By Samuel Rubenfeld
It’s times like these we learn that either people do not value pertinent information, or the providers of said information do not value their readers.
Newsrooms are shrinking, along with the newspapers they produce. Layoffs, buyouts and closures are the rules of the new journalism game. And no one seems to know how to stop it.
Except journalists. However, the corporate bigwigs won’t listen to their advice.
Reporters want to go around the world and cover the uncovered, give voice to the voiceless and provide readers with content to make informed decisions back home, wherever that is.
Reporters want to make newspapers so valuable that one cannot functionally exist in the world without reading at least one every day.
Recently The New York Times joined its rivals, The Wall Street Journal and The Los Angeles Times, in shrinking the size of its paper, from the famously distinctive 13.5 inch width, to the broadsheet national standard of 12 inches.
Now this would not be a problem had the paper provided more pages to make up the loss, but they are not doing that. They have cut the size without adding content, thereby cutting “news.” By cutting “news,” the reader is being left behind.
The reader doesn’t matter to corporate fatcats, so long as they continue to blindly buy the paper and so long as the advertising dollars keep coming, which they haven’t lately.
Readers are now getting their news online; they don’t have to wait for the next day to read a nuanced 750-word account of what happened and why it matters, but instead they get the 125-word brief, or the 650-word commentary.
Commentary, analysis and/or research from the blogosphere is a great, great thing. But the problem lies with the lack of funds, training and methods used by some bloggers, who may not know the importance of attribution, or have the levelheadedness and news judgement of a good editor.
It isn’t just any news that’s being cut, either.
Seemingly, the most expendable resource is foreign news. Nearly all newspapers have completely gutted their foreign bureau reporters, instead relying on reprints from the wire services, from larger corporate partner papers or a mixture of both.
However, in a time of endless war, systemic terrorism and economic globalization, foreign news is more important than ever. And readers aren’t getting it.
Instead, they are getting “hyperlocal” news about arcane matters normally meant for neighborhood weeklies, civic associations or backyard disputes.
Is the latest sighting of Lindsay Lohan and the Olsen twins or a civic fight over a cell tower your idea of news that can change the world? Or is it the war in Iraq, the attorney-firing scandal, the plight of Africa and our developing credit crises?
Maybe to the corporate CEOs looking to advance their bottom line it is the gossip and the tawdriness, but not to the reporters who have stories to tell.
It wasn’t always this way. Newspapers used to be owned by families, and the best ones continue to be, such as The New York Times owned by the Sulzburgers andThe Washington Post, owned by the Grahams.
Now meta-conglomerate corporate tycoon Rupert Murdoch of News Corp., owns even the most highly regarded business paper in the world, The Wall Street Journal.
Newspapers could be at the turning point of their very existence. And it is going to take readers demanding important stories from their papers just to continue functioning.
Advertising dollars follow the demand pool, and so will the corporate fatcats looking to take your hard-earned dollars from you.
If you demand a good product, it will be made. But if you don’t, you will get the minimum product that skirts along the lowest common denominator.
The fate of the world is in your hands, readers. Make good use of it.
Samuel Rubenfeld is a junior print journalism student. You may e-mail him at [email protected].
(Alex Murray)
