David Simon on the Death of Newspapers: 'My Industry Butchered Itself'
Via Democracy Now!, David Simon, former Baltimore Sun reporter and creator of the HBO series "The Wire," testified Wednesday at a Senate hearing on the future of journalism. He warned that "high-end journalism is dying in America."
"And unless a new economic model is achieved, it will not be reborn on the web or anywhere else. The internet is a marvelous tool, and clearly it is the information delivery system of our future. But thus far, it does not deliver much first-generation reporting. Instead, it leeches that reporting from mainstream news publications, whereupon aggregating websites and bloggers contribute little more than repetition, commentary and froth. Meanwhile, readers acquire news from aggregators and abandon its point of origin, namely the newspapers themselves. In short, the parasite is slowly killing the host.
He points out that most bloggers aren't hanging out at City Hall or at cop bars, trying to cultivate sources:
"... High-end journalism is a profession. It requires daily full-time commitment by trained men and women who return to the same beats day in and day out. Reporting was the hardest and, in some ways, most gratifying job I ever had. I’m offended to think that anyone anywhere believes American monoliths as insulated, self-preserving and self-justifying as police departments, school systems, legislatures and chief executives can be held to gathered facts by amateurs presenting the task — pursuing the task without compensation, training or, for that matter, sufficient standing to make public officials even care who it is they’re lying to or who they’re withholding information from.
Well, yeah. But let me point out here that naive and inexperienced reporters are not unique to blogs. When I was a journalist, I used to run into neophyte Ivy League-grad reporters all the time, and I'd have to explain the simplest things to them. They were baffled when I'd call out some elected official for violating the state Sunshine Act: How did I know that? I'd carefully explain that reporters had attended all the public work sessions, a topic had never been discussed on the record, but there was just a unanimous vote in its favor - with no apparent discussion.
"Oh!" they'd say. But they didn't really understand, and didn't seem to care, either.
Simon also points out that old media can't completely blame new media for the financial pressures that led to its current state:
Anyone listening carefully may have noted that I was brought out of my reporting position in 1995. That’s well before the internet began to threaten the industry, before Craigslist and department store consolidation gutted the ad base, before any of the current economic conditions applied. In fact, when newspaper chains began cutting personnel and content, the industry was one of the most profitable yet discovered by Wall Street. We know now, because bankruptcy has opened the books, that the Baltimore Sun was eliminating its afternoon edition and trimming nearly a hundred reporters and editors in an era when the paper was achieving 37 percent profits.
In short, my industry butchered itself, and we did so at the behest of Wall Street and the same unfettered free market logic that has proven so disastrous for so many American industries. Indeed, the original sin of American newspapering lies in going to Wall Street in the first place.
When locally based family-owned newspapers like the Sun were consolidated into publicly owned newspaper chains, an essential dynamic, an essential trust between journalism and the community served by that journalism was betrayed. Economically, the disconnect is now obvious. What do newspaper executives in Los Angeles or Chicago care whether readers in Baltimore have a better newspaper, especially when you can make more money putting out a mediocre paper than a worthy one? Where family ownership might have been content with ten or 15 percent profit, the chains demanded double that and more. And the cutting began, long before the threat of new technology was ever sensed.
I would really love to sit down and have a beer with this guy.
Thomas Jefferson
---
We have a terrifying present promising an even more terrifying future.
How will we know in the future the types of terrible truths the journalists of the past uncovered with unheralded bravery?
statusquObama, change you can only pretend in
Simon makes great points. The newspaper industry is going through the same crisis here in Canada with the consolidating of media outlets. It does make me sad as I've always been a big newspaper reader but I've now seen the result of the cutbacks: the dumbing down of news stories and the focussing on the "if it bleeds, it leads" stuff. Lately, I've just been buying newspapers for the New York Times crosswords.
Where are the new generation of Sy Hershes going to come from?
I do not think profit is a dirty word. I own a small business that for years netted about 20%. During these tough economic times we are down to about 10% and happy to have it. I can not imagine what would have happened if some big company had bought us out. Would 10% been enough for them or would they have had massive layoffs? I am pretty sure I know the answer to that one. I also know that because we have kept our people as satisfied as possible we will be in a position to grow when things turn around. This is a luxury I did not have when I was in the corporate world.
mostly illiterate. Images, gossip and sound bites have replaced imagination, comprehension, and thinking.
Just like they replaced graphic design, now every moron thinks they can place text and graphics into something and call it great, even if it looks like complete shit! And they do not even care. Hee, it's free, and motherfucking crap!
God, i hate it!
Bite my shiny metal ass.
http://www.startalkradio.net/
the general public "publishing".
I remember when "desktop publishing" came along and designers decided they could become typesetters. Fine typography is becoming a lost art. What once was beautiful now generally looks like crap and most new designers don't even know it, or appreciate it when it's pointed out.
same concept as light bulbs replaced gas and candlelight and the automobile replaced the horse and buggy.
When I was a kid the only computers I had were cardboard box layouts I drew analog dials and steam gauges on never dreamed I would have a personal computer.
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/BUSINESS/05/07/mu...
The first thing to go was the competition. Once there was no compition, they started maximizing profits. That is what corporations do. Investigarive reporting was the first to go because it was the most expensive. Stories were edited so that no advertisers were offended. Newspapers became wire stories, fluff pieces, and advertising. To the reader they eventually became irrelevant.
which will make it more difficult for the small players when they write in new rules to benefit the big boyz.
there's no journalism. Our rag here in Las Vegas also has an editorial writer that has a huge hate-on for teachers (and generally anyone that works as a public servant)and the paper regularly posts pretty right-wing letters. We were not interested in having them be able to count us as subscribers, I can't imagine that my husband and I are alone. It would not break my heart one little bit to see the Las Vegas Review Journal bite it.
making a living in our culture was supplanted by making a killing, having a devastating result on most things good in America. Short term thinking versus long term thinking. Hopefully, there's time to turn it around.
We're going to have to change our lifestyles into an epoch of quality and purpose.
I worked for the Star Tribune for 25 years as a mid-level manager in circulation. The downfall of newspapers are their own fault. For years they ignored local news, and went for flashy headlines and wire service news, instead of giving people something that the internet is not very good at and cable news also ignores. Newspapers missed the boat when it came to doing something that only they could have done, and that was put a product at the customers door. We could have delivered anything with the newspaper to the customers door, something that could have been a gold mine with advertizers. Short term profits won out, and we now see the end of local newspapers.
diamondmc
people can collaborate on stories and fill in missing details.
The old adage of 'connecting the dots', agreed you still need primary news sources and insiders feeding the info nerds and the hordes.
This collective approach to stories can work both ways to the advantage of both newspapers and hard news bloggers.
We stopped buying the Chicago Tribune - and any other paper - over ten years ago.
For decades the Chicago Tribune force-fed us self-serving corporate conservative swill. When they made Mona Charon a regular, and then hired Kass to replace the legendary Mike Royko --- we had had enough.
For us the problem went beyond the internet access to news (especially so long ago) - it was a content issue. Their editorial page was enough to make any liberal vomit.
I have no sympathy for them.
*
different city. And, I would venture a guess that your liberals are more inclined to read their news than soak it up off of the television, where you really don't have to think much. My brother and sister-in-law also stopped the Arizona Republic for similar reasons.
If you watch Mr. Simon's show the wire, from episode one to the end of the series it was a great show that took on some really forward thinking issues.
There was a season where the police commander designates an area where drugs are legal in an experiment with legalization. Next season same commander goes to work in a school and they really brought home the education failures overall but it Baltimore in particular.
After that they dealt at length with the newspaper issue. A hot shot reporter starts faking stories about a serial killer to get ratings and promoted while they shut down the crime desk and real reporters with corporate buyouts.
I'm sad the show is over, but it is nice to hear from mr simon.
I remember reading about Yellow Journalism ever since grade school. I also had some WW2 newspaper clippings a prior resident left in my attic that left me feeling dumber for having read them... I've read writing by Emma Goldman and other critics of those times, and books such as a People's History of the US. What I have to ask is, when was it really any better?
I think that maybe from the first video images of the Vietnam War to the investigative reporting that led to the downfall of Nixon, those may have been a golden era for traditional media.
But that doesn't mean that something is necessarily lost with nothing else gained. We've gone through at least 30 years of journalistic decline, but now the internet has come along. It's arguable that Obama would have never been elected without the internet and the type of grass roots organization that is possible today was never feasible before. The internet has given a whole new power to word of mouth that I think is much more significant than even the best investigative journalism ever was.
The internet has in fact changed the way politicians talk on public record - time after time, politician after politician was destroyed by simple lies and contradiction that can be easily discovered with an internet search. Every journalist in the world can't even come close to the vetting process of millions of internet readers empowered by YouTube and Google. Instead of journalists with high level access reporting on big crooks in high ranking places, I believe and hope that in the future, public scrutiny will prevent the scumbags from attaining power in the first place.
Comparing that day in radio, to what passes for news and daily radio/TV today is heartbreaking.
http://www.archive.org/details/Complete_Broad...
I get all my info from the internet. A lot of it comes from youtube and video.google.com documentaries which have nothing to do with the mass media tv, radio, newspaper, or magazine. It's all original material from independant sources!
This guy's rationalizations are the exact reasons why mass media is dying. Biased, inaccurate, propaganda from the corporations, for the corporations, by the corporations.
Where else can you see the whole monthly AMEX bill for Bernie Madoff?:
http://www.askbutwhy.com/2009/05/bernie-madof...
Your "sourcing" can often be crap when you get your "news" from sources that the "infotainment" mass media is presenting to the American public. Sources nurtured from years of overseas staff bureaus that are now defunct can lead to dubious reporting and unreliable sourcing, among many other things. Not everyone can cull reliable information from the innernets
Radix Omnium Malorum Avaritia
the internet, with all of the dubiousness and crap through which I must wade, rather than our hometown paper any day of the week. Newspapers, for the most part, are a joke.
Even worse the lack of information the American public receives when professional writers and journalists who have developed years of relationships and sourcing no longer are heard because newspapers realized it was easier to cut staff and churn out crap is the fact that the vacuum is being filled with disinformation.
Americans are, sadly, getting dumber by the day
Radix Omnium Malorum Avaritia
just the way the Corptocracy wants it?? An uneducated populous and a non-existent free press is the perfect prescription for the end of democracy.
"Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of Stupidity" - Frank Leahy
This is all by design.
Radix Omnium Malorum Avaritia
those at the top, doesn't it? They're the ones who have the most to gain from the death of serious journalism.
We gutted one of the most important instruments of a functioning democracy to the altar of the market logic. I say "we", because a majority of us have believe, and still believe we can become "rich", hence, we'd better "not interfere" with the unfettered money.
The thing is, history shows that money has this recurrent habit of concentrating instead of diffusing throughout society.
When locally based family-owned newspapers like the Sun were consolidated into publicly owned newspaper chains, an essential dynamic, an essential trust between journalism and the community served by that journalism was betrayed
Radix Omnium Malorum Avaritia
Hope you're reading this. It's been a while from the roach hotel days.
You might remember me as the guy who lectured you on not understanding the first thing about journalism at a certain college newspaper. Well, I admit I was wrong -- even though you did steal my girl.
Anyway, I enjoyed your take down of the free marketeers -- especially your choice of venue to do it. Let's face it, the U.S. Senate isn't exactly a hotbed of FDR progressives, 2006 notwithstanding. As Roger Dawltry put it, I hope we don't get fooled again.
I do miss your wit and verbal aggression. Your insights on the demise of journalism are priceless and right on target. One point I thought you could have made, though it didn't fit your theme, was that journalism is also suffering from a lack of readers. With 40 percent of Americans believing that we are living in the end times, I fear Mr. Mencken was correct in predicting mankind's inexorable return to the primordial slime on the down escalator of religion. Newspapers seem to me one of the few life preservers available to us, but they can only do so much on the Titanic.
Your old roomate,
Steve H.
Its going to take something special to revive the dying newspapers, not all of them are gasping their last, there are ones doing reasonably well.
A little thing called real news and content, coupled with reader interest might work.
Whenever some rightwing nut starts spewing that free market bullshit, I point out how ignorant they are, and generally have people laughing at them in seconds. I also let them know how clueless they are.
I can't stand listening to these dumbfucks anymore. And why is it, the ones who spew this shit the loudest; are guys in their late 20's or 30's who make about $8 an hour, have no benefits - but fancy themselves Wall Street tycoons some day. WTF is that all about?
If I were a psychopath, I would join the republican party, and get in on the gravy train taking the Teabircher morons to the cleaners.
he is right that the industry butchered itself as a result of going after the mighty dollar
he is wrong that the internet cannot reform itself into becoming a primary news source
there are blogs that are working hard on establishing beat reporters
this will become more prevalent as the understanding of how to advertise and market is expanded
we are viewing an industry in its infancy...but one that has had a huge impact on the dinasour media...more than just in loss of revenue
most papers now post on online edition...in order to keep up with what the blogs can do, they have started podcasting and adding video content to many stories
and if you want to watch simon's views on what happened to the newspaper industry, and how it does have an impact on both local,state and fed gov....watch the 5th season of the wire...its brilliant
To some extent this is true. Right and left bloggers do tend to rely on each other for sources and perspectives -- not many blogs are comprised of professional investigative reporters.
But the business model of newspapers and the content of their reportage should not be conflated.
"Real News" has a zip and generates the interest of the reader. How many thousands of newspapers all parrot the same "news", much of it now thinly-disguised propaganda, and as such, utterly boring. Nothing to sink your teeth into, nothing to connect you in any real way with what's being reported.
And there's a lag in the thinking of the behemoth news organizations, a failure to recognize that the age of technology has made the purchase of their product, newspapers (and magazines), extremely inconvenient. A newspaper is just not worth the trouble when the flick of a switch on a laptop or Blackberry can provide the same information, minus finding a vendor, making a small purchase, and carrying around a fat package of smudgy papers around with you and getting rid of it when you've read it.
There may be grousing about the blogs not having an investigative or standard reporting structure and repeating what they've seen elsewhere, but damned if I see much difference on the newspaper scene. It is really exciting when a newspaper actually publishes verifiable ground-breaking news, but it's pretty rare.
So until newspapers recognize that the content of their publication is what sells their publication and they'd better go on-line for their primary publication activity, they're going to continue to dwindle away into oblivion.
years ago...about when Bush was elected (cough cough) the first time, I had been a regular contributor to my local newspaper the St Paul Pioneer Press in the letter to the editor section. Suddenly they took none of my letters. I switched to the more 'liberal' Star and Trib and they published my letters for awhile.
One day I got a call from the newspaper itself. Some woman was verifying me. Never got another letter published. And guess what? I looked for my news elsewhere because I noticed that the news in my local newspapers was becoming stilted and bias. If you can't give me the news then close the damn door and don't let it hit you in the ass when you leave.
When they lost the readers like me they lost those that spark debate, that demand more, that look at the details, want accurate reporting, and admire good writing. It aint about advertising.
Jeanne
I understand that, as Simon says, you have to pay for good reporting but it became all about profit. I've watched America water itself down in mediocrity in the last twenty years. It was all for the sake of the stockholders. EVERYTHING has been damaged. This mentality came like a Katrina just blowing in and drowning everything, leaving a wasteland.
Jeanne
and, as posted above, it's not been about profit (which keeps the engine going), but about generating obscene profit.
As I like to recall, there was a self-proclaimed "neo-hippie" who had a group stenciling "lies" on newspaper distribution boxes in our metro. That was about the time Ronald Reagan got elected and four or five years before I had even a 300 baud dial-up to CompuServe at $14/hr.
Where did I get my news? Magazines like Mother Jones, Z and even Rolling Stone. International daily news from BBC shortwave. Frankly, the local "journalism" was as likely to come from weekly pulps like City Pages because they only had to keep the bars and escort services who were their advertisers happy instead of pimping for the local corporations and billionaires like the metro papers.
Just a load of B.S. on every front to say the internet killed newspapers. Newspapers filled their own pages with crap first and not everything on the internet is crap by a long shot.
Establish a check off box on IRS 1040's to allow tax filers to contribute to a national fund, to be used to underwrite operating deficits of regional and metropolitan newspapers that convert from profit making to none-profit making corporations.
Establish a not-for-profit funding organization similar in design to the United Way to operated as a national financier for participating newspapers.
Designate at least two eligible news papers in each SMSA region to operate as daily newspapers to report local and regional news, in addition to national and international news.
Designate at least two eligible newspapers to report on national and international news
Require each not-for-profit newspaper to pubish an on-line version of their product
Authorize all who contribute to the national fund via the IRS 1040 check off system to have open access to all on-line publications that make up the system.
Membership for existing newspapers will not be mandatory
but once a newspaper joins it must remain a participating member for at least five years.
that most newspapers represent corporations, shareholders, and lean republican. Thank god for the internet.
If the internet is mainly represented by Reslugs, which I don't believe for a second, then it's a matter of time before they fuck that up too like everything else the idiots do.
Faux Noise entertainment absolutely showed Americans what FAKE Journalism truely is after hearing them spew total lies, fabrications and hate monguering to their uneducated, ignorant, blind sheep. This daily crap powers Right Wing-Nut terrorists and killers.
Simon neglects to mention media consolidation and the politicizing of the fourth estate, how the media in general has ceased to be run for the public good, seen in much the same way as electric or water utilities.
He also does not mention that reporters today are not reporters, they are "journalism school graduates", meaning they learned how to be stenographers and to edit sound bites rather than ask probing questions and collecting facts. Reporters tell what happened, "journalism students" tell what they are told happened.
Some of the best most accurate reporting I read on hurricane Katrina at the time was from NOLA bloggers.
... but to be fair, the Ivy League has only one, maybe two, good J-schools, and only one of them might be considered top ten. So, cutting on said neophytes doesn't really add to your argument. J-schools rankings are dominated by public schools.
can save itself by reporting NEWS. Sometimes I see nothing but garbage in paper or on the front page. Report the real news, leave out the gossip and celebrity BS. I don't want to know which star has the cutest kid and how much their outfit costs.
Give us NEWS.
NOBODY 2012
... and it's the only reason why my local rightwing fishwrapper -- The Monroe Evening News -- continues to this day: it's an "employee-owned" rag exactly how the Gray family wanted it even though my father and Steve Grey got into some serious heated about debates on politics and economics which finally ended a few years before my father's death in 2003 when he finally had enough. He canceled our 20 year subscription with a small one sentence letter ("I've suddenly grown sick and tired of bankrolling the sprawling homes and pampered lifestyles of partisan, fake Christian, Republican newspaper publishers and the college funds of their hack journalist witless children who've repeatedly voiced their intentions clearly on the editorial page to reward me by privatizing my social security.") and instead bought The Toledo Blade for the remaining few years of his life.
I don't feel sorry for them, either. They've been extolling the so-called virtues of trickle-down Reaganomics for over 30 years before the fiscal, moral, ethical, spiritual, and FINANCIAL bankruptcy set in, forever discrediting themselves and their sorry fishwrappers into the memory hole of history with John Bolton's upper lip functioning as the push broom. What's happening to newspapers happened to broadcast radio and television with the repealing of The Fairness Doctrine and deregulation. They sowed those seeds. May they reap the brutal harvest.
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