The Newspaper Man is Defunct - Part 15 - It’s All Too Much

By TRB

A long time ago on the Beatles "Yellow Submarine" album there was a song called "It's all too much." George Harrison wrote it, and it was about a number of things including love. But it was also about the over-stimulation of thought, the avalanche of facts from countless sources that each of us is expected to survive on the average day. Thankfully, this avalanche is of no physical substance. It just sweeps over us unseen like a chatty fog. But still a few out there are beginning to feel pummeled, caught up in something that is moving them involuntarily and at whim from a place they like to a place they might not enjoy things at all. The avalanche is coming from your cable TV, leaving misinformation piles on your floor.The avalanche in coming from your computer, in many cases dropping piles of information right in your lap. And the information is coming from your newspaper, if you still read one. It is almost a shame to call them newspapers, really, since they bear little resemblance to what they were 30 - 40 years ago, when they dared to print the truth and were worth what you paid for them. Back when they were actually newspapers.

I remember when there were wonderful newspapers. Newspapers that had great writers. Newspapers that told you what you didn't want to hear. Newspapers that stuck a pin in local government when it was corrupt. Newspapers that explained the community to the community because they were the only institution in the community that could. Newspapers that told the government to go to hell. Newspapers that told the cops to stop acting like thugs. Newspapers that had critics who slammed book authors when they were hacks and told readers which movies out of Hollywood were worth a damn. Newspapers that told us when people, with whom we had been out of touch, died.

Newspapers with fearless editorial writers who would write anything they damn well pleased if they could prove it. Newspapers with columnists who were strange in the way they looked at your little or big city, who took you into places you had never been, who introduced you to ironies and wiseguys you did not know existed. Newspapers who employed investigative reporters who would often disappear for days only to return with a story or two that would put some scumbag in jail or open up criminal investigations into giant government agencies. Newspapers with publishers who actually saw their newspaper as an important institution in the life of a community and considered it their responsibility to allow their editorial staff to do the paper's editorial business because it was an important business they knew how to do.

I can't imagine what a print journalist does today when newspapers are owned by large corporations that care primarily about three things: profit, low liability, and increased ad revenue. This all began when the family owned newspaper became the mega-corporation newspaper three or four decades ago, First they dumbed them down to a fifth grade reading level.Then they got their hooks into the J Schools through their endowment systems where they were able to place hundreds of journalism instructors all singing the praises of "fairness, balance and objectivity." I don't know how they did this. But I can tell you, I was there and it was like a journalistic version of "The Invasion of the Body Snatchers."

Does anyone out there remember when the Boston Globe employed an entire department of investigative reporters called the Spotlight Team? The Boston Globe even had a morning and evening edition? Remember Mike Barnicle who after years and years of excellent columns was run out of town over what might have been a slight exaggeration in one of his columns, but only if you looked at it from the proper direction while the wind was blowing south over your left shoulder? And then the infamous whispering woofers came around saying things like, "Well, you know this has almost happened before." And you asked what had almost happened to Mr. Barnicle "before". And they replied that they didn't really know but they had their suspicions. For me, firing Barnicle was the last straw. The mighty Globe had been failing for years. Getting rid of Barnicle was the proof.

And besides what was their problem with Mike Barnicle? Barnicle wasn't the first brilliant but eccentric writer to appear on their payroll. Does the Boston Globe even remember that they once employed George Frazier, a columnist who every year would cover the opening day Red Sox game in Latin? Frazier dressed like he was on his way to some unknown king's ball, he was never self-centered, though. He was more attuned to the society going on around him, and he could spin a tale so fast it would literally disappear from your sight. Frazier could tell you stories that you could never prove or disprove even if you had a half a century to investigate them. I believe he eventually went to work for Esquire Magazine in New York City. But the Globe has had its characters. I remember running into Will McDonough once at a court house where I was covering some legal problems his son was having. At the time McDonough was splitting his time between the NFL on the networks and his sports column in the Boston Globe. He asked me if I planned to come back for his son's next court date, in that way only Will could ask, one that would instantly transport you to the sound stage of a horror movie looking directly into the eyes of the beast. "No Will, I said. "There's not much of a story here." There really wasn't much of a story there; just the Herald trying to make McDonough look bad. I wasn't going to help them do that and never wrote a story on the subject.

Sometimes I think back to 1968 to that perfect Boston Globe, the one that convinced me to be the editor of my high school newspaper. The one that pushed me into the dusty basement to write obits at a small city newspaper. The one that got me assigned to Stars and Stripes, and the Patriot Ledger and the Herald and then into a university to teach about how all of it was coming apart just as it was coming apart. All the fat cats where purchasing the newspapers and television and radio networks and it wasn't real journalism anymore and hadn't been for a long time.

And worse. It is not coming back. And more newspapers will die everyday until none or very few are left.

So what now? Well there is this - you are looking at it. I am a former print journalist. I was a good journalist. I broke stories, they broke me, I received awards, I had my fill and I got old. And now here I am writing for a web newspaper. And I have to tell you it is almost like the old days, except that the money, when there is any, sucks. That will improve though. This is the Dodge City of journalism. Sure there are rules, but you know about those rules, second and third sources and attribution and all that. My opinion is that print journalists in higher numbers should begin to prepare for "newspapers" like this one that provides readers with enough information to make it over the bumps in their lives, and entertains, too. It won't decide what you can and can't write at a board meeting or an editorial conference. If you know what you are doing, you are trusted to do it. The plain fact is web newspapers could use you.

I am discovering that more and more so-called "bloggers"are former journalists.You can usually spot them instantly - they are the ones who know how to write. I wouldn't call this a literary masterpiece (look at those second and third paragraphs, and I am not even ashamed), but as you grow older you develop this casual attitude about your writing. It becomes like your wardrobe. You simply put the nearest article of clothing on first. Sure, I could write a good hard news story, a good news feature even a good obit - but I wrote that years ago.