The Guardian’s Roy Greenslade often can be counted on for an interesting and accurate take on the state of journalism.
Just not today.
Today, in a stunning and sweeping mea non culpa, Greenslade, a journalism professor and former reporter and editor, looks at the shrinking audience for newspapers and echoes The Washington Post’s Paul Farhi in a clear and ringing voice: “Don’t blame us!”
There cannot be any doubt that journalists themselves – the reporters, sub-editors, photographers, feature writers, columnists, page designers – cannot be held responsible for either the financial woes of the industry nor for the public turning its back on the “products” that contain their work.
In case that’s not clear enough, here it is more succinctly, in his own words: “It isn’t our fault.”
Greenslade correctly points out many of the other factors that come into play – including the general economic turmoil, bad management and changing media-consumption habits – but for him to say that the content itself has no part – no part at all – in the decline strikes me as ludicrous, and a marker for how deluded some still are.
Any other business with declining market share since The Eisenhower Administration would at least consider that the product might be part of the problem.
Otherwise, you’re just blaming your audience for being too stupid to appreciate all you’ve done for them.
UPDATE: Steve Yelvington, as usual, has a thoughtful and reasoned take on this topic:
The deck is stacked against the newspaper, but newsrooms are not powerless victims in the grip of some irreversible cosmic force. There is still high demand for effective local mass advertising solutions. Newspapers can be that solution — in fact, they could be the last mass medium standing.
But you can’t do it with a 20 percent market penetration, and that’s what you’ll have if you continue producing a 1968 newspaper in 2008.
Adrian Monck says
October 3, 2008 at 8:49 amTim – I hate to take issue with a fellow Thesis user, but people's changing social habits are surely the driver for most leisure activities and newspapers met those needs most successfully in the middle decades of the 20C. TV news took up the baton from the 1960s.
Of course there are qualitative differences in journalism, just as there are in any media but quality tends to be a threshold issue. And of course poorly resourced outlets produce thinner fare. It was ever thus – just read Charles Dudley Warner's The American Newspaper from the late 19C.
I posted about it here.
There's a lot of great journalism around today – more than ever online – but that's not helping to make journalists more valuable in a mature mass media.
timwindsor says
October 3, 2008 at 9:30 amI'm not arguing that other factors don't come into play here, or even that they could very well be the primary factors, but the claim that journos shouldn't bear some of the blame strikes me as wrong-headed and dangerous to the profession.
timwindsor says
October 3, 2008 at 9:31 am(And one of these days I'll actually get around to customizing Thesis…)
Adrian Monck says
October 3, 2008 at 10:40 amProbably when I get round to using Disqus!
gus says
October 6, 2008 at 5:57 amTim —
This is a great debate! My two cents: Much of the content that many newspapers still publish in print doesn't necessarily find the best home online. You know that firsthand, as do I. The media are so different, and many leaders in journalism still fool themselves into thinking you can just “repurpose” stuff between print and Web and satisfy consumers. Indeed, newsrooms have had to overcome the attitude of satisfying print first, and the Web second.
Who's to blame for that approach?
Those who are expected to produce content for print and the Web are really working in media that is dramatically different from each other. If we — the collective “we” who work in newspapers, and not just newsroom folks — have stumbled, it is because we have failed to grasp how game-changing the Web is for the content we produce.
The more I do this stuff, the more I realize that as a practical, day-to-day matter, journalists should focus almost all their energies on either satisfying the print beast or the Web beast. Because doing both well is exceptionally difficult, and you'll most likely end up doing a mediocre job in both.
Happy Monday!
Gus
gus says
October 6, 2008 at 6:57 amTim —
This is a great debate! My two cents: Much of the content that many newspapers still publish in print doesn't necessarily find the best home online. You know that firsthand, as do I. The media are so different, and many leaders in journalism still fool themselves into thinking you can just “repurpose” stuff between print and Web and satisfy consumers. Indeed, newsrooms have had to overcome the attitude of satisfying print first, and the Web second.
Who's to blame for that approach?
Those who are expected to produce content for print and the Web are really working in media that is dramatically different from each other. If we — the collective “we” who work in newspapers, and not just newsroom folks — have stumbled, it is because we have failed to grasp how game-changing the Web is for the content we produce.
The more I do this stuff, the more I realize that as a practical, day-to-day matter, journalists should focus almost all their energies on either satisfying the print beast or the Web beast. Because doing both well is exceptionally difficult, and you'll most likely end up doing a mediocre job in both.
Happy Monday!
Gus
gus says
October 6, 2008 at 11:57 amTim —
This is a great debate! My two cents: Much of the content that many newspapers still publish in print doesn't necessarily find the best home online. You know that firsthand, as do I. The media are so different, and many leaders in journalism still fool themselves into thinking you can just “repurpose” stuff between print and Web and satisfy consumers. Indeed, newsrooms have had to overcome the attitude of satisfying print first, and the Web second.
Who's to blame for that approach?
Those who are expected to produce content for print and the Web are really working in media that is dramatically different from each other. If we — the collective “we” who work in newspapers, and not just newsroom folks — have stumbled, it is because we have failed to grasp how game-changing the Web is for the content we produce.
The more I do this stuff, the more I realize that as a practical, day-to-day matter, journalists should focus almost all their energies on either satisfying the print beast or the Web beast. Because doing both well is exceptionally difficult, and you'll most likely end up doing a mediocre job in both.
Happy Monday!
Gus