Turkeys and Journalism

As I thought about what to write for this blog I came across three articles that reminded me of the importance of journalism and its far reaching impact on society and the journalists themselves.

The first article I read was entitled Media coverage can impact financial markets, journalists say. The title tells it all. Journalists I feel have a responsibility to know the power the news has and unfortunately in some places the consequences can be more than financial.

The second article was the news of a grenade attack on a Mexican newspaper office, and as I scrolled through the related articles one read simply Another journalist murdered in Mexico. It seems the many criminals in Mexico do not like the attention brought by the journalists and newspapers.

However, even with these dangers, and other journalists being jailed or killed the world over, they continue to report what is important for others to hear.

On a lighter note apparently we can thank a journalist for our upcoming thanks giving break

According to the Science News website in the article Thank Journalist, Rather Than Pilgrims, For Thanksgiving Feast, “The holiday came about through fifty years of relentless promotion by Sarah Hale, editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book and Magazine. She promoted it in columns and stories in her magazine until President Abraham Lincoln finally bestowed it national recognition.”

Maybe this year I will be thankful for journalism.

Finally some good news

Just in time too. I don’t know about anyone else out there but I was getting a bit depressed and discouraged about the whole business of print journalism. At my core I truly believe and understand the importance of tangible things such as newspapers, but all the doomsday predictions and declining percentages had me really second guessing the future of print journalism.

That was until newspapers sales after election day. People apparently were running out of newspapers as they flew off the stands in record numbers.

As we have talked a lot about biases and other problems facing the coverage of the recent election maybe the publics interest has shown that right or wrong the media as a whole has taped into record breaking audiences.

Whether it was the historic nature of the election, or the way it was covered can be debated. I would like to think it was a combination of the two, what does everyone else think?

TV news enjoyed a record 71.5 million viewers tuning into watch. ABC was at the top of the prime time viewership and CNN, with the aid of some special effects, historically brought in the most viewers overall.



Newspapers also enjoyed a surge of interest increasing output in some cases up 60%.
Here are some quotes, that sum it up better than I can ,from an article titled “A Strange Global Phenomenon Occurred Wednesday – People Were Lining Up To Buy Newspapers, Many Outlets Sold Out, And Additional Press Runs Were The Order Of The Day,” by Philip M. Stone.

Digby Solomon, publisher of the Daily Press, in Newport News, Virginia - “We anticipated some additional demand, but this was an historic election… and (we) completely underestimated it, It shows that when something truly historic takes place, people want a printed record of it.”
But perhaps what newspaper publishers need to remember most – they could do a lot worse than use it as a tagline for an advertising campaign reminding the public that newspapers are published every day, not just the day after Election Day – is what Shirley Holman, 59, of Dallas said: Seeing the news in print "makes it real."

Surely there’s a message there for publishers that if they put out a quality editorial product that its populace is really interested in, then print newspapers do just fine. Sure, the election of a Black man as President of the United States was historic and exceptional, but it goes to show people have not forgotten newspapers, and newspapers need to keep coming out with editorial products that people want to read, even keep.

So for me I am skeptical if Obama will really bring any of the change he promised, but if anything else thanks to him maybe newspapers can use this historical event as a spring board to reestablish the legitimacy with advertisers and naysayers alike.

Maybe if newspapers in the end don’t make it they won’t have anyone to blame except themselves for not putting out a quality product people want and feel is important. That quality I think lies in the hands of the journalists writing, taking the pictures, and helping put the final product together.

How many people does it take to write a newspaper?

“The blogosphere has had its share of news breaks, but absent a functioning mainstream media to annotate, it could be pretty darn quiet out there.” wrote David Carr, in the article Mourning Old Media’s Decline.

In this article he sums up the decline of newspapers, and magazines that has been highlighted most recently by Gannett, who happens to be the nation’s largest newspaper company planning to lay off 10 percent of their newspapers staffers.

Many reasons are given for the decline including the economy and the decline of advertising revenue.

CNNMoney.com invites us to Read all about it...but not in your newspaper, saying “According to figures by PriceWaterhouse Coopers, between 2005 and 2010 the U.S. newspaper industry will go from a $60 billion to a $50 billion industry, as measured by revenue.”

I think 50 billion dollars is still a lot, but apparently not enough to keep things how they were.

Two more quotes from these articles stood out to me.

“Bob Iger, the CEO of Walt Disney, was asked what he thought about the newspaper industry's future. In so many words, he basically said that if the newspaper didn't exist and someone tried to create it, you'd be hard-pressed to dispute the appeal of a product that delivered the world to your doorstep every morning in a smartly-produced package. He then noted, with some relief, that Disney briefly owned newspapers but unloaded them more than a decade ago-largely to Knight Ridder.”

“At the recent American Magazine Conference, one of the speakers worried that if the great brands of journalism — the trusted news sources readers have relied on — were to vanish, then the Web itself would quickly become a “cesspool” of useless information. That kind of hand-wringing is a staple of industry gatherings. But in this case, it wasn’t an old journalism hack lamenting his industry. It was Eric Schmidt, the chief executive of Google.”

I guess my real question is with all these reporters and newspaper staffers being fired how long will it be until anyone notices the difference in news quality, or has it already happened?