Simmons and Klosterman on death of newspapers ...

High salaries are killing newspapers. This is a new one.

 

I cannot believe that you mean that. Do you think that the Times' or Post's readership is so big because they have such large "FOR RENT" sections? I know much, much less about the decline of newspapers than other people here, but to throw out the quality of writing and reporting as a topic is foolish. Do you really think that Tony Kornheiser, Red Smith, and Joe Posnanski never sold a newspaper? Not one? I'd actually guess that for many men who weren't keen on politics or the stock market, the sports columnist was the main reason they picked up the paper.

Now, you mentioned age, as did SF_Express.

As someone who's purposely trying to do too much, too soon, I want to weigh in on this. The concept of age as a determinant for one's opportunity to report and write is a sad one to me, and historically ignorant. Lardner, Hemingway, Liebling, and Shirley Povich were each getting space in major publications when they were, by today's measure, children. (Povich, of course, was also his own editor.)

Those are the big names, and Klosterman and Simmons ain't them. Neither am I. Neither, probably, are 99% of the 22 year olds telling WaylonJennings that they'd like an ESPN.com column by tomorrow morning. But some of them are. The geniuses of this business were often geniuses at 20 and 25, and I don't know that 10 years doing box scores would've helped their careers. (If it wouldn't have ended them altogether.) As SF said,it can become an issue for someone who sees no light at the end of the tunnel, and they don't want to wait for -- and I won't name names, but everyone can think of someone like this -- a senile fixture on the sports page to literally die before he gives up his biweekly 20 inches.

I'm just guessing at this, but I think those guys I mentioned got their early start for a few reasons: 1) many, many more newspapers at the time, 2) less syndication of columnists -- how many papers was Dave Barry in? -- and less wire copy cut and pasted onto papers. If I'm wrong on this, someone will correct me.

This is a bit off the topic from Simmons, and you guys may be right that he didn't deserve a column at that age. (Personally, he annoys me more often than not.) And this topic is, surely, some distance down the list on why newspapers are what they've become. I just wanted to brirefly stick up for good writing, and to say that talent and age are not the same thing, and are not each other's prerequisite.

 

I thought I'd heard it all. If you think 70K is a "high" salary, go peek around the real world.

 

Almost every newspaper in Southern California, with a few exceptions, has been paying its reporters in the mid-$30,000s to start with. Often as low as $32,000 per year.

It's fucking insulting to think most people at newspapers are making "pretty damn high" money. The trust is, most people have to work real hard just to make ends meet.

Wages -- in most industries -- have NOT kept up with the rising cost of living in the last two decades. You think that gig is paying $70K? I'd bet you're off by at least five figures.

 

The newspaper industry's woes can be traced back to the tipping point when more owners began treating their properties as "investments" whose primary purpose was not to inform their readers but to provide what was thought to be steady, reliable sources of income.

When Conrad Black owned Hollinger, the papers in the chain were expected to do 30 per cent ROR every year. This during a time when most investors would have killed to have a portfolio that grew by 10 per cent annually. And Black got what he wanted, in spades. I know of one daily paper in southern Ontario that was doing 60 per cent ROR. How this was being accomplished, I don't know, but it happened.

Shareholders and boards of directors obviously thought that if 10 papers with 30 per cent ROR was great, 100 papers with the same ROR would be 10 times better. Do the math!!! So companies began to swallow smaller companies in order to increase their holdings. Bidding wars inevitably sprang up. Unfortunately, even 30 per cent ROR couldn't make up for the obscene amounts of money companies were throwing around at suddenly over-valued properties. Corporations weren't prepared to invest the time as well as the money - the returns had to be immediate, dammit! Those investments had to be recouped. And so the cutbacks started.

Unfortunately, the financial geniuses made several more mistakes. They didn't realize how difficult it would be to maintain the quality of a newspaper where the staff has been chopped. They didn't figure on customers and advertisers actually noticing and caring about the resulting drops in quality and then turning their backs on those newspapers, lowering the ROR and making it even more impossible for the owners to manage their debts. They didn't have a cogent plan to deal with 24-hour TV news/sports or with the internet. They didn't foresee the recession that would force the collapse of what remained of their advertising stronghold. And on and on and on.

For anyone to suggest that the wages of employees played any significant role in the death of newspapers is simply ludicrous. It was corporate greed combined with an inability/unwillingness to understand its product, advertisers and customers. That's it.

 

Just to make sure I put a fine point on this and the point is taken as intended, I don't begrudge 22-year-olds who want to shoot for the moon. I don't. But by being themselves. Or by learning to report. What I'm saying is that too many people want to just bypass reporting and BE Klosterman and Simmons. They think they're as funny as them, as clever as them, that they have a quirky world view that others just don't, etc., etc., etc., and that the dirt-under-the-fingernails stuff of writing and reporting is for suckers and less talented people than they are. That's what irks me, not ambition.

 

Translation: Nobody wants to pay their fucking dues.
One or two years and they think they've earned a key to exec. washroom.

 

For one, the Times' and Post's circulation -- different from readership, and far more relevant to this discussion -- is/was so big largely because of the many non-news staples that go in there. Yes. It was that way everywhere. That's just basic history about newspapers.

Joe Posnanski is the finest writer in our industry. He works for the finest writing staff in our industry. If Simmons' claims about being stifled in Boston are accurate, we can assume he would have found his wings in Kansas City and flourished under the conventional route. He'd be one of the giants of our industry. And where would that leave the Star right now, or any other newspaper with a young out-of-the-box columnist? That's going to save newspapers?

This is like the politics sites that say newspapers are dying because they don't pander to a conservative base. It isn't the content. It's the delivery and business model.

 

Those are high estimates. Singleton's many SoCal properties bring down the average significantly.

Also:

- GBNF, regarding your page one post: Big Head, getting bigger all the time, party of one.
- Double Down is right. This bullcrap of "dues paying" doesn't have to last forever. There are ways to get in position, that do not necessarily involve stepping over a veteran's carcass or making a backdoor deal.
- Simmons needs to quit his bitching. He knows about newspapers exactly what all people know who quit when they didn't rise from prep clerk to columnist in six months: jack shit. I'm not big on Klosterman, but in their conversations, Simmons is like the little brother just begging to be as cool as his older brother, while never realizing that the other guy is just humoring him.

"I was in newspapers for a few years, and have now written a few well-received books."

"UH . . . . Karate Kid references!"

"I will now make a salient point about sports and about journalism as a whole."

"UH . . . . BOSTON sports teams! . . . Hey Klosterman, can you float me one of your newest ideas so I can pass it off as my own? I haven't had an original idea since 2003."

"Well, maybe . . .oh, sorry, Bill. I gotta take this call. Bye!"

CLICK.

 

Major newspapers have been looking for and promoting young, and I mean well under 30, sportswriters to important positions for as long as I can remember. Bob Ryan, hired out of college. Peter Gammons, ditto. And those are examples from one paper (one where I live), that's still doing so 40 years later. Amalie Benjamin came to the Globe straight outta college. Good hire, too.
BUT, young people don't stay that way. And suppose the young hire in question is still doing a damn fine job 20-30 years later. What do you do with them? Fire 'em for turning 45-50-55. That's crazy. Also illegal.
I have said before and will repeat. Sports departments are like sports teams. The ideal is a blend of experience and youth. This is especially true because ideally, that's what your readers are like as well.

 

Again, I have no issue with youth. I have an issue with youth reading Chuck Klosterman and Bill Simmons and thinking that they, also too clever-by-half, are going to make their bones that way the day they pick up the sheepskin.

I don't have an issue with it because I much give a shit personally. I have an issue with it because it's career suicide on their part.

 

Absolutely. But it's not just LANG paying those rates, I can assure you.