fishwrapper
Active Member
I wanted to share this with the lot of you. If it is a d_b, I apologize:
It is important. Take 5 minutes and read it. I'm not sure how this could more plainly stated.
Speech by Dave Zeeck, executive editor of the News Tribune in Tacoma, Washington, and president of American Society of Newspaper Editors. Full version is available on Romenesko.
Let’s look at three strengths that we still possess, strengths we can carry forward as we invent a new digital journalism.
One, our dominance in every local market – in print and online -- means we’re still the source of most news in this country. We’ll keep that dominance for a long time. We have the advantage, as Tom Rosenstiel says, of more boots on the ground. Those boots give us the advantage of covering important news that no one else covers, and of presenting a high barrier to market entry for any competitor.
I’m told the blogosphere is going to eat our lunch. Well, the blogosphere, for the most part, spends its infinitely expanding gas talking about what we – newspapers – write, not what some blogger reported. If newspapers disappeared tomorrow it would be like pulling the fuel rods from a nuclear reactor: the lights would go out and the blogosphere wouldn’t produce a single BTU of intellectual heat.
It’s the same with the Internet in general. When someone tells me they get their news from the Internet, I want to say: “Oh yeah? So, tell me again, how many reporters does Yahoo have at City Hall? How many correspondents from Google are risking their lives in Iraq?
People working for dot.coms go to jail for stock fraud or backdating options, not for disclosing important truths and protecting their confidential source?
News on the Internet – news from real communities, new about real governments and real wars – comes from flesh-and-blood reporters. And they’re dispatched from our newsrooms, not the soulless zero-gravity of the Internet.
Another newspaper strength we must carry into the future is our investigative and enterprise reporting. I prefer Len Downie and Bob Kaiser’s phrase – accountability reporting -- because it recalls our constitutional mandate to hold the powerful to account. Whatever you call it, newspapers are still the source of almost all serious accountability reporting in the nation.
I judged the investigative categories of both the Pulitzers and the ASNE writing awards this year. I feared that, with all the cost pressures on American newsrooms, I would see a visible decline in the number of entries or in the depth and quality of the work that was entered.
Not so. The Pulitzers had 79 entries in the investigative category in 2005. The number climbed to 99 in 2006, and dropped to 67 this year. But there were another 150 entries this year in a new category, local reporting, many of which also were investigative. Investigative entries also held steady in the ASNE writing awards. Entries in the local investigations category numbered 117 last year, 106 this year.
Not only have the numbers stayed strong, the quality and depth of the work was truly inspiring. From Belleville to Baltimore, Biloxi to Boston, Seattle to St. Pete – it was inventive, important, well-sourced and original.
And it’s the investigative work of newspaper newsrooms that forces change in our communities and moves the national agenda – think NSA eavesdropping, think secret prisons, think Walter Reed hospital.
ASNE is doing its part to keep investigative reporting alive. We and IRE just won another grant to keep our Better Watchdog Workshops going for a third year; I saw the fruits of that work at the ASNE and Pulitzer judging. As editors we can do our part by keeping strong investigative reporting a central part of our newsroom mission.
The third strength of newspapers – and the most important – is you, the editors in this room.
Maybe some of you are here by mistake, but my guess is that most of you got your jobs and keep them because you chose to lead, and you’re good at it.
[continued]
It is important. Take 5 minutes and read it. I'm not sure how this could more plainly stated.
Speech by Dave Zeeck, executive editor of the News Tribune in Tacoma, Washington, and president of American Society of Newspaper Editors. Full version is available on Romenesko.
Let’s look at three strengths that we still possess, strengths we can carry forward as we invent a new digital journalism.
One, our dominance in every local market – in print and online -- means we’re still the source of most news in this country. We’ll keep that dominance for a long time. We have the advantage, as Tom Rosenstiel says, of more boots on the ground. Those boots give us the advantage of covering important news that no one else covers, and of presenting a high barrier to market entry for any competitor.
I’m told the blogosphere is going to eat our lunch. Well, the blogosphere, for the most part, spends its infinitely expanding gas talking about what we – newspapers – write, not what some blogger reported. If newspapers disappeared tomorrow it would be like pulling the fuel rods from a nuclear reactor: the lights would go out and the blogosphere wouldn’t produce a single BTU of intellectual heat.
It’s the same with the Internet in general. When someone tells me they get their news from the Internet, I want to say: “Oh yeah? So, tell me again, how many reporters does Yahoo have at City Hall? How many correspondents from Google are risking their lives in Iraq?
People working for dot.coms go to jail for stock fraud or backdating options, not for disclosing important truths and protecting their confidential source?
News on the Internet – news from real communities, new about real governments and real wars – comes from flesh-and-blood reporters. And they’re dispatched from our newsrooms, not the soulless zero-gravity of the Internet.
Another newspaper strength we must carry into the future is our investigative and enterprise reporting. I prefer Len Downie and Bob Kaiser’s phrase – accountability reporting -- because it recalls our constitutional mandate to hold the powerful to account. Whatever you call it, newspapers are still the source of almost all serious accountability reporting in the nation.
I judged the investigative categories of both the Pulitzers and the ASNE writing awards this year. I feared that, with all the cost pressures on American newsrooms, I would see a visible decline in the number of entries or in the depth and quality of the work that was entered.
Not so. The Pulitzers had 79 entries in the investigative category in 2005. The number climbed to 99 in 2006, and dropped to 67 this year. But there were another 150 entries this year in a new category, local reporting, many of which also were investigative. Investigative entries also held steady in the ASNE writing awards. Entries in the local investigations category numbered 117 last year, 106 this year.
Not only have the numbers stayed strong, the quality and depth of the work was truly inspiring. From Belleville to Baltimore, Biloxi to Boston, Seattle to St. Pete – it was inventive, important, well-sourced and original.
And it’s the investigative work of newspaper newsrooms that forces change in our communities and moves the national agenda – think NSA eavesdropping, think secret prisons, think Walter Reed hospital.
ASNE is doing its part to keep investigative reporting alive. We and IRE just won another grant to keep our Better Watchdog Workshops going for a third year; I saw the fruits of that work at the ASNE and Pulitzer judging. As editors we can do our part by keeping strong investigative reporting a central part of our newsroom mission.
The third strength of newspapers – and the most important – is you, the editors in this room.
Maybe some of you are here by mistake, but my guess is that most of you got your jobs and keep them because you chose to lead, and you’re good at it.
[continued]
