Next up: Chicago Tribune

Maybe they can relocate to Buffalo Grove or Orland Park.

 

I need to get this off my chest. Long-time lurker, first time poster. Ex-newspaper sports writer since 2009. The Trib was one of my stops. High school educator today.

I can't give enough likes to the comment: "There is still a market for newspapers if they were worth a damn." I can't believe that no one has addressed the elephant in the room. Newspapers are in the current condition in large part because of its inability to provide fair and accurate coverage. Customers don't trust the news coverage. I feel this, and hundreds of my former students' parents and family members feel this way, and they come from very diverse demographics, professions, education levels, political affiliations, affluence, interests, etc. Over the last decade, I have explicitly asked hundreds of parents/family members if they would subscribe to a newspaper if they trusted the coverage, and by and large the answer was "yes".

News coverage has played a central role to the division of our country. I am a liberal Democrat myself, but in the last few years, I've found myself more aligned to Fox News than most newspapers. Fox News definitely leans right, but they are closer to "fair" than 99% of mainstream newspapers, and as a result, their ratings are out the roof.

Among other examples, I was sickened by the coverage of the summer BLM riots. The newspapers contributed to the riots by taking an utterly asinine, one-side stance on the movement. Incident after incident, they portrayed criminals as helpless, innocent, unarmed victims, and police officers as racist, cold-blooded killers. There were no attempts to tell stories of the dangers police officers face, behaviors from the victims that may have provoked the incident, insight into what a police officer might be thinking during an incident, etc., or give any credit to the majority of the police force who put themselves on the line to protect the communities every day. Instead of starting conversation and mediating discussions that tell every stakeholder's point of view to every other stakeholder and helping people form an understanding and a direction towards a resolution, newspapers incited division by taking such a hard-line bad cop/innocent victim stance and forcing its readers to pick a side.

Newspapers have covered my current profession of teaching very similarly. Whenever there is an incident, such as when a teacher uses profanity, or every gets physical, there are giant headlines painting a picture of an evil teacher hurting an innocent kid. There isn't any coverage telling stories of the teacher's point of view, the kid's behavior leading up to the incident, the previous history between the kid and his/her peers, etc., or give any credit to the majority of teachers who pour their hearts and sole into the future of their students. Instead of starting conversation and mediating discussions about school discipline practices, the importance of parental involvement, the effects of peer pressure, etc., and helping people form an understanding and a direction towards a resolution, newspapers incited division by taking such a hard-line bad teacher/innocent victim stance and forcing its readers to pick a side.

There is no way I would even think of subscribing to a newspaper if I worked in law enforcement or education. I don't know of a single teacher or police officer who subscribes to a newspaper, online or home delivery (and I know a lot of teachers.) And I'm sure there are many other professions who feel unfairly treated by newspaper coverage and also won't subscribe because of it. I'm not sure when newspapers went from the fair portrayal of everyday people to the sensational headline approach, but I do know this is NOT on the suits. These are coverage decisions that come 100% from the journalists in the newsrooms, and customers see it.

 

There are some good points in your first-ever post, ex (you got your money's worth!) ... but we'll agree to disagree about some things.

Let's take the BLM protest/riot coverage. You can't leave out what prompted those riots: the outrageous death of George Floyd, condemned by nearly all police, let alone protesters. When you combine that with several other police brutality deaths in recent years, you see what prompted the newspaper coverage (and the protests).

Not all newspapers ignored "the other side." Those of us at smaller daily papers, in smaller towns/"Trump country" (for lack of a better description), saw plenty of pro-police protests and covered those. Locals took out their guns, paraded through town on foot or in their trucks, and made sure their wouldn't be any rioting ... and it was covered.

Should in-depth interviews, data review and analysis of police tactics have appeared in more newspapers? Of course. But many places, including my <2oK circulation shop, don't have much staff to throw at those types of stories. It's unfortunately where our business is at these days.

I won't dispute that there has been plenty of biased reporting, especially in the past four years. But it's not at the 99 percent level. IHMO.

 

Every single one of these statements I'm going to make are 100% true. Every single one represents the legitimate feelings of large numbers of everyday, well-intentioned, honorable people. But some of these facts were emphasized by large numbers of mainstream newspapers, while other facts were completely omitted. You don't need massive newsroom staffs and in-depth interviews to portray all of these facts in a fair and accurate manner.

I will agree with you that the "99 percent level" is an exaggeration, but the real number isn't that far off, especially when it comes to the big metros. It has probably turned off multi-millions of would-be customers. And, as I stated earlier, it is 100% on the newsroom staff, not the suits.

* George Floyd's death was a preventable tragedy.

* Derek Chauvin is a power-hungry and cold-blooded murderer.

* Alexander Kueng, Thomas Lane, and Tou Thao were indeed complicit in the tragedy, but they were low-ranking officers who were in a position where anyone from any profession would have major hesitations to undermine a difficult supervisor, even if there are human rights violations on the line.

* This example of police brutality has angered, saddened, and triggered a lot of people.

* There are many people who feel that Floyd's death was a result of police overstepping their bounds by playing judge, jury, and executioner.

* There are many people who feel that Floyd's death was a result of him facing the ultimate consequence of his criminal life choices in the line of police duties.

* The police deal with a lot of violent criminals on a regular basis, and have to make split-second life-and-death decisions. George Floyd's death is NOT an example of this facet of the police profession, but Jacob Blake, Rayshard Brooks, and Breonna Taylor most definitely are.

* In the aftermath, there has been a lot of peaceful protests.

* In the aftermath, there has been a lot of lawless riots.

* Many of the events of the aftermath has resulted in a lot of businesses being burned, looted, and destroyed. They have turn the lives of many honest, hard-working people upside-down. A majority of these people are ethnic minorities.

* The organization BLM has stepped up to the forefront since the incident.

* BLM has successfully put the issue of police brutality of blacks into the national spotlight.

* There are many people who believe in racial equality and feel that BLM is a social cause to be commended.

* There are many people who believe in racial equality, but won't get behind the BLM movement because they feel that BLM is associated with the violent and lawless riots.

* There are many people who believe in racial equality, but won't get behind the BLM movement because they don't think that BLM has done enough to address other causes of racial inequality, such as black-on-black crimes in the inner cities, education, fatherless children, and more.

* There are many people who believe in racial equality, but would like to have more information before deciding whether to get behind the BLM movement. These people back the police in the killings of criminals, and they do so because of the criminal records of the victims, not the skin color. Many of the killings that BLM has gotten behind are criminals, and many have no criminal records, and they would like BLM to differentiate between the types of victims.

* About 60% of the population has a negative view of BLM, according to several scientific polls. These people come from every political party.


I did not put any of my opinions into any one of these statements. Each statement is 100% true, and each carries lots of importance to large pockets of people. Yet, newspaper give some of those statements major attention, while completely omitting others.

This was a wonderful opportunity for newspapers to put all the facts on the table, take no stance, and start and mediate conversations between people from different backgrounds with different beliefs in a civil manner, with an eye towards social changes that all can get behind. Instead, newspapers took a clear and divisive stance and pissed off people from all walks of life and every political affiliation. No wonder they are dying so fast.

 

Problem is, they won't "trust the coverage" unless the coverage tells them exactly what they want to hear.

And if/when that happens, it's no longer fair and balanced news.

 

Politics aside, what I and several others on this thread were articulating is that no matter how strong the print product was (in terms of quality, quantity, credibility, etc.), the revenue was drying up anyway. Readers never foot the bill for journalism, advertisers did. And sites like Craigslist, Facebook and Google have taken almost all of the ad revenue away.

 

While that's 100 percent true, that's equally true of MSNBC viewers and FOX viewers, New York Times readers and Breitbart readers.

Very few media outlets are even pretending to appeal to a mass (i.e., politically diverse) audience at this point.

As Matt Taibbi recent wrote: "Media firms work backward. They first ask, “How does our target demographic want to understand what’s just unfolded?” Then they pick both the words and the facts they want to emphasize."

 

Bingo. You win the prize. I can't tell you how many neighbors have stated they cancelled subscriptions because of a paper's editorial bias. Even when opposing viewpoints are regularly featured on the op-ed page, these folks still cancelled because of the paper's editorial positions. Maybe Gannett NJ canned all its editorial page editors and stopped writing editorials on local issues, to stop the bleeding.

 

The readers who complain about editorial bias, lack of coverage of their kid's sports team, etc., and loudly announce "I'm cancelling my subscription!" get most of our attention.

But the majority of people who have quit reading newspapers did it for more mundane reasons: No time in the morning, subscription price increased, carrier no longer flips it onto the doorstep, the bag covering the paper has a hole in it and it was soaked ...

Drop by the circulation department sometime and they'll tell you the decline is mostly for those reasons ... and, of course, improved smart phone technology and generational change.

 

Excellent post and very happy to see there are intelligent people who agree with Fredrick and don't feel I am crazy. In my own opinion I'm actually so much better than any consultant your companies could hire. Except for the fact I think it's too late to save the fishwrap. That ship has sailed. Pick up a newspaper and you'll see why.

 

Yep. Yep. Yep. Circulation and delivery have contributed so much to the destruction of the newspaper, but the suits don't want to hear about that. Write better stories they'll scream at the poor news hack working 70 and getting paid for 40.