Five Key Reasons Why Newspapers Are Failing

Let's not start throwing around "you don't belong here" accusations. I'm well aware that the grinding work of the beat writer is what enables him to eventually write something larger or more penetrating.

My point is that most mid- and low-level beat writers spend too much of their time giving readers information they can get everywhere else -- roster moves, the mechanics of last night's game, warmed-over cliches from the player who made the game-winning play. Consumers have too many options now (team sites, fan commentary, watching nearly any game on television) for that to sell. We need to give them better and more than that.

 

I'm not throwing around any accusations, I was asking a question. Because if you're in the business and you've determined that attending practices and covering a team on the road is a "waste of time" and leads to stories that are "boring as hell," you need to find more satisfying work and create an opening for someone with the initiative and creativity to do the job properly.

Your criticism of unnamed "mid- and low-level beat writers" is the warmed-over cliche here.

Fans have been watching games on television for more than 50 years. Before there were fan commentary sites, there were talk shows and that didn't seem to prevent an enterprising writer from coming up with something that would interest readers.

 

List your five reasons.
Mine.
a.) Gannett and everything about it trickling down to other chains.
b.) newspapers giving it away free online.
c.) selfish managers and buttkissers who care not about the product
d.) cutting back pages the last many years and staff, making the product horseshit.
e.) loss of morale due to pay cuts, freezes, furloughs and layoffs.
Happy hump day. Newspaper business sucks.

 

I don't want to speak for Dan, but I will anyway, I think he means that SIDs and media relations people will always be putting positive news out there.
Papers will report the news and the fanbois might not be willing pay for negative news about the program.
He then draws a comparison to cable news.

 

1) Newspapers refuse to charge subscription fees online for fear of being labeled unhip to the web
2) The Web irrevocably cheapens the advertising market by flooding the supply.

I don't need the remaining three slots, so I'll donate them to anyone who wants to go to eight.

 

I've run out of ways to explain my side of discussion, especially since my previous points somehow got twisted into "working a beat is stupid." I think we're looking at these issues from two very different viewpoints. Sorry we couldn't communicate across the gap.

 

1. Inability to figure out how to make internet advertising work.

People can gripe all they want about how newspapers should have charged readers from the beginning, but the reality is people tried it and it didn't work. Doesn't mean the current system is better -- clearly it's not working -- but if newspapers can find a way to get an advertising-based system to work at all, it's the best hope. Remember, if you go to a subscription-only model the advertising disappears, because the audience plummets. You'd better get a hell of a lot of subscribers to counteract that... and that won't happen.

2. Cutting the product to the bone.

When I read the sport section that no longer has a golf writer, an auto racing writer, a boxing writer, doesn't travel with the hockey team -- when it had all of those things 18 months ago -- I start to wonder why I keep reading the paper. And that's just the sports section. I can get AP copy at any number of sources.

3. What's left? Um... Not really all that good.

Cuts are one thing; mediocrity is a bigger problem, and one that can't entirely be blamed on cuts. The local paper's coverage of the major sports teams isn't any more probing or hard-hitting than what I'll find on the league web sites. Moddy always says "Just give me something to read." I might go weeks at a time without finding an interesting read in the paper.

4. Refusal to admit that huge profit margins are history.

They're not coming back. Ever. You can convince yourself to live with a smaller profit margin or you can destroy the business. Most companies are choosing the latter.

5. Papers have little apparent interest in doing what they do well, and want to do what they can't do at all.

Local coverage should be king, because I have hundreds of other places to find national news. Somehow my local paper continues to shove all local news into the tiny B section. (For God's sake, the president was in town and that didn't even make the front.) The newspaper used to be the only place for classifieds, but it handed that to Craigslist without putting up a fight. It used to be the place for movie listings and concert listings but now is utterly useless.

Instead, they want to focus on video reports and blogs and twitter and other things that newspapers are completely fucking useless at. You have any number of ways to make your website better than the local TV station's site; why put your focus on video, which is the one place where they will absolutely kick your asses?

And, since Rick Stain so graciously offered up a few extra spaces...

6. Allowing the posting of racist, mean, sniping, libelous, ignorant and illiterate comments on the web.

I read a perfectly decent story, glance at a comment or two posted immediately at the bottom of the story, and I get pissed and leave the site. I go to the local paper's site far less than I used to, solely because I don't want to read over and over about how the "fukking Messican wetback POSs" are to blame for crime, the economy, and the local baseball team's failures. I now associate the local paper with ignorance and bigotry. It may not come from its employees, but it's what slaps me in the face every time I read its web site.

7. Failure to get people who understand the web to work on the web.

My station used to have people who could post and write stories well. Our web hits sucked. Then they got people who can write, post stories, and get those stories linked at CNN.com, Drudge, and other key national sites. Our hits went through the roof.