Get Your Paper Here

As some of you might have realized from prior postings, I am a part of the newspaper industry. Not the writing or editorial side of course. I have neither the education nor the experience to write professionally for a newspaper (though this blog site is an attempt to work on the latter). Instead, I am involved with the equipment that gets the newspaper from the printing press to the loading dock (you know, the part where people sweat and get dirty). It has not been a bad living and having been part of it for more than 30 years, I'm not sure that I'm capable of doing anything else. As a consequence of this, I have a vested interest in seeing that this industry survives (at least as long as I do). Now having completed this preamble, I will now regale you with a piece of my own wisdom on the industry that I am a part of:
The newspaper of today is a lot like the Norma Desmond character in "Sunset Blvd". Once a beauty and a power to be reckoned with, she is now merely an over-painted trollop, with nothing but the memory of power and greatness. In a vain effort to seek past glories, she now sticks her nose in the air while prostituting herself to anyone who will listen, complaining when no one is paying attention her. It's funny and a little sad to watch, especially for those of us who play the part of one who still serves her.

The problem as I see it, is that I am part of an entire industry that attempts to live off of its past glories and may not understand its place in the new Information Age. More focused on the way the world was before the Internet and cable news networks, and on artistic awards like the Pulitzer prize, they have no sense of where their future might lie. Well for any of them who happen to be reading this, let me tell you something about your customers they you may not know or choose to recognize.

We don't care if you no longer have a Moscow, Beijing, or London Bureau, and don't need your on-site perspective from these places. Someone else with a faster response time has already filled us in, and their perspective is as valid as yours is.

We aren't buying your product because it has the most awards in or out of the media. The only one who remembers who Joseph Pultizer was is you. (Quite frankly,we are usually buying your product because it's the only one in town).

We don't need you to compete with MSNBC, CNN, Fox News, or even the local news shows. If you need to print what they have already told us, do so and give them proper recompense and accreditation, otherwise use a wire service and save the money. We need you to do what they can't for us.

1. We need you to cover the local news. Not just the news in the city of record, but all of the suburbs around it, and in depth. We need you to create the editions that tell us about every political gathering, sports competition, PTA meeting, and charity fund raising event. We want and need you to show us our kids, our leaders, and our neighbors and everything that we should be proud of them or worried about them for; and do it every day of the week.

2. We need to have you simply report the news, without attempting to spin every story that you cover to the editor's, the publisher's, or the owner's point of view. Take it for granted that by virtue of our ability and willingness to read the written word, that we are actually capable of forming our own opinions without your help, and understand that we are starting to resent you for shoving yours down our throat. Leave your editorial opinions in the editorial section.

3. We need you to go back to the investigative reporting that used to be your hallmark. Newspapers have the time now, and their journalists have the training to find out the dirty little secrets that those in power (both in government and in business) don't want us to know. You also have the time and page space to show us the details of such stories. (By the way that continued on page 8, 14, and 16 stuff is really annoying.)

Some have already begun to realize this message, and the benefits of such thinking. Paddock Publications in the Chicago suburbs is showing consistent increases in circulation while 95% of newspapers across the country decline, and competes successfully with the larger Chicago Tribune there because it aggressively uses local editions for each of it's markets. Here locally, the Toledo Free Press, a weekly publication, appears to be growing and profiting by concentrating on the very things that I am talking about, while the larger Toledo Blade continues down the industry's traditional time honored path (apparently to destruction).

Newspapers are no longer limited in the stories that they can best cover by the editorial deadlines of their past. Neither are they restricted in the size of a story that they can tell by the commercial breaks and time restrictions of their competition. It is far past time that they woke up and used that advantage. Their only limit in serving their future marketplace is that of their own imagination.

Recent technology changes in the printing industry have made everything that I am talking about not only possible, but fairly simple for to accomplish (shaftless printing presses and inserting machine capable of true demographic production come to mind). I am begging you therefore, before the newspaper becomes the media equivalent of the dodo bird, to find that place where you can best serve our needs and interests, and your own as well. I am begging you to find the path back to the prosperity and profitability that you desire. I am begging you to improve your business so that I can stay in mine!

(Sorry, if you were looking for something less self-serving here you came to the wrong place. I'm just a greedy bastard trying to maintain a standard of living here.)