The Newspaper Man is Defunct - Part 22 - Going Backward to Go Forward

By TRB

Ink-on-paper newspapers are having a difficult time surviving across the nation and around the globe. It seems that at least once a month another major city newspaper in the U.S. is either cutting back its circulation, raising its prices or completely folding. All the major dailies are online now with what are called "money walls," which means you pay the newspaper to take down the wall on your computer screen or you can't read the paper.

So far this issue of dying papers has focused almost entirely on the excess availability of "news" from so many and various outlets that readers no longer believe the newspaper is worth buying. It is just more of the same. This is a reasoned response to the current availability of "free news" on line, on local television and 24/7 on cable and satellite. The rational question becomes "Why do I need a newspaper?"

It used to be that you might need it for the television program listings. Those are now available right on your television. Maybe you like sports. Sports are available on at least 6 different devices night and day, national and local.

Then there is the marketplace for international news, and domestic news too, for that matter. It is just so crowded and confused that many people have given up on it.

People have also learned, over the years that major news media are in the business of indoctrination, not news. And the journalists who write this idiocy about "humanitarian" wars and fail constantly to mention the manipulation of our political system by the banks; are they even aware of these monumental news stories? The truth is, the journalist can not be blamed. They too have been indoctrinated at journalism schools that have taught them to be "fair and balanced" and "objective," too.

Imagine that? trying to be objective about news stories that can never be anything but subjective. And be fair and balanced too. No wonder newspapers have a foot in the grave.

There was a time when people wanted to know about practical things, such as what ships were coming into the harbor today, what was their cargo, how many days would they remain in port?

They wanted to know about the price of meat and poultry and fruit and vegetables and where they could get these articles at a good price.

People wanted to know about the price of fish, where it could be obtained fresh.

The outside food markets were busy back then - let's say 1850 - and newspaper readers wanted to know what was in these markets, where it came from, right down the the name of the farmer.

In those days, the newspaper was an absolute necessity. You needed it for everything. When were services held at the various meeting houses, churches and temples? Who were the cabinet makers downtown who could replace your worn sideboard? What medicines were available for the gout that bothered you? Where could your find the nearest horse doctor?

Readers wanted complete police reports. Why? because they like to read about the crazy things their neighbors did. They wanted to know about the calls the firemen made. They wanted a complete list of obituaries for the city that day, to see if they had lost any friends They wanted a prominent place reserved in the newspaper just for the schedule of the tides.

Readers wanted to know what happened in court with as many cases as could be fit into the newspaper. They wanted train schedules to and from every city in the nation and bus schedules too. Readers wanted a list of every couple who had married. Every couple. They wanted to hear about every baby who was born.

They wanted library news. Every day. They wanted to know what the Coast Guard was up to. They wanted to know every last bit of information about the Mayor's day, the City Council and every single department in the city government. They paid for these things. Were they getting their money's worth? Same goes for the Governor and legislature. It all had to be "on the record," out in the open. After all, these were public servants.

Further, they wanted real consumer news. Reports that told you what products were bad and why and what products were good and why.

There are so many things people wanted to know, issues that really had an impact on the way they lived their lives, that I simply do not have the space to mention all of them here. So have people stopped wanting to know about relevant events?

No. It is just that newspapers long ago stopped telling the reader about what he or she wanted or needed to know and began to tell them instead, what the newspaper and its advertisers wanted them to hear. Hence, the advent of newspaper indoctrination.

Newspapers used to be gray with type because they were literally packed with information. I am looking at the front page of a Washington County Post of New York from 1850. The headline on the front page has to do with a party that was held for a gentleman in town. It is written almost like a novel, welcoming you right into it. In fact, another part of the front page actually contains a serialized novel that will run in the paper every day until it is finished. Then another serialized novel will take its place.

You could read this entire newspaper and not know who was President of the United States, because his name is not to be found. Instead, you might come upon a story about the children's grades in school that season, naming names. This was probably an incentive to keep your grades up. A new school teacher had come to town. Her story took up an entire page. By the time I was through reading it, I felt as if I knew her. And I would trust her to teach my children.

So where were the advertisements? They were confined to the back pages mostly. And they were given classified ad-sized space for the most part. Same goes for the 1700s. I have plenty of papers from that period and almost all of them are about subjects people needed to know about to conduct their daily lives or to gain a better idea of the environment in which they lived. The newspaper wanted to tell you everything.

At the beginning of the 20th century newspapers began the long slide downhill to what they are today. Large corporations began buying them up in the '60s. This is also when they "opened up" their layout with things like "dynamic imbalance" and "creative use of white space."

The news hole kept getting smaller while the ad hole increased in size. There were extreme cutbacks in local news reporting, which had turned it's attention almost exclusively to crime and violence. The International news ruled the front page, whether it was relevant to the paper's reader's or not. They closed their overseas news bureaus and began to use wire service accounts of events in foreign countries. So you almost had to get below the front page fold to even see the byline of a local reporter.

Their hypocritical credo of "fair and balanced" and "objective" just made their news "product" generic. You could get the same story anywhere in the country. It wasn't always like that. One hundred years ago newspapers had real opinions, and they were not afraid to put them right into their news stories. And if you didn't like it, you could always write the editor.

Now the print news business is dying. And I think I know how to bring at least a bit of it back.

Go retro - and do it soon. Go gray. Fill your paper with every scrap of information you can. Get rid of the white space. Damn the international news and the domestic news. You can bet that there are many other news outlets out there who are doing it better than you.

Stay local. Climb into bed with your readers. Find out what it is they want to see more of and print it. Don't just slap photographs up on every page. Remember. Go gray. Forget about pagination and the "effective use" of white space. Readers don't give a damn. Go back to the papers of the 1700s and early to mid 1800s and study them.

Raise the price of your paper and use less ads. I believe your circulation will increase. And become a friend of the consumer, even if your advertisers don't like it. Remember, ad prices are based on circulation, so get your circulation up and say what you want.

The big paper is over. That doesn't mean were going back to Ben Franklin's shop where he sometimes wrote the copy, laid the type, ran the press and made the deliveries. But it might mean something like that, only less severe. If the object is to keep the newspaper alive, then, by all means, go local in a big way. Cover your town or city like wallpaper. Don't just sit there and watch print news die. Because it will if you let it.