If the Burlington County Times in 1967 was a typical newspaper, the way news releases got into the paper was simple. Someone opened the mail and gave the news release to someone -- the news editor or an assistant city editor. A really significant news release would be given to a reporter to follow up on and produce a story, but most were simply announcements of promotions, meetings, garden club officers and the like.
So the editor, using a pencil, whacked out a lot of the garbage, made the lede focus on what was being announced rather than who was announcing it, and gave it some sort of standard headline -- a 1/24/2 or the like. The edited news release, either still on its original paper or cut-and-pasted (using real scissors and paste) onto another sheet of paper, then went down the chute to the composing room, where a printer set it into type on a Linotype, a proofreader checked it and ordered fixes, and the typeset slug either went onto a page as dummied or sat in a bank to be used as filler.
And thus local newspapers in the 1960s could easily find themselves filled with lots of local news releases. They were easy to process and they filled spaces around the ads. They got local names into the paper with very little effort. And journalists wondered why they were taking up all this precious space with "K. of P. Installs Grand Master." Whether readers felt that way we probably do not know, because newspapers at that point did not often ask readers what they thought. Why should they? Everyone bought the paper.
Three things happened in the 1970s. One is that journalists' view of their newspapers changed. How can we publish that press release? It could be a lie. We need to check it out, and if we don't have time, we shouldn't run it. Why do we list the garden club officers but not the officers of the AME church women's organization? But for change to happen there has to be a push and a pull. The pull was to make the newspaper more journalistic.
The push was that there no longer was a composing room. Someone in the newsroom would now have to actually input these news releases into some type of computer system. At my first paper, where we used OCR scanners, they actually hired people to do this -- retype news releases and newsletters from "country correspondents" that previously were set in type by a printer so that they could be fed through a scanner that only read Courier 12 off an IBM Selectric typewriter. (Yes, I was one of those people.) But if most newspapers had a position, they were going to hire a reporter, not a typist.
The second element was that the design of pages became more precise with computers. Previously, you really had no idea how long a story would be in type; it was an estimate. Now the computer showed you the exact length. So there was no excuse to have a one-paragraph filler headlined "SIKHS WEAR TURBANS" at the bottom of your page. Doing layout, you were no longer dashing off pages and letting a printer figure it out; you were responsible for the whole thing. This was seen as good because it gave the newsroom control. And it had been determined that readers liked modular layout and no longer wanted the cacophony of thrown-together pages. (Not debating that they did. But does anyone remember the debates about "op width" that led to 14-pica columns for Action Line on A1? Why did that matter so much then and matter so little now? Did we solve that problem, or just get bored with it and declare it solved? And why does none of this stuff about readability seem to matter on the Web?)
Your job was a lot easier if you surrounded the ads with easily cuttable wire copy requiring one headline than if you had to put four local stories on the page -- particularly if it was no one else's job to input the local "stories" in the first place. The news editor had now become in part the pagination-desk editor and was no longer whacking news releases, and a person of his dignity certainly was not retyping them. Even if they were available, they had to be rounded up and attached to the page. That took time.
And the third thing was sectionalization. Until the 1970s many daily newspapers had one or two sections -- with the break page often being dominated by a department store's ad. (The start of the second section in The Times-Picayune was generally an ad for D.H. Holmes Co. In the San Francisco Chronicle, it was the City of Paris Dry Goods Co. running next to Herb Caen.) If there was a third section, it was something like the Chronicle Sporting Green or The Des Moines Register's Peach section, or a once-a-week item like Food. A typical paper, though, had two sections, with something like news, women's and editorials in the first, and news, sports, classified and comics in the second. Sunday, of course, was different.
This meant that everything in "news" was jumbled together, as pages had to be made up and moved on a set schedule to allow the pressroom to deal with the cumbersome process of making plates. So you would tend to close out pages with small newsholes early, even if they were A5 and A14, with what you had at the time. For many papers, this meant there was no distinction between local news and wire news. It all went everywhere. It was what you had.
For a lot of good reasons, many actually involving early determinations of reader preference and others involving that pivotal 1970s question of "What do we do with the Women's Page after 1960s feminism but while people still want their weddings listed," newspapers embraced sectionalization. The New York Times used this to break out of being the Old Gray Lady, and Gannett was a leader in developing the four-section plan. At most newspapers this was A section, Metro, Sports and Features. The advertising model was: Most advertisers wanted to be at the front of the paper, so the department-store ads and the other big guns went in the A section. Metro often was backed with classified, not just because not as many advertisers wished to be in the B section, but because classified was often led with obits (paid or not) and obits were clearly B section news. Sports (or Sports/Business) had enough agate to make up a C or D section, along with the tire store ads and the like, and Features would have ads from women's clothing stores and theaters, plus the comics. You could balance the sizes of the sections, roughly, which made it better for the pressroom.
What that meant in many papers, however, was that the A section was now devoted (past the front page) exclusively to wire news. Some papers tried to make the front section local and the second section national-foreign, but some readers resisted this even though it hadn't mattered when it was jumbled together. In that era when newspapers were the only real providers of national-foreign news, it just seemed wrong to consciously give run-of-the-mill local stories precedence over national politics and foreign intrigue. (We still hear this from some traditional readers today.) If you just stuck a page of local news in the middle of the A section, the reader who assumed all local news was now in the B section would miss it. And the B section usually did not have as much space as the A, because it did not have as many display ads. So the marginal local news was squeezed out. Also, you could kill off the A section pages early with wire copy from Asia or Europe that wasn't going to change, and make your flow goals.
Part of the reason that news releases and community news suddenly look attractive again on local-local Web sites is that the person in the community in effect becomes the printer -- posting their own news without the involvement of an editorial person.
Some papers did hand out stacks of news releases to reporters, who then complained how they were unable to do real stories while retyping news releases. Many papers tried to shepherd them into briefs columns or "hometown news" pages, where they often embarrassingly became the best-read items in the paper because they were short. But in those heady days money to hire reporters at some papers was flowing like wine, and those reporters turned out news stories that tended to get longer and whose trimming now involved negotiation, because we were past the bad old days of the evil city editor who whacked 30-inch stories to three grafs because there was only three grafs of news in them. We're all Halberstams on this bus.
This served the cause of journalism. Whether it turned readers away from newspapers, which were now more full of wire stories from Almaty and contained fewer easily digestible news nuggets about people you might know, is an open question. TV news improved and expanded as well. But overall circulation began its inexorable decline and people began telling us that they did not have time to read the paper. Our response was that they should adjust their priorities and make time, and that in fact we would give them even more to read.
Readers say in focus groups that they don't expect daily papers to provide chicken-dinner news, and then they buy weekly papers that provide chicken-dinner news and increasingly turn away from the dailies. But how the daily of 1967 got to the daily of 2008 is not just a story of increasing professionalism. Technological change always involves changes you don't even know are happening, and often involves changes that reader-customers don't like but you don't notice, because you are getting to do more of what you want.
Showing posts with label 1960s. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1960s. Show all posts
Monday, August 25, 2008
Thursday, August 21, 2008
The News in 1967 -- What It Was
The Burlington County Times in mid-October of 1967 ran its share of wire stories, but they were not many. They fell into three categories: Breaking news that had to get in; "evergreen" stories to fill up around the back-page ads; and short, non-essential stories to make up a page where something else ran short. Back in these days printers made up the page, using layouts for major stories and then filling the holes with whatever was available.
At my first job, we still made up pages this way; you would write "AE" for "all edition" on the dummy after you indicated what had to go on the page, and the printer would grab some filler copy to complete it. Dick Holden had been a copy editor at The Indianapolis Times and told about a new deskman there. The page next to the comics page had to be made up early, so the news editor told him to "fill it with type" and send the dummy down to the composing room. In a few minutes an angry foreman arrived in the newsroom. The dummy had come down with the entire page marked "Fill with type." What would you like, the foreman asked, an entire page full of one-paragraph fillers with heds such as "Rats in Sumatra"?
But the majority of the content of the BCT on this October Thursday was local. And here are the headlines:
Of course, the vast majority of these headlines are on news releases. The story on the Mount Laurel race track was a local breaking news story; the Burlington police chief's retirement was a local piece; the luncheonette story was an oddly-placed local feature on how a closed-campus policy at a middle school had ruined life for a small businessman; and there were the typical cops and courts stories.
There were no "blow the lid off" pieces, no "social trend" stories except for the possible luncheonette piece, no business stories as we know them, no health stories; none of the stories that so rile the conservatives when they complain about newspapers, about lesbians wanting to become Catholic priests or every inner-city shooting victim being an honor student, but no stories that would rile liberals either. And while the major local news stories -- the racetrack denial or the police chief -- were the usual 12-to-14 graf essays one sees today, the typical story, wire or local, was four to six paragraphs.
Using this collection of what today's journalists would see as unpalatably thin gruel and not what they wanted to get into the newspaper business to do, the Burlington County Times in nine years, in a market where it was competing with six larger dailies from Philadephia, Trenton and Camden, plus the occasional New York Times or Daily News sold on the newsstand, had managed to build its circulation from zero to 22,000. (And an amazing thing is that it is still competing with five of those six papers.) Willingboro was new, but Mount Holly, Pemberton, Burlington and Riverside were long-established towns without much growth. Moorestown was growing, but only Mount Laurel was a "new suburb."
Not that this is a playbook for 2008. But this content resembles much of what you would find on local-local Web sites or promoted as the sort of copy that now should go there. Local institutions. Local activities. Local names -- loads and loads of local names, even though many of them were simply of people saying, "Look at me!" All delivered in short nibbles -- you didn't have all day to read the paper, after all. And it resembles much of what many newspapers threw out of the paper in the 1980s, which was followed by circulation and advertising declines, perhaps related, perhaps not. Human nature does not change, but not running news releases didn't kill Pomeroy's.
But it wasn't just journalistic snobbery that led to this change. Technology played a major part. Providing our wash lady doesn't put my new straw hat in the soap suds and take all the color out of the ribbon, we'll move on to that.
At my first job, we still made up pages this way; you would write "AE" for "all edition" on the dummy after you indicated what had to go on the page, and the printer would grab some filler copy to complete it. Dick Holden had been a copy editor at The Indianapolis Times and told about a new deskman there. The page next to the comics page had to be made up early, so the news editor told him to "fill it with type" and send the dummy down to the composing room. In a few minutes an angry foreman arrived in the newsroom. The dummy had come down with the entire page marked "Fill with type." What would you like, the foreman asked, an entire page full of one-paragraph fillers with heds such as "Rats in Sumatra"?
But the majority of the content of the BCT on this October Thursday was local. And here are the headlines:
- State Denies Application for Mt. Laurel Track
- Pair Nabbed in Larcenies
- Crash Injures Woman Motorist
- Accident Claims Second Victim
- Rosh Hashanah Begins High Holy Days
- Pemberton Library Group Meeting Set
- 12 Motorists Grounded
- Willingboro Population Zooms
- Chief Retires in Burlington
- Rockets Paint Night Sky
- State Police Nab Bootleg Suspect
- Mt. Holly to Keep Log Cabin
- Medal Winner Group Speaker
- Repeater, 15, Going to Juvenile Shelter
- Lawyer Files Jail Charge
- Riverside Post Sets Installation
- Burlington County Joins Fight to "Let Freedom Ring"
- Tri-Boro Area News (a newsletter)
- Computer Education Future Reality? Moorestown Experimenting
- Church Schedules Autumnal Service
- McGuire Installs Employment Post
- Dental Society Plans Seminar
- Riverside Cubs Receive Badges
- Local PTAs to Hear Reading Coordinator
- Chiropractors Attend Seminar
- Knights to Hold Ladies Night
- Luncheonette Man's Lament: 'School Regulation Is Ruining Me'
- Martin Donohue Attends College
- Armed Forces Announce Duties of County Men
- Friends School Hosts Communication Confab
- Burlington Grad Seeks Election
- Pupil Staff Confab
- Council Sets 'Victim' Film
- Republican Clubs Host Candidates
- School Eyes Evaluation
- French Club Plans Trip
- County Welfare Council Selects Slate of Officers
- Soltesz Says GOP 'Boss' 'Personally Selected' Mauk
- Fire Chief Urges Chimney Work
- 10 Countians in Practice
- GOP Club Sets Candidates Night
- 2 Countians at Arkansas
- Kiwanis Seats Local Man as Deputy State Official
- Mt. Holly Fills Municipal Posts
- Man Completes Sales Seminar
- McGuire UF Unit Aims at New High
- Russian Trip Glassboro Topic
- Jaycees Host Bike Road-E-O
- Seamanship Course Set
- County GOP Workshop Set
- PTA Activities
- Navy Offers Trade Skills
- Democratic Club Hears Candidate
- Dann Speech Set Tonight
Of course, the vast majority of these headlines are on news releases. The story on the Mount Laurel race track was a local breaking news story; the Burlington police chief's retirement was a local piece; the luncheonette story was an oddly-placed local feature on how a closed-campus policy at a middle school had ruined life for a small businessman; and there were the typical cops and courts stories.
There were no "blow the lid off" pieces, no "social trend" stories except for the possible luncheonette piece, no business stories as we know them, no health stories; none of the stories that so rile the conservatives when they complain about newspapers, about lesbians wanting to become Catholic priests or every inner-city shooting victim being an honor student, but no stories that would rile liberals either. And while the major local news stories -- the racetrack denial or the police chief -- were the usual 12-to-14 graf essays one sees today, the typical story, wire or local, was four to six paragraphs.
Using this collection of what today's journalists would see as unpalatably thin gruel and not what they wanted to get into the newspaper business to do, the Burlington County Times in nine years, in a market where it was competing with six larger dailies from Philadephia, Trenton and Camden, plus the occasional New York Times or Daily News sold on the newsstand, had managed to build its circulation from zero to 22,000. (And an amazing thing is that it is still competing with five of those six papers.) Willingboro was new, but Mount Holly, Pemberton, Burlington and Riverside were long-established towns without much growth. Moorestown was growing, but only Mount Laurel was a "new suburb."
Not that this is a playbook for 2008. But this content resembles much of what you would find on local-local Web sites or promoted as the sort of copy that now should go there. Local institutions. Local activities. Local names -- loads and loads of local names, even though many of them were simply of people saying, "Look at me!" All delivered in short nibbles -- you didn't have all day to read the paper, after all. And it resembles much of what many newspapers threw out of the paper in the 1980s, which was followed by circulation and advertising declines, perhaps related, perhaps not. Human nature does not change, but not running news releases didn't kill Pomeroy's.
But it wasn't just journalistic snobbery that led to this change. Technology played a major part. Providing our wash lady doesn't put my new straw hat in the soap suds and take all the color out of the ribbon, we'll move on to that.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
The News in 1967 -- Prelude
The Burlington County Times, one of our local newspapers, has an interesting story. Unlike most dailies, it did not grow out of a weekly or have its base in an established community. It owes its existence to William Levitt.
Having built Levittowns on Long Island and in Bucks County, Pa., Levitt looked to Burlington County for his third community (and final one on the U.S. mainland). He selected Willingboro Township, a rural area halfway between Philadelphia and Trenton and right across a bridge from Levittown, Pa. Levitt had learned from his mistake in Pennsylvania, where his community went across township lines and thus he needed approval from many levels of government. In Willingboro he would deal with one community.
His ambition had grown as well. Long Island was basically a huge subdivision, but starting with Pennsylvania he aimed to build not just subdivisions, but complete communities -- not just with schools and parks, but with shopping, movies, newspapers -- ready-made towns. In Levittown, Pa., he had convinced Pomeroy's, the Reading-based Allied Stores operator of department stores in eastern Pennsylvania, to be an anchor of the Shop-A-Rama. (Pomeroy's even developed a separate store logo for its new division.) Pomeroy's would also have a store in Willingboro.
In 1954, Stanley Calkins, publisher of newspapers in western Pennsylvania, had bought the Bristol Courier from Bucks County's political boss, Joseph Grundy. Calkins then purchased a weekly serving Levittown and created the Bucks County Courier Times. It was a natural for Calkins to be involved in creating a newspaper for the third Levittown as well. But while Levittown, Pa., was near Bristol and its established daily, the new Levittown, N.J., was in a county served only by weeklies. And the nearest towns, Burlington and Riverside, were hardly retail hubs.
The challenge was clear. The Willingboro Levittown -- it only briefly legally adopted the name of Levittown and was back to Willingboro by 1963 -- was to become the hub of Burlington County; the Fox Theater relocated there from Burlington (in a Levitt building) and the Plaza, with Pomeroy's and Sears as anchors, was to be the largest shopping area between the new South Jersey malls (Cherry Hill and Moorestown) and Trenton. That meant that once the early excitement of thousands of families establishing new homes in Willingboro was over, the mall had to draw from Mount Holly and Edgewater Park and Fort Dix. That meant the newspaper had to pull people from around the county to Willingboro as well as taking whatever ads came from stores in the established towns. In essence, the developer and the newspaper were creating a regional market where none had existed before.
The Burlington County Times is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, having been established in 1958 when the first families began moving into their Levitt houses in Willingboro.
On the one hand, the BCT had a blank slate -- it had no longtime readers to alienate with changes, as it had no readers at all. On the other hand, it was being made up and printed at the Bucks County plant until it was firmly enough established to have its own, so it had to conform to the basic makeup of that newspaper. And it had to conform to reader expectations of a newspaper so that people would not reject it in favor of the Philadelphia or Trenton papers, while recognizing that many people would take the larger papers anyway. Quite a challenge, and one that easily could have not been met. Yet the BCT sunk its roots and established itself as a paper for a county without a traditional center. It had to offer its readers what they wanted from the start. So what did it offer them?
By the fall of 1967, the nine-year-old BCT, which published Monday through Saturday afternoons, was running one or two pages of "women's news," two clear pages of editorials and news features -- the op-ed page was not filled with pundits but with in-depth wire stories as well as Dear Abby -- three or four pages (with ads) of sports, a couple of pages of comics and puzzles, and general news pages to fit the ads. A Monday might have eight to 10 news pages, a Wednesday or Thursday around 25. Page 3 was always open, but everything from there to the comics pages was clearly determined by how many ads there were. What was the news-to-ad ratio? No idea, but 60 percent news looked like a stretch. It was probably 50-50.
This was an afternoon paper, so the only way it got out the door in those days of Linotypes and stereotypers was for many of the pages to be made up the day before. Just a few pages would be reserved for breaking news, and the back pages had to consist of wire or local stories that would not change overnight. The front page would be made up late, so it would have to have a couple of "not really front page stories" available to fill it out when local copy ran short or didn't happen. But generally, as a local afternoon paper, only the most essential or interesting wire stories would get in. On one Thursday in mid-October, this meant there were nine stories on A1. Only two jumped.
This Thursday's paper -- in a typical week, no election ads, no pre-Christmas runup, just an ordinary paper -- had about 56 columns of general news (it was an eight-column page). Women's news added 10 columns and, perhaps most shocking by today's standards, Sports had 11 -- the equivalent of two pages today. This didn't take into account the comics and puzzles. There were four pages of classified, but again, the pages were wider.
Readers looking for advertising on this Thursday -- a Best Food Day, as we used to call it -- got ads for the major groceries. Sears took six pages, and Pomeroy's probably accounted for three although its ads were scattered. Other display advertisers included a carpet store, a paint store, an optometrist, a fabric store, discount stores, a beauty salon, a bank, a children's clothing shop and two tire stores -- the same odd collection of advertisers local newspapers have today. (If your memory goes back this far, the major movies playing were "Dr. Zhivago," "Up the Down Staircase," "The Sound of Music" and "A Man for All Seasons.")
But what news did the paper provide its readers as it continued to sink its roots into its county? Next post.
Having built Levittowns on Long Island and in Bucks County, Pa., Levitt looked to Burlington County for his third community (and final one on the U.S. mainland). He selected Willingboro Township, a rural area halfway between Philadelphia and Trenton and right across a bridge from Levittown, Pa. Levitt had learned from his mistake in Pennsylvania, where his community went across township lines and thus he needed approval from many levels of government. In Willingboro he would deal with one community.
His ambition had grown as well. Long Island was basically a huge subdivision, but starting with Pennsylvania he aimed to build not just subdivisions, but complete communities -- not just with schools and parks, but with shopping, movies, newspapers -- ready-made towns. In Levittown, Pa., he had convinced Pomeroy's, the Reading-based Allied Stores operator of department stores in eastern Pennsylvania, to be an anchor of the Shop-A-Rama. (Pomeroy's even developed a separate store logo for its new division.) Pomeroy's would also have a store in Willingboro.
In 1954, Stanley Calkins, publisher of newspapers in western Pennsylvania, had bought the Bristol Courier from Bucks County's political boss, Joseph Grundy. Calkins then purchased a weekly serving Levittown and created the Bucks County Courier Times. It was a natural for Calkins to be involved in creating a newspaper for the third Levittown as well. But while Levittown, Pa., was near Bristol and its established daily, the new Levittown, N.J., was in a county served only by weeklies. And the nearest towns, Burlington and Riverside, were hardly retail hubs.
The challenge was clear. The Willingboro Levittown -- it only briefly legally adopted the name of Levittown and was back to Willingboro by 1963 -- was to become the hub of Burlington County; the Fox Theater relocated there from Burlington (in a Levitt building) and the Plaza, with Pomeroy's and Sears as anchors, was to be the largest shopping area between the new South Jersey malls (Cherry Hill and Moorestown) and Trenton. That meant that once the early excitement of thousands of families establishing new homes in Willingboro was over, the mall had to draw from Mount Holly and Edgewater Park and Fort Dix. That meant the newspaper had to pull people from around the county to Willingboro as well as taking whatever ads came from stores in the established towns. In essence, the developer and the newspaper were creating a regional market where none had existed before.
The Burlington County Times is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, having been established in 1958 when the first families began moving into their Levitt houses in Willingboro.
On the one hand, the BCT had a blank slate -- it had no longtime readers to alienate with changes, as it had no readers at all. On the other hand, it was being made up and printed at the Bucks County plant until it was firmly enough established to have its own, so it had to conform to the basic makeup of that newspaper. And it had to conform to reader expectations of a newspaper so that people would not reject it in favor of the Philadelphia or Trenton papers, while recognizing that many people would take the larger papers anyway. Quite a challenge, and one that easily could have not been met. Yet the BCT sunk its roots and established itself as a paper for a county without a traditional center. It had to offer its readers what they wanted from the start. So what did it offer them?
By the fall of 1967, the nine-year-old BCT, which published Monday through Saturday afternoons, was running one or two pages of "women's news," two clear pages of editorials and news features -- the op-ed page was not filled with pundits but with in-depth wire stories as well as Dear Abby -- three or four pages (with ads) of sports, a couple of pages of comics and puzzles, and general news pages to fit the ads. A Monday might have eight to 10 news pages, a Wednesday or Thursday around 25. Page 3 was always open, but everything from there to the comics pages was clearly determined by how many ads there were. What was the news-to-ad ratio? No idea, but 60 percent news looked like a stretch. It was probably 50-50.
This was an afternoon paper, so the only way it got out the door in those days of Linotypes and stereotypers was for many of the pages to be made up the day before. Just a few pages would be reserved for breaking news, and the back pages had to consist of wire or local stories that would not change overnight. The front page would be made up late, so it would have to have a couple of "not really front page stories" available to fill it out when local copy ran short or didn't happen. But generally, as a local afternoon paper, only the most essential or interesting wire stories would get in. On one Thursday in mid-October, this meant there were nine stories on A1. Only two jumped.
This Thursday's paper -- in a typical week, no election ads, no pre-Christmas runup, just an ordinary paper -- had about 56 columns of general news (it was an eight-column page). Women's news added 10 columns and, perhaps most shocking by today's standards, Sports had 11 -- the equivalent of two pages today. This didn't take into account the comics and puzzles. There were four pages of classified, but again, the pages were wider.
Readers looking for advertising on this Thursday -- a Best Food Day, as we used to call it -- got ads for the major groceries. Sears took six pages, and Pomeroy's probably accounted for three although its ads were scattered. Other display advertisers included a carpet store, a paint store, an optometrist, a fabric store, discount stores, a beauty salon, a bank, a children's clothing shop and two tire stores -- the same odd collection of advertisers local newspapers have today. (If your memory goes back this far, the major movies playing were "Dr. Zhivago," "Up the Down Staircase," "The Sound of Music" and "A Man for All Seasons.")
But what news did the paper provide its readers as it continued to sink its roots into its county? Next post.
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