American journalism is in trouble, and the problem is not just financial. My profession is in distress because for more than a decade it has been chasing the false idols of fame and fortune. While engaged in those pursuits, it forgot its readers and the need to produce a commercial product that appealed to its mass audience, which in turn drew advertisers and thus paid for it all. While most corporate owners were seeking increased earnings, higher stock prices, and bigger salaries, editors and reporters focused more on winning prizes or making television appearances.
Some long-term reporting projects have been undertaken, and multiple-part series published, simply because they might win prizes. Over the past ten years, The Washington Post has won nineteen Pulitzer Prizes. But over that same period, we lost more than 120,000 readers. Why? My answer, unpopular among my colleagues, is that while many of these longer efforts were worthwhile, they took up space and resources that could have been used to give readers a wider selection of stories about what was going on, and that may have directly affected their lives. Readers have limited time to spend on newspapers. The number has been twenty-five minutes, on average, for more than thirty years. In short, we have left behind our readers in our chase after glory.
Editors have paid more attention to what gains them prestige among their journalistic peers than on subjects more related to the everyday lives of readers. For example, education affects everyone, yet I cannot name an outstanding American journalist on this subject. Food is an important subject, yet regular newspaper coverage of agriculture and the products we eat is almost nonexistent unless cases of food poisoning turn up. Did journalists adequately warn of the dangers of subprime mortgages? I don’t think...
Complete access to this article will soon be available for purchase. Subscribers will be able to access this article, and the rest of CJR’s magazine archive, for free. Select articles from the last 6 months will remain free for all visitors to CJR.org.
Many, many thanks.
Posted by George Hesselberg on Thu 7 May 2009 at 12:15 PM
Wonderful job, Walter.
Posted by douglas turner on Thu 7 May 2009 at 12:35 PM
Wonderfully written and wonderfully smart.
Posted by John on Thu 7 May 2009 at 12:55 PM
"When is the last time you saw a major newspaper or television network set out its own agenda for candidates to take up?"
There was a major story/scandal about a Pentagon propaganda program, where the Pentagon colluded with a bunch of retired generals (who now raked in the bucks from DOD contractors) to disseminate favorable stories about the military industrial complex into the U.S. media.
By my count, the major TV networks, whop are deeply implicated in this scandal, have ran a total of ZERO stories combined. This is what I call setting out "its own agenda".
Pinch hiring his barely literate childhood buddy William "the nepotism kid" Kristol had everything to do with "agenda".
The Philly Enquirer sure didn't pay disgraced former Senator Rick "man on dog" Santorum $1800 a column because it was smart business. No, it was "agenda", and a very stupid one at that, according to their bankruptcy filings.
I want less conflicts of interest and less of this good old boys network stuff that just looks unseemly and gives us bad product..
Posted by flounder on Thu 7 May 2009 at 01:00 PM
You said it all, and you are dead right on all of it.
Posted by Rebecca Leet on Thu 7 May 2009 at 01:06 PM
Good column, but why no mea culpa about the press cheerleading the impeachment of a president over a bj? (Or at least not being skeptical enough to ask why a president is being impeached over a hummer.) That, and Whitewater was when I started losing my respect for the press. The media did not disappoint in the run-up to Iraq and their dishonest attempt to present two sides to every discussion – even though one side is patently lying – didn’t help their cause. As you sow…..
j
Posted by John Smith on Thu 7 May 2009 at 01:08 PM
More later maybe, but for now this: Supermarkets are aggregators, archetypal aggregators.
Posted by Josh Young on Thu 7 May 2009 at 01:12 PM
Pincus seems to infer that conservatives are at least partly to blame for the present condition of the industry. What he conveniently fails to mention is that the obvious bias of most reporters since "All the President's Men" amounted to nothing more than pissing on the beliefs of average Americans who read, and more importantly, bought, newspapers. Where has this led? To a new generation of liberal who get their news from the Internet and who would never think of spending 50 cents for a newspaper.
Posted by L. Cahill on Thu 7 May 2009 at 01:15 PM
I have the greatest respect for Walter Pincus, but in this case his math is fuzzy.
He writes, "NYTimes.com had some twenty million unique users for the month of October, making it the fifth-ranked news site on the Internet in terms of total visitors. The newspaper is sold to 800,000 readers a day, rising on Sunday to over 1 million. Without thinking, someone might say the Times Web site readership far exceeds the newspaper’s. But the definition of unique visitor is someone who within a month’s time visits the Web site more than once. It is not apples to apples, but by dividing the twenty million a month by thirty you get at best roughly 667,000 readers a day, which is short of the paper’s daily circulation."
A unique visitor is someone who visits at least once during the time period.
If you divide 20 million unique visitors a month by 30 days, you do indeed get about 667,000.
But Walter assumes that each visitor comes to the Post Web site only once during the month.
Does anyone think that's true?
Certainly some visit more than once a month. I wouldn't be surprised if the median unique visitor comes to the newspaper's Web site on 10 days a month.
When Walter writes, "you get at best roughly 667,000 readers a day," shouldn't it be the opposite? At worst, you get roughly 667,000 readers a day. At worst.
In the same vein, why does the editor allow Walter to state as fact that the Post has lost 120,000 readers over the last decade. It may have lost 120,000 daily subscribers to the print newspaper. But why ignore every one of the online readers? Surely someone who doesn't subscribe to the print edition looks at the Post's Web site. I do.
Posted by Bill Dedman on Thu 7 May 2009 at 01:23 PM
Amen. Thank you!
Posted by L Hill on Thu 7 May 2009 at 01:23 PM
Who will pay the journalists to follow this good advice?
That's the question. Buy a copy of the Post or the Times down on the corner? Or go to the Huffington Post or Yahoo home page and get the same article for free at your kitchen table? If relevant editorial -- which is costly -- is what makes an audience for advertisers, who gets the advertising revenue, the publisher who pays the reporter or the aggregator who links to it and pays nothing to the reporter? If you don't solve this problem, the rest is phffft.
Posted by P. McGann on Thu 7 May 2009 at 01:29 PM
Main stream media is a wholly owned subsidiary of the US government. In turn,the US government is a wholly owned subsidiary of Wall Street.
You think your votes matters but the billionaires know better
Posted by Dr Wu, I'm just an ordinary guy on Thu 7 May 2009 at 01:29 PM
The public good was not served by your trashing of the late journalist Gary Webb, who wrote about the Contra Cocaine connection. His work was ridiculed by you and your coddled peers, but later proven factually correct. YOU are the problem.
Posted by fred rinne on Thu 7 May 2009 at 01:29 PM
To Bill Dedman: dividing 20 million by 30 days assumes readers come back every day, not stop by once and never return. His point was that it's not 20 million different people in a month, it could be the same 667,000 people coming back every day.
Posted by Rich on Thu 7 May 2009 at 01:42 PM
Pincus makes some very good points, but they have little to do with what has happened to the Post or any other struggling newspaper. I would ask the following: name me one newspaper in the past 20 years that by dint of its editorial and/or news coverage policies has gained circulation? (Price discounts, bulk distribution etc. do not count).
Yes, many things might have been done better, but the changing technology and the market have spoken.
Posted by Mal Johnson on Thu 7 May 2009 at 01:51 PM
Rich, if it's the same 667,000 people coming back every day, then it's not 20 million unique visitors. If we take the Nielsen survey at its word, and the Times has 20 million unique visitors every month, that's 20 million people, or 20 million computers at least (the clearing of cookies aside). A unique visitor is someone who comes to the site at least once a month.
Surely the number of those 20 million who come to the site on a given day is less than 20 million, but Walter states as fact that each one comes only once a month. (You, at least, say it's possible -- "it could be..." -- that they each visit only once a month. He says they come only once a month. That's how he gets to 667,000.)
Again, no one thinks that's true.
The number who visit on a given day is surely somewhere between the 667,000 and the 20 million. But if the typical Times reader on the Web visits even two days a month, which seems a very conservative estimate, then the Times Web site has more online readers than it has print subscribers.
Posted by Bill Dedman on Thu 7 May 2009 at 02:12 PM
Technology and pursuit of prizes could certainly be factors, but the MSM also dropped the ball on the excesses of the last 8 years. Whether being too timid in the face of outrageous lies and manipulation by Bush, Cheney and Co., or neglecting to really question the excesses of Wall Street, etc., traditional news print is no longer the go-to place to understand what is really happening. For that people turn to blogs. Granted blogs get their news from larger outlets, but they provided an important component: critical and connect-the-dots thinking that makes the news relevant and discovers the truth.
Posted by not so sure on Thu 7 May 2009 at 02:15 PM
Walter, you are a national treasure. I have read your work for years and greatly appreciate learning more about your own history and your sagacious view of the present and future. G-d Bless!
Posted by andy caploe on Thu 7 May 2009 at 02:27 PM
AMEN.
What you've said here Mr. Pincus is much the same thing as I've said when dealing with radio stations over the past decade.
They have all fallen over themselves ridiculously over things like satisfying their secondary markets - their online readers - at the expense of overall quality for both both their primary and secondary markets.
They've fought, kicked, and screamed against the rise of technology, and when someone who knows how to help them use it effectively offers suggestions, they get angry at the person, insisting they will NEVER use technology that way - and then they often proceed to eventually throw large piles of money at the internet, and use the technology wrong anyway.
It seems far too many in the media have forgotten both basic journalism and basic business. As McCluhan, in his full texts warned, confusing the medium with the message does neither any good in the long-run. And as any Business 101 professor will tell you, if you don't serve your primary audience properly, your business won't survive.
I know I'm many years younger then you, Mr. Pincus, but I also consider myself an old-fashioned journalist in many ways.
Glad I'm not the only one who sees things as they are.
Posted by Shawn Smith Peirce on Thu 7 May 2009 at 02:27 PM
"not so sure", it seems like you didn't read the whole article....
Pinkus, thank you. Those are my thoughts precisely.
However, I think something new will come out of this crisis, and later we will say "how come we didn't think of this before?".
"Where there's a need..."
Posted by duh... on Thu 7 May 2009 at 02:29 PM
Topical - today we were discussing the newspaper malaise, and arrived at a few conclusions:
1. Newspapers spent too much energy catering to ad agencies and advertisers, blinded by the high cost of placing an ad, and forgetting they had hundreds of thousands of readers, who while they each contributed little, made up a big tally. The readers were the ones the papers should have focused on, every single day, as Pincus also writes here.
2. The conglomerates getting into the business, turning it into pure business. Newspapers were calls to arms, they were clarions, they were shouting from mountaintops. They took positions, they moved opinions. Sorry - but why on earth should one spend time reading the tripe newspapers are turning out now? What's not advertising, or advertorials, are boring A said, B said, reportages - with the newspaper pretending to be the omniscient silent sage that's just reporting.
3. The tremendous self-shaming that the US news media accepted during the Bush 43 years. Forget about being taken seriously again, if you do not take yourself seriously.
Posted by SteinL on Thu 7 May 2009 at 02:30 PM
Here's a minor anecdote about how newspapers are failing at the basics:
I live on the West Hollywood/Beverly Hills border. Yesterday AM in the garage of a luxury condo, a separate husband going through a bitter divorce lay in ambush and shot his wife, then killed himself (she fortunately will live).
This was a typical helicopters in the sky, mobile units airing live on TV midday. Yes, it was one of many shootings in LA, but for the demographic that watches TV news and reads newspapers, it was a major event of interest.
This AM, the LA Times has a brief two parapgraph item, getting the location wrong, not mentioning the details TV told yesterday, and basically showing the effects of major cutbacks of local coverage (they abolished there stand a lone "California/local" section recently, and laid off many reporters.
People go to newspapers for many things, but one of the key ones (for those who are subscribers) are locally important events like this, for the details, for names, for context.
It's a small item, but this is the sort of thing that is likely happening hundreds of times over in hundreds of papers. And it is hastening the end of newspapers, with the parallel loss of millions and millions of dollars for their owners before they throw in the towel.
Posted by hopeless pedant on Thu 7 May 2009 at 02:33 PM
And let me add, for style.
If you are dependent upon people being able to read, in order to maintain a readership, as a newspaper or magazine publisher you are obligated to:
1. Attack any politician or political party that undermines the school system.
2. Demand stringent school standards for literacy, and ensure that these are maintained.
3. Attack any attempt to undermine scholarship programs for students, particularly for disadvantaged students.
4. Hoist false "No Child Left Behind" pretense programs by the petards they deserve to be hoisted with.
5. Do whatever is in your power to encourage reading, particularly among the young.
6. Make reading papers appealing, through design, the organization of content and through realizing that the competition is stiff (people only have a given number of hours available for media consumption.)
They didn't, and they are paying the price.
Posted by SteinL on Thu 7 May 2009 at 02:36 PM
Walter Pincus, you are and have always been one of the few great American journalists and heros of the press. Whenever I see a column by you, I read it because I know that you will give the facts, insight, and truth on the issue. Thank you for your service to American democracy and speaking truth to power.
Posted by Catherine Legge on Thu 7 May 2009 at 02:59 PM
Pincus makes some good points, but proves himself a little too close to his subject perhaps, by A.) telling us too much about Walter Pincus and his own heady days at the Times, his later chats with Phillip Graham etc. (rather odd in a piece entitled "Newspaper Narcissism") and B.) laying this steaming pile on us:
The Graham and Sulzberger families’ ownership of The Washington Post and The New York Times is, I believe, a major reason why these newspapers continue to provide quality journalism. But even they and their editors are nervous when accused of showing favoritism or antipathy toward one party or another.
Now, in fairness, Pincus himself is a pretty good reporter, but neither the Times nor the Post have been much good at informing the populace about what atrocities the GOP, the Christofascists, the Wall Streeters etc have wrought for the last few decades. Just f'rinstance, it was readily apparent, even a matter of public record, that George W. was a toxic bungler, and the puppet of same, long before he ever slimed his way into the White House, but none of the mainstream players told the booboisee this plain truth, and the rest is...infamy. So claims of"quality journalism" in our leading papers are pretty much out the window right there.
One thing Pincus doesn't really touch upon is the issue of trust. Newspaper stories, being subliterary and unfunny by design, rely for most of their appeal, their interest, their hypnotics, not on their usefulness to the reader, but on their documentary claim, their veracity, their trustworthiness. A story has to be much more clever, shocking or weird to hold interest when we assume it may be fictional. But even a mildly weird or emblematic story can become compelling when we asume it's true -- the Urban Legend Effect. Think of all those Darwin Award stories that go around. They're scintillating when we assume they're real; nobody repeats them if they're revealed as bullshit. The bullshit quotient in contemporary journalism is going up up up (strongly correlated with its reliance on anonymous sources), so it just isn't that interesting anymore. Why would I buy or read something that's boring and apt to be bullshit?
Posted by Kalkaino on Thu 7 May 2009 at 03:00 PM
Mr. Pincus, you have spoken the plain, hard truth and for that I applaud you. I agree with your analysis, based on my experience of more than 30 years in newspaper publishing. Today, I am sad to say that I no longer subscribe to the metro daily (Dallas); I can live without the national briefs and odd mix of regional news (with snazzy, unhelpful graphics) it offers. Locally, our suburban weeklies are barely more than shoppers with news releases. I am only 55, but I remember a much different experience as a reader. There was a time when newspapers delivered news which enriched and informed our daily lives, and provided the context and analysis to help reason through the big, complex issues. I could go out into my day better prepared to meet its demands - as a parent, taxpayer, voter, citizen or consumer.
You are correct regarding recent trends in important coverage so remarkable by its absence: all the many issues concerning education, food, agriculture, governance, etc.
I believe that career tracks were all wrong for competent journalists, as well. Local beats, community issues reporting, etc (all that high-value information useful to real people on a daily basis!) were entry- to mid-level assignments. This is much like what's wrong in education: the reward for experienced teachers is highly motivated and capable honors/advanced students or gifted/talented specialty programs.
One other point I would add concerns the inevitable complacency of an industry addicted after decades to fat margins based on predatory ad pricing, in markets with little or no real competition. Unable or unwilling to change? Hard to know. But print "rate integrity" trumped adaptation, even years after Monster and Craigslist eroded the dominant classified piece of the revenue pie forever. As this revenue left the print pages, never to return, newspapers continued to compare their "internet play" strategies at industry meetings while their print-based revenue model melted down around them.
Last year at this time I held out a measure of hope for an important election year, one in which newspapers could show us once again what they, and only they, could deliver. Oh well.
Posted by Newspaper Vet on Thu 7 May 2009 at 03:10 PM
These days it seems that the primary purpose of the media is to dramatize the news. If it can't be made EXCITING, it's not mentioned. This has as much to do with consumers as it does with the providers, but for the providers it's basically pandering.
Posted by Lester Noyes on Thu 7 May 2009 at 03:45 PM
What you didn't say is that ruling class has used media to control
the masses. TV is aimed at 8th grade level for a reason.
Just look at NBC Today show, same stories are recycled
over and over. celebrities, food, fashion, consumption, books,
fake personal advice, now they are giving financial advice.
Instead of telling the truth, they are covering for the corporations
and politicians. When people have decent alternative they will
jump at it. So newspaper and TV can't really compete where
it really counts. Give ala-carte on cable and watch most channels disappear. Even PBS will have to become HBO where only
rich people who pay will get it. Bring on BBC, CBC and other foreign
media, I would gladly pay for those. May be in future US goverment will
block foreign news website so US media can survive.
Posted by rd on Thu 7 May 2009 at 03:47 PM
Cable news has ruined journalism. It must die.
Posted by peorgy tirebiter on Thu 7 May 2009 at 03:52 PM
How ironic is it today, then, that there are dozens of competing electronic voices in almost every city, most of which now have only one newspaper.
As accurate as the rest of the piece is, and as necessary it is for someone to say it, I do have to take issue with the idea of competing electronic voices. Almost all of the radio stations in my market are owned by one or two companies dictating the station format and playlist. None of them offers any news coverage and if any of the 'personalities' offer an opinion, it is likely to pander to jingoism or sexism. We don't just need newspapers to look at their responsibilities - we need all media to assess their true roles, then present themselves transparently to their markets.
Posted by ignoreland on Thu 7 May 2009 at 04:04 PM
Instead it's "the Washington Post is an excellent newspaper" and "mistakes were made" blah blah blah.
Posted by Taylor on Thu 7 May 2009 at 04:05 PM
May 7, 2009
Dear Mr. Pincus;
Thank you for your viewpoints on the decline of newspapers.
The web offers two things that major newspapers do not. One is broader access to what is happening in this country and abroad.
But most importantly, the independent news web offers more, and better, exposure of wrong doing within our federal government.
The mainstream media has sold out to our corporate controlled Congress, and Americans know it.
And are fed up.
Thanks for all the good you have done for this country.
Best wishes,
Dennis A. Rice
Posted by Dennis A. Rice on Thu 7 May 2009 at 04:06 PM
National homogeny is not want I want from a newspaper. I want idiosyncracy.
Put the local news section first, with expanded coverage and with
an opinion page dealing exclusively with local issues.
National and international news and opinion in its own section. Extend coverage and opinion on a web site, with links to further information from other sources.
More emphasis on local amateur and school sports in the sports section.
Continuing helpful features section covering such topics as price comparisons between grocery stores, limiting prescription costs and pharmacy prices, cheapest auto insurance, how-to articles for homemakers etc., etc. This should be aimed at lower and middle income readers.
Make the newspaper an indispensable daily tool.
Posted by Caslon on Thu 7 May 2009 at 04:22 PM
Regarding the discussion of 20 million monthly uniques: Almost certainly it means that more than 667,000 people access the Times site daily.
Here's how it works on our site (mcclatchydc.com): The unique monthly visitors count includes only one visit per month. If visitors come twice, they aren't counted the second (or third or fourth) time in the monthly uniques. The aggregate total of daily unique visitors -- those who come in a day -- recorded in a month is always larger than the total of monthly uniques, by a substantial number.
So 20 million monthly uniques is the MINIMUM number of visits made to the Times site during the month.
If we applied the monthly unique concept to the daily newspaper, you would take the total number of newspapers distributed in a month and count JUST ONCE all those who have subscriptions or bought the paper on the street multiple times. Assuming that half of the Times's circulation is home delivered and another 40 percent are repeat buyers, the MONTHLY UNIQUE number for the newspaper would be something north of 6 million.
Web aficionados would argue that that demonstrates that the Web has greater reach. But counting monthly uniques discounts reader loyalty, since a person who comes to a site 30 times in a month still only gets counted once. I'm not sure why that's the standard the Web has settled on. Maybe someone can explain it.
Posted by Mark Seibel on Thu 7 May 2009 at 04:55 PM
It's simple. Newspapers sold out their constituency which ranged from Eisenhower Republicans to the farthest left part of the Democratic Party. They tried to please the far right, who never trusted newspapers and never read them. Partially this was a response to a few vocal advertisers. As a consequence the papers lost their readers who have gone over to the INTERNET blogs. Now papers are dying and nothing will bring the readers back.
Tough
Posted by Eli Rabett on Thu 7 May 2009 at 04:56 PM
wow! and amen.
we disagree only on having personal relationships - and I'm not saying personal relationships shouldn't exist, but readers have paid the price for "access" again and again.
I am talking about the air of clubbiness btw so called journalists and those they are to cover - writ large in the late Tim Russert's testimony at the Libby trial. and I wont even mention a certain rib fest in Sedona in the heat of a Pres. Election.
fabulous and informative piece Mr Pincus
thank you
Posted by clarice on Thu 7 May 2009 at 05:17 PM
Duh.
Posted by mark van patten on Thu 7 May 2009 at 05:20 PM
I'm a graduating journalism student, and this article reinforced and refreshed my views of why I even decided to roll with journalism. One of the best articles I've read in a while.
Posted by Bob Herman on Thu 7 May 2009 at 05:47 PM
While I agree with the general gist of the article (and/or have some food for thought at least), I was also floored by the bad math concerning unique visitors on the web.
20M unique visitors in a month is very hard to translate into equivalent paper subscribers or readers.
How many unique readers does the NYT have in a month? Well, if there are 800k uniques per day, and all of them are subscribers, then the NYT print edition has 800k unique readers per month.
Assuming that only 500k are subscribers, and further that the other 300k each day buy it exactly one day each month of 30 days, and the NYT ends up with 500k+(300k*30), or 9.5M unique visitors per month, well under half the unique visitors on the web site.
It's not until you assume that *over 650k of those 800k buy the NYT only one day of the month* that you hit 20M unique readers of the paper edition in a month.
To be absolutely frank: the New York Times would KILL to get 20M unique readers of its paper per month!!!
That having been said, you are still comparing apples to oranges. The typical paper buyer has a bit more invested in the paper and so will spend more time looking over various articles and absorbing various ads. In contrast, the web reader is reading an article they were pointed to, typically, and will not generally skip to another article or absorb any ads but those they happen across with that single article. And, of course, uncounted on the paper side are the public paper readers, reading the paper left on the bus or in the cafe, or sharing a physical copy amongst several members of the family (which also would tend to be underreported on the web as most families will appear to the web site as a single unique visitor even if they come from multiple computers in the house).
So, don't get wholly discouraged. Still, it's a foolish endeavor to attempt to belittle web unique visitors compared to newspaper buyers.
Posted by Tom Dibble on Thu 7 May 2009 at 06:19 PM
Compare the press enabling the Iraq war with today's similar reluctance to question Obama's war in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Why is he killing all those people and urging others others to kill them?
Posted by Michael Munk on Thu 7 May 2009 at 06:21 PM
Berle and Means noted one major exception to the wretched state of journalism back in the 1920s, business news in the major business oriented newspapers. Everything else, they argued, could be pap, but people took action based on business news reporting, so any news source that lost its reputation for completeness and correctness would soon be out of business.
The situation is similar today. There is still good reporting aimed at people who use news to take action. For example, you can still get good business news, congressional news, science news and so on, because there are a lot of people who read, listen to or watch the articles and then take action. Non-action news barely exists.
Mr. Pincus notes that most newspapers were created to influence local politics in some way or another. This suggests that a successful news model involves getting people to take action. The proof is in the rise of the progressive political blogs and news sites aimed at a population otherwise neglected by the media. It is important to note that it is the news, not the editorials, that inspire action. (The only reason to take action based on a WSJ editorial is if you need a tax loss.) The fact is, and it is an unpleasant fact for the corporate press, that Americans are far to the left of the media. Once people get a taste of news that they can use for something beyond planning their morning commute, they are loath to put up with the traditional brew.
Posted by Kaleberg on Thu 7 May 2009 at 06:35 PM
Dear Mr. Pincus,
As a devoted "print" media subscriber, I must disagree with your assessment.
It is not the print media's fault that readership and subscriptions are down, it's a "generation internet" problem.
The majority of those under the age of 40 are easily and quickly satisfied by the information they get online. The days of reading (and savoring) a newspaper at the kitchen table, on your couch, or your porch, have been supplanted by the computer generation's quick hits on the internet, while at work or at home.
Neither content, quality, or substance, much less, credibility, are of importance to these readers ..... it's all about speed ("quick hits"). For them, journalism is just a word describing anyone who types some news reports online, not a description of a profession governed by values, facts, competence, talent and, most importantly, character.
I thought television had an unholy effect on the ethical profession of journalism, but that was before the internet destroyed any vestige of hope I had for its survival.
p.s. Tim Russert was NOT a "journalist," he was a television personality.
Posted by J. Decker on Thu 7 May 2009 at 06:35 PM
Great article Walter and you are absolutely right on every point you raised. I hope they listen to you because you have a lot to say. Keep up the good work. Remember always that after Nixon the right hated newspapers and wanted them abolished--so what did they do? They went to the newspapers and had a plan, without realizing it the newspapers made a Faustian bargain. Republicans gained access to journalist and newspapers by screaming "liberal media" day in and day out and the newspapers did not want to be called biased so they did what they were told and the Republicans were granted the most space in spouting their ideas and assertions. Then the Republicans used that access to abolish newspapers by making false claims to journalist which they promptly printed as fact so that the people reading them would begin to lose trust in those very same newspapers. Then when Republicans said you can't trust newspapers or journalist it would then be true. Voila' the end of newspapers and Republicans win what they wanted all along.
Posted by poopsybythebay on Thu 7 May 2009 at 07:09 PM
Excellent analysis. Thanks, Mr. Pincus.
My local newspaper (which I no longer read) had one page a week (on Friday) devoted to religion. They even had a religion editor.
However, there wasn't a similar page devoted to science and the current happenings in the scientific field. Is it any wonder that the general public is so ignorant regarding science?
I stopped my subscription to my newspaper because I found that the political blogs gave me a much more thorough analysis of what was going on. I had reaching the tipping point with the regular media with their "he said" and "so-and-so disagreed" mentality. If newspapers are dying, they have only themselves to blame.
Posted by Sheridan on Thu 7 May 2009 at 08:00 PM
Mr. Pincus produced a thoughtful, well-written article and I'm sure he won't mind if I'm politiely critical.
It was a pretty lengthy piece but there was one key sentence in it. Did you notice? It jumped right out at me.
"I am a Democrat, and everyone knows it."
Did your readers know it after reading one of your Post articles? If so, shame on you.
Your being a Dem ... well, is that the reason for your trashing coverage of Bush and even going back so far as Nixon, but to remain embarrassingly silent about the tank job the press corps did during Obama's campaign, and continuing even more so now in office?
You also are conspicuously silent about what kind of reporting model you would like to see instituted, if the he said-the other guy said one isn't good enough.
One of the bloggers above called for an end to it on grounds that if one side is patently lying, don't report it.
So let's see, what would we have? Well, since the D.C. press corps is 90 percent or more leftie/liberal, then the side that would be patently lying ... that would always be the conservatives, wouldn't it?
So the "articles" would simply turn into one-sided leftie screeds even more than they are right now.
The Post could probably get away with it, as its audience and its community is basically leftie.
Whether other papers could abandon the traditional model of attempting to be, or at least pretending to be, objective in their news coverage ... I doubt it.
To have much of a chance of surviving, papers have to appeal to a broad audience, not just the frenzied, hapless Obamaites.
If Mr. Pincus disputes any of this, I'd be glad to listen.
Posted by Gerry Storch on Thu 7 May 2009 at 08:25 PM
Wow, totally 100% wrong. The reason no one reads newspapers anymore is because they HAVE become crusaders. One-sided, blatant, propogandizing crusaders. They routinely call positions that the majority of Americans hold (i.e. parental notification, secure borders) "extreme". They have created their own world of morality and political correctness and are really peeved that we aren't all following along.
I don't patronize businesses that insult and belittle my beliefs, as every newpaper does to every conservative. So there they can write off half the country.
The other half, which holds similar beliefs as they, is too busy watching reality TV shows on their government cable box in their dormroom to read a newspaper. Or they are too busy producing TV shows and movies.
Posted by Odkin on Thu 7 May 2009 at 08:30 PM
Walter, you nailed it!
Posted by Larisa Alexandrovna on Thu 7 May 2009 at 09:10 PM
What a bunch of junk. Newspapers are dying because the audience (White Middle Class) is shrinking, and Newspapers heed the straight uber-liberal "Stuff White People Like" (website and book) Yuppie vewpoint. It's PC dogma and half their potential readership is uninterested in a PC dogma lecture, preferring news.
Meanwhile the growing Hispanic/Mexican population if it reads newspapers at all reads them in Spanish.
Neither the NY Times nor Washington Post, to name two, have published any of the scandals around Obama, from questionable dealings with Rezko and Aiuchi, to ties to Saddam, to questionable campaign funding from the Gulf kingdoms and Hezbollah. The LAT has a tape of Obama and Michelle attending a party for Rashid Khalidi where anti-Semitic remarks were said (to the alleged amusement of the Obamas) and has refused to release it on it's website or report on it!
Newspapers are in the Propaganda Business for the Liberal Yuppie mindset, along with the suppression of what little genuine news comes their way. The Post and the Times and Newsweek all failed to run stories on Clinton's affair with Lewinsky until Drudge reported it.
Newspapers deserve to die like Pravda and Izveztia before them. Because there isn't any genuine news in them that conflicts with their ideological biases. It's well known for example that when newspapers refuse to report on the ethnicity of a criminal suspect, they are either Black or Hispanic.
Posted by J Rockford on Thu 7 May 2009 at 10:07 PM
Bill Dedman and others make good points about the fuzzy math of web audiences. But they all miss the point, which is not audience but REVENUE. The reason that newspapers' valiant efforts to transfer their flag to the internet are failing miserably is not that their sites don't generate big audiences. It's that they don't generate MONEY on anything close to the scale of the printed product. In fact, click-based ad revenue has been falling on a unit basis the past couple of years, which means that newspaper sites have to chase more and more eyeballs just to STAY EVEN revenue-wise. (Chasing total audience is a fool's errand anyway, because, unlike in the print world where papers monopolized their markets, the competing Web alternatives are only going to multiply.) In any case, until someone figures out how to get dramatically more money from the online product -- and forget about subscriptions or per-story fees, which would only generate chump change -- newspaper companies have no choice but to ride their printed products down and cut costs to chase the overall revenue decline. A few national papers will survive, but metro dailies will whither. AT BEST, they will one by one convert into Web-only operations with staffing and structure similar to a TV station -- a cadre of "big story" chasers, a couple sports guys and an investigative reporter or three -- because that's all the ad revenue will support.
Posted by Mr. Ed on Thu 7 May 2009 at 10:23 PM
Only Republicans cited as examples of media manipulation. Today's media doesn't need to be manipulated. It is addicted to Obama's Kool-Aid.
The real problem with journalism today can be found in who he identified as his heroes. They are all columnists who express opinion, not reporters who gathered facts objectively. This is why the post-newspaper websites won't work. Every reporter who ever wanted to be a columnist finally gets the chance. Nobody wants to cover the school board. Everyone wants to kiss Chris Matthews' butt and be a star.
I agree with whoever blamed cable news. Look at who is on cable news. Look even at network news. Few of these people were trained as journalists. There are too many lawyers, who are trained to argue. Not enough journalists who are (or used to be) trained to find the truth without bias. Now, every print journalist wants to be a multi-media star. When they banned cigars from newsrooms, that was the end.
This guy ought to retire and take Arlen Specter with him.
Posted by flyoverland on Thu 7 May 2009 at 10:35 PM
Mr. Pincus; there is some truth in what you write. Nevertheless, two primary reasons are contributing to the demise of newspapers.
The first is the most important, and it will continue to be relentless: technology. More and more, although I still subscribed to the daily newspaper, I found I spent less time reading it. Most of what was printed was either "old" news - or not even accurate any longer. How can something that is produced the night before compete with the freshness and immediacy of Internet news?
Then there is the bias; something that I am saddened you do not even address. As many others have said, you are able to see times when the press doesn't report "as they ought" - but they all involved those nasty Republicans. Mr. Pincus, I'm afraid that there are times when those nasty Democrats don't do what they ought - but it is not being reported much at all.
Those of us who are not Democrats or not liberals are tired of it. Now we have a method to both get news and express our views, while circumventing reporters and editors who laugh at us.
Newspapers in their current form are dying. The horse is out of the barn; the toothpaste is out of the tube.
Posted by peggybundy on Thu 7 May 2009 at 11:32 PM
An interesting article. However, I suspect you miss a very important reason for the post loss in readership during the last few years. i was a post daily and weekend reader for over 30 years until I had enough reading some reporters slanted reporting on topics of interest to me. Far too often it was clear that reporters were not reporting facts I needed to decide for myself what the truth was, but were selectively reporting facts, often misreporting facts, to support their own view. Examples, reporting that the visits to the post web news as "at most 667,00 per day". This is not a fact even supported by the information given in this article. This is why I no longer read the post. I much prefer other sources, sources that add links to their source data which permits me to check for myself. Not all readers read articles and accept what is reported uncritically. I suspect that is a big reason why lots of readers have been leaving the post and other newspapers.
Posted by Wayne on Thu 7 May 2009 at 11:43 PM
I agree completely! If the newspapers had never investigated Watergate, we all would be a lot better off!
Posted by Mooser on Fri 8 May 2009 at 12:25 AM
"Those of us who are not Democrats or not liberals are tired of it."
Yeah, Peggy, first those liberals and Democrats caused the newspapers to downplay the threat from Iraq, and Iraq's connection with Al Queada.
And then those liberals and Democrats suppressed all the news about our great victory in Iraq, and exagerrated the hell out of some frat pranks.
Yeah, Peggy, it was all those Liberals and Democrats.
Posted by Mooser on Fri 8 May 2009 at 12:31 AM
Love how every example of government malfeasance was of a Republican administration. Yet another newspaper obit without mentioning that giant pink elephant (or is it a donkey) sitting on the coffee table, smothering the patient to death with a giant pillow. Nothing to see here folks.
Another major cause of death - political and like-minded inbreeding. I've worked in newsrooms for the better part of the last decade. It's like working with drones who think Michael Moore is a journalist.
Narcissism is right. Doing your best to piss off and misrepresent 50-percent of the country, pure narcissism. If the New York Times can put off insinuating affairs of Republican candidates long enough, maybe they take on Rangel, Dodd, Obama's house of tax cheats instead of playing by its partisan code. Same for the Post and the rest.
The head died years ago. The body is just following.
Posted by JohnFN on Fri 8 May 2009 at 12:50 AM
The end cannot come soon enough for the deceitful, hateful, manipulative propaganda conduits known as the NY Times, The Boston Globe, the LA Times, and (perhaps one day) the Washington Post.
Posted by SmartDude on Fri 8 May 2009 at 12:56 AM
@ J. Decker: I'm well under 40 years old (22) and very much in love with the internet. But I don't behave in the way you describe. I just spent the best part of half an hour reading the article online and all the comments. The comments provided some crazy nonsense but also some very interesting discussion about the measurement of readership on the internet.
While I'd agree with some of the concerns raised about the nature of journalism in the article I wouldn't immediately assume that a generation of uninterested young people are killing the news industry.
Posted by Ian Duncan on Fri 8 May 2009 at 01:02 AM
The reasons newspapers are going out of business and the ratings for network news coverage is cratering is simple. Almost nobody trusts them any more. We get better coverage of current events from John Stewart and Stephen Colbert.
Here's the big real story that hasn't run anywhere in the US mass media. An excerpt from article that ran in the UK Independent called "American Excess"
"...I’d been working for UBS for about five weeks when I woke up on the balcony of a ski resort in the Swiss Alps. It was midnight and I was drunk. One of my fellow management trainees was urinating onto the skylight of the lobby below us; another was hurling wine glasses into the courtyard.
Behind us, someone had stolen the hotel’s shoe-polishing machine and carried it into the room; there were a line of drunken bankers waiting to use it. Half of them were dripping wet, having gone swimming in all their clothes and been too drunk to remember to take them off. It took several more weeks of this before the bank considered us properly trained.
I didn’t fit the typical profile of a trader. I was an English major working on a novel at night. Most everyone else was a maths or economics major, most everyone else had relatives or family in banking....I put on 45 pounds in my first year at the bank, and, as you might guess, it was not from eating McDonalds. Occasionally I ate stuff like sushi, but mostly it was steak. We went to the good places like Sparks, Peter Luger’s, and the Strip House. We tended to look down on chains like Morton’s and Ruth’s Chris-they were for car dealers or stock brokers, not traders. Regardless of where we ate, we ate in quantity. My standard strategy was to order half a dozen appetisers, plus a steak and lobster, plus a few desserts and much wine as I could drink, as long it was under a few hundred dollars a bottle. Followed by a digestif, typically a 30-year-old port. There’s not any way to justify this except to say I was trying to catch up to my colleagues. We would treat those restaurants like Roman vomitoriums. And it wasn’t the food so much as the wine. Being a junior employee, I couldn’t really order bottles that cost more than a few hundred dollars, but the senior guys could get nicer stuff - Opus One, Chateau Latour. As long as we were out with a client, the bank paid. I remember being stunned the first time I saw a dinner bill for ten grand. But that was just the beginning.
What it boiled down to was austerity for everyone else and rampant consumption for ourselves. I never saw anyone literally set fire to money, but I did drink most of a bottle of 1983 Margaux ($2,000)...."
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/american-excess--a-wall-street-trader-tells-all-1674614.html
The real story is bankers and traders stole all the wealth of North America and Europe and went on an almost 3 decade long drunken binge with it. They woke up one morning to discover all the money was gone. Now the bankers and traders are kicking and screaming for more money from their enablers. We are have no money left to give them, so we are going to go print some. Then we will give the bankers and trader all that freshly prinked without a word of protest.
Read that article again. Read it over and over until you get it. There is a financial overclass. That financial overclass feels they are entitled to do whatever they desire with the wealth of our societies. They have nothing but contempt for all of us "down here," and they plan on getting the drunken orgy restarted as soon as we go print them some more money to do it with.
Posted by Adam on Fri 8 May 2009 at 01:05 AM
This article is unmitigated liberal bullshit.
The real problem is that you "media mavens" are all far-left and you have an agenda to implement, and that the American public know it , and doesn't approve of your agenda or your methods or YOU and your work product. Compare and contrast the treatment of Palin and her family by all those "reporters" flying to Alaska, hunting for any piece of dirt on her and her family, while IGNORING a presidential candidate who was porking a campaign "worker" while using his cancer-stricken wife as a pull toy. YOU PEOPLE DELIBERATELY IGNORED IT!
You liberal media flacks are losing your jobs and your "beloved 4th Estate" because instead of reporting on things like (1) tea parties (2) the unconstitutional behavior with respect to the banks and the auto companies (and their bond holders), (3) the intergenerational debt, and (4) the other ignorant and dangerous national security policies of this president, you are, instead, fighting over who gets to put his lips on Obama's "member" next at his press briefings.
They way you all stand up when he gives a press conference - something you hardly EVER did for Bush. The way YOU let HIM play press favorites and let HIM dictate your copy, both directly and indirectly.
Yes, it is that obvious that you all wish you could be the 21st Century version of Monica. Your hatred of Bush didn't go unnoticed by the American public, and neither has you near orgasmic worship of your Messiah. That's why your industy is in the toilet - and why it deserves to be there.
You forget that nearly half of the voters, 55 million+ people, *DID NOT VOTE FOR YOUR MESSIAH!" Nor do they worship him. Nor do they fawn over him, his wife, his kids, or his dog - all the things that you Obamanoids think is "newsworthy."
YOUR JOB is supposed to be an adversary to the President - NOT PART OF HIS MINISTRY OF INFORMATION.
You are out of time, you've exhausted any good will by the public, and you're soon to be unemployed - and to quote Martha, "That's a Good Thing."
Sign me a disgusted American, who used to read 3 newspapers a day.
Posted by A former newpaper reader on Fri 8 May 2009 at 03:40 AM
Interesting piece, but the idea that the NYT is a good newspaper that cares about a "fariness doctrine" is just not credible.
Posted by Dave, Gulfport, FL on Fri 8 May 2009 at 05:40 AM
Serving as shrill shills for the obama campaign/adminstration and a total lack of objectivity might have had just a bit to do with your continuing demise. I don't trust you to present honest, unbiased news. Then, too, there's that publishing of so much material that injures the security of the country.
"Journalist" has become synonymous with "flack" and "liar". We don't have to depend upon you any more since you no longer have a monopoly on all news sources. You're as trustworthy as that idiot of a press secretary obama has and exhibit the integrity of joe biden. And you wonder why we're no longer happy with your despicable rags?
Posted by James S on Fri 8 May 2009 at 06:35 AM
The article mentioned the press being used by the Bush admin. to trumpet so called "facts" about Iraq prior to the war. Maybe so, but the press had been ruthless to Bush before the war and twice as ruthless after. The media has in large part become a mouthpiece for the democratic party, a fact wich became painfully evident during the last election cycle. Until and unless you in the "press" will acknowledge that, nothing wil change and your reporting will only become more hollow over time and amount to nothing more than propaganda. Never mind the thrills going up your legs - the feeling will pass and maybe then you can get back to objective reporting. In the mean time, I'll stick to the interent. Oh and I hope the NY times dies a slow, painful death.
Posted by D. Smith on Fri 8 May 2009 at 06:42 AM
Wow - such passion and effort and yet leaving out so large a factor. I no longer digest any form of MSM, be it NYT, WP, ABC news, NBC news CBS news, CNN, Time or Newsweek because of the liberal slant. WSJ has grown subscriptions in the same time as the rest are falling. NYPost has gained while the NYDailyNews has lost. Why? Because the liberal bias is so prevalent and the coverage so slanted. If you gave me objective coverage and treated liberal politicians to the same scrutiny which you cast upon conservatives, I'd be willing to read and patronize. But you don't. I have given up on the MSM and now read only publications that are right leaning, because there is no alternative to getting at least half the truth. If you would commit to being ideology neutral, not just supposedly in your hard news but in your hiring and in your editorial pages (I don't believe it doesn't impact your hard news) I would gladly read you. But you won't, and so I won't. You lost my trust and you can not get it back without more work than I believe you are capable of. Good luck in your new job search.
Posted by Steve on Fri 8 May 2009 at 06:46 AM
Here is why the media you describe is failing, and why I won't pay for their product:
1) If the politician in the article is a republican, party affiliation is prominently noted - either in the headline or first paragraph. If a democrat, party affiliation is mentioned later, if at all. (There really is a game called "Name that Party", If party affiliation isn't mentioned, there is a 100% chance the pol is a democrat.)
2) Bush's grades, Kerry's grades are knowledge vital to the electorate. Obama's college grades, a well kept secret.
3) Stories about how Obama walks, what he eats (but must not mention dijon mustard by MSNBC, as if they don't sell and eat the stuff in flyover country)
4) The way the press equates waterboarding with torture, Holocaust, etc. (There was more torture in "Animal House" than there is at Guantanamo)
5) Political correctness and proof by anecdote. Educated adult readers know that it isn't racist if it is true and that the later is not proof.
6) Stories not reported by the media, like the horrific murder of Hugh Newsom and Channon Christian. Both raped and murdered by.......well you can't say it, can you.
7) Global warming band wagon: the media is on it, most others not so much. One hour spent watching Prof. Bob Carter on Youtube, and a thorough review of the scientific method is, apparently, asking too much from investigating journalists.
8) A failure to actually investigate ACORN, a government funded organization which registers anyone who might possibly vote democrat, legal or not.
9) The way the press will attack anyone who questions Obama's policies. And keep attacking until they are dead.
10) A complete failure of the press to hold the Teacher's Union to any form of accountability.
11) When the media permits the 'clown nose off', 'clown nose on' tactics of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report.
12) The constant hype and a failure to provide an unbiased context.
13) The coverage of the Danish Cartoon riots, without showing the pictures (including the three added by the Imams which were not part of the Danish Cartoons)
out of "respect". But it was really fear.
I want information, and my time is valuable. I waste it when I read the NYT, or watch the networks because what they provide is closer to propaganda than information.
Posted by Jack on Fri 8 May 2009 at 07:37 AM
I found the article enchanting.
Posted by Claude on Fri 8 May 2009 at 07:46 AM
Mr. Pincus talks about politicians who manipulate the press but doesn't mention President Obama. No mention of his scripted press conferences or his teleprompter-dependent photo ops. Pincus doesn't mention that adulatory press coverage of the new President. ("See Michelle's new $500 tennis shoes!" Nancy Reagan is surely jealous.) Pincus mentions, in passing, that "I am a Democrat and everybody knows it." Yes, everybody knows it. Is it possible, Mr. Pincus, that readers have fled mainstream newspapers, in part, at least, because they suspect that they are not getting the full story? Is it possible that readers are tired of the bias? Just a thought.
Posted by jon on Fri 8 May 2009 at 07:47 AM
I find the Pincus' comments enchanting.
Posted by Claude on Fri 8 May 2009 at 07:49 AM
Actually, not all newspapers are losing money. The suburban presses are doing well, and the reason seems to be that they cover their suburbs with local content not available anywhere else. In contrast, the large city daily runs mostly AP stories - content that is unavoidable to anyone with any media at all.
This raises the question; why would anyone pay for 'news' that is so widely disseminated as to be unavoidable? Especially news delivered in your doorstep the morning after you've heard about it from four other sources the night before? A day late means a dollar short, methinks.
Posted by Stephen on Fri 8 May 2009 at 08:05 AM
Thank you jack!
Notice how all of walter's examples of the manipulation of the media concern those of the republican party.
He had to go back to 2003 for his "worst examples".
Right there for all to see is the reason for newspapers' decline; one-sidedness in choosing what stories to print and from what viewpoint to tell them from. Also include the outright insulting of their conservative readers' intelligence by their REFUSAL to admit to their bias. A bias that has been documented by numerous questionaires provided to their fellow journalists along with the obviousness of the slant of any story by almost any paper.
They have spit on or ignored 40% of their potential readers (and since most readers are older these days and older folks generally are more conservative; whoops there go the subscriptions)
Even as they sink into the red ink they refuse to acknowledge their leftist biases.
Truly amazing.
Posted by jcw46 on Fri 8 May 2009 at 08:06 AM
Wow. So obvious in the comments that a conservative website somewhere linked to this article. The comments swerved from complimentary to critical about 2/3 of the way through. Just an observation.
Posted by Greg VA on Fri 8 May 2009 at 08:28 AM
"...Manipulation of the media was taken to its highest form by George W. Bush’s administration. It built, however, on what went on before..."
You're joking, eh?
The so-called "MSM" are not mainstream any longer. They are media, but not in the sense of news. They are clearly not the mainstream. More like Josef Goebbels...
Therefore, I think we have to state clearly what the so-called MSM is now:
The Ministry of Propaganda (MofP)
I think this characterizes them perfectly. The Fourth Estate is now a fifth column in America. Not to be listened to. Not to be trusted. To question every word they say. Censorship of the truth. Only in business to advance an agenda detrimental to our great country.
The newspapers (!) tell us that people are moving to the Internet to get news because the news cycle is faster, or the technology is great, or whatever. You can delude yourself all you want on why it is happening.
Blaming the Internet is merely the symptom, not the problem. The reason people are going to the Internet is to get the truth, and be able to fact check it. The absolute lack of real news, the outright lies, the not reporting of ALL the facts so a story can be slanted to fit the agenda, etc., is the problem.
The people correctly understand that the former MSM now distributes nothing but propaganda. Why are they surprised we don’t want to pay for it?
Posted by Fed up on Fri 8 May 2009 at 08:35 AM
So, you think those nasty old Republicans were able to mislead you about Iraq and that contributed to your downfall? Good thing you have all been doing such great non-partisan investigative coverage of Obama. No one can ever say you are left biased! Nope, never.
Posted by Robert Hooper on Fri 8 May 2009 at 08:36 AM
Greg VA,
My first job in journalism was in Arkansas. I moved to a small town from a major market and the boss told me, "don't stay here more than three years, after that it starts seeming real." That is the problem with liberals like this guy. He only associates with liberals and he believes his liberal bias isn't slanted and doesn't understand why those of us out here in flyoverland are so stupid.
Posted by flyoverland on Fri 8 May 2009 at 08:42 AM
"The press should play an activist role." That's the problem, dufus. Instead of analyzing, the press is activist. How about analying cap and trade, the stimulus package, the huge coming deficit, health care, the Congress' role in the Fannie/Freddie mortgage meltdown, so-called climate change. I could go on, but I understand activist propaganda should be the order of the day, not informing the public.
Posted by Zola on Fri 8 May 2009 at 08:43 AM
Is there any evidence here? Walter Pincus writes:
American journalism has turned away from its own hard-won expertise, and at the very time when readers are looking to us to explain the context of what is happening and what will happen next.Are they? How does Mr. Pincus know what readers want? Has he conducted any polls or focus groups? Has even interviewed anyone? Has he compared those papers that follow his prescriptions from those who don't?
Mr. Pincus is surely correct that some papers pursue long multi-day stories in search of Pulitzers. He may even be correct that most readers don't like such stories. But how does he know that such stories have a measurable impact on readership? And how does this explain the global decline of newspaper readership which includes many papers that have never even considered seeking a Pulitzer? The big narcissists Mr. Pincus criticizes, the NYT and the WaPo, are actually doing better than the industry as a whole. The papers that he should be analyzing if he actually hopes to help the industry, are the ones that have already failed.
And speaking of writing about one's expertise, Mr. Pincus's discussion of unique visitors belies a profound misunderstanding of the web. Please read Bill Dedman's cogent explanation in the comments above concerning why 20M unique visitors per month does not translate to "roughly 667,000 readers a day" as Mr. Pincus asserts? Did he even bother to ask anyone in the online industry to verify his assertion? When you write outside your expertise, shouldn't you at least communicate with the experts?
While the media may be doing many things wrong, I have little confidence in Mr Pincus's explanations for the decline in print readership. I picture an old worn-out journalist, chomping on his cigar while fulminating about the kids these days and blaming the perceived loss of old-time values for everything that's going wrong.
Genghis at dagblog.com
Posted by Genghis on Fri 8 May 2009 at 09:25 AM
Probably not a great idea to feed the trolls but: Didn't the US public deliver the Democrats the White House and both Houses of Congress just recently? Even if conservatives won't read the newspapers any more, there should be plenty of liberals who don't feel alienated in the same way...
Posted by Ian Duncan on Fri 8 May 2009 at 09:37 AM
I wonder if Mr. Pincus is reading these comments.
I wonder if other journalists are reading these comments.
Mooser and Mr. Pincus may think that the problem is that the press has not been tough enough on miscreants like GWB and other Republicans. But their blinders in thinking so are at least part of why newspapers are floundering.
How many people have to say "I stopped reading because of the bias and the indignities and the inequities" before you realize that there really is some "there" there?
Posted by peggybundy on Fri 8 May 2009 at 09:42 AM
You are wrong. The problem is that newspapers became activist and not the other way around. I have to search in blogs and international newspaper websites to find news that our main media won't touch - that's not only political activism, it's complete bias. Where are those reporters that just report the news? They are nowhere. Now we only have mouthpieces that do not investigate. The newspapers don't report the news. They give slanted opinions. Period. People no longer trust them, so why buy them? The media moguls and so called journalist killed journalism. YOU did it.
Posted by Pat on Fri 8 May 2009 at 09:51 AM
Narcissism? Perhaps, Mr. Pincus. But if you really want the -ism that defines the collapse of the industry, try elitism.
Newspapers are now written and edited, for the most part, by people who look at themselves as being part of the "elite." The bigger the newspaper, the more likely this is true.
As a result, you have this "elite" which feels it has to condescend to the unwashed masses. We're not smart enough to be in their world, so we don't deserve consideration as part of it.
People like Mike Royko, Lewis Grizzard and Jimmy Breslin -- arguably the top three U.S. columnists of the latter half of the 20th century -- would not fit in to today's newsrooms. Too rough around the edges, too real.
Unfortunately for the industry, the elitists of the world have a certain mindset. They are surrounded by people with the same mindset and quite likely don't know anyone with a different worldview. Therefore, they are -- in the world they know -- in the mainstream. In the overall world view, though, they are far out of it.
There is also a certain cranial disconnect, too. I once talked to a reporter, an old-school type, who wondered how any reporter could write anything in support of expansion of government. I don't recall the exact quote, but he said something to the effect that "Every day we fill our columns with tales of government incompetence. Why would any rational person want more government and more incompetence?"
Yet, too many imbue their reporting with a belief that government is better and people -- individual people -- are not.
Bye-bye, unwashed masses.
Today's newsrooms are blind to their biases. But many outside newsrooms are not. They're the potential customers who aren't buying at all.
Sure, the internet has meant a sea change in delivery of information. But I would rather read a story in print that maybe jumps once rather than have to wade through multiple web pages to read it.
There was a time when newspapers gave a damn about their readers and their potential readers. That time, unfortunately for outlets like the WaPo, the NYT, the LAT and many others, has passed.
And if you don't give a damn about us, don't expect us to give a damn about you.
Posted by bob on Fri 8 May 2009 at 10:26 AM
Good column. I got an important UK daily national newspaper journalist business editor to come on a webinar for small businesses to explain what mattered about getting press coverage
I asked my own question of the journalist. "what sources do you look at to go and find the news to filter for your column. I asked what web sources were searched - naming a couple.
The answer I thought was scandalous. "I dont have to - he said , the news comes to me by email". Which means that journalist was no longer searching anything - but expecting press releases - and clearly therefore could never report on a balanced view of business - it seemed who wined and dined was more likely to get coverage.
And that to me says it all. Journalists should find the news, and balance up what is being heard with a dose of conflicting opinion and truth.
Posted by MikeB on Fri 8 May 2009 at 10:38 AM
Journalists love to consider themselves as elite. They reflect the greatness of those they cover and they crave to be great themselves. They used to say those going into journalism didn't have the grades to get into law school and those who didn't have the grades to get into law school and couldn't spell went into broadcast journalism. I recently visited my school and they have discontinued print journalism. A major university doesn't believe it has a future.
Posted by flyoverland on Fri 8 May 2009 at 10:40 AM
"our press is not protected in order to merely echo the views of government officials,..."
Now that is rich coming from Mr. Pincus who on Feb. 9, 2007 wrote a front page article for the Wash. Post quoting a report by Sen. Levin (D-Mich.) rather than the ACTUAL report by the Pentagon Inspector General. He used the talking points put out by Sen. Levin. The Wash. Post printed a long correction the next day.
Posted by Janet on Fri 8 May 2009 at 10:52 AM
You're dancing around the obvious and then trying to blame conservatives to boot. The real reason newspapers are going the way of the dinosaur is because they've lost their soul. "Journalists" these days are just mouthpieces of the left. There is NO objective reporting of the current president and opinions are offered on supposed hardnews stories. People in droves have left the newspapers and now get their news from blogs and the internet. I'm glad that newspapers are dying, they killed the truth ages ago.
Posted by Anita on Fri 8 May 2009 at 10:53 AM
The Bush administration was the public relations manipulator? How about the out-and-out cheerleading for Obama. I have yet to see any serious investigation of his threats to "out" the debt holders of bankrupt Chrysler, and I well remember the attacks on the AIG bonuses. When I was in college, a professor once reminded us the question is "on what to you bias your opinion." All too often, that bias is readily apparent in what should be straight reporting. Newspapers that have refused to run pictures of people jumping to their death on 9/11 see nothing wrong with running photos of Abu Ghraib. If newspapers want to be relevant, they need to at least acknowledge that not all their readers are Democrats, and not all of them voted for Obama.
Posted by Dan Sernoffsky on Fri 8 May 2009 at 10:57 AM
As a self-defined centerist, I can see the bias in the media for miles and miles. If the media loves their subject, it's the second coming. If the media hates their subject, that person can do nothing right.
It's all opinion if someone is actually writing. However, most of the time, it's just AP regurgitation. Expose? In depth reporting? Working a story? That stuff died with the dinosaurs. I'm sure that it happens from time to time, it's just so rare, who in the hell would notice?
What makes you different from any talking head on cable news? What makes any journalist stand out, now? Quick, get national recognition, write a book, make some money. It's all about the money, self, the idea that it was about the public's need to know is so antiquated, I cannot really tell you when it died. Probably after Bob Woodward wrote his second book.
Simply put, from here it looks like you're all in the tank for your subject de jour. I have little respect for the profession, and you would be embarrassed by that, if you knew how much respect I had for you once in my youth.
You try to make the news now, and you certainly do. You don't report, you spin, you create, you opine, you argue, you cheerlead, you fawn. What you don't do, is report the news in such a way that the public gets to be the one with the opinion. You have so many opinions, and have slanted the news so much that the news is literally lost, and not exposed.
Old style journalism is basically dead in my opinion. It's all public relations, now. Where once, serious news was on the front page, and opinion relegated to the Op-Ed pages, it's now ALL op-ed.
You can talk about the minutiae of the disease of the print media: Circulation numbers, the impact of the net, the rise of 24/7 cable news, the changing American lifestyle. We wanted to be superstars. The meganews conglomerates, stock dividends and advertising revenue...
And a whole portion of America chuckles in a snarky way and shakes it's collective head. The biggest reason is because no one reports anymore, unless they're telling America what THEY believe in, what they think is important. You know what they say about opinions, everyone has one.
There is no balance anymore. It's dead, gone, left with the do-do bird. Two sides to a story? Only the reporter's side remains. Facts? Hell, let the AP give us a couple of paragraphs. Copy, paste, print. Snore.
You're a Democrat. Aw shucks, couldn't figure that one out. That's pretty much the media default answer. What did the Obama's waterdog eat for breakfast this am? Does Michelle have any new exercises to keep those well-toned arms? Inquiring minds want to know...
Are you aware that we still have two wars going on and we're cutting the Defense budget? Is there an exit strategy for anything, anywhere? Speaking of budgets, what about that historical deficit and what about our rising national debt? Military tribunals are going to be reconsidered? Government has grown to epic proportions that it's now a gigantic fiscal parasite and no one in the media blinks when they're talking about more? Naw, it's all good, pass the crackers. No one talks abouut the long term implications of government anymore, let's just talk about what happened TODAY. Where did I put that press release?
There is much to report on these days. But one has to put on hipboots to wade through the political PR machines and the alternate media ass-kissing. We also now have to go all over the world via the internet to get snippets of real information, instead of turning to the front page of our large newspapers.
Do you realize how much work that is for us? We've had to turn into our own journalists because American journalism has failed us. We have to research and gather facts, and then double check them, and check them again. Filter out bias, go to another source and so on. Filter, filter, check, check..
Don't wonder why we're jaded and think that you have bias. Don't wonder why we're irritated and people are canceling subscriptions. Either you do this job with some integrity and professionalism, or you don't. If it's the former, you'll certainly have an audience. If it's the latter and we're forced to do your work, you've lost and we're peeved.
We have other options now, and we're taking them. We'd rather you do it, but we need real news NOW, not later. So when you all finally stop admiring your own reflection, you might want to look around the room because many of us left.
Btw, I think that the media in the tank for the war is equally on par with the media being in the tank for Obama's message of change. Show me one real journalist that says that the Emperor has no clothes, and I'll react like there is a star in the sky.
Obama is the biggest PR machine that I've seen in 30 years of watching Washington as an adult. It's not about the belief system or the politics, it's about working the system. They're playing you like a fiddle and it's working like clockwork. If you keep up the fawning, you'll have a worse situation than you did with Bush and Iraq. If you don't learn from your own history, you are doomed to repeat it.
I'm basically saying all of this for myself. I really think that journalism is dead and I'm just watching a rerun. You're going to follow Obama all over hell and back and then years from now, we'll get another 'oh no, where did we go wrong?' series of stories.
The public already knows. We can see this coming as sure as those clouds signal rain. Deja vu all over again. Only this time, we might literally go bankrupt. Both personally and nationally.
Your politics don't make you better reporters, your poltics are a dangerous filter for the public. We don't want the filter, we want the FACTS. Personal political viewpoints are a handicap, a hinderance not a help.
The media has killed itself. Only the media can resurrect itself.
Posted by JR on Fri 8 May 2009 at 11:08 AM
Walter Pincus's 'payroll journalism', being tied to Operation Mockingbird, means that he's willing to toss his journalistic ethics aside whenever the CIA's needs -- and not the people of the United States' needs-- call him.
His biography, at
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/MDpincus.htm
shows him putting out a false report during Iran/Contra, attacking Sy Hersh for 'advocacy journalism' (while he himself is practiciing same for the CIA ?), attacking Gary Webb's Dark Alliance story-- and Webb was later proven correct.
As a commenter above put it succinctlly, Pincus is the problem.
Posted by Gene Koch on Fri 8 May 2009 at 11:16 AM
MSM journalism has been sick but it died in the last year. The newspapers have been writing for each other instead of for the readers. THe Pulitzer prize is given to 'journalists' by journalists and a few journalisn school members thrown in. It has beconme an echo chamber repeating the same storyline rather than facts. Research consists mostly of asking what their fellow journalists think.
Mr Pincus is a Democrat, proud of it, and it shows. The news has become a story with a definite story line couched in fluff and fuzzy facts.
If journalists had held true to their mandate as the fourth estate and watchdog for the public, their economic problems would have been nil and only those out of step with technology would be suffering.
There is a lot of garbage on the internet but there is also a great ability to find the truth.
When Dan Rather and CBS ran the TX Nathional Guard story it was an expert on typsets that was able to start the dismantling of the story. Many times I have been able to correct something written in a newspaper or on TV with a few minutes research. Something the journalist should have done himself.
Instead of the high water mark with Watergate, it may have been the beginning of the end when journalists felt that they could effect events themselves instead of reporting and informing.
Posted by Gary F on Fri 8 May 2009 at 11:29 AM
An interesting point made by Pincus is that Graham and Meyer at the Washington Post would have been happy with a 7 percent profit margin, as I believe most businessmen would be today.
Non-profits are allowed a 12 percent profit margin if I'm not mistaken.
So, why don't newspapers (if they fear for their survival) become local non-profit corporations and take the money, which is ruining the business of truth-telling, pretty much out of the equation ?
BTW, are there any not-for-profit news organizations out there today with newspapers ? Maybe these could be what saves the dailly paper. I for one am hooked on my morning paper and a cup of coffee.
Posted by Gene Koch on Fri 8 May 2009 at 11:59 AM
Mr. Pincus; a job well done. I agree on your assessment to give the readers what they want in order to sustain and/or create readership; actually, to be more precise, "purchasership". After all, reading without buying is what you can do on-line, right? But, determining what your readers want is the challenge. You rightly indicated the poor direction in making multi-edition spectacular, journalistic wonder pieces. My local paper, which I unsubscribed to and now use their daily email headline reporting feature, is 75% advertising. The classifieds are nearly non-existent and barely useful, at best. The articles, as you mentioned, are parroted from press releases, virtually buying all that is presented to them. And, there is no "equal time", but hugely-liberally-biased regurgitating of what's on the AP or other services. So, how to save the newspapers by giving the readership what it wants? What I want is real classifieds, whether to find a job or a car; real un-biased (as much as possible) news of all persuasions, not just the "negative news sells" news; and real local business and economic reporting alongside the "touchy-feely" community event news. I would then re-subscribe. More precisely, give me something of value and which I cannot get for free.
Posted by Faceplow on Fri 8 May 2009 at 12:00 PM
I'd love to see old Walter respond to the comments here, most of which were probably not what he expected. If you do, I'd also like to have you comment on how journalists like you seem capable of moving between journalism and government jobs. Obama could put out his own paper with all the reporters who've gone to work for him, of course, since all the papers fawn over him, there is no reason for him to need to do that. I once had an offer to go to work in a PR job and an old editor told me, "once you go flack..."
Posted by flyoverland on Fri 8 May 2009 at 12:15 PM
I like and greatly respect Walter Pincus, but economically I think he still doesn't get what the web has done to his industry.
The threat isn't in the competition for content consumers (who we once called readers) -- radio and TV have been and still are a far more serious challenge in that regard. The revolution is in the way the Internet has completely busted the old "tied services" model of newspapering, in which if you wanted the classified ads you also had to buy the news, sports, business and "living" sections -- and the retail display ads that went in them.
But Craig's List and Monster Board has taken the classifieds, specialized web sites offer faster, more obsessive coverage of specific sports than newspapers can ever hope to match, financial news is being given away by virtually every financial services provider in the world AND Yahoo and Google, and so on.
In other words, every section, every feature, every column in the paper now faces direct competition -- and has to pay its own freight. Which pretty much destroys the revenue model the entire edifice and its 20%+ profit margins was built upon. Readers may still be willing to pay for the things they like, but that may not be enough to keep a complex, cost-heavy enterprise like a daily newspaper alive.
Some will survive I guess -- once the absurd debt loads predicated on 20% profit margins have been restructured and/or defaulted away. But whether that ultimately means fewer and better newspaper, as opposed to just fewer, is kind of doubtful at this point.
Posted by Peter Principle on Fri 8 May 2009 at 12:20 PM
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/american-excess--a-wall-street-trader-tells-all-1674614.html
Many thanks, Adam.
Walter, while I agree with the premise of your essay, I would make two points: becoming friends of politicians is what allowed the Bush white house to funnel their PR bullshit directly to the front page.
Secondly, don't downplay the role of the dumbing down of America in the demise of newspapers. Most Americans can only be bothered with "news" of the latest person to get booted off American Idol, or how their sports team is doing this season. And please... tell it to me in a Twitter-esc 140 characters or less.
Posted by Robert on Fri 8 May 2009 at 12:39 PM
The kind of journalism Pincus is talking about was practiced by Paul Krugman in the early days of the Bush administration when he was virtually alone in pointing out that the adminisitration's claims about what was in its budget had nothing to do with the actual numbers. He was shunned by his peers and smeared by the Times' outgoing omnibudsman.
It hasn't been that being an expert in one's field simply wasn't just being done anymore. It was that the few people who did their jobs were regarded as weirdos and treated as outcasts. The news culture among reports became sick as well.
At least the Nobel committee appears to be on that ball.
Posted by Michael Fonda on Fri 8 May 2009 at 01:04 PM
This message might be tough medicine for some in the business. Introspection, oftentimes, is not a pretty thing.
However, I live in the "real world" which is non-partisan. It's where people keep looking for work, keep looking for hope to keep their home mortgage, keep hoping the greedy will get their comeuppance.
This real world is said by some to have a liberal bias, "left of center," wherever "center" is. A reporter's responsibility is to relate these stories in a factual manner and perhaps to analyze the "why."
This results in news people need to read, crave to read and then take action for a better world.
In the final wrap, it's all about the reader. Always has been, always will be. --G
Posted by Greg McClure on Fri 8 May 2009 at 02:01 PM
The range of comments is striking. Liberals think Newspapers are too conservative, Conservatives think newspapers are too liberal. I think the decline of newspapers started when newspapers stopped lacking identity. Our country is so politically polarized that is it any surprise that a complete partisan network like FoxNews gets the best ratings. Newspapers need to figure out that instead of trying to cater to everybody's viewpoints, they should carve out a niche in the market and cater to it.
A local rag that is explicitly partisan will at least satisfy a portion of the regions populace. It may even get people that don't agree with their viewpoints to read what their "enemy" may be up to.
If local rags start identifying with something, and sell thesmelves as a liberal or conservative rag, they could be honest with themselves and in turn honest with their subscribers.
Posted by Sean Evans on Fri 8 May 2009 at 02:33 PM
Nice article, but you teased us with something ansd didn't follow-up: the impact of print journalists appearing on TV talk shows.
What do they need to do to get that access, are they paid and how much, how does that impact the paper's coverage of the elctronic media outlet, how do print jounralists compromise thmeselves to ensure additional invitations? etc.
Posted by Bob Griendling on Fri 8 May 2009 at 02:49 PM
Nice article, but you teased us with something ansd didn't follow-up: the impact of print journalists appearing on TV talk shows.
What do they need to do to get that access, are they paid and how much, how does that impact the paper's coverage of the elctronic media outlet, how do print jounralists compromise thmeselves to ensure additional invitations? etc.
Posted by Bob Griendling on Fri 8 May 2009 at 02:50 PM
The media has been sick for a long, long time, going back to the 60's. A banner year was 1968, where 2 examples stand out.
The 68 Tet offensive by the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese Army was, in reality, a huge defeat FOR THEM. The Viet Cong ceased to exist as a major force, the NVA lost 45,000 KIA, and the general uprising they hoped to achieve never happened. It was not only a tactical failure, but a strategic failure that cost the NVA years of rebuilding. Yet, Walter Conkrite was pontificating about what a great defeat TET was - to America at the time. And I (like many Americans) fell for it hook, line, and sinker. A decade later, ABC News broadcast their Vietnam Miniseries, including the report that TET was an American/ARVN defeat. This time, thanks to the analysis of the campaign by historians and not liberal activists, the outrage was so great at this misstatement of history, that ABC had no choice by to run an hour long rebuttal.
The other 1968 incident was the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, which "Uncle Walter" deliberately categorized as a "police riot" when in fact the entire thing was an orchestrated, coordinated with the broadcast media, left-wing propaganda event.
Then there were all those "advertisements" for gun control pretending to be news. The one that stands out in my memory is the video showing a police officer shooting at a watermelon with one of those "deadly assault weapons" finishing with a shot of the watermelon exploding. What the producers of that segment did NOT show was that the video of the watermelon exploding didn't involve a "deadly assault weapon" at all, but a standard .357 revolver using standard police-issued hollow-point ammunition. The goal was to manufacture consent (cf. Noam Chomsky) to ban AR15 pattern rifles by convincing the public that such rifles are so powerful that they cause their targets to explode.
While the corpse called "Journalism" stopped twitching during this last election cycle, the death watch was 4 decades in the making. Activism and advocacy were the weapons that did you journalists in. Because you can't advance an "agenda" without lying either directly, or by omission.
Posted by A former newpaper reader on Fri 8 May 2009 at 03:22 PM
Fantastic article. As a recently laid off newspaper editor and reporter at an alternative weekly I've been watching this industry slowly kill itself for some time. It's sad that we've become so focused on recognition within our own industry and less focused on what our readers want and what our communities need.
The print publications that make it through this downturn are certainly going to be ones that embrace the changes happening in how people get their news and are the ones at the forefront of defining that in the future.
To write and report while suppressing an opinion is stifling and makes the newsroom a miserable place to be. The self censorship that is required of reporters (in and outside of the office) makes the quality of our work go down and in turn loses us readers and advertisers left and right.
Posted by Patricia Sauthoff on Fri 8 May 2009 at 05:05 PM
This ties in with a Derek Jacoby piece a few days ago in the 'Boston Globe', where he says that the problem is not the paper's 'liberal bias' but simply the economics of print (many comments had been received at the paper saying that the sender didn't care what happened to the paper, since it was so liberally biased).
My own take on it all: I became dismayed not by 'liberal bias' but by any bias at all. Of course there's no such thing as utterly pure objectivity, but advocacy journalism erected that sad fact into a Plan. The 'Globe' went whole hog for things 'liberal' starting at least as early as the 'busing crisis' of the early 1970s, perhaps reflecting - with a bit of the Pincus insight - the desire to be 'cutting edge' and to 'create' history rather than simply (!) 'report' it.
But after a decade of that, when the Republicans came in and politics became even more polarized, all the paper could do was extend the same 'advocacy' to the Republican agenda.
In the end, the 'Globe' wound up being wrong about busing and later unable to face the consequences of the whole thing, supported the Iraq War to 'balance' its approach, and played only a sensationalist-stenographer's role in the clergy sex-abuse crisis (despite the Pulitzers).
I don't think one can pursue both truly valuable reporting and 'commercial product' that 'consumers' want. The job of a paper is more like that of a public utility than it is a commercial business. The abandonment of such 'seriousness' was print-journalism's self-induced doom.
The desperate efforts of 'major' celebrity reporters (often inside the Beltway) to somehow erect their hugely diminished stature and competence into a glossy Plan is simply the bad icing on a crumbling cake long past its sell-by date.
Perhaps some of the now-wealthy journalists emeritus could pool their resources and set up a funded news organization whose mission would be to 'report' as best as that can possibly be done. 'Soft news' and the advertisers can all go ... elsewhere.
Posted by Joe Stevens on Fri 8 May 2009 at 10:09 PM
As a former journalist appalled by the profession's decline, I agree with much of this article. However, it's rather less black and white than an essay of this length can suggest..
For instance, solid reporting continues to occur at papers large and small across the country. Contrary to what Mr. Pincus says, I know, for example, of news stories that warned of the sub-prime mortgage treat years before the bubble's bursting.
Nevertheless, newspapers have been under increasing pressure to please their declining pool of advertisers and some of these stories never gained wider traction, even after seeing print.
But where advertiser pressure isn't a factor, the industry itself has been on a decades-long self-censorship kick. When I was a newsman, being contrary and pushy and aggressive in the newsroom was considered the mark of a committed journalist. Now, it's considered rude, insubordinate and just plain weird. Corporate publishing has evolved into corporate journalism, where rocking the boat increasingly is deemed not in the best interests of the organization or the community it serves. Which leaves populism to the fringe groups, themselves decreasingly worthy of close journalistic inspection.
One area where Mr. Pincus scores big is in his comments on beat reporting, especially where government is concerned. Government reporting used to be the forte of good newspapering. More and more it has become an unglamorous set of beats that the star system shuns in those remaining outlets that still support them. Without careful, diligent government reporting, the Fourth Estate abdicates its Jeffersonian role in setting a public agenda. Government that is not transparent and thus bad becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Print journalism has learned the worst possible lesson from electronic journalism and electronic media in general: namely, that process is more interesting than issues, and that the trivial and ephemeral are even more interesting. What the president of the United States puts on his hamburger is supposed to tell us more than what he puts on his policy docket.
Current reporting methodology too often amounts to feeding the reader a candy bar instead of a balanced meal: The reader gets a quick sugar high, but is soon left hungering for more. Temporarily, perhaps, that is a good sales strategy, but it's also lousy journalism, and all those empty journalism calories help produce lazy, sluggish readers, and, worse, lazy, sluggish reporters.
Posted by Ron Legro on Fri 8 May 2009 at 11:24 PM
In his piece on the state of the newspaper industry, Walter Pincus
>asserts that there have been no outstanding American journalists
>covering education. If by "outstanding" he meant famous, he is
>right. If he meant excellent, or significant, I very much beg to
>differ. Education reporters do the legwork, and the terrific
>writing, that sinks corrupt leaders and bad classroom teachers,
>exposes profiteering and cheating, and is now getting our nation's
>lawmakers to rethink No Child Left Behind. It is difficult work,
>and there are dozens of reporters around the country who do it very
>well every day.
Dale Mezzacappa
President
Education Writers Association
Posted by Dale Mezzacappa on Fri 8 May 2009 at 11:24 PM
The push for awards over beat reporting dates back to at least the 1980s, and the increasing belief that the only good newspaper article was the one that provided readers a single, coherent narrative. The only reward for good beat reporters was to be pulled off the beat for investigative journalism. A society of investigative journalism grew and held conferences and was the company in which every young reporter wanted to be. Reporters who enjoyed beat journalism were undervalued and often encouraged - both explicity and implicitly - to leave journalism entirely. Watergate was the instigator. Of course, as others have noted, the irony is that Watergate broke not as the result of any single, award winning narrative but the regular pain-staking drips and drabs of beat reporting.
Posted by John on Sat 9 May 2009 at 10:02 AM
Might have been a good article if it had been more honest and included a discussion of the lack of objectivity and the resultant manipulation of content by the media. The article infers that media is prone to manipulation, but does not engage in that itself. Either the author is naive or dishonest. Of course if the media is so capable of being exploited, naive might be right. In any event, we choose to get our information from other more reputable sources these days. As far as many of us are concerned, what media publishes must be verified because it has lost our trust.
Posted by Dave on Sat 9 May 2009 at 10:41 AM
Might have been a good article if it had been more honest and included a discussion of the lack of objectivity and the resultant manipulation of content by the media. The article infers that media is prone to manipulation, but does not engage in that itself. Either the author is naive or dishonest. Of course if the media is so capable of being exploited, naive might be right. In any event, we choose to get our information from other more reputable sources these days. As far as many of us are concerned, what media publishes must be verified because it has lost our trust.
Posted by Dave on Sat 9 May 2009 at 10:43 AM
Regarding Mark Seibel's fine post on monthy unique users: I share his puzzlement on how that monthly total came to be regarded as a gold standard statistic, when an average on DAILY unique users, or readers, would measure up much better with standard newspaper circulation efforts.
Posted by David Beard on Sat 9 May 2009 at 05:49 PM
Mr. Pincus seems to be operating under the delusion that the press has and is playing, hour by hour, day by day, an activist role.
Mr. Pincus seems to be so deep inside the bubble he cannot see the bubble.
Mr. Pincus needs to get out more.
Posted by vanderleun on Mon 11 May 2009 at 05:55 PM
Thoughtful article. Much better than any of the other recent ones I've read regarding the state of the newspaper industry. The only gripe I have with it is the flawed math regarding unique website visitors, but that was covered in other comments.
If I may offer one opinion:
One part of the problem is that there is that some of the people in this country are taught to disbelieve anything reported in the news. Any error on the part of the news media just confirms this distrust.
See the commenter above who responds to this article as "unmitigated liberal bullshit." Appealing to this kind of reader with he-said/she-said stories won't work. You end up taking the edge off of a story in the hopes of making a reader out of someone who will never become one anyway, and you miss an opportunity to better inform the readers you do have.
When my local paper prints a story that presents both sides of the evolution/creationism argument as if they were both equally valid science, they sacrifice the truth in an attempt to appear "balanced." In the end, no one is better off for it and the paper does not add any value.
Posted by Rob on Tue 12 May 2009 at 04:36 PM
Many to most of my friends get their news from the WSJ and The Economist. For a 'trusted source' may of my son's teachers reference The Economist. Why? The focus is on quality journalism and analysis of issues. They weigh many sides and come up with a general sense of balance. You would never say that of the New York Times.
The journalist are not named in The Economist stories. I think that is the key to their success. The egos are contained and the personal politics minimal.
I will disagree with one part of this article. Prior to the Iraq war, there were may issues the press did not want to deal with, given the institutional hatred of the Bush administration. Corruption in the UN and the Food for Oil program were not discussed, as the press has propped up that organization for years. That distrust of the press allowed the Bush administration to call the shots with many people.
With reporters trying to be rock stars, you cannot trust them to be objective or even honest. Watergate was the beginning of the end for the trust in the press.
The industry created the problem, now they the business is failing. I would submit it failed the battle for public trust many years ago, to pursue the award status.
Posted by Randy Cook on Tue 12 May 2009 at 09:55 PM
Interesting article. I used to love to sit down with a paper but no longer subscribe.
The trouble is conservatives think media is liberal biased, while I distrust papers altogether as corporate mouthpieces. But whatever your viewpoint in that respect, the fact is that the web overshadows everything. I read this article on the web, not in print. And that says it all...
Posted by AlpineBob on Fri 15 May 2009 at 08:37 AM
Odd to hear Mr. Pincus can't think of an outstanding education journalist considering Jay Mathews works for the Washington Post.
Posted by Ron Charles on Wed 20 May 2009 at 12:57 PM
The newspapers are failing because you LIE and cover up. Its a shame we have to rely on overseas papers to get stories you people refuse to report because it would look bad for your Messiah.
That is the #1 reason I stopped buying the paper. I got sick of the biased coverage.
Posted by Barry on Sun 31 May 2009 at 11:12 PM
This episode of Orwell Rolls In His Grave
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fr12kp5YXE&feature=PlayList&p=49055550A716E9CE&index=3
shows precisely why the media in general, including print media, is in such disrepute. The corruption and pandering to the wealthiest and corporations has not gone unnoticed by the general public.
It seems only those with a 'flair for the obvious' in your business dare tell the emperor that he isn't wearing any clothes.
Posted by Gene Koch on Tue 9 Jun 2009 at 07:49 PM
Somehow it strikes me as ironic that, in the absence of a free press, about half the commenters to Pincus' post would be carted off to a gulag. The only question is which half.
@ Walter Pincus - This piece was thoughtful and well-written. My only quibble was the idea that journalists should somehow cozy up to politicians. H. L. Menken, never one to avoid being blunt, once said something to the effect that "the only way for a reporter to look at a politician is down." And if you consider that in the context of Menken in general, you get a sense that the press needs to deal, professionally, with politicians as often-adversarial equals. It's also not a matter of being an ivory-tower elite; it's a matter of being set aside as a fair witness for readers.
@ Bill Dedman, Mark Seibel, and others - Raw data from server logs is typically based on individual TCP-IP network addresses. What this meams is that if I share a machine with someone at work it counts as one "unique" even though it may involve two different site visitors. Conversely, if I view a newspaper website on one machine at work and go home and visit the site from another machine, it counts as two uniques even though I'm the same person. Uniques are functional enough to be useful only to a certain degree. Added to uniques are other metrics, such as Nielsens, which paint a somewhat clearer picture. Nationally and in the aggregate, it's possible to draw the following current, and very rough, rule-of-thumb estimates from newspaper websites in the major markets:
Take the population of a given market, and a market's newspaper site visitors will be about 20-25 percent of the population.
Visitors are coming into a newspaper's site roughly two or three times per week, and visiting two or three pages.
The amount of time visitors spend on each page is not much: about one minute.
This is iffy, but what also seems to be happening is that visitors are mostly coming into the main page of the paper and not being linked from elsewhere into anything specific.
@ Greg VA - You're not the first person to notice the seeming organization of conservatives to pile on when it suits their agenda. It also wouldn't surprise me to learn that many were commenting, not from conviction, but because they were getting paid. And what's up with the caps-lock thing?
@ A former newspaper reader - I understand your frustration, buddy, I really do. On the other hand, I also think you're making the mistake of both shooting the messenger, and confusing political strategy with military tactics. The point is that there weren't supposed to be 45,000 North Vietnamese around to be KIA during Tet of '68. We were supposed to have already gotten beyond that; nor was the ability of the troops in the field to have the will to engage a critical question.
The strategic lesson of Viet Nam is that we simply backed the wrong dog in the fight. Instead of letting the country plot its own destiny after Dien Bien Phu, we decided to game the Geneva Accords for the benefit of a greedy and corrupt regime in Saigon. That the war probably had less to do with halting the spread of communism and more to do with something like oil leases in the South China Sea was also understood down to the level of a grunt humping a rucksack. That I know this to be true is because I was there.
The other thing I sometimes wonder about is why it is that some of us had to spend Saturday nights listening to the whistle of incoming mortar rounds while others such as George W. Bush got to spend the weekend soaking up suds with fratboy friends. Which would be neither here nor there except for when the fratboy is later placed in a position to bang the drum and send other kids in harm's way.
For the most part, I think Cronkite got it right about the progression of the war. I also draw no conclusions from events surrounding the Democratic Convention in Chicago in 1968. One person's "appropriate response" can be another person's "police brutality." That the cops went over the top is probably true, but it's also true that the out-of-control behavior of protesters had sometimes more to do with impressing peers than it did with working for rational political change. There was a lot of both going around at the time.
Posted by Perry Gaskill on Sun 21 Jun 2009 at 09:34 PM
Bill Dedman is correct about the unique visitors stat. Web stats can be confusing and are easily misinterpreted. We used to talk about "hits", which has tremendous potential to be misleading. "Visitors" is also misleading, because if the same person comes back twice, they get counted as 2 visitors. So we use unique visitors - this attempts to count how many *different* people came to a site. Of course, it uses the computer's ID to accomplish this, so it's not perfect. If you share a computer with your wife and you both visit the NY Times, you will be counted as one unique visitor. But if you read the NY Times at home and also on another computer at work, you will be counted twice.
Posted by Ryan Biggs on Thu 2 Jul 2009 at 10:58 AM
When readership falls we have the same development as occurred when Hurst was battling Pulitzer. The convenience of Yellow Journalism gives yet an embattled industry something to sell papers. Although, most citizens abhore sensationalizm they still like to read it. We live in a society that now tries to manufacture the future through the use or mis-use of different forms of media.
Posted by dlc on Tue 17 Nov 2009 at 10:19 PM
. . .
2 solutions to journalism in crisis:
1. put a cartoon on every printed page. Time magazine used to have lots of cartoons and as a 10 year old, I got hooked on reading it for the funny pictures.
2. sms text. a $3 sms text gets you access online for 30 days. 3 4 30 or some such nonsense. This should permit access to multiple news sites.
meantime ... www.journalismincrisiscoalition.blogspot.com
Posted by jason brown on Tue 5 Jan 2010 at 02:20 PM