Journalism is expensive, talk is cheap

On the way into work I was listening to a very interesting Where We Live, this morning on WNPR, during which two experienced, now under-employed journalists Mark Pazniokas (formerly of the Hartford Courant) and Greg Hladky (formerly of the New Haven Journal Register), talked about the fate of state news coverage.

I decided to call in when both reporters continued to say, "journalism is expensive," and while I got on the air at the tail end of the show, the entreaty from host John Dankowsky to ask my question quickly left me spurting out a comment, not a question, that wasn't completely cohesive and complete.

So, here are my concerns, and the questions I would have raised.

Both Pazniokas and Hladky said at some point during the hour that good, investigative journalism is "expensive."

I would argue that "expensive" is a relative term, and now a meme being repeated by laid-off reporters who have heard that very justification from the newspapers which have laid them off.

There's no doubt that the cost of a staff of experienced, capable journalists is significant. Still, I don't believe that the cost of journalist salaries are what's bringing dailies down.

The Courant began trimming news and editorial staff two years ago. A source inside the paper told me that the publisher confirmed that the Courant would have netted $41 million in 2007, if it did not have to pay down the debt incurred by Sam Zell's purchase of the paper.

That's a lot of profit. And to be fair, that was a year ago when the economy was still humming along. Since then, the economy has tanked, advertising revenue is down, and the cost of running a paper has increased. But the debt hasn't disappeared.

So, without the corporate debt, the Courant might have had to trim staff. But the huge, debilitating cuts that the parent company is now demanding would be unlikely.

The truth is that the papers that are failing in this country are largely the victims of upside down mortgages. Large corporations bought the papers at inflated prices when the economy was good, and the papers (and associated TV and radio stations) were cash cows. But the economy went in the shitter just as other factors like news on the web, and particularly free classifieds on the web, began to erode the influence and reach of the papers. Corporate debt has killed more newspapers than the cost of maintaining a solid staff of good writers.

Writers report news. News makes newspapers. Without news you lose readers. Without readers you lose newspapers.

The extension of the belief that "good journalism is expensive," leads one to conclude that eventually all legacy print newspapers are bound to fail, and that there is no way to create an in-depth news organization on the web, or elsewhere, that can feature local source reporting, and make a profit.

I think that's a fallacy, and it's one that ex-reporters ought to stop spreading. That meme allows the legacy press publishers to discourage those they lay off from rising up as competitors.

Will print newspapers disappear? The answer, unfortunately is "yes." Inevitably the cost of print, the lack of demand for print, the ease of acquiring news stories on the web and elsewhere, is bound to hasten the demise of ink and paper. But will these factors destroy the organizations publishing healthy newspapers today? The answer is likely "no." I suggest that locally-run, privately-held, commercially and publically-funded, agile newspapers will figure out how to move from ink and paper to another medium, and in the meantime, they'll continue to publish successful ink and paper until the paradigm shifts completely.

And new "newspapers" will spring up to compete with the legacy press who can't get their act together.

Hladky and Pazniokas talked about the search for a new model for news, and that it's unlikely that "blogs" will be able to do what a paper like the Courant has done. The truth is that the Courant is at the point where it isn't doing what the Courant once did, and some blogs are filling in the blanks.

What if Hladky and Pazniokas and their laid-off colleagues banded together and created a state-wide web paper (or joined forces with someone like Christine Stuart at CT New Junkie) that capitalized (no pun intended), on their vast experience, but also featured free online classifieds, obituaries, weather, traffic, movie and tv listings, sports and virtual coupons. They might find that they have something that they could sell to advertisers. They might find that they could create an income stream that would pay local reporters, editors, photogs and graphic artists, and have enough money left over to declare a profit at the end of the year.

Of course, not many journalists wants to run a newspaper. Not many news writers are entrepreneurs. Not many columnists want to balance a spreadsheet. Not many editors want to track payroll. Mostly writers want to write, and they want to work for someone who will pay them to write.

So, as I blurted on Where We Live, I don't think the discovery of the model that will work is that far off. I only think it takes an enterprising publisher to discover a way to truly compete with The Courant.

People want what the Courant and the New Haven Register once offered. They may not want it in the same way, but they want it all the same. They may not appreciate capitol reporting in the abstract, but when it comes wrapped with weather and traffic and obits and movie previews, they may come to understand how much they need and want it.

And the state, and the country needs and wants it too.

It's our duty to discover a way to keep an eye on government, and to bring well-crafted news to the governed. It's our duty to demand in-depth reporting and not to cede that duty to well-coiffed talking heads, and camera operators with a mic and a deadline. It's our duty to stop talking about the way in which newspapers have failed, and discover a way to make news work again. It's our duty to have an informed citizenry, a wary governing class, a knowledgeable set of voters and legislators and public officials who won't operate in a vacuum.

Okay, journalism is expensive. What will it cost us if it disappears?

Trained journalists

So, after volunteering to sit through a three hour Economic Development Committee meeting in Middletown, so that I could share the results with my fellow residents, I got home an listened, online to the podcast of Monday's Where We Live. The topic was "The Future of Newspapers."

It's a topic I'm passionate about, as a reader, a former newspaper writer, and a documentary film journalist.

I'm happy to say that an email I wrote to host John Dankosky got read on the air, but dismayed that the journalism professor (Paul Janesch) and the former NY Times reporter (Marcia Chambers) found it necessary to disparage the efforts of citizen journalism sites like The Middletown Eye, which I helped found.

Janesch posited that the Middletown Eye, and other local community newsblogs didn't display the journalistic discipline of real newspapers. Chambers indicated that unlike her newsite (kind of a blog), The Branford Eagle, The Middletown Eye is not staffed with "trained journalists."

Well.

The worst thing a "trained" journalist should do is presume that he or she knows something that he or she doesn't.

I detect a bit of journalistic snobbery.

First off, I won't pretend The Middletown Eye is something it isn't. We are not a website attached to a print newspaper. We do not have paid staff. We don't have an office, or the ability (time) to dig for all of our stories the way a paid staff might.

But don't get me wrong. I'm not apologizing. The Middletown Eye is staffed by community journalists of all stripes. Some indeed are what you might call "trained" journalists. They have experience writing for print newspapers, magazines and journals. Some are professors. Some are artists, musicians, stay-at-home parents, ministers, business owners, civic activists, university employees, architects, environmentalists and others who care deeply about the town in which we all live.

All of us know how to write. I would conjecture that some of us know a bit more about research than most "trained" and seasoned journalists.

I will tell you this. We have scooped the Hartford Courant and Middletown Press on a number of occasions. We have been the media source (unaccredited), for newspaper, TV and radio stories. We have written stories which have made the US Army change course. We have exposed local issues and controversies for public scrutiny. And we covered the last election in town like no other media outlet could or would.

We've been around for seven months.

We try mightily to keep opinion separate from news reporting (though we are not always successful). We discourage anything that smacks of personal vendetta. We refuse to print anonymous assaults (though we will print non-threatening anonymous comments). And we are respected by town municipal leaders and residents as an accurate source of information. Our readership is small, but growing.

Certainly, some of what Janesch and Chambers say a "newsblog" ought to aspire to are lofty goals (goals, I might add, that many newspapers do not achieve) - fairness, accuracy, objectivity (to the extent that it can ever be achieved), insight, institutional memory, clear and spirited writing. We hope to be able to offer all or those things to our readership, and more, including a dedication to making Middletown a great place to live, for everyone who lives here (without becoming mindless cheerleaders).

By the way, that Economic Development Committee meeting I sat through resulted in a post which revealed that a gourmet food manufacturer wants to move to Middletown. No other "trained" journalist was at the meeting to report that. You won't read about it in the Hartford Courant or Middletown Press today. It was in the Eye at midnight.

The trouble with newspapers, as I've said dozens of time, is not the reporters, editors, photographers or graphic artists who toil for the dailies. It's the absentee-landlord corporate owners who have hocked the papers into debt-holes from which it is impossible to climb.

Finally, if examples of "trained" journalists are what we find in the ineffectual Washington press corps, or on cable news channel, I'd rather remain untrained.

Why we don't vote

It's absolutely shameful that only 30% of those registered to vote in Middletown, actually voted. It's an indictment of a populace too lulled into complacency to get off their asses and make a decision about the people who run the towns, the state and the country they live in.

So, why don't we vote. On Connecticut Public Radio today, John Dankowski hosted two young politicians on Where We Live. The topic of discussion was Getting Out the Youth Vote, and the guests were David Brewster, President of the Connecticut Union of College Republicans, and Matt Lesser, whom you may have read about in this blog before, who is a member of College Democrats in Connecticut. (The show is available online and will be rebroadcast tonight on WNPR).

Lesser, BTW was recently victorious in his unopposed run for Planning and Zoning Commission alternate here in Middletown, where he received nearly as many votes in his category, as the unopposed candidate for mayor, received in his. Matt worked hard to get the vote out among his fellow Wesleyan students.

The main question on Where We Live was voter apathy among young people. The problem with the topic is that voter apathy is not an affliction of youth. It infects young and old alike. The answer to the question of why people don't vote became clear during the course of the show. Though they are barely out of their teens, both Lesser and Brewster spouted the pat, scripted answers you would expect to fall from the lips of party bosses several decades their senior.

When asked about youth disaffection from policies of the Bush administration, Brewster took the opportunity to not answer the question, but to laud Bush for diligently fighting terror. While Brewster admitted that the war may not be going the way it was predicted to go, he thought it was important to be fighting in Iraq (I suppose so we don't have to be fighting them here.) He obviously doesn't think it's important enough for him to enlist. His evidence to the success of the Bush doctrine - we haven't had a terrorist attack on these shores since 9/11. The same specious argument the president offers.

As for Lesser, when asked if students were less active politically because they aren't threatened by the draft like young men in the sixties were, Lesser smugly posited that youth today are more "saavy," that they don't need to espouse revolution because they can affect change through the electoral process. He cited the Democratic congressional victories as his example of how change can happen by using the system. What he didn't explain was why the Democratic congress has been such a complete failure in ending the war, protecting our civil liberties and the Constitution, or controlling a runaway executive branch.

The reason most people don't vote. Simple. Politicians. When twenty-year old political novices speak exactly like their ineffectual mentors, it's a hothouse for apathy and cynicism.

Give me Abby Hoffman any day.