. So it is something in which no one believes and to which no one objects … There are still people in my party who believe in “consensus” politics. I regard them as Quislings, as traitors … I mean it. — Margaret Thatcher
Bingo, Kyle!
deweyfromdetroit (Diary) Sunday, May 10th at 11:33AM EST (link)And maybe if they taught something in “journalism” school besides the Saul Alinsky handbook they could turn out a few left-brained nerds who knew how to analyze and present facts.
In fact, if they taught anything besides the SA handbook anywhere in the Liberal Arts schools it would be refreshing.
Perhaps if parents refused to pay these schools of socialist propaganda $20k a year we might see a bit more balance in academia.
Also blogging as
DeweyfromDetroit