Thursday, April 23, 2009

Former Journal editor: 'Broken for 20 years'

In an amazing admission the former Flint Journal editor opined that the newspaper model has been broken for "20 years" at a recent forum on the future of newspapers.

Gees, I don't remember him telling us that during his service as our editor at the Flint Journal. In fact, it was the editor - and his predecessor - who told us that the free content model, specifically the lame MLive version, was the future.

If you go back 20 years - 1989 - you will remember that newspapers weren't doing so badly then. In fact, they were making money hand over fist. The Flint Journal circulation was high and the advertising dollars were rolling in. We were paid well, had great benefits and we got nice raises each year.

Broken, I don't think so. I think the broken part goes back about 10-12 years, or about the time the new generation of new Booth leaders took the helm of many of the papers.

But have no fear, they are coming back to fix what they broke.

2 comments:

inky said...

I can't believe I'm partly defending Tony Dearing, but I will spend a brief minute doing so and then take a shower.

He and the rest of the Boothies aren't the sole reason why newspapers across America are dropping like flies. Like termites that spend years eating away at the foundation before the house falls down, I do think the damage to newspapers started some time ago: It's just taken five years for it to show up. Few papers have been spared.

Newspaper content has always been relatively "free" to subscribers (subscription fees barely pay for printing and delivery); it's just that there is no longer a healthy supply of ad revenue to pay reporters and editors. Putting the identical content online for free seemed like the only way to stay in the game, but now we have millions of customers who love to dance but don't think they should have to pay the band.

Then there's the incompetence, including in Flint. Flint has always been a great news town, so it puzzles me as to why the management felt they needed to "plan" the news. They thought they could lure young readers to the print product with celebrity news and squishy features vs. hard news. There's a place in the paper for that, but they did little or no marketing to this audience. Hell, there's a reason why even a venerable brand like Pepsi spends a billion dollars every time it unleashes a new flavor of cola.

I'm not saying the Journal should have gorged itself on a buffet of township planning commission drivel, but it's at those micro-local forums where reporters learn what's really going on in a community. Like who's skimming from the treasury, or which zoning officials are taking bribes in exchange for yes votes. That's what makes for great local journalism, and something readers can't get on Channel 12.

Editors also have been lousy about explaining how a free press works in this country; namely that it isn't "free." A friend of mine who is in real estate got tired of showing houses to clients only to have them jump to another agent to buy. When she took the time to explain to new clients how agents are paid and how much upfront time they invest in sellng a house, she had fewer defections.

The relative success of the Monnroe paper seems to underscore this: Do what you are best at, stay close to your customers and give them local, timely news. Don't plan Sunday covers a month in advance -- most Journal Sunday packages, for example, were too timeless to be news and too thin to masquerade a good magazine article.

Finally, I have to ask: If Tony Dearing really did declare at that forum that the business model for papers has been broken for two decades, then I'd like to know what Booth editors and publishers actually TALKED about at those management and professional association conventions -- or did they merely opine about the quality of the hotel breakfast buffet?

Anonymous said...

For too long Sales people have been riding on the shirt tails of the accounts they were givin and were already established. It seems like there has not been enough effort to get new accounts or keep the ones they had for years. I am just making an observation here. I am sure some of the folks in sales work very hard.