Comments on: Newspapers Writing for Selves, Not Readers?

By: Mike P

Mike P — Fri, 08 May 2009 13:20:59 +0000

@Lunacy,
You're right in that one newspaper communities don't have that luxury. That paper literally does have to be all things to all people, which means it won't be able to do everything well and will, in fact, do some things poorly.

@Sam,
That's actually the kind of thing you'd almost see in the NY Post or Daily News. They encourage their reporters to go for punchy, pithy ledes.

By: sam

sam — Fri, 08 May 2009 12:33:14 +0000

@Boyd

Nothing infuriates me more than not being able to find out about a topic without having to fight my way through the author's opinion and "cuteness." Don't they teach reporting in J-school any more?

Well, maybe we could go back to the philosophy of journalism followed by one of James Thurber's editors when Thurber was on the crime beat for a newspaper. The editor assembled all the reporters and told them, from now on, all stories had to begin with a one-word lede. So the next day, Thurber submitted a story that began:

Dead. That was the way the man was the police found on the corner of 1st and Main yesterday morning. ...

I once wrote for a magazine, and my editor was himself an old crime reporter. I told him this story, and he said, "Hey, that's not a bad idea."

By: lunacy

lunacy — Fri, 08 May 2009 11:15:06 +0000

Mike's point about varied news sources isn't valid in one newspaper communities like mine. Our population is roughly 400,000. So, one newspaper. And, sadly, the readers' preference do play in this. I haven't done statistical analysis but I'd bet the bank that readers here are more interested in the sports section than the local gov't/zoning issues. Still, I don't want to pay 1.50 to struggle to get my news.

By: dennis neylon

dennis neylon — Fri, 08 May 2009 09:56:23 +0000

As another former journalism major now doing something else for a living, I am not so much frustrated by coverage or lack thereof of zoning boards issues (which are, for the most part, tedious and boring most of the time) but the lack of any meaningful coverage at all. I happen to live next to Detroit (literally; we are 250 feet from the city line). The two metro outlets (since they cut back on print, you can barely call them newspapers) barely covered the suburbs before, made obvious errors (having parallel streets cross, moving boundary lines, etc) when they did and coverage was shallow. Now it's worse (a condition I would not have believed possible). The suburban 4 day a week paper does an infinitely better job. World and national coverage depends on the wire services, feature writing is nearly non-existent and they have early sports score deadlines that the newspaper I worked for 30 years ago would have found unacceptable (the cut off seems to be around 10 p.m. for non-local teams). Oddly, the local business coverage is very good. If it wasn't for sports and the byzantine politics of the city of Detroit, I could get by with the local paper and the Wall Street Journal (thank God for the Wall Street Journal, a paper which still seems to employ reporters). I am often reminded of a line from when I was in Journalism school -- Journalists are unemployed reporters. Unfortunately, today it would seem to be that the journalists are working and the reporters are not!

By: Mike P

Mike P — Fri, 08 May 2009 03:24:26 +0000

Well there already are outlets in both NY and DC that do the local thing better than the big boys. Nobody here in NYC reads the Times for local news, because the Times isn't a local paper. If you want to know what's going on in NYC, you read the Post, or the Daily News or the Observer. In DC, you probably can get a good sense of what's shaking by reading things like the Washingtonian and the City Paper. I'm getting a master's in journalism now and while the basics that both lunacy and Boyd mention are both stressed, I think, again, it really depends on what paper you're reading. The Times will frequently use delayed leads and the like, where, again, if you picked up the Daily News, you'd get a pity intro, but the story would spool out quickly for the reader.

By: lunacy

lunacy — Fri, 08 May 2009 00:21:23 +0000

Here, here!

--Nothing infuriates me more than not being able to find out about a topic without having to fight my way through the author's opinion and "cuteness."--

Often it doesn't strike me as cuteness or an attempt to make things interesting. I think there is a real lack of the concept of reporting all the meat at the top of the article and elaborating as it goes on.

I never went to J-school but I'm degreed in language arts ed (no longer occupied as such, having moved on through post grad). BUT (I digress!) I learned, and taught, that the reader should be able to find who, what, where, when, and possibly why, within the first sentence or two, or three if the story is complex. Then the reader can decide if they wish to proceed.

I HATE it when they make me struggle for the most basic information. It's like they leave the facts lying around someplace on the floor of the article.

By: Boyd

Boyd — Thu, 07 May 2009 22:00:42 +0000

I think this misses the point. The problem in journalism as I see it is not so much what topics the newspapers decide to cover. It's rather how they end up writing the articles. From reading today's major newspapers, I can only conclude newspapers no longer employ reporters because they're all authors. They're writing for those Pulitzers by making their articles "interesting," as opposed to reporting. Nothing infuriates me more than not being able to find out about a topic without having to fight my way through the author's opinion and "cuteness." Don't they teach reporting in J-school any more? Give me Who What When and Where. Some How might be good. Keep the Why back in the Opinion pages, labeled as opinion. I don't know, maybe those types of articles would be more boring than the crap that passes for reporting these days, but at least it imparted information, unlike today's reportage. Yeah, I'm an old fart. And GIT OFFA MY LAWN!

By: Dave Schuler

Dave Schuler — Thu, 07 May 2009 21:59:11 +0000

I think the premise isn't entirely wrong but is an overstatement. Copy writers and editors have their own objectives and that's reflected in what they do. That's always been true. When the cost of entry into the newspaper market was high and there wasn't any competition from other sides those objectives could be allowed free rein without hurting the bottom line much. It's that last bit that's changed.