Here at the American Copy Editors Society convention in Minneapolis -- one of the journalism conventions that wasn't canceled this year, unlike those that cater to our owners and publishers -- attendance as of today is 250. Attendance last April -- in Denver, also not in the middle of a megalopolis -- was just over 300. That's right, in the worst economy in decades we have 80 percent of the atttendance we had last year.
In the midst of all this madness, copy editors are spending their own money -- their own time -- because they want to do their jobs better. Because they want to learn and practice their craft. And because they want to continue to contribute to the role journalism plays in America. Sessions today have covered Twitter and online ethics; sessions to come will cover blogging and search engine optimization; and there are sessions that are, as we say, platform-agnostic. And yes, there are some sessions that center on that old warhorse, the print newspaper.
And this takes place amid the Bloody April at Baltimore, which brought the ax down on a former president of our group, John Early McIntyre, as well as any number of copy editors; and that same ax is being wielded throughout Sam Zell's empire, as Charles Apple here makes clear, because we, the journalists trying to better our craft, are seen by Tribune Co. as the equivalent of photoengravers and stereotypers, redundant production pieces to be eliminated.
If you have followed this blog, you may remember that -- unlike the journalists who were offended that Zell told a photographer to fuck off, and that his aide, a radio guy, wrote hippy-dippy rock-and-roll memos to we sophisticated newspaper types -- TTPB asked that attention be paid to Zell's points -- that newspapers can be arrogant and detached, that newspapers assume that readers should know what the newspaper is doing without being told, that newspapers do not focus on their communities. And the power of imaginations was set loose in many redesigns. Not everyone liked them, but they were honest tries to reinvent the newspaper.
And the recession hit, and Zell filed for bankruptcy, and now his attitude has changed. Bad investment; gut it; at the same time, hold onto it a while longer, because it'll be worth more at the end of the year than it is now. All those redesigns, all that rethinking about what works best in Orlando or Fort Lauderdale or Newport News; throw them out and use templated pages from Chicago. You don't count, and neither does the reader.
Sam Zell, you could give another fuck about what TTPB thinks, so that's not the point. You don't stand revealed to the world today, though, as just a businessman who made a mistake. Businessmen make mistakes, and you have admitted you made one by buying Tribune Co. in a package so heavily leveraged that the end of the lever could not be seen. Mistakes happen. But by telling your newspapers to connect with their communities, by telling your journalists to embrace new ideas, and then within a year trashing what they have done and inserting lowest-common-dollar journalism, you simply show yourself to be a hypocrite. You are not a young man, and your place in history is assured.
I feel bad for those who lost their jobs, many longtime colleagues among them; but I feel worse for people who still need to work for Tribune Co.; and the people I feel the worst for, honestly, are those among the top editors and publishers who know better, and who 10 months ago put their shoulders to the grindstone to make journalism and their news organizations better, and who need today to try to do their jobs ethically and support their families and plan their own careers while living in what is clearly a rat's nest in which they can only salute, shut up and do what they are told. I'm sorry, Mr. Publisher, Ms. Editor, you didn't get to go to your conventions, but I am even sorrier that you are not here, seeing your fellow journalists working to better themselves -- at the same time that your company gives a giant finger to them. There are many people of, alas, little business competence in the history of our business, but few whose names simply stand for Bad -- the Frank Munseys who appear from time to time. It is some of our ill fate to have worked with a new member of that group.
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