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.
Showing posts with label sam zell. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sam zell. Show all posts
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Not the Cut of Our Jib
Sam Zell couldn't win. People said newspapers were out of date, so he told his editors to try to make them connect better with younger and occasional readers, and for that he was pilloried. People said newspapers were caught up in their past glories, and he told them to stop living in the past, and for that he was pilloried. People who say newspapers are dead sneered at him for saying he could revive them, and people who believe in newspapers sneered at him because he didn't treat them with sufficient respect.
This is a different question than the ethics of Sam's being given Tribune employees' retirement funds by an ownership desperate to cash out, and then using those funds to try to enrich himself. Bankruptcy will probably trim Sam's total profit off this deal, but he'll doubtless walk away with money that his employees in essence forfeited.
But why did Sam's efforts to remake newspapers draw such outsize derision -- more than is given to Gannett's layoff this month of 2,000 people, or the impending destruction of the Minneapolis Star Tribune by people who also overpaid, or the withering away of JRC and Gatehouse, or... or... Let Roger Ebert tell it, parenthetical matter mine:
"At least it can be said that Lord Black [who looted the Sun-Times and many other newspapers around the world to line his own pocket] was a newspaperman with taste, and a gifted writer. ... There is no evidence [Zell] had other than a financial interest in his purchase. He has discussed condos in Tribune Tower, the sale of the name of Wrigley Field as a corporate naming opportunity, and other ways to milk his mortgaged cow. ... Under Zell its current leadership 'team' includes a onetime radio promotion manager [Lee Abrams] who writes memos so badly the staff passes them around for a laugh. Zell recently observed that no paper ever made money because of its Pulitzers. I would add that no paper ever made money because of its putzes, which Zell has proven. The lesson here is that journalists create newspapers, and their owners should be in sympathy with that purpose. Sam Zell made his purchase because he wanted to make money."
As opposed to Avista Capital Partners, or Gannett, or Dean Singleton, or the Alabama public pension fund, or the investors in the Philadelphia papers? Other than his financial missteps, Sam made three mistakes. He openly dissed a journalist in a public meeting when she started talking about the Higher Calling, using a word that we say almost hourly in the newsroom but do not expect our publishers to say to us. He brought in a radio guy (Radio!) to tell newspaper people what to do. And he didn't simply start by buying the Allentown Morning Call and the Newport News Daily Press -- nice papers, but nothing more. He bought two of the most iconic names in the business, papers that had set the standard for the industry -- the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times -- and treated them as if they were the same as the Allentown Call and the Newport News Press.
Of these, probably his biggest mistake was his creative officer, Lee Abrams, who by newspaper standards simply could not write. He wrote all-caps growling memos in which he had some good ideas, some mediocre ideas, and some pap. He did not write the usual journalistic report or memo which contains some good ideas, some mediocre ideas, and some pap. Few read his ideas, because they COULDN'T GET PAST his WORDS... his punctuation and his HIGH FIVING MANNER... yeah, baby! Admittedly Abrams' lack of understanding of what a foreign dateline meant busted him among journalists. Journalists also should have asked themselves if the typical reader shared Abrams' lack of understanding, or at least of attention. But these guys came across as characters from "Glengarry Glen Ross." We did not want them seated at our table.
Sam probably could have been hailed as the savior of the newspaper business if he had told his newsroom that his aim was to again make the Chicago Tribune "The World's Greatest Newspaper," to restore the L.A. Times of yore, and had turned to an eminence grise -- bringing back a John Carroll, say -- for cover while he did the same things to Orlando, Fort Lauderdale, etc. that he did. He could have said he wanted to end Tribune Co.'s micromanagement, which he did do, but could have said he wanted to do so simply to enable good journalism, while at the same time still selling Newsday to a cable-TV company (the relative lack of criticism for this deal shows that almost no one grew up dreaming of working for Newsday). He could have bowed before the house gods, established his cred, while sending Abrams off on quiet tours of the provinces. A year later, based on research done there, changes would have been made to the Chicago Tribune. Would it have staved off bankruptcy? Probably not. But he would have been hailed as a titan who tried to save newspapers, instead of a buffoon.
Zell was Tony Ridder with all of the communication problems and none of the occasional grace notes, let alone a century-long family heritage in the business. He saw newspapers as a business but didn't see that for journalists they are dreams -- of public service, of righting wrongs, of writing prose that will move the masses, of playing in the big leagues at 435 N. Michigan Ave. the way others dream of playing in the friendly confines of Wrigley Field. He probably did want to make money and save his newspapers at the same time, but his ego was so large that he did not realize his role in the drama was to publicly, at least, put himself second to his newsrooms. Different languages. Is it really better to be bankrupted by a bandit who can write stories than by a bumbler who cannot? (Well, you probably feel better if your house is robbed by a Gentleman Burglar than by an armed thug.) And one analyst at the time said Zell was pursuing "a childhood fantasy" himself -- owning newspapers. Perhaps all this was his dream as well. Perhaps he simply didn't understand the price of admission to the theater on which such dreams were played out.
This is a different question than the ethics of Sam's being given Tribune employees' retirement funds by an ownership desperate to cash out, and then using those funds to try to enrich himself. Bankruptcy will probably trim Sam's total profit off this deal, but he'll doubtless walk away with money that his employees in essence forfeited.
But why did Sam's efforts to remake newspapers draw such outsize derision -- more than is given to Gannett's layoff this month of 2,000 people, or the impending destruction of the Minneapolis Star Tribune by people who also overpaid, or the withering away of JRC and Gatehouse, or... or... Let Roger Ebert tell it, parenthetical matter mine:
"At least it can be said that Lord Black [who looted the Sun-Times and many other newspapers around the world to line his own pocket] was a newspaperman with taste, and a gifted writer. ... There is no evidence [Zell] had other than a financial interest in his purchase. He has discussed condos in Tribune Tower, the sale of the name of Wrigley Field as a corporate naming opportunity, and other ways to milk his mortgaged cow. ... Under Zell its current leadership 'team' includes a onetime radio promotion manager [Lee Abrams] who writes memos so badly the staff passes them around for a laugh. Zell recently observed that no paper ever made money because of its Pulitzers. I would add that no paper ever made money because of its putzes, which Zell has proven. The lesson here is that journalists create newspapers, and their owners should be in sympathy with that purpose. Sam Zell made his purchase because he wanted to make money."
As opposed to Avista Capital Partners, or Gannett, or Dean Singleton, or the Alabama public pension fund, or the investors in the Philadelphia papers? Other than his financial missteps, Sam made three mistakes. He openly dissed a journalist in a public meeting when she started talking about the Higher Calling, using a word that we say almost hourly in the newsroom but do not expect our publishers to say to us. He brought in a radio guy (Radio!) to tell newspaper people what to do. And he didn't simply start by buying the Allentown Morning Call and the Newport News Daily Press -- nice papers, but nothing more. He bought two of the most iconic names in the business, papers that had set the standard for the industry -- the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times -- and treated them as if they were the same as the Allentown Call and the Newport News Press.
Of these, probably his biggest mistake was his creative officer, Lee Abrams, who by newspaper standards simply could not write. He wrote all-caps growling memos in which he had some good ideas, some mediocre ideas, and some pap. He did not write the usual journalistic report or memo which contains some good ideas, some mediocre ideas, and some pap. Few read his ideas, because they COULDN'T GET PAST his WORDS... his punctuation and his HIGH FIVING MANNER... yeah, baby! Admittedly Abrams' lack of understanding of what a foreign dateline meant busted him among journalists. Journalists also should have asked themselves if the typical reader shared Abrams' lack of understanding, or at least of attention. But these guys came across as characters from "Glengarry Glen Ross." We did not want them seated at our table.
Sam probably could have been hailed as the savior of the newspaper business if he had told his newsroom that his aim was to again make the Chicago Tribune "The World's Greatest Newspaper," to restore the L.A. Times of yore, and had turned to an eminence grise -- bringing back a John Carroll, say -- for cover while he did the same things to Orlando, Fort Lauderdale, etc. that he did. He could have said he wanted to end Tribune Co.'s micromanagement, which he did do, but could have said he wanted to do so simply to enable good journalism, while at the same time still selling Newsday to a cable-TV company (the relative lack of criticism for this deal shows that almost no one grew up dreaming of working for Newsday). He could have bowed before the house gods, established his cred, while sending Abrams off on quiet tours of the provinces. A year later, based on research done there, changes would have been made to the Chicago Tribune. Would it have staved off bankruptcy? Probably not. But he would have been hailed as a titan who tried to save newspapers, instead of a buffoon.
Zell was Tony Ridder with all of the communication problems and none of the occasional grace notes, let alone a century-long family heritage in the business. He saw newspapers as a business but didn't see that for journalists they are dreams -- of public service, of righting wrongs, of writing prose that will move the masses, of playing in the big leagues at 435 N. Michigan Ave. the way others dream of playing in the friendly confines of Wrigley Field. He probably did want to make money and save his newspapers at the same time, but his ego was so large that he did not realize his role in the drama was to publicly, at least, put himself second to his newsrooms. Different languages. Is it really better to be bankrupted by a bandit who can write stories than by a bumbler who cannot? (Well, you probably feel better if your house is robbed by a Gentleman Burglar than by an armed thug.) And one analyst at the time said Zell was pursuing "a childhood fantasy" himself -- owning newspapers. Perhaps all this was his dream as well. Perhaps he simply didn't understand the price of admission to the theater on which such dreams were played out.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
And What THEY Said
Alan Jacobson certainly does not hide his candle under a shade, and one might argue with some of his specific approaches. But he's right, and right, and just generally right. And yes, Sam Zell -- though it's clear from his use of the word "copywriter" that he still doesn't really understand how newsrooms work -- is largely right as well.
1. The era of what Alan Mutter called the longest-running free trial offer in American history -- the newspaper Web site as we know it -- has to end. As Bob Garfield was quoted earlier as saying, it's never going to pay off with an effective business model. Never, never, never. Newspaper valuations, still robust in mid-2006 even after years of competition from free classifieds, went to the floor when investors figured that out. It isn't really anyone's fault that newspaper leaders didn't immediately see it. In 2000 it seemed like it would work. In 2000 newspapers seemed invulnerable and the Internet was in many ways experimental. Whatever we did would work, because we were newspapers. Radio in 1922 was an experiment and in 1932 was a huge business in which a lot of the early attempts had not worked. Things change. As MediaWeek reported this week (I just spent five minutes trying to find the link and failed), banner ads online are about to expire from lack of interest in a bad economy -- essentially, everyone's figuring out that no one clicks on them. People use social networking sites like crazy, but advertising doesn't work on them. It's time to give up on the particular hope that any Internet ad model that we are now using will support journalism.
2. When we did not have to work hard for revenue, we could put the interest of the Paper and the People above commercial interests and the desires of individuals. It was a great time. I loved it. It is gone. Journalists have to accept that the point of our thinking about "how do we raise revenue" is not just to put money in Sam Zell's pocket. If it works, money will go in Zell's pocket, but the goal is to allow us to do our jobs. As I read somewhere yesterday -- I can't find it to make the link, this is not my day -- we are no longer working for the Church of Truth, but a business. There is nothing wrong with working for a journalistic business, it beats lots of other ways to make a living, but it is not the same as working for the Church of Truth, which was not a business. It is our misfortune, but there it is.
3. Zell's much criticized point that Pulitzers don't sell newspapers -- it needs to be noted that he is saying "today." In the past winning the Pulitzer Prize did sell newspapers -- not for an individual story, but for the idea that your newspaper was better when compared with another newspaper. Pulitzer Prizes helped the Inquirer beat the Philadelphia Bulletin. They helped if you were the Pottstown Mercury and wanted to make your paper seem better than it really was. They don't work when your competition is not other newspapers. They don't work when quality is not the deciding point between two otherwise nearly identical products.
I think the hardest change one can make isn't saying that you were wrong -- it's saying that what was right once is wrong now. Anyone can own up to a mistake. But doing what was right and then having it become wrong means there are no fixed lodestars. In a business that is totally built upon individual reputations in the pursuit of truth, it means you have to say that "what I said was right two years ago is no longer right" -- and if so, what is truth and why did I work so hard -- and so let's just not go there, because someone will accuse me of apostasy, which undercuts my reputation, which means the end product of everything I did is devalued. And the Internet allows anyone to undercut anyone's reputation in an instant. But go there we must. And yes, people who believe that journalism should not be a business activity will have to seek different answers from people who see little other option. Success to them; success to us.
1. The era of what Alan Mutter called the longest-running free trial offer in American history -- the newspaper Web site as we know it -- has to end. As Bob Garfield was quoted earlier as saying, it's never going to pay off with an effective business model. Never, never, never. Newspaper valuations, still robust in mid-2006 even after years of competition from free classifieds, went to the floor when investors figured that out. It isn't really anyone's fault that newspaper leaders didn't immediately see it. In 2000 it seemed like it would work. In 2000 newspapers seemed invulnerable and the Internet was in many ways experimental. Whatever we did would work, because we were newspapers. Radio in 1922 was an experiment and in 1932 was a huge business in which a lot of the early attempts had not worked. Things change. As MediaWeek reported this week (I just spent five minutes trying to find the link and failed), banner ads online are about to expire from lack of interest in a bad economy -- essentially, everyone's figuring out that no one clicks on them. People use social networking sites like crazy, but advertising doesn't work on them. It's time to give up on the particular hope that any Internet ad model that we are now using will support journalism.
2. When we did not have to work hard for revenue, we could put the interest of the Paper and the People above commercial interests and the desires of individuals. It was a great time. I loved it. It is gone. Journalists have to accept that the point of our thinking about "how do we raise revenue" is not just to put money in Sam Zell's pocket. If it works, money will go in Zell's pocket, but the goal is to allow us to do our jobs. As I read somewhere yesterday -- I can't find it to make the link, this is not my day -- we are no longer working for the Church of Truth, but a business. There is nothing wrong with working for a journalistic business, it beats lots of other ways to make a living, but it is not the same as working for the Church of Truth, which was not a business. It is our misfortune, but there it is.
3. Zell's much criticized point that Pulitzers don't sell newspapers -- it needs to be noted that he is saying "today." In the past winning the Pulitzer Prize did sell newspapers -- not for an individual story, but for the idea that your newspaper was better when compared with another newspaper. Pulitzer Prizes helped the Inquirer beat the Philadelphia Bulletin. They helped if you were the Pottstown Mercury and wanted to make your paper seem better than it really was. They don't work when your competition is not other newspapers. They don't work when quality is not the deciding point between two otherwise nearly identical products.
I think the hardest change one can make isn't saying that you were wrong -- it's saying that what was right once is wrong now. Anyone can own up to a mistake. But doing what was right and then having it become wrong means there are no fixed lodestars. In a business that is totally built upon individual reputations in the pursuit of truth, it means you have to say that "what I said was right two years ago is no longer right" -- and if so, what is truth and why did I work so hard -- and so let's just not go there, because someone will accuse me of apostasy, which undercuts my reputation, which means the end product of everything I did is devalued. And the Internet allows anyone to undercut anyone's reputation in an instant. But go there we must. And yes, people who believe that journalism should not be a business activity will have to seek different answers from people who see little other option. Success to them; success to us.
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