Media Skepticism Part II (local newspapers)

(Author’s Note: Sorry for the interruption between Parts I &II but I thought Flossie had something worth saying for all of us.)

 

I have lived long enough to witness the media I love the most --- newspapers --- teeter harrowingly on the brink of extinction ---- (It could happen in my 26 years but I have an old soul.)

I have also lived long enough to see the career I knew I was destined for --- journalism --- live out periods of high ethnics (post-Watergate) and surrender to sensationalism (pick a medium, pick a story).

I have a lot of bones to pick with this profession, but at 60, the one that bothers me the most is this natural and perhaps necessary evolution away from hard copy news to Internet rivers and streams of electronic news, and the audience that loses out as a result.

When the country switched from analog to digital in 2008, the FCC reported that less than 2.5% of American households were unready and did not make that switch. Interestingly, The Nielsen Company reported that by October of that year all but .05% of households had made the conversion and that those that hadn’t were most likely to be African American, Hispanic, Asian, younger, lower income and those less likely to have Internet access in their homes.

Yet, the same report shows that of that small percentage, one-third was age 55+ (no doubt also low income, without access to the Internet and of all cultures). A group of people who no doubt counted on their TV, along with their newspaper, as company in the household during the day as well as an important information source. Of approximately 116M households in 2008, that would mean somewhere around 5M households (some 5M+ citizens) lost this important companion.

I couldn’t find any estimates on how many households may still be without TV because they didn’t make the switch but I do worry that too many of them are elderly and out there alone.

Closely following the analog/digital switch and the gap in service it may have created, came the loss to too many newspapers.

I cannot help but remember my mother and aunt living alone, without the freedom of a car and only so much yard work to be done. I remember the talk radio station on all day to fill the void in an empty house. I also think about my mother’s dinner schedule around “M*A*S*H” reruns and the news, and her “stories” in the evening to pass the time.

The newspaper industry has struggled for decades to cultivate young readers in hopes of turning them into dedicated adult subscribers but electronic technology and the Internet got in the way.

Newspapers were very late coming to the realization that they had to change to survive. They still struggle to figure out how to remain a relevant and effective source of news with TV and radio long having held that breaking news position and a mindless number of alternative news sites on the Internet for newshounds to track.

Yet, their most loyal readers --- the seniors who grew up knowing that the newspaper was a constant they could count on --- are the least attended to by the industry today and the ones most likely to require this version. While seniors are certainly tech savvy, many are still not likely to spend their days following the electronic river of news, where the most coverage is today.

Granted, they have calculated that we aren’t their long-term audience, yet at the same time, the industry has discounted us completely.

HEY! we're still here. We’re the ones who still want ink on our hands when we finish the newspaper for the day ---- every day. We're the ones who want all of the news "that's fit to stream." We'll trade you the Sudoku, advice columns and other syndicated stuff for pages full of the news of our city!

And we're happy to pay for it...It's not like you have to do it forEVER! (see two grafs above.) I'll even put "She still subscribed" on my tombstone. (Full disclosure: I can't really do that since I'm going to be freeze dried and my dust thrown in the wind --- I've take up too much room on this earth already.) But I would put that on my tombstone if I was getting one.

Flint, Michigan’s Flint Journal is owned by Booth Newspapers and became a part of MLive.com when the parent company decided to form the MLive Media Group in 2012 to handle the advertising and news for all of its newspapers and websites.

From 30+ reporters to cover the MANY stories of this urban community prior to MLive, the Flint Journal is down to eight-ish reporters according to Managing Editor Bryn Mickle. And as Mickle explained to my students last year, those reporters focus on the daily Internet stream of news, not on the content for the newspaper, which publishes four times a week --- Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, and Sunday.

Interestingly enough, since the MLive group is based in Grand Rapids, Michigan --- two hours away from Flint and on the western side of the state, the Flint Journal is edited, designed and printed in Grand Rapids. (Pause to let this sink in.) People in Grand Rapids are making decisions, with a bit of input from the Flint staff, about what the Flint Journal hard copy will contain. Just as they are for the other community newspapers in the system: The Bay City Times,  The Grand Rapids Press, Jackson Citizen Patriot, Kalamazoo Gazette, Muskegon Chronicle, The Saginaw News and Advance Newspapers.

If one subscribes to the paper long enough --- one year for me --- the template of daily coverage is obvious and sacrifice of local news just as obvious. MLive tends to drop in the biggest story among their coverage areas whether it has relevance to the other communities or not.

A weekly entertainment column covers the highlights of performers across the state for that weekend, completely ignoring the amazing arts events that happen nonstop in Flint. ---- FLINT IS AN ARTS TOWN! --- But how would a columnist not in Flint know about Flint arts if he’s just surfing the web looking for events calendars to help him fill his column?

Often, from Friday to Sunday or Sunday to Tuesday, the same story is virtually repeated rather than covering ---- “NEWs --- as in breaking news or new news in case you don’t get that “news” means the latest not just the best we’ve got to help us save money in the production process.

Instead of spending money on sufficient reporters to cover the local news, two full pages are given over to comic strips and Sudoku, more pages include three syndicated advice columns in a row (thanks, I needed that) along with horoscopes and other filler that has nothing to do with the community or the state --- just more paid for syndicated feature stuff.

Whew though! Plenty of pages are still dedicated to obituaries because most subscribers are 55+ and our parents (my mother) trained us well to check to see who we know who died. One service they’ve preserved for us ---- or actually the one service that makes them money since those death notices are paid for by the funeral home or family. Cha-ching.

It’s not that I don’t want the latest information on the Flint Water Crisis but that’s not the only story in town. And by the way, I’d much rather read about the other stories in my town than fluff features about Grand Rapids, Jackson, Kalamazoo, Muskegon or even Saginaw (my home town.)

I’m troubled by any justification behind generically filling each community’s paper with copy from other communities to save money. Whatever cash savings they are enjoying, they plan is at the expense of their subscribers who still hope for the the service that once was the community newspaper.

Will I cancel my subscription? Are you kidding! Newspapers are my life. I want my news in hard copy and I will always support my local paper ---- but that doesn’t mean it isn’t worthy of some constructive criticism from time to time.

Do you think it is still possible for publishers to think more about their audience than their bottom line? I don’t.

Media Skepticism Part I

Fox News Reporter Ed Henry

Fox Reporter Ed Henry is finding out that paybacks are hell this week. After months of trying to implicate Hillary Clinton in allegedly scandalous behavior while following her on the campaign trail, Henry’s own skeletal mistress (literally, tee hee) came out of his closet of secrets. Now he’s the bad news.

This reminds us that those with celebrity status (as with presidential candidates we would say “prominence”) should really clean out their own closets before delving into those of others.

This is especially the case if they questionably choose to use their position as a trusted news reporter to preach their opinions, suspicions and accusations instead of reporting the facts. Amazingly forgetting that their audience is tuned in because the American public, regardless of news network, has placed its trust in the news organization to provide them with the truth on which to base their own positions on the issue.

Within this same news period, we’ve learned that the New York Times plans cutbacks that include downsizing their international offices and that the the Gannett company, owner of the Detroit Free Press, seeks to take over Tribune Publishing, publisher of such papers as the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times. Coupled with the FCC’s relaxed ownership rules for radio and TV --- the fear here is that we are losing the many and varied voices in the market place that inform us from many perspectives and help us to come to our own conclusions about the issues of our time. How do we protect a lively “market place of ideas” and its many voices if monopolies across media control the messages through too few voices?

For instance, radio stations once were local voices of information for communities. Now, iHeartMedia, Inc. (formerly Clear Channel Broadcasting) owns nearly 1,225 stations in 300 cities nationally and is noted for carrying primarily conservative talk shows such as those hosted by Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Sean Hannity. You may recall that after Dixie Chicks lead singer Natalie Maines told a London concert audience in 2003 that she was “ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas,” Clear Channel among other radio networks pulled the musical trio from its line-up across the country. The controversy even resulted in Dixie Chick CD burning and destruction parties.

Geez, even Bush 43, defended the Dixie Chicks in his response to the controversy during an interview with Tom Brokaw in 2003:

The Dixie Chicks are free to speak their mind. They can say what they want to say ... they shouldn't have their feelings hurt just because some people don't want to buy their records when they speak out ... Freedom is a two-way street ... I don't really care what the Dixie Chicks said. I want to do what I think is right for the American people, and if some singers or Hollywood stars feel like speaking out, that's fine. That's the great thing about America.

I have lived in a time when metropolitan cities were able to sustain two daily newspapers and most of the rest of the cities and towns --- one. Our villages and burbs can still support at least a weekly.

We once had a wealth of independent news voices available to us. What radio and TV didn’t have time to delve into, we could turn to our daily paper --- waiting on the stoop and delivered by a really real-live paperboy ---- (At $8 a pop for the Sunday NYTimes today, I can’t even get the delivery person to get it into my condo building let alone bring it to my door) ---- for “the rest of the story.”  (Thank you Paul Harvey.)

We had thick lush Sunday papers that weighed as much as 9 pounds, filled with all of the special sections and community advertising for the week. It was a given to me that everyone in town subscribed and everyone watched the news because that’s what we did in my house.

Granted, I had to wait for my dad to read it first and when I discovered I could use my allowance to subscribe to the --- wait for it --- Detroit Free Press --- I was in miracle territory. The FREEP and the Saginaw News everyday on the floor with me. Ink proudly covering my fingers at the end of each session.

(Total Aside: I was so young when I caught the news bug that I had to ask my parents why the police only ever found the “body” of the victim of any crime story. ---- I thought “body” meant “torso.” Where was the head, arms, legs, and feet I wondered aloud? I mean don’t sing “head, nose, fingers, toes” to me if you expect me to believe that they are all just “body.”)

We didn’t realize what we had or its importance and now it’s pretty much gone. While I realize that I’m not alone in realizing what we have lost, I do think that those who don’t realize or are too young to understand this loss are probably in the majority, suggesting that we are quickly losing an informed population and given the year, an informed electorate.

Downsizing and mergers and convergence from print to Internet --- from daily print to a few issues a week is what we have left.

Time Magazine (Newsweek is gone in print) is a mere shadow of itself down from 35 pages to 15.

It always feels like I'm picking up some kind of sample version or toy model of the once substantial publication. Not that the reporting doesn't remain important but weekly print news magazines can't complete for readers or advertisers with instant access to information online regardless of source or quality. Sigh.

TV news has gone from independent entities of their corporate owners to profitable brands and products demonstrated so aptly by the coaching anchors and reporters demonstrate as they punch those adjectives and offer their opinions on the events of our times. All in the hopes that these added effects will offer a sense of entertainment/sensationalism that will boost ratings and ad revenues.

For an industry and profession that I have loved all of my life, I am now worried and skeptical.

Worried that we aren’t getting the news we NEED to know and have a RIGHT to know to protect what we think is a free and open democracy.

Skeptical because I think the media is now too influenced in its news coverage decisions by profitability pressures thus filling programs and pages with the news they think we WANT rather than NEED. And it’s our immediate loss (especially in an election year as some of us try to prepare to make informed decisions at the polls) but what’s the long-term impact going to be for this nation that boasts free press and the importance of providing its citizens with all the news they need to know…you know “transparency” as so many presidents and governors promise but don’t practice already.

President Obama drinks Flint water during this week's visit.

Look no further than the Flint water crisis as a demonstration of this. Especially after President Obama’s visit to the city this week where he told a select crowd that “I have your back.”…just two years after the fact, with no funding from the federal government yet, at least one federal EPA official out of a job, along with state and local EPA and water department employees also out of jobs, some limited local indictments, and two local deaths that are raising questions because of their connection to the water crisis.  Where was the transparency on this issue? And where was the media's coverage of it?

To be continued…