THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, August 24, 1995 TAG: 9508230014
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A18 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Opinion
SOURCE: By RICHARD HARWOOD
LENGTH: Medium: 97 lines
One of our children once said it may be true that her behavior on occasion was obnoxious. But she was not to blame; it was her mother's fault for giving her the wrong genes.
We have a tendency in the news business to adopt that kind of reasoning when our own affairs take a bad turn. When a newspaper fails, for example, it isn't because it's an Edsel but because of the owners and their Philistine lackeys or because of an unappreciative market.
That's what we heard recently when New York Newsday folded for lack for patronage. No one seemed to wonder why this model of journalistic excellence failed to attract more than a handful of readers in a metropolitan market of 20 million people. It had assembled a large staff and recruited columnists who, supposedly, are household names in the Big Apple - Jimmy Breslin, Murray Kempton, Liz Smith, Mike Lupica. But the pulling power of these celebrated heavyweights was somewhat less than their employers might have expected. The paper's circulation when it shut down was less than 250,000, a poor fourth in a four-paper market.
A long time ago newspapers were managed and shaped from the top. They reflected the personalities, the political and economic interests, the prejudices, ethics or lack of thereof and the likes and dislikes of their owners. If they succeeded or failed, the credit or blame was easily assigned - to Hearst or Pulitzer. . .
Things don't work that way anymore. The newsroom of a daily newspaper, with few exceptions, is essentially an autonomous island ruled, by and large, by the journalists who inhabit it. They are dependent on the bean counters ``upstairs'' for their budgets, for the amount of newsprint at their disposal, for the definition of their areas of circulation, for needed equipment ranging from presses to computers and for the general care and feeding of their staffs. But they are generally free to shape the ``product.''.
If it succeeds, the journalists who produce it deserve much of the credit. If it fails, they deserve much of the blame, although you probably would not know that from reading the obituaries of dead newspapers. That is because they are written by journalists, not bean counters.
Failure in ventures such as New York Newsday has many possible explanations: The people are too dumb to appreciate a good buy. The competition is too entrenched. Advertisers are niggardly and so is the newspaper's management. Or, as in the case of New York Newsday, the staff seemed to be saying, ``Ten years is not enough time. Give us more time and more money, and we'll win the hearts and minds of the masses.''
Failure can have other roots. One possibility is that the journalists who are at fault learned their tricks by rote. They know how to do what they have always done but may not know how to do what they ought to be doing in different times and places.
We tend to believe that our concepts and definitions of ``news'' and good newspapering were more or less divinely inspired. Yet, there are volumes of evidence, much of it compiled in recent years by the Center for the People and the Press, suggesting that the people and the press live on different planets so far as their interests and values are concerned.
Nevertheless, editors of the evangelical bent (and there are many) insist on giving people what they ``ought'' to read, because it is ``good'' for them.
We do not know the extent to which these trickle-down theories of newspapering are factors in the death of daily newspapers. But we know what has happened in other industries unresponsive to changes in the marketplace. Detroit built automotive yachts long after the demand for compact cars was evident. Newspapers and their editors may also suffer from myopia. That may have been the case with Newsday. Its journalists set out to produce a tabloid that would be upscale and respectable, a la The New York Times. At the same time it would be jazzy and sexy enough to compete with the real, unapologetic tabs - The Post and The News.
Whatever the rationale for this ``product,'' it didn't work.
After losing a big chunk of the world market to Japanese and European competitors, Detroit learned that markets are not monolithic and that the range of demand is greater than A to B. So they now build everything from Cadillacs and minivans to pickups. Daily newspapers may understand that, but the range of their products is limited. Leaving aside a couple of tabloids such as the News and Post in New York, there are essentially only two models available. One model is represented by USA Today and its imitators. These papers rely on the heavy use of color, short and easy-to-read stories, a heavy dose of sports, columns of news briefs, lots of how-to information and bland opinion pages. Their ``entertainment'' value is emphasized.
The other model - an upscale, ``serious'' product - is represented by The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal and a handful of other metropolitan dailies. They try to entertain as well as inform, but information is their principal selling point. To succeed they require a critical mass of affluent and well-educated readers found in sufficient quantities only in a limited number of markets.
Are there empty niches newspapers of a different design - newer models, so to speak - can fill? If so, whose job is it to find these niches and design papers to fill them? If editors can't do it, as seems to have been the case with Newsday in New York, then I suppose we should get out of the way and let the bean counters do what they can do. MEMO: Mr. Harwood is a former ombudsman of The Washington Post. by CNB