http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtuRJYJ0Nao&NR=1Please watch this video of Tribune/Morning Call owner and billionaire Sam Zell responding to Orlando Sentinel photographer Sara Fajardo's question about the role journalism plays in the community. Zell says that "journalists need to focus on what readers want that generates more revenue." Fajardo said "what readers want are puppy dogs."(referring to soft feature stories.) Then she said "we also need to inform the community." When asked later about her question she said:
“I was trying to affirm that I understood what he meant about revenue and that, as a journalist, I understand the need for soft news. It’s important, but sometimes a newspaper has to question authority and question things that are happening in the community and cause us to be unpopular and cause us to lose advertisers, and where does he stand on that?”
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10 comments:
Ethics are fading quick.
It's profoundly sad what has happened to the news business everywhere. It has become all about ratings and taking the low road and everybody covering the same dumbest common denominator story. Missing in action at a time we could have really used it (the past 7 years) is the honesty, integrity, and quality that news consumers and subscribers deserve. And need.
Ultimately, it's our fault for not putting a stop to the news business's decline and demanding better, because we're too busy comparing our 6 month old car to our neighbor's new car or racing Muffy to soccer practice or watching Girlicious on TV.
But I blame the news business practitioners more.
They used to embrace and redeem the responsibility of being held to a higher standard.
They used to understand the importance of being a crucial part of our American system of checks and balances.
Now, as certified asshole Sam Zell points out, it's only about checks.
And when an old-school news business practitioner like Orlando Sentinel photographer Sara Fajardo steps up and courageously challenges the "puppy story strategy" as a way to higher profits, The Boss tells her, "fuck you."
Instead of applauding, the news business practitioners in that Orlando Sentinel audience should have stormed Mr. Zell, stripped him, tarred him, feathered him, run him out of Orlando on a rail, and then started looking for other jobs.
I'm hoping Sam Zell busts up The Morning Call for kindling wood.
Or, if he's really interested in a "better product," he'll start throwing the bums who run The Morning Call out the door along with select/tenured gas bag alkie court reporters who kiss DA Jim Martin's large and lazy ass and lie for him in print.
If we can't have a good newspaper in Allentown, let's at least be spared all the aggravation The Morning Call causes so many of us, daily, with its arrogance, stupidity, transparently framed agendas, blurry off-register photographs, typos, errors, lies, pompous opinions, clannishness, missed deliveries, annoying sense of monopoly entitlement, ivory tower inaccessibility, and pages that aren't all the same width.
TELL ZELL: We're mad as hell and we're not gonna take delivery of it anymore.
"... sometimes a newspaper has to question authority and question things that are happening in the community and cause us to be unpopular and cause us to lose advertisers, and where does he stand on that?” -Sara Fajardo
I guess we all know where the morning call stands on "questioning authority and things that are happening in our community," they are standing and clappingfor zell like those sheep at the orlando sentinal who say "GIVE THEM MORE STORIES ABOUT PUPPIES!!!" I want a new car.
Zell says: "Hopefully we'll get to the point where our revenue is so significant that we can do puppies in Iraq." ....APPLAUSE....(F-bomb)
Unbelievable.
"The United States Constitution doesn’t protect the press so that newspapers can generate revenue. It does so to ensure that citizens always will have independent monitors of their government."
from Manning Pynn at Hollywoodchicago.com
I think a big part of this problem is that papers like MC, which used to be family owned, are now owned by big corps. as investments, not as newspapers. These companies look at circulation figures, which I think are declining because many people are getting their news for free on the internet instead of subscribing to the paper format. (I don't think they've yet figured out how to calculate circulation online.)
But anyway, I don't think its fair to categorize all the individuals working in the print media as caring more about checks than checks and balances. The corporate lugs are the guys who care about the money. The vast majority of reporters, who are fearing for their jobs due to "circulation decline" and the quest for the ever larger profit margin by the news companies, still believe in and practice journalistic integrity. I have some friends in the news business who complain about feeling muzzled or complain that they don't have the time to work on the big stories because the boss requires so much quantity.
One of the best things that could probably happen to MC would be for it to revert to being a family-run paper.
"I don't think its fair to categorize all the individuals working in the print media as caring more about checks than checks and balances."
I didn't say all. But there does seem to be some consensus at the Orlando Sentinel and The Morning Call, wouldn't you agree?
I have contacted just about every reporter and columnist at The Morning Call, numerous times each, and I can't get a one of them to take a stand in support of me and The Morning Call Editorial Board's curiously stubborn refusal to meet with me, a grieving father with "excellent questions that deserve to be answered" regarding DA Jim Martin's fixing of a DUI homicide case on 9/25/07.
Not Bill White. Not Paul Carpenter. Not nobody.
there has always been a financial aspect to newspapers. years ago they called it yellow journalism, think back to "citizen kane", the objective was to sell more papers, today the objective is to stay in business. perhaps we expect too much from them
MM,
Yes, that's true there has always been a financial aspect, but I think what makes it different now is the internet, and media consolidation, (ownership by a few huge mega companies.) So now, more people are choosing the internet and blogs for news. So yes, like you said, the objective now is to stay in business.
I personally still enjoy sitting down with the morning paper and having a cup of coffee, but I don't know too many people who still do that.
"perhaps we expect too much from them"
I do know what you're saying, Michael, but this story would sell a LOT of papers, here's the headline:
PERSISTENT DAD TOPPLES DA. DISGRACED JIM MARTIN TO RESIGN EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY. HOGAN'S CLUB FLIES FLAG AT HALF-STAFF, OFFERS GUINNESS AT HALF-PRICE.
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