New York Times 2020 Report

Hmmmm . . . sounds familar.

It was a nightly ritual on our desk. "Did you catch the (John Smith) fact error yet?" "I found the (John Smith) fact error." "I need to read this again. I didn't find the (John Smith) fact error the first time."

One time he was writing about a local player who needed an organ transplant and referenced Sean Elliott and his "lung transplant."

 

All administrations need to have their feet held to the fire, the incoming one especially. With fewer journalists working, good luck to us all.

 

My political views are more in line with the Times than the Journal, but this report has me concerned that the Times is going to become more biased than it already is. The emphasis on feature stories is particularly troubling, because those are the ones most likely to be slanted. And while I have faith the Times newsroom would stand up to advertisers, I have less faith they will "stand up" to readers, who are quickly becoming their primary revenue source--we will see more and more stories that simply affirm readers' views rather than challenge them.

Already, the WSJ is a much better choice if you actually want an unbiased, down the middle take on what actually happened in the world a day earlier--whatever you may think about its op-ed page.

 

I don't think anybody is suggesting editing isn't important. In a perfect world, we'd have five different copy editors read every story. Hell, make it 10, 20 -- mistakes hurt the product, right? The reality is that a lot of the practices that became norms in the big journalism era are only economically feasible in a high-profit-margin environment. We're talking about substitution of expenditures here: a paper has x dollars in its budget. Every dollar spent on copy editing is one less dollar that can be spent on reporting.

 

I skimmed through the report. I wish it had identified more of the backgrounds of the people involved. As it is, I have to assume they were younger people, clearly never involved with any aspect of the copy desk and with no desire even to attempt to discover what happens "over there." I also assume they are rarely, if ever, involved in the development of complex articles that require the oh-so-odious strings of text and do not always lend themselves well to "a graphic." (This committee seems to think the act of creating "a graphic" is much like climbing Everest and is the touchstone to unparalleled success.)

In a previous scenario, we created maps on the fly fairly frequently. There are always tech compatibility issues -- I have to think an outfit like the Times could navigate through these, even if a reporter is placing the "pins" on a map image and then, God forbid, printing a hard copy that the graphics department could work with. Some of that simply requires the writer to devote some time -- yes, outside of work -- to learn an application. Whining about it in a report is a waste of time and drastically lowers the credibility of the report. We're not talking about building a rocket here. Want to do it? Learn to do it, and then do it.

Some of the stuff about spending hours in debates and moving paragraphs all around is not a surprise, and those things should be limited. But the calls for more of a personal voice in an article are a warning siren that (1) the report is no longer focusing on what it should; (2) someone is still peeved that his or her catchy phrase got scotched; and (3) the people doing the report are not cognizant of the concept of a "neutral edit."

The idea of a "player-coach" system is intriguing at first, but then I remembered it's already in place at many smaller papers. It's called "editor" who writes, paginates, takes photos, etc. That has not been a sparkling way to do things.

 

Regarding "2020 initiatives," my company has never announced one. But well-connected co-workers assure me one exists in the corporate office. And one of the key components, not surprisingly, is eliminating all print editions.

 

And if that reporting is wrong, has that dollar not merely gone to waste but actively contributed to damaging the enterprise?

 

I'm in a tweener spot. I was encouraged out of school to lean toward copy editing -- "more stability!" If I graduated three years later, my career path would be totally different.

Observation: Most journalists younger than 40 don't appreciate the craft of copy and line editing. Many journalists older than 40 don't appreciate the need for quick turnaround on web copy (I hate the word "content") and other elements. I wish there were some way we could meet in the middle.

 

I hate that too, but it's telling. We care about producing quality articles, pictures, videos, what have you (graphics!!1!!!1!! like the NYTers), but most of the higher ups don't. It goes beyond them using 'content' as a catch-all term for everything on websites. To them, content = filler. Put something (anything) up, and put up as much as possible, so we can throw out it in a desperate attempt to gain eyeballs, which we'll try to convert into advertising impressions, which we really haven't figured out.

My company's execs big idea of bringing "as much content as possible as often as possible" and applying it to small shops hasn't worked. Our readers may not be that bright but they're not that dumb either. You can't keep putting up small little stories or crappy cell phone photo galleries or videos with headlines that imply something more than the actual news and expect them to keep coming back. When they click on their 20th crappy story that tells them nothing, they wise up and don't come back.

As has been talked about on other threads here, at times I feel like an assembly line worker. Get the shit (content) off as fast as possible.

 

This is why it was easy for me to walk away when the time came. I would be hard-pressed to find anything from my last two years in the business that I would be proud to show anyone. It was all about quantity, not quality, and sometimes in a very literal sense— as in a (thankfully short-lived) quota for at least one online posting a day. It wasn't that I stopped trying; it was that I stopped having time to try to do better.

 

I never thought of it as "more stability." For me (graduating in 1983) it was where the job openings were, and a ticket that would let me go pretty much anywhere I wanted (as opposed to being the 1,245th resume to land at the L.A. Times for some writing job).