The redoubtable Mario Garcia -- the collapse of American newspapers has led him to do most of his work overseas, more's the pity for us -- had, well, a THANG, as my former colleague Wendy Dowkings used to say, for Amy Winehouse. He makes no bones about it. Her death caused him to collect some front pages from Europe and South America reporting her death.
Looking at the pages -- and as a copy editor, reading the headlines to the extent I could -- may indicate why American newspapers have such a youth problem.
From Il Secolo XIX in Bologna: "Enormous talent and fragile soul: Winehouse may be the Lady Diana of Rock. Fans besieged the star's house crying." The emotion of the opera. But they're Italian. We move on.
From Bild in Germany: "We must grieve today about Amy Winehouse. The police found her dead in her London apartment. She was only 27." Perhaps German newspapers all speak in the first person plural. We move on.
From Las Ultimas Noticias in Santiago: "The sudden end to the solitary diva. Amy Winehouse died at her home at 27. Her mother: 'It was a matter of time.' She had been depressed for a month after breaking up with her last boyfriend." But this is a paper that plays soap-opera entertainment on the front every day. We move on...
From Clarin in Buenos Aires: "Amy Winehouse: An early goodbye. The renowned English singer was found dead in her London home. She was 27 and had a history of addictions." Seems pretty straightforward. But even here, a hint of sympathy.
From Correio in Santiago do Bahia, Brazil: "Amy at the end. Singer, 27, found dead in London." The same (and I'm not completely sure of that translation.)
From Correio Braziliense: "Curse of 27 silences the voice of the 21st century." Referring to the deaths of Cobain, Joplin, Hendrix, etc. -- and assuming its readers know what it means.
From El Tiempo in Bogota: "Amy Winehouse dies. She was found in her London home. The artist was famous for her excesses." Hmm, we must be getting closer to the United States.
Now, for three from the U.S. that Mario collected:
The New York Times: Amy Winehouse (1983-2011): British Retro Soul Singer With Troubled History.
Los Angeles Times: Amy Winehouse (1983-2011): Iconoclastic pop singer found dead. The five-time Grammy winner inspired a new generation of vocalists.
New York Post: They tried to make her go to rehab, she said No No No! Amy Winehouse dead at 27.
So in Europe we hear of her fragile soul, for which we must grieve. In South America we hear of the depressed solitary diva whom we bid an early goodbye, the voice of the 21st century famous for her excesses. Callas! Duncan! Nijinsky!
OK, these are just the papers Mario selected, as are those in the U.S. But the U.S. reader is calmly told of the death of an iconoclastic retro soul singer -- whatever that may mean -- who inspired a new generation -- whoever they are -- but whose troubled history including refusing rehab.
It's a random sample, but it seems to me that papers overseas -- and OK, Mario didn't include any from England -- assume their readers know who Amy was, embraced her or her music, and mourned her passing. Here in the U.S. (and, OK, somewhat in Colombia), we first must assume that our readers have no idea who she was -- which we try to remedy with somewhat vacuous terms -- and in some cases, make sure we understand she was not an avatar of traditional American values. (But hey, she won five Grammys! So she must have been somebody.)
There's an ocean of difference between "Fragile Soul" and "Troubled History," and it's not just one of Italian vs. English, and it doesn't mean we have to go there. (And until this weekend, I had never heard a note that Amy Winehouse sang.) But it does convey the attitude of detached Olympian judgment that people accuse American newspapers of having -- and that does not work in the 21st century, when emotional connection is all.
More to come on emotion.
UPDATE: Today (Tuesday) my paper had a sympathetic tribute, as did the Burlington paper. So perhaps it just had to get out of the hands of the newsside and over to the features desk. Does this mean arts writers elsewhere work on weekends?
Monday, July 25, 2011
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Little Comic Relief
First off, to correct an error in the last post, Durango Front Range – obviously I know nothing about Colorado Pueblo
The question was, can newspapers reach 18-to-30-year-olds? Here on the East Coast we have the Metro chain inBoston , New York Philadelphia Canada
Our Metro runs only a few stories each day – typically the most important city government story, brief national and foreign entries, entertainment news, and very little sports. Although it is distributed around town, it is mostly associated with rail commuters (they tried it on buses, but it just led to cluttered buses). While serious stories are written seriously, much of the paper, including its entertainment coverage, is far more conversational than even the most conversational traditional newspaper. It does not try to break news to any extent, though I'm sure here and there it has gotten something first. Much is written in first person or as a Q and A. It runs stories on careers, education, and the like aimed at people coming up in the world, not people already there or planning for their children’s education. It has lots of advertising -- some days it makes my own paper look comparatively adless, though I'm sure the ad rates would barely support a pigeon.
Do young people read it? Sure. It’s free. It’s on the train. Do masses of young people read it? I have no idea. InEurope , however, where Metro is under different ownership, it has become, at least in one survey, the most-read free newspaper among the wealthy. I guess watching every euro counts.
Metro used to have a couple of comics, but no more -- interesting in view of the comics cutbacks at the Denver Post, including “Doonesbury,” which is as close to a sacred totem among journalists as any comic except “Pogo” has ever been. It turns out that few readers of the Post were initially discomfited by these cuts, which took out some low-hanging fruit ("Scary Gary"? "F-Minus"?) and some very costly comics while leaving the “Beetle Bailey”s of the world. (Perhaps resentment has grown since then.) The thinking seems to have been, the only people who read comics are the seniors, and all they want is the strips they’ve had their whole lives. Many of them have had “Doonesbury” for much of their lives, of course. But we’re talking, for that generation, of repeats of “Peanuts,” plus things like “The Family Circus,” “Hi and Lois,” and “Beetle” – most of which could be called repeats even if they are new. (Two of the most venerable strips, “Blondie” and “Nancy,” have been reimagined over the years and while not cutting-edge fare at least are not in an endless “Groundhog Day” loop.)
(Locally, the Philadelphia Daily News this week went to one tabloid page of comic strips, after going down to two a couple of years back from three... with some panels on a facing page.)
Add to this that the three largest papers in the U.S. for the last three decades do not run comics, and one starts to wonder whether the role of comics has been overblown for years by people who will howl if you give them a choice about taking away their daily visit with Sgt. Snorkel but who, if the comic was simply retired by its authors, would just say, Oh, well, guess I'll read something else. "Steve Canyon" had a huge readership, and then it disappeared and there was no more to be learned about Stalky Schweisenberger and almost no one canceled. When I was a kid papers didn’t have massive numbers of comics; big papers would have a page, small papers might run four. An editor might get into a financial fight with a syndicate and all of a sudden "Li'l Abner" no longer ran, and people might have been discomfited but they found something else. It was only when competing papers started going out of business that newspapers ended up with multiple pages of comics, fearing that someone who read an afternoon paper would only adjust his or her biorhythms enough to take a morning paper if it let him or her keep up with “Hagar the Horrible.”
Many older readers still see the comics as the equivalent of Jay’s monologue, a humorous or heartwarming fillip to the depressing state of the world. But it seems to be becoming clearer that trying to fill the pages with 30 comics is spending a lot of money to chase few people.
Young readers do not come to the paper through the colorful Sunday comics in the way they did when nearly everything except comics was black and white. (How would young readers relate to “Funky Winkerbean,” “Rhymes WithOrange Garfield
Perhaps young readers would be better satisfied by having one or two strips that were actually relevant and funny to their lives. But burying them amid the Beetles and Flagstons would not work.
And perhaps, as with stock listings, newspapers should think about just blowing the whistle on comics – I say this with trepidation, I love newspaper comics and have always read most of them that weren’t “The Girls in Apartment 3-G” – and, like college papers, finding one or two locally or regionally drawn features that would provide a break from the news that would be exclusive to them. If people were only taking the paper to find out what that hilarious Lt. Fuzz was up to today, perhaps those are customers who are no longer essential to us at that price of keeping them.
Still more to come.
The question was, can newspapers reach 18-to-30-year-olds? Here on the East Coast we have the Metro chain in
Our Metro runs only a few stories each day – typically the most important city government story, brief national and foreign entries, entertainment news, and very little sports. Although it is distributed around town, it is mostly associated with rail commuters (they tried it on buses, but it just led to cluttered buses). While serious stories are written seriously, much of the paper, including its entertainment coverage, is far more conversational than even the most conversational traditional newspaper. It does not try to break news to any extent, though I'm sure here and there it has gotten something first. Much is written in first person or as a Q and A. It runs stories on careers, education, and the like aimed at people coming up in the world, not people already there or planning for their children’s education. It has lots of advertising -- some days it makes my own paper look comparatively adless, though I'm sure the ad rates would barely support a pigeon.
Do young people read it? Sure. It’s free. It’s on the train. Do masses of young people read it? I have no idea. In
Metro used to have a couple of comics, but no more -- interesting in view of the comics cutbacks at the Denver Post, including “Doonesbury,” which is as close to a sacred totem among journalists as any comic except “Pogo” has ever been. It turns out that few readers of the Post were initially discomfited by these cuts, which took out some low-hanging fruit ("Scary Gary"? "F-Minus"?) and some very costly comics while leaving the “Beetle Bailey”s of the world. (Perhaps resentment has grown since then.) The thinking seems to have been, the only people who read comics are the seniors, and all they want is the strips they’ve had their whole lives. Many of them have had “Doonesbury” for much of their lives, of course. But we’re talking, for that generation, of repeats of “Peanuts,” plus things like “The Family Circus,” “Hi and Lois,” and “Beetle” – most of which could be called repeats even if they are new. (Two of the most venerable strips, “Blondie” and “Nancy,” have been reimagined over the years and while not cutting-edge fare at least are not in an endless “Groundhog Day” loop.)
(Locally, the Philadelphia Daily News this week went to one tabloid page of comic strips, after going down to two a couple of years back from three... with some panels on a facing page.)
Add to this that the three largest papers in the U.S. for the last three decades do not run comics, and one starts to wonder whether the role of comics has been overblown for years by people who will howl if you give them a choice about taking away their daily visit with Sgt. Snorkel but who, if the comic was simply retired by its authors, would just say, Oh, well, guess I'll read something else. "Steve Canyon" had a huge readership, and then it disappeared and there was no more to be learned about Stalky Schweisenberger and almost no one canceled. When I was a kid papers didn’t have massive numbers of comics; big papers would have a page, small papers might run four. An editor might get into a financial fight with a syndicate and all of a sudden "Li'l Abner" no longer ran, and people might have been discomfited but they found something else. It was only when competing papers started going out of business that newspapers ended up with multiple pages of comics, fearing that someone who read an afternoon paper would only adjust his or her biorhythms enough to take a morning paper if it let him or her keep up with “Hagar the Horrible.”
Many older readers still see the comics as the equivalent of Jay’s monologue, a humorous or heartwarming fillip to the depressing state of the world. But it seems to be becoming clearer that trying to fill the pages with 30 comics is spending a lot of money to chase few people.
Young readers do not come to the paper through the colorful Sunday comics in the way they did when nearly everything except comics was black and white. (How would young readers relate to “Funky Winkerbean,” “Rhymes With
Perhaps young readers would be better satisfied by having one or two strips that were actually relevant and funny to their lives. But burying them amid the Beetles and Flagstons would not work.
And perhaps, as with stock listings, newspapers should think about just blowing the whistle on comics – I say this with trepidation, I love newspaper comics and have always read most of them that weren’t “The Girls in Apartment 3-G” – and, like college papers, finding one or two locally or regionally drawn features that would provide a break from the news that would be exclusive to them. If people were only taking the paper to find out what that hilarious Lt. Fuzz was up to today, perhaps those are customers who are no longer essential to us at that price of keeping them.
Still more to come.
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Can You Think We're Sexy?
The July issue of Editor & Publisher valiantly decided to bring up the question: Is there any way that 18-to-30s can be made into newspaper readers? (These don’t seem to be online yet.) Internet enthusiasts will say, stop right there, fool’s errand. But if you run a business, you have an obligation to find out if your customers can be made to want your most profitable products, before you simply give up on them. Nothing revanchist or woolly-headed about that.
Utah State senior Rob Jepson – I have no idea how he was picked, he is the traditional aspiring journalist with a poli-sci major and a journalism minor – doesn’t blame the product, he blames the customer – or at least says, look, the customer in that age isn’t ready yet. I suppose that’s like saying, when we were getting smashed on Boone’s Farm in the 1970s it was because we weren’t yet ready for Chateau Lafitte, which is true. It’s also Jepson saying, I’m smarter than my peers, but let’s move on. Jepson says “the struggle … lies not in adapting the news to a disinterested generation, but rather sparking the interest of a generation that doesn’t yet know what it’s missing.” His answer – put the newspaper in fast-food restaurants. Put it on buses. Give it away at schools. “You’ll create a generation of consumers by capitalizing on the insurmountable power of trend…. Our age group is impressionable, and also eager to impress.”
No issue with his ideas, except that there’s USA Today free whenever I go to Chick-Fil-A. The Metro papers started out being given away free on buses. And the minutes of university committees are filled with years of “who’s paying for this and does it undermine the revenue of our student paper” debates over free newspapers at college. Yet circulation and ad revenue still decline. But Jepson does make a good point. Part of the reason people are fleeing newspapers is because they’re told that fleeing newspapers is the modern thing to do, that smart people and (most particularly) young and young at heart people don’t read them. (Despite our protests, they’re really not being told this by Google or Craig Newmark. They’re being told this by thousands of posters who want to make sure you know how impressed they are with themselves for being hip, and not reading a newspaper is a really easy way to show how hip you are, because not doing something is easier than doing something.)
I remember the ad campaigns for the Wall Street Journal back in the 1970s that basically said, if you want to be seen as successful, have a folded Journal under the arm notch of your suit jacket. Newspapers and journalists wanted to be seen as cool back then, until USA Today came out and marketed itself to John Q. Traveling Citizen, and journalists recoiled in horror because we didn’t find John Q., with his love of color weather maps and six-paragraph stories, to be cool. Cool people read 200-inch stories on rhinoceroses. And the readers ticked away.
Newspapers do need to make the newspaper seem like a good option for intelligent people “eager to impress.” It’s hard for them to do that, though, when they spend all their time saying, “Well, since hip people are getting their news through tablets, we’ve got to be hip and go there, even though none of us has a good idea how to make millions there.” Nothing wrong with following your customers; but how do you deal with it when following your customers makes your most profitable product look out-of-date? The industry says, “Give us some more time to ponder that.” It’s been pondering that for 17 years and still doesn’t have a good answer.
E&P also turned to Pat Ivey, circulation director in Durango, Colo., who notes that 18-to-30s have “seen everything…. What possible interest could they have in looking at a newspaper? Still, photos, bold graphics, and clever headlines may grab their attention. But if the story is yesterday’s news or it doesn’t spark their emotions, don’t expect much more.”
His solution is to “run stores that share real-life experiences others in their demographic have had, conveying a sincere regard for the interests of young adults. Invite their comments, print them, and don’t edit out those that may surprise or shock us… Give them fresh stories they will yearn to share with friends.” If they want some Red Bull, give it to them.
Back when times were good, at the Inquirer a bunch of our then-younger staff members – the ones we later largely laid off – put together what they called a “new view” committee. Their point was that we were not covering stories of experiences others in their demographic have had. We wrote about fancy houses of 50-year-olds and not how to furnish an apartment on $1,000. We wrote about suburban taxpayers and not about young people in the city (or the suburbs, for that matter). We wrote about power and not about those trying to figure out how to get it. And, OK, we wrote about sports, but often from the standpoint of, “This brings to mind Wilt Chamberlain’s famous 100-point game,” to people who had almost no idea who Wilt Chamberlain was.
They were right, and we did try to meet them. But every day in the newspaper business, one is reminded – sometimes very self-consciously – of the people who buy the paper every day who have done so for 50 or more years, and they want to read Beetle Bailey because they have read Beetle Bailey every day for 50 years and it is irrelevant whether he is funny or not. As long as Beetle lives, the world they inhabited is not over. The fact that these are not the people advertisers want to reach – well, that is irrelevant to them, as it should be. They want the paper they have lived with for years just like they want Maxwell House Drip Grind coffee from the percolator every morning. And unlike most of our readers, they have no compunctions about letting us know what they want. They’ve got the time, and not much else to do.
Jepson would want the business to say, “Smart is the new sexy.” Well, maybe not those exact words, but he would get the idea. In an editorial, E&P also trashes the Newspaper Association of America’s campaign using that very phrase. It’s not that the idea is bad; it’s that, in the view of editor Jeff Fleming, the ads being used are neither smart not sexy. His main argument (again, I’m not seeing it online), though, is “why this ad is … scheduled to run in print newspapers across America. I’m guessing the average subscriber is already smart and probably let go of sexy with their last hip replacement. And if, by chance, someone younger than 30 happens to see and actually read the ad, I don’t think (it) is going to turn them on to subscribing to a newspaper – especially after reading the 48 words of text that entice readers with how to make a peanut butter icebox pie.” As my colleague Nick Cristiano says, whenever newspapers try to do hip, they show themselves to be square.
Fleming notes: “If newspapers want a long-term, meaningful relationship with a 27-year-old, they need to walk the walk and feel the talk.” But we all know why the ad is running as a house ad speaking to newspapers’ current readers – it lets some publishers say they’re supporting the campaign while not actually spending any extra money, burying it in their PSA and glue budgets. “I ran the ad, but what can I do?” Walking the walk indeed.
Can newspapers reach 18-to-30-year-olds? Sure; they already do. Look at college newspapers and small-town newspapers. Can newspapers ever again deliver 80 percent market penetration? Not a chance. So we’re back to: Who are our customers and how do we find them? A question the newspaper business, with its Woolworth’s-like past of “Everyone is our customer,” still has trouble getting its hands around. “Smart people are our customers” is at least a start. And “emotions” is the key word in Ivey’s message from the Front Range.
Still more to come.
Utah State senior Rob Jepson – I have no idea how he was picked, he is the traditional aspiring journalist with a poli-sci major and a journalism minor – doesn’t blame the product, he blames the customer – or at least says, look, the customer in that age isn’t ready yet. I suppose that’s like saying, when we were getting smashed on Boone’s Farm in the 1970s it was because we weren’t yet ready for Chateau Lafitte, which is true. It’s also Jepson saying, I’m smarter than my peers, but let’s move on. Jepson says “the struggle … lies not in adapting the news to a disinterested generation, but rather sparking the interest of a generation that doesn’t yet know what it’s missing.” His answer – put the newspaper in fast-food restaurants. Put it on buses. Give it away at schools. “You’ll create a generation of consumers by capitalizing on the insurmountable power of trend…. Our age group is impressionable, and also eager to impress.”
No issue with his ideas, except that there’s USA Today free whenever I go to Chick-Fil-A. The Metro papers started out being given away free on buses. And the minutes of university committees are filled with years of “who’s paying for this and does it undermine the revenue of our student paper” debates over free newspapers at college. Yet circulation and ad revenue still decline. But Jepson does make a good point. Part of the reason people are fleeing newspapers is because they’re told that fleeing newspapers is the modern thing to do, that smart people and (most particularly) young and young at heart people don’t read them. (Despite our protests, they’re really not being told this by Google or Craig Newmark. They’re being told this by thousands of posters who want to make sure you know how impressed they are with themselves for being hip, and not reading a newspaper is a really easy way to show how hip you are, because not doing something is easier than doing something.)
I remember the ad campaigns for the Wall Street Journal back in the 1970s that basically said, if you want to be seen as successful, have a folded Journal under the arm notch of your suit jacket. Newspapers and journalists wanted to be seen as cool back then, until USA Today came out and marketed itself to John Q. Traveling Citizen, and journalists recoiled in horror because we didn’t find John Q., with his love of color weather maps and six-paragraph stories, to be cool. Cool people read 200-inch stories on rhinoceroses. And the readers ticked away.
Newspapers do need to make the newspaper seem like a good option for intelligent people “eager to impress.” It’s hard for them to do that, though, when they spend all their time saying, “Well, since hip people are getting their news through tablets, we’ve got to be hip and go there, even though none of us has a good idea how to make millions there.” Nothing wrong with following your customers; but how do you deal with it when following your customers makes your most profitable product look out-of-date? The industry says, “Give us some more time to ponder that.” It’s been pondering that for 17 years and still doesn’t have a good answer.
E&P also turned to Pat Ivey, circulation director in Durango, Colo., who notes that 18-to-30s have “seen everything…. What possible interest could they have in looking at a newspaper? Still, photos, bold graphics, and clever headlines may grab their attention. But if the story is yesterday’s news or it doesn’t spark their emotions, don’t expect much more.”
His solution is to “run stores that share real-life experiences others in their demographic have had, conveying a sincere regard for the interests of young adults. Invite their comments, print them, and don’t edit out those that may surprise or shock us… Give them fresh stories they will yearn to share with friends.” If they want some Red Bull, give it to them.
Back when times were good, at the Inquirer a bunch of our then-younger staff members – the ones we later largely laid off – put together what they called a “new view” committee. Their point was that we were not covering stories of experiences others in their demographic have had. We wrote about fancy houses of 50-year-olds and not how to furnish an apartment on $1,000. We wrote about suburban taxpayers and not about young people in the city (or the suburbs, for that matter). We wrote about power and not about those trying to figure out how to get it. And, OK, we wrote about sports, but often from the standpoint of, “This brings to mind Wilt Chamberlain’s famous 100-point game,” to people who had almost no idea who Wilt Chamberlain was.
They were right, and we did try to meet them. But every day in the newspaper business, one is reminded – sometimes very self-consciously – of the people who buy the paper every day who have done so for 50 or more years, and they want to read Beetle Bailey because they have read Beetle Bailey every day for 50 years and it is irrelevant whether he is funny or not. As long as Beetle lives, the world they inhabited is not over. The fact that these are not the people advertisers want to reach – well, that is irrelevant to them, as it should be. They want the paper they have lived with for years just like they want Maxwell House Drip Grind coffee from the percolator every morning. And unlike most of our readers, they have no compunctions about letting us know what they want. They’ve got the time, and not much else to do.
Jepson would want the business to say, “Smart is the new sexy.” Well, maybe not those exact words, but he would get the idea. In an editorial, E&P also trashes the Newspaper Association of America’s campaign using that very phrase. It’s not that the idea is bad; it’s that, in the view of editor Jeff Fleming, the ads being used are neither smart not sexy. His main argument (again, I’m not seeing it online), though, is “why this ad is … scheduled to run in print newspapers across America. I’m guessing the average subscriber is already smart and probably let go of sexy with their last hip replacement. And if, by chance, someone younger than 30 happens to see and actually read the ad, I don’t think (it) is going to turn them on to subscribing to a newspaper – especially after reading the 48 words of text that entice readers with how to make a peanut butter icebox pie.” As my colleague Nick Cristiano says, whenever newspapers try to do hip, they show themselves to be square.
Fleming notes: “If newspapers want a long-term, meaningful relationship with a 27-year-old, they need to walk the walk and feel the talk.” But we all know why the ad is running as a house ad speaking to newspapers’ current readers – it lets some publishers say they’re supporting the campaign while not actually spending any extra money, burying it in their PSA and glue budgets. “I ran the ad, but what can I do?” Walking the walk indeed.
Can newspapers reach 18-to-30-year-olds? Sure; they already do. Look at college newspapers and small-town newspapers. Can newspapers ever again deliver 80 percent market penetration? Not a chance. So we’re back to: Who are our customers and how do we find them? A question the newspaper business, with its Woolworth’s-like past of “Everyone is our customer,” still has trouble getting its hands around. “Smart people are our customers” is at least a start. And “emotions” is the key word in Ivey’s message from the Front Range.
Still more to come.
Monday, July 11, 2011
My opinion, and I do have one...
Into the second half of the year, and it still looks like the downward circle, not just for newspapers but for anything in the economy that isn’t based on corporate profits – which are being kept up by the fact that companies realized, after laying all these people off, that they actually didn’t need them, because one programmer with a good application can eliminate 20 people. Or something. That’s just an unsupported opinion. No facts whatsoever. Me being a blowhard. And that should qualify me to comment on the Caylee murder case as well. One of my local newspapers today ran a column by Scripps-Howard’s Dan K. Thomasson saying the jury did its job well, under a letter saying that those people were incompetent to be jurors.
As a journalist for decades, I believe that Dan Thomasson has more professional background and analytical skill to parse the verdict than does a letter writer from Lumberton, N.J., whose Web profile consists basically of "Camden Catholic High School, Class of '76. His view is based in years of reporting, interviewing experts, being on the scene. But in the end, his “the jury didn’t say she didn’t do it, just that it wasn’t proven. Like it or not, that’s the law” is no more based on verified reporting in this case than is Noreen Errigo-Hoff’s “We need to learn from this case that not everyone is competent enough to understand the modern-day complexities of a trial.” Both are just expressing opinion. Thomasson is saying that the law, as he understands it, demands that the jury find beyond a reasonable doubt, and that's the way it should be. The writer is saying that people know in their hearts what a reasonable doubt really should be, and that regardless of the lack (UPDATE: SEE BELOW) of evidence, the case was proven because “mothers don’t go to Blockbuster with their boyfriends … after their children die accidentally.” In a way, the point isn't in the end whether Casey killed Caylee; Casey thumbed her nose at society, at every self-sacrificing mother in the land, and should be punished for something. As Errigo-Hoff wrote, "Even if the jury didn't believe any of [the evidence against Casey], they are supposed to apply common sense. A liar is a liar; you shouldn't believe them." Q.e.d.
Ask anyone and you’ll get an opinion. You’ll have to trust me on this – I can’t find the article, so it's your opinion whether to trust me – but there was an article in the last couple of weeks that noted that you can get 30 percent of people to express a view on a nonexistent candidate’s nonexistent policy statement. Well, why not? They’re not expressing their view that Sen. Mythical B. Chimera actually said something. Some are just being know-it-alls; others are saying, here’s what I think about this and I don’t really care if Sen. Chimera exists or not. What he’s saying is right, even if he didn’t say it.
So, looked at another way -- the classical-journalist way -- much of the populace is blowhards. That’s how we would traditionally see it. Back then we could confine the blowhards to the “Letters to the Editor” column and then say, the rest of the paper belongs to us, with our finely honed understanding of journalistic fair play, defendant rights, the moral obligation of the majority not to oppress the minority, our training in news values, and the like. But who now is “us”? If journalism is simply nonfiction writing about timely events of concern to the public, then both Dan Thomasson and Noreen Errigo-Hoff are journalists.
The crisis of journalism is not that newspapers can’t pay their bills. That’s the crisis of newspapers. The crisis of journalism is that 1) journalism has been defined down and outward in so many ways that no one can really say anymore what it is, and therefore every high-church article can be rebutted by an off-the-cuff posting and one cannot trump the other; and 2) that the crisis of newspapers (and magazines and all-news radio and the like) has eliminated a main definition journalists used for decades to define themselves as professionals, which is: Someone who has a printing press or a licensed transmitter paid me to write this.
More to come as I emerge from a few weeks of encyclopedia articles, book forwards, travel, and trying not to think for a while.
UPDATE: I received a letter from Ms. Errigo-Hoff, my neighbor in Burlington County, which she also attached as a comment, severely taking me to task and feeling that nose-in-the-sky attitudes like mine are why the press is getting its deserved comeuppance. First, let me acknowledge that it was a cheap shot to refer to her as I did in terms of her web profile. At the same time, as I said to her, perhaps it is a professional bias, but I would defer to the opinion of an experienced journalist over a regular citizen on a matter involving judgment from years of news judgment, as I would defer to a lawyer vs. a journalist on courtroom procedures and the law. But I phrased it in such a way as, in retrospect, to be sneering about someone I do not know, which was not only dumb, but stupid.
Second, I did mischaracterize her position in one regard. She referred to the "preponderance" of evidence against the accused mother. I used the word "lack," thinking more of the column as well as the quotes from jurors about how the prosecution had not made its case ironclad. But in doing so I put a word into her mouth that was 180 degrees from the word she had used. So in both cases, my apologies to Ms. Errigo-Hoff, who, I am glad to say, wants printed newspapers to continue despite all of our lacks.
As a journalist for decades, I believe that Dan Thomasson has more professional background and analytical skill to parse the verdict than does a letter writer from Lumberton, N.J., whose Web profile consists basically of "Camden Catholic High School, Class of '76. His view is based in years of reporting, interviewing experts, being on the scene. But in the end, his “the jury didn’t say she didn’t do it, just that it wasn’t proven. Like it or not, that’s the law” is no more based on verified reporting in this case than is Noreen Errigo-Hoff’s “We need to learn from this case that not everyone is competent enough to understand the modern-day complexities of a trial.” Both are just expressing opinion. Thomasson is saying that the law, as he understands it, demands that the jury find beyond a reasonable doubt, and that's the way it should be. The writer is saying that people know in their hearts what a reasonable doubt really should be, and that regardless of the lack (UPDATE: SEE BELOW) of evidence, the case was proven because “mothers don’t go to Blockbuster with their boyfriends … after their children die accidentally.” In a way, the point isn't in the end whether Casey killed Caylee; Casey thumbed her nose at society, at every self-sacrificing mother in the land, and should be punished for something. As Errigo-Hoff wrote, "Even if the jury didn't believe any of [the evidence against Casey], they are supposed to apply common sense. A liar is a liar; you shouldn't believe them." Q.e.d.
Ask anyone and you’ll get an opinion. You’ll have to trust me on this – I can’t find the article, so it's your opinion whether to trust me – but there was an article in the last couple of weeks that noted that you can get 30 percent of people to express a view on a nonexistent candidate’s nonexistent policy statement. Well, why not? They’re not expressing their view that Sen. Mythical B. Chimera actually said something. Some are just being know-it-alls; others are saying, here’s what I think about this and I don’t really care if Sen. Chimera exists or not. What he’s saying is right, even if he didn’t say it.
So, looked at another way -- the classical-journalist way -- much of the populace is blowhards. That’s how we would traditionally see it. Back then we could confine the blowhards to the “Letters to the Editor” column and then say, the rest of the paper belongs to us, with our finely honed understanding of journalistic fair play, defendant rights, the moral obligation of the majority not to oppress the minority, our training in news values, and the like. But who now is “us”? If journalism is simply nonfiction writing about timely events of concern to the public, then both Dan Thomasson and Noreen Errigo-Hoff are journalists.
The crisis of journalism is not that newspapers can’t pay their bills. That’s the crisis of newspapers. The crisis of journalism is that 1) journalism has been defined down and outward in so many ways that no one can really say anymore what it is, and therefore every high-church article can be rebutted by an off-the-cuff posting and one cannot trump the other; and 2) that the crisis of newspapers (and magazines and all-news radio and the like) has eliminated a main definition journalists used for decades to define themselves as professionals, which is: Someone who has a printing press or a licensed transmitter paid me to write this.
More to come as I emerge from a few weeks of encyclopedia articles, book forwards, travel, and trying not to think for a while.
UPDATE: I received a letter from Ms. Errigo-Hoff, my neighbor in Burlington County, which she also attached as a comment, severely taking me to task and feeling that nose-in-the-sky attitudes like mine are why the press is getting its deserved comeuppance. First, let me acknowledge that it was a cheap shot to refer to her as I did in terms of her web profile. At the same time, as I said to her, perhaps it is a professional bias, but I would defer to the opinion of an experienced journalist over a regular citizen on a matter involving judgment from years of news judgment, as I would defer to a lawyer vs. a journalist on courtroom procedures and the law. But I phrased it in such a way as, in retrospect, to be sneering about someone I do not know, which was not only dumb, but stupid.
Second, I did mischaracterize her position in one regard. She referred to the "preponderance" of evidence against the accused mother. I used the word "lack," thinking more of the column as well as the quotes from jurors about how the prosecution had not made its case ironclad. But in doing so I put a word into her mouth that was 180 degrees from the word she had used. So in both cases, my apologies to Ms. Errigo-Hoff, who, I am glad to say, wants printed newspapers to continue despite all of our lacks.
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Zero Game
This is really about John Paton, Alan Mutter, Robert Picard, and the economy of journalism. But first, a segue:
I knew, when I felt no need to grab my iPhone and immediately post a comment such as "NOOOOOOOO" at the end of Sunday's episode of "Game of Thrones" -- I'm trying not to be a spoiler, but has anyone who watches this show not heard about this episode yet -- that there's nothing worthwhile I could ever say about social media. I did the traditional thing -- my wife and I talked about it -- and she talked about it at work with another fan. No need for endless posted speculation about how could they do this! and will anyone keep watching! and the like. I could have posted something like, well, that's really using the old Bean, but -- to what point?
And then, of course, I write about it here. One could drive a truck through the contradictions in self-expression that exist in a world where everyone has a printing press. Entertainment Weekly provided actual journalism on the episode, talking to the star and the producers about the surprising turn. Except, of course, that it wasn't surprising to anyone who has read the books, or a synopsis of them, and has seen how faithfully the plot has been followed. So were the gasps of "NOOOOO" authentic gasps of surprise, or were they anticipated gasps, or were they attention-provoking exhalations simply to position oneself in the conversation? That's always been a problem with journalism -- we say we report the truth, but in damn few cases do we actually know it. What we know is what people say, and we try (sometimes) to line that up against what other people say and some things that are actually Known Facts, and then we say it has worth and (we used to say) people should pay someone to have it delivered to them, or someone should subsidize us for gathering an audience.
But now comes John Paton, widely hailed as a visionary for his digital-first emphasis at the formerly broken-down (let's be honest, still broken-down) Journal Register newspaper chain. Paton was given a weak hand to play and has played it well -- he has not only kept his neglected newsrooms afloat, but has made efforts to strengthen them, unlike the previous ownership, which cared about profit only, and has positioned himself as a 21st-century media guru. Alan Mutter, the well-regarded "Newsosaur" who has been one of the leading critics of the slow pace of media adaptation to a digital world he feels he was among the first to see, feels Paton has gone too far, though:
"Here’s what Paton said in remarks prepared for a keynote speech last week to the WAN-IFRA International Newsroom Summit in Zurich: 'As career journalists and managers, we have entered a new era where what we know and what we traditionally do has finally found its value in the marketplace and that value is about zero.'
"Explaining that the digital media have empowered everyone, everywhere to report or comment on the news, Paton pronounced 'traditional journalism' to be dead, according to a text of the speech he published at the blog he maintains to motivate the employees of his company. 'The Crowd collectively knows more about any subject, city or event we choose to cover than we do.'"
Mutter has not been among the "conversation" zealots or the "Stop the Presses immediately" crowd -- he has tried to base his views in economic analysis as much as in post-Internet journalistic theory or anger at plodding executives who didn't increase his web-news budget 150 percent every year because it would chip away at classifieds. But Paton is not breaking new ground. Media analyst Robert Picard largely said this in a speech at Oxford in 2009 called "Why Journalists Deserve Low Pay." Some excerpts:
"If one assesses the value that journalistic practice and skills creates, one rapidly comes to the conclusion that journalists are not knowledge workers, that is, they are not professionals with a unique base of knowledge such professors, medical personnel, and engineers or even electricians and computer technicians. Consequently, they are unable to create value through the scarcity of and control over professional knowledge. Journalists instead gather and convey knowledge from others. Consequently, the primary economic value of journalism derives not from its own knowledge, but in distributing the knowledge of others.
"Today the value created by the practice, functions, and skills of journalism are being severely challenged. The fundamental challenge comes from technology that is deskilling journalists. It is providing individuals the capabilities to access sources, to search through information and determine its significance, and to convey it effectively without the support of a journalistic enterprise. Well‐paying employment requires that workers possess unique skills, abilities and knowledge. It also requires that the labour must be non‐commoditized.
"Unfortunately, journalistic labour has become commoditised. Professionalism of journalism and journalism education have determined the values and norms of news, commoditized the product, and turned most journalists into relatively interchangeable information factory workers. Average journalists share the same skills sets and the same approaches to stories, seek out the same sources, ask similar questions, and produce relatively similar stories. Few journalists encounter skills‐related problems changing from one news organization to another and the average journalist is easily replaced by another. This interchangeability is one reason why salaries for average journalists are relatively low and why columnists, cartoonists, and journalists with special skills (such as enhanced ability to cover finance, science, and health) are able to command higher wages. Across the news industry, processes and procedures for news gathering are guided by standardized news values, producing standardized stories in standardized formats that are presented in standardized styles. The result is extraordinary sameness and minimal differentiation.
"This problem is compounded because the uniqueness of their skills and activities are diminishing and that there is high competition to provide the news and information from persons outside the journalism profession.
"It is clear that journalists do not want to be in the contemporary labour market, much less the highly competitive information market. They prefer to justify the value they create in the moral philosophy terms of instrumental value. Most believe that what they do is so intrinsically good and that they should be compensated to do it even if it doesn't produce revenue."
Indeed, as Mutter said:
"Even if, arguendo, there were no 'commercial value' to journalism, the pursuit of disciplined and open-minded inquiry into public affairs and social issues has an incalculable value to society. Whether they are working for a media company or blogging for free, ethical and professional journalists contribute just as much as artists, scientists, academic researchers and people who dedicate themselves to fighting to assure honest government, enhance social justice and alleviate human suffering."
Which is exactly Picard's point -- and probably Paton's. Maybe there is, but it has to be created.
Although Picard did not have a concrete answer, he did show a direction -- one in which Paton does not go, from Mutter's synopsis:
"If value is to be created, journalists cannot continue to report merely in the traditional ways or merely re‐report the news that has appeared elsewhere. They must add something novel that creates value. They will have to start providing information and knowledge that is not readily available elsewhere, in forms that are not available elsewhere, or in forms that are more useable by and relevant to their audiences. ... It is not just a matter of embracing uses of new technologies. Journalists today are often urged to change practice to embrace crowd sourcing, to search specialty websites, social networks, blogs and micro‐blogs for story ideas, and to embrace in collaborative journalism with their audiences. Although all of these provide useful new ways to find information, access knowledge, and engage with readers, listeners, and viewers, however, the amount of value that they add and its monetization is highly debatable. The primary reason is that those who are most highly interested in that information and knowledge are able to harvest it themselves using increasingly common tools."
Which brings us to an editorial in this month's Editor & Publisher that I can't find online:
"Newspapers still own a solid competitive advantage over the Internet, but this advantage is slipping as newspapers play to the level of their competition and adapt to what everyone else is doing, instead of vice versa ... Newspapers that make the gutsy move away from day to day headlines -- news that is being disseminated better and faster online -- and focus on strong investigation and intelligent intrigue may be the ones that succeed in reintroducing themselves to subscribers willing to pay for breadth rather than immediacy."
As TTPB has repeatedly said: You need to find out who your customers are. You need to understand that your customers are not yourself. You need to create a pipeline to those customers that you control the spigot, because without that you cannot price. Simply trying to be part of "the conversation" is a doomed enterprise for a business or for most journalists, because much of the theory of "the conversation" is a rebuke to journalism as a business, a desire for a noncommercial agora of ideas, and most journalists do not have the ability to create an individually economically scalable presence.
Perhaps Mutter now sees better where some of this is going -- which is not the way he wanted it go to.
I knew, when I felt no need to grab my iPhone and immediately post a comment such as "NOOOOOOOO" at the end of Sunday's episode of "Game of Thrones" -- I'm trying not to be a spoiler, but has anyone who watches this show not heard about this episode yet -- that there's nothing worthwhile I could ever say about social media. I did the traditional thing -- my wife and I talked about it -- and she talked about it at work with another fan. No need for endless posted speculation about how could they do this! and will anyone keep watching! and the like. I could have posted something like, well, that's really using the old Bean, but -- to what point?
And then, of course, I write about it here. One could drive a truck through the contradictions in self-expression that exist in a world where everyone has a printing press. Entertainment Weekly provided actual journalism on the episode, talking to the star and the producers about the surprising turn. Except, of course, that it wasn't surprising to anyone who has read the books, or a synopsis of them, and has seen how faithfully the plot has been followed. So were the gasps of "NOOOOO" authentic gasps of surprise, or were they anticipated gasps, or were they attention-provoking exhalations simply to position oneself in the conversation? That's always been a problem with journalism -- we say we report the truth, but in damn few cases do we actually know it. What we know is what people say, and we try (sometimes) to line that up against what other people say and some things that are actually Known Facts, and then we say it has worth and (we used to say) people should pay someone to have it delivered to them, or someone should subsidize us for gathering an audience.
But now comes John Paton, widely hailed as a visionary for his digital-first emphasis at the formerly broken-down (let's be honest, still broken-down) Journal Register newspaper chain. Paton was given a weak hand to play and has played it well -- he has not only kept his neglected newsrooms afloat, but has made efforts to strengthen them, unlike the previous ownership, which cared about profit only, and has positioned himself as a 21st-century media guru. Alan Mutter, the well-regarded "Newsosaur" who has been one of the leading critics of the slow pace of media adaptation to a digital world he feels he was among the first to see, feels Paton has gone too far, though:
"Here’s what Paton said in remarks prepared for a keynote speech last week to the WAN-IFRA International Newsroom Summit in Zurich: 'As career journalists and managers, we have entered a new era where what we know and what we traditionally do has finally found its value in the marketplace and that value is about zero.'
"Explaining that the digital media have empowered everyone, everywhere to report or comment on the news, Paton pronounced 'traditional journalism' to be dead, according to a text of the speech he published at the blog he maintains to motivate the employees of his company. 'The Crowd collectively knows more about any subject, city or event we choose to cover than we do.'"
Mutter has not been among the "conversation" zealots or the "Stop the Presses immediately" crowd -- he has tried to base his views in economic analysis as much as in post-Internet journalistic theory or anger at plodding executives who didn't increase his web-news budget 150 percent every year because it would chip away at classifieds. But Paton is not breaking new ground. Media analyst Robert Picard largely said this in a speech at Oxford in 2009 called "Why Journalists Deserve Low Pay." Some excerpts:
"If one assesses the value that journalistic practice and skills creates, one rapidly comes to the conclusion that journalists are not knowledge workers, that is, they are not professionals with a unique base of knowledge such professors, medical personnel, and engineers or even electricians and computer technicians. Consequently, they are unable to create value through the scarcity of and control over professional knowledge. Journalists instead gather and convey knowledge from others. Consequently, the primary economic value of journalism derives not from its own knowledge, but in distributing the knowledge of others.
"Today the value created by the practice, functions, and skills of journalism are being severely challenged. The fundamental challenge comes from technology that is deskilling journalists. It is providing individuals the capabilities to access sources, to search through information and determine its significance, and to convey it effectively without the support of a journalistic enterprise. Well‐paying employment requires that workers possess unique skills, abilities and knowledge. It also requires that the labour must be non‐commoditized.
"Unfortunately, journalistic labour has become commoditised. Professionalism of journalism and journalism education have determined the values and norms of news, commoditized the product, and turned most journalists into relatively interchangeable information factory workers. Average journalists share the same skills sets and the same approaches to stories, seek out the same sources, ask similar questions, and produce relatively similar stories. Few journalists encounter skills‐related problems changing from one news organization to another and the average journalist is easily replaced by another. This interchangeability is one reason why salaries for average journalists are relatively low and why columnists, cartoonists, and journalists with special skills (such as enhanced ability to cover finance, science, and health) are able to command higher wages. Across the news industry, processes and procedures for news gathering are guided by standardized news values, producing standardized stories in standardized formats that are presented in standardized styles. The result is extraordinary sameness and minimal differentiation.
"This problem is compounded because the uniqueness of their skills and activities are diminishing and that there is high competition to provide the news and information from persons outside the journalism profession.
"It is clear that journalists do not want to be in the contemporary labour market, much less the highly competitive information market. They prefer to justify the value they create in the moral philosophy terms of instrumental value. Most believe that what they do is so intrinsically good and that they should be compensated to do it even if it doesn't produce revenue."
Indeed, as Mutter said:
"Even if, arguendo, there were no 'commercial value' to journalism, the pursuit of disciplined and open-minded inquiry into public affairs and social issues has an incalculable value to society. Whether they are working for a media company or blogging for free, ethical and professional journalists contribute just as much as artists, scientists, academic researchers and people who dedicate themselves to fighting to assure honest government, enhance social justice and alleviate human suffering."
Which is exactly Picard's point -- and probably Paton's. Maybe there is, but it has to be created.
Although Picard did not have a concrete answer, he did show a direction -- one in which Paton does not go, from Mutter's synopsis:
"If value is to be created, journalists cannot continue to report merely in the traditional ways or merely re‐report the news that has appeared elsewhere. They must add something novel that creates value. They will have to start providing information and knowledge that is not readily available elsewhere, in forms that are not available elsewhere, or in forms that are more useable by and relevant to their audiences. ... It is not just a matter of embracing uses of new technologies. Journalists today are often urged to change practice to embrace crowd sourcing, to search specialty websites, social networks, blogs and micro‐blogs for story ideas, and to embrace in collaborative journalism with their audiences. Although all of these provide useful new ways to find information, access knowledge, and engage with readers, listeners, and viewers, however, the amount of value that they add and its monetization is highly debatable. The primary reason is that those who are most highly interested in that information and knowledge are able to harvest it themselves using increasingly common tools."
Which brings us to an editorial in this month's Editor & Publisher that I can't find online:
"Newspapers still own a solid competitive advantage over the Internet, but this advantage is slipping as newspapers play to the level of their competition and adapt to what everyone else is doing, instead of vice versa ... Newspapers that make the gutsy move away from day to day headlines -- news that is being disseminated better and faster online -- and focus on strong investigation and intelligent intrigue may be the ones that succeed in reintroducing themselves to subscribers willing to pay for breadth rather than immediacy."
As TTPB has repeatedly said: You need to find out who your customers are. You need to understand that your customers are not yourself. You need to create a pipeline to those customers that you control the spigot, because without that you cannot price. Simply trying to be part of "the conversation" is a doomed enterprise for a business or for most journalists, because much of the theory of "the conversation" is a rebuke to journalism as a business, a desire for a noncommercial agora of ideas, and most journalists do not have the ability to create an individually economically scalable presence.
Perhaps Mutter now sees better where some of this is going -- which is not the way he wanted it go to.
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
On the Newspaper Front...
It's only been depressing. Advertising is recovering everywhere but in newspapers. It is rarely pointed out that newspapers' ad base -- the now-nearly-vanished help wanteds and real estate, the display ads for new subdivisions, and local retail -- continues to be the area worst-hit by the economic malaise and thus showing the slowest advertising recovery. That really doesn't make any difference to the bottom line, though.
So what increasingly looks to many like a march to the cliff continues -- it's now become folk-wisdom, as in "I love your newspaper, it's a shame you're all going out of business." I just wish that in writing about the problems of newspapers, people would cite the no-call law (as Rick Edmonds pointed out in noting an award for the New York Times' success in selling, yes, print subscriptions at events), the merger of Federated and May Co. that killed local department store competition in many markets, and other issues instead of simply saying "the Internet." As has been noted, it wasn't "the Internet" that's essentially killed Borders and put Barnes & Noble in jeopardy; it was the Internet (Amazon) plus Walmart and Target selling nearly every best-seller (or at least every best-seller with a strong female readership) at 40 percent off as a loss leader to get women to do all their shopping there. But journalists tend to look for one cause for any effect. It's the fatal flaw in "get both sides of the story." That works in court and on election night. But most stories have multiple sides -- which makes them, of course, worse stories.
And where did that meme about "the Internet" and its eventual triumph over -- well, everything come from? Read the book "The Filter Bubble" by Eli Pariser, board president of MoveOn.org. Read it for its own usefulness in showing just how quickly the Internet is become a series of paths we will be led down. It's not that the transformation-of-media Pariser writes about isn't happening. It's the law of unintended consequences that he now sees. There's a gem on nearly every page of this book, in which Pariser is hopeful that the better world early Internet enthusiasts saw will still happen but acknowledges that at the moment, it's been hijacked. I could quote this book all day -- and infringe on Pariser's copyright -- but for now I'll just quote this:
"Experts have a lot invested in theories they've developed to explain the world. And after a few years of working on them, they tend to see them everywhere."
And who did newspaper reporters call about what was happening to their business? Internet experts -- who not only saw the effect the Internet would have on newspapers, but also, more importantly, wanted it to happen and thus told newspapers there was nothing they could do.
Also for your reading list, from the New York Review of Books, "The Very Violent Road to America," by J.H. Elliott, a review of Daniel K. Richter's "Before the Revolution: America's Ancient Paths." When you're asking yourself, exactly what America do the tea party people want back, don't just think about the president's color or heritage. Remember the history of our country that we all were taught:
"The resulting story, as told to generations of Americans, was relatively simple and straightforward. Its origins were located in England, the England of Magna Carta, the Protestant Reformation, and the seventeenth-century struggle to save liberty from the grasp of arbitrary power. It was thus an essentially English story, which was then carried across the Atlantic by English emigrants, and was in due course replayed on the soil of America, and primarily of New England. Naturally it acquired new elements along the way....
"The story, however, continued to be shaped by three defining elements. It was Anglocentric, in the sense that it placed the weight of its emphasis on the contribution of British settlers, with some assistance from continental Europeans, primarily those of Teutonic origin, who were granted a kind of honorary Anglo status. It was teleological, in the sense that everything in the story built up to a logical conclusion in the winning of independence. And it was exceptionalist, in the sense that it was a story like no other about a nation that itself was like no other. As William Findley wrote, even before the eighteenth century was over, Americans had “formed a character peculiar to themselves, and in some respects distinct from that of other nations.”
"Over the past few decades all three pillars supporting the structure of colonial history have come to look increasingly insecure, partly as a consequence of changes in the discipline of history, but also because of the enormous political, social, and cultural changes that have transformed the world itself. As far as teleology is concerned, the Whig approach to history, with its retrospective selection of those features of the past that are held to explain a distinctive, and equally selective, interpretation of the present, has fallen out of favor. ... American exceptionalism, too, has come to look out of joint with the times.... On examination, the early settlers of Jamestown do not look so very different in their aspirations and methods from the Spanish conquistadores hunting after gold and Indian laborers in Mexico and Peru. But perhaps most important of all, the world has changed, and, with it, the United States’ sense of itself. National self-confidence, which once took for granted a manifest destiny deriving from a set of exceptional national qualities and characteristics, has taken some hard knocks since the 1960s. If the destiny is less manifest and some of the characteristics are less positive than they once appeared, then perhaps, after all, the United States does not have all the answers."
That's the America they want back -- the America that made them, as Americans, not only the greatest people in the world but sort of the point of a theory of cultural evolution. As with creationism, the America they want back is one in which the point of Western history was to create -- us. "Us" did not include a half-African who grew up in Jakarta -- happy to have you live here, of course, but as with everyone who does not have "honorary Anglo status," mind your manners and know your place. This story is about us, not you. When myths meet reality, though, don't myths usually win?
So what increasingly looks to many like a march to the cliff continues -- it's now become folk-wisdom, as in "I love your newspaper, it's a shame you're all going out of business." I just wish that in writing about the problems of newspapers, people would cite the no-call law (as Rick Edmonds pointed out in noting an award for the New York Times' success in selling, yes, print subscriptions at events), the merger of Federated and May Co. that killed local department store competition in many markets, and other issues instead of simply saying "the Internet." As has been noted, it wasn't "the Internet" that's essentially killed Borders and put Barnes & Noble in jeopardy; it was the Internet (Amazon) plus Walmart and Target selling nearly every best-seller (or at least every best-seller with a strong female readership) at 40 percent off as a loss leader to get women to do all their shopping there. But journalists tend to look for one cause for any effect. It's the fatal flaw in "get both sides of the story." That works in court and on election night. But most stories have multiple sides -- which makes them, of course, worse stories.
And where did that meme about "the Internet" and its eventual triumph over -- well, everything come from? Read the book "The Filter Bubble" by Eli Pariser, board president of MoveOn.org. Read it for its own usefulness in showing just how quickly the Internet is become a series of paths we will be led down. It's not that the transformation-of-media Pariser writes about isn't happening. It's the law of unintended consequences that he now sees. There's a gem on nearly every page of this book, in which Pariser is hopeful that the better world early Internet enthusiasts saw will still happen but acknowledges that at the moment, it's been hijacked. I could quote this book all day -- and infringe on Pariser's copyright -- but for now I'll just quote this:
"Experts have a lot invested in theories they've developed to explain the world. And after a few years of working on them, they tend to see them everywhere."
And who did newspaper reporters call about what was happening to their business? Internet experts -- who not only saw the effect the Internet would have on newspapers, but also, more importantly, wanted it to happen and thus told newspapers there was nothing they could do.
Also for your reading list, from the New York Review of Books, "The Very Violent Road to America," by J.H. Elliott, a review of Daniel K. Richter's "Before the Revolution: America's Ancient Paths." When you're asking yourself, exactly what America do the tea party people want back, don't just think about the president's color or heritage. Remember the history of our country that we all were taught:
"The resulting story, as told to generations of Americans, was relatively simple and straightforward. Its origins were located in England, the England of Magna Carta, the Protestant Reformation, and the seventeenth-century struggle to save liberty from the grasp of arbitrary power. It was thus an essentially English story, which was then carried across the Atlantic by English emigrants, and was in due course replayed on the soil of America, and primarily of New England. Naturally it acquired new elements along the way....
"The story, however, continued to be shaped by three defining elements. It was Anglocentric, in the sense that it placed the weight of its emphasis on the contribution of British settlers, with some assistance from continental Europeans, primarily those of Teutonic origin, who were granted a kind of honorary Anglo status. It was teleological, in the sense that everything in the story built up to a logical conclusion in the winning of independence. And it was exceptionalist, in the sense that it was a story like no other about a nation that itself was like no other. As William Findley wrote, even before the eighteenth century was over, Americans had “formed a character peculiar to themselves, and in some respects distinct from that of other nations.”
"Over the past few decades all three pillars supporting the structure of colonial history have come to look increasingly insecure, partly as a consequence of changes in the discipline of history, but also because of the enormous political, social, and cultural changes that have transformed the world itself. As far as teleology is concerned, the Whig approach to history, with its retrospective selection of those features of the past that are held to explain a distinctive, and equally selective, interpretation of the present, has fallen out of favor. ... American exceptionalism, too, has come to look out of joint with the times.... On examination, the early settlers of Jamestown do not look so very different in their aspirations and methods from the Spanish conquistadores hunting after gold and Indian laborers in Mexico and Peru. But perhaps most important of all, the world has changed, and, with it, the United States’ sense of itself. National self-confidence, which once took for granted a manifest destiny deriving from a set of exceptional national qualities and characteristics, has taken some hard knocks since the 1960s. If the destiny is less manifest and some of the characteristics are less positive than they once appeared, then perhaps, after all, the United States does not have all the answers."
That's the America they want back -- the America that made them, as Americans, not only the greatest people in the world but sort of the point of a theory of cultural evolution. As with creationism, the America they want back is one in which the point of Western history was to create -- us. "Us" did not include a half-African who grew up in Jakarta -- happy to have you live here, of course, but as with everyone who does not have "honorary Anglo status," mind your manners and know your place. This story is about us, not you. When myths meet reality, though, don't myths usually win?
Thursday, May 12, 2011
Department Store Buildings of the... Vale of Anthracite
I was just talking with my former colleague Jim Remsen, who hails from Clarks Summit, Pa. -- the upscale and up-the-mountain suburb of Scranton. So here's a look at what were Scranton's two big department stores, whose buildings thankfully have lasted until now.At the upper middle (with the large light roof, and extending to the next building to the right as well) is what generations of Scrantonians knew as the Globe Store. Its official name was the Cleland-Simpson Co. at 119 Wyoming Ave., but it was known initially as the Globe Warehouse, then the Globe Store. John Cleland, John Simpson, and a Taylor established the Globe in 1878. The company established many branches, among them Trenton and Allentown. Around 1900, John Taylor, son of David, withdrew from the partnership and went his own way in Allentown. By 1910 the Globe was totally under the direction of the Simpson family and its heirs, one of whom was the wonderfully named Urbane Noble. The other Globes -- there were Globe Warehouses across northeastern Pennsylvania, in towns such as Danville and Carbondale -- gradually withered away, although the Taylor store in Allentown continued until the Depression. The Scranton Globe prospered, however. It expanded downtown in the 1950s, as did so many department stores that 20 or 30 years later were gone, and purchased the Isaac Long Store in Wilkes-Barre.
In the 1970s it was briefly a division of John Wanamaker in Philadelphia, then was spun off in one of the Wanamaker sales (to Carter Hawley Hale or to Woodward & Lothrop) and operated as an independent store until the mid-1990s.Even though it was attached to a downtown mall with a Boscov's store, it could not last and closed in 1994.
Here, I'd like to make a point about historical accuracy. Very few department stores, other than the largest, had books written about their histories, such as happened with Strawbridge & Clothier, Belk Bros., or Marshall Field & Co. Newspapers tended to cover the deaths of department store owners lavishly (thank you for the advertising) and the sale of their companies miserly (are you going to continue to advertise?). Occasionally one will find a treasure trove like the historical records of P. Wiest's Sons at the York County Historical Society. More often, though, one is left with memories, occasional clips, and records that may or may not be reliable.
The Globe Store creates a couple of problems for researchers online. This story from the Scranton Times-Tribune says the Cleland-Simpson Co. was founded by Cleland, Simpson, and William Taylor in 1878. That indeed may be, but by the 1880 city directory David E. Taylor was listed as a partner and the firm was called Cleland, Simpson & Taylor for two decades. (The Times-Tribune story becomes suspect by calling Taylor "Williams" on second reference.) It also says Cleland bought Taylor's share of the business shortly thereafter. That also may be, but David Taylor was still listed as a partner in the firm in not only the Scranton directory of 1900, but in the Allentown directory as well. So it depends on the definition of "shortly." Most suspect is the phrase "the Globe and its warehouse." The store was called the Globe Warehouse to emphasize that it sold at lower prices. As it became more established and upscale, it became the Globe Store. But there was never a difference between the store and its warehouse.
The Wikipedia entry on the Globe offers more confusion. It correctly notes that the Danville Globe was operated by Charles Hancock, and notes that he had worked with Cleland, Simpson, and Taylor in Danville and that they then moved to Scranton. This again may well be, as it is taken from an old county history. But that book confuses the issue for modern readers by referring to Hancock's moving back to Danville "where his former employers were located." I assume that it uses "were" to mean "had been." But they had moved on to Scranton and taken Hancock with them, and he then went back home. Hancock opened his Globe in 1883 and may have been an independent operator, but even in those days, it was usual that a store of the same name would either have been started as a branch or the owner would have been "staked" by the original partners. The Wikipedia writer, confused by all this, has Hancock's Danville Globe moving to Scranton, which is inaccurate, because the Globe Store had been in Scranton for five years before the Danville Globe opened.
But on the other hand, in an earlier post I said John Taylor was an original partner in the firm. John Taylor was the son of David Taylor, who either was an original partner or became one in place of the mysterious William Taylor. John Taylor did become a partner with Cleland and Simpson in the Allentown operation briefly, but was never a partner in Scranton. So I guess none of this is completely trustworthy.
The other big store in the photo, on the corner at bottom with a canopy over the sidewalk, was known to Scrantonians as the "Scranton Dry" or the "Dry Goods," and about this store the Times-Tribune article appears absolutely correct. The Scranton Dry Goods Co. was founded by Isaac E. Oppenheim on Washington Avenue in Scranton in 1912 and quickly moved to occupy a giant store at 401 Lackawanna Ave. that had been built as a branch of Jonas Long's Sons, another Wilkes-Barre store. Isaac and Jonas Long were brothers. (The Jonas Long firm apparently fell on hard times, because the original store in Wilkes-Barre also was sold around the same era.) The Dry Goods also greatly expanded over the years, including into the much taller building behind it. In the 1970s, in an attempt not to sound archaic, it rebranded itself "Oppenheim's." But it closed in 1980, apparently still run by Ellis and Richard Oppenheim, sons of the founder. The building is used for offices; here's an appreciation.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)