the newspaper business

A budding journalist is kvetching about the fact that Gannett wants to buy a college newspaper in Ft. Collins Colorado.

Student news outlets are designed to be independent voices for the campuses they serve. Having corporate management, which is one of the possibilities currently being talked about for The Collegian, would destroy the nature of the student-news industry.

He asks a number of questions, but the heart of his post is how can a college newspaper be independent when owned by a “media-conglomerate.”

I don’t know the details in Ft. Collins, but the newspaper probably gets some funding from the college, either directly, or indirectly from the college charging some kind of fee to the students.

It seems to me that young Vogts has misread the situation.

Here’s how I see it: the newspaper is currently answering to a master who has no motivation or compunction to preserve a free press on campus. OTOH, Gannett practices their dedication to a free press everyday.

As far as the financial aspects of which is better - getting money from a college (or it’s students) or getting money as a well run business. That’s an easy answer. Every state is under pressure to spend education wisely. Many lawmakers would suggest that running a newspaper that is often critical of the college and/or the government, is an expense that is unnecessary.

One more point regarding the hazards of being owned by a “media conglomerate.” While it is true that many media companies decimate acquisitions to meet the debt payments, Gannett has demonstrated this is not their modis operandi.

I think every college newspaper would be better off with ownership that has no financial ties to the college or university it covers.

The New York Times and Media General are finding themselves in the midst of hostile takeovers by the same hedge fund.

Maybe the manager of the fund subscribes to the Beat Dead Horses theory of investing.

My experience of late is that newspaper conventions/seminars are too much like school. Too much like school in a bad way.

1. Public Schools are required to teach to the dumbest kid in the class.  There has been no “gifted and talented” sessions for those of us who are trying to move forward with the print and online newspapers.

OR

2. Private schools where they teach to the big donor’s kid, and I’m on a hardship tuition grant because I meet a quota or something. So the teacher spends extra time with the rich kid who has all the latest toys and techniques and tutors. Meanwhile some of us are just trying to keep up by finding an inexpensive technique or by working smarter.

I’ve decided to home school this year.

Automattic, the developers of WordPress - a huge blogging platform - got an infusion of cash from investors, including the New York Times.

The Times Company had previously maintained a business relationship with Automattic. The About.com guide site, which was purchased by the Times Company in 2005, is published using the WordPress platform. The New York Times has also produced more than 50 blogs using the platform.

If a site as huge and deep as About.com can be published using WordPress, then there isn’t any publication that can’t use WordPress.

If the New York Times is using WordPress for their blogs, that speaks volumes. Our newspaper also use WordPress. (see blogroll)

I heard a weekly newspaper editor whining about not being able to keep his website updated because he just doesn’t have staff with the technical know-how. If I thought he would listen, I would have told him about the advantages of using WordPress.

The days of writers becoming journalists because of a love of writing and a desire to change the world is ending. Including television, not just print. Television news has been taken over by the beauty queens.

Here’s a writer that is struggling with her future. Her post was based on a Forbes article which she didn’t link to but quoted from on her blog. Here are here feelings. 

If I didn’t feel obsolete before, that pretty much did it. Yet I’m still craving this career that will never pay well, never be the same and never get the respect it used to deserve. This really isn’t news. I know that my career is threatened by so much right now. And it’s dying a slow death. I knew that after college. But still. I try to hope…

She asked, “what now? Teach?”

My answer is no, learn. Learn to think multi-media.

• Learn to shoot a digital still camera well. This is a skill that can be mastered. It doesn’t require the motor drives and SLR’s of a professional. You won’t be shooting moving targets, you will be shooting scenes or people.
• Learn to shoot video. Not television quality. But “good enough” quality. Learn how to pan smoothly. Learn not to zoom. Learn about backgrounds and closeups. Learn what can be done with good editing.
• Learn to record audio. Natural sounds and sound bites that can be added to a slideshow to create a great experience for the reader.

Quality writers will always be in demand. Quality writers with a multi-media outlook will be in higher demand. But certainly somebody told you that you’ll never get rich in the newspaper business. So there still has to be the passion to realize you are fulfilling a mission that is so important it is written into the constitution.

UPDATE: Winston-Salem, NC, editors strike a blow for “reader involvement.” They choose Pearls Before Swine comic.

More than 270 people wrote in about the comic, with about 70% of them giving it favorable comments.

Winston-Salem Journal has about 85,000 circulation.
0.00223529412% of the circulation decided which comic the newspaper should carry. Now divide that number by 2.25 (readers per copy.)
0.000993464052%
Nice going editors of Winston Salem, you really got the readers involved.

UPDATE: Ft. Myers News-Press editor gives up responsibility too. 

Remember to put as much thought and reasoning into assigning parking spaces and what vending machines to have in your building as you would any other decision.

An editor will get a wild hair and decide to drop comic strips when the creator is dead, (Peanuts, The Elderberries, B.C.) or the creator quits, or the editor thinks changes should be made for the good of the newspaper.

So a bunch of newsroom types gather a bunch of comic strips and look at them. Newsrooms are such a good focus group for comic strips! The potential strips are winnowed to a few.

Then the editor abdicates total responsibility and lets the readers vote on which they like.

Minneapolis is going through this now. 

It’s a cop out. Editors read day in an day out how they need to be more responsive to readers. When it’s time to change comics they trot out the “need to be more responsive to readers” mantra, and put things up for a vote.

Editors think that readers care about the newspaper’s position on presidential candidates, and a myriad of other topics and stories,  so they reserve the right to decide what gets published.

Editors know deep down, that they will get more blow-back from readers on changing a comic strip than they will from most front page stories.

I am now a fan of the people that publish the Flathead Valley Beacon. I hope that someday, they will consider me a friend. I want to hang at the Roadhouse with Tom and Kellyn and Stephen, Lido, Dan, Myers, Keriann, Bob and Kristi.

I hope they are having as much fun as it appears.

So why the Flathead Valley Beacon?

- more - 

Nobody - nobody - uses the term that was the last headline for the last issue of the Kentucky Post.

Even in their death, the editor that wrote the headline succumbed to a out-of-date and meaningless cliche:  -30-

The front-page headline in the last Kentucky Post proclaimed “-30-,” a symbol used by journalists, printers, and telegraphers to signal the end of a dispatch.

It’s absurd that -30- be the final headline.

This is my one last swing at a dead horse with a buggy whip while checking the ticker for the morning’s flashes. I’ll hunch over the old Remington and see if I can get this posted on the Internets.

-30-