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Chicago Tribune Reporters Don't Want Readers' Pre-Approval
theodp writes "Irked by the Marketing department's solicitation of subscribers' opinions on stories before they were published, 55 reporters and editors at the Chicago Tribune signed an e-mail demanding the practice be stopped. 'It is a fundamental principle of journalism that we do not give people outside the newspaper the option of deciding whether or not we should publish a story, whether they be advertisers, politicians or just regular readers,' the e-mail read."
Imagine that, having your readers decide the content. Unheard of. /.
Hey, I didn't approve this story, why was it released?
WTF do they think a newspaper is for? The minute you try to "democratize" is, politicians and PR types will try to game the system to make sure that only stories beneficial to them will get published.
I piss off bigots.
"As long as they get to over-hype whatever story they want"
Isn't the idea of overhyping based on whoring out integrity to whatever sells, which would be the opposite of what is going on here? Just why are they overhyping if they aren't doing it for ratings?
I read it the other way. Basically, if we just follow what the majority want, then many stories that appeal to minority groups will be snuffed out. I can't speak for this newspaper, as I have never read it. If they are already just trying to provide sensational titles, with very little actual content, then sure, they don't care about the stories and are just about lining their wallets.
They're not selling the newspaper, they're selling ad space. The paper isn't the product, you're the product.
Why should the reporters care what you think of their stories? They're here to report, not to butter you up.
If I want news report that aims to please the masses, I'll go watch Fox News.
Of course, they want to spin the news they way THEY want - both by how they report and what they choose to report or not. How could they stand it if people wanted them to report negative stories about Obama and positive stories about Bush?
It's the evil liberal media conspiracy, trying to suppress the truth of Obama's evil! Where can I sign up for your newsletter?
"In other words, the reporters don't care what the readers think of their stories."
The readers indicate their care by either purchasing or not purchasing the newspaper.
In other words, the reporters don't care what the readers think of their stories. As long as they get to over-hype whatever story they want (a brown nose Obama story, or a effusive global warming rant), they don't care if nobody wants to buy the paper.
I read it as the reporters wanting to publish news, rather that was fits best with the marketing.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
The Tribune's expose on Anonymous will not be published, after receiving 50 billion no votes.
Or perhaps they have things to say that people don't necessarily want to hear or believe.
And I read it as the reporters using the idea that you just said to accomplish what the parent suspects. They're smart enough to know that that is a very real drawback to the plan, but they ought to be smart enough to take the feedback and do something with it.
It might be a case of readers collectively wanting to suppress something, but it might also be a case of readers wanting information about something else and wanting resources to be freed to get that information.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
This "review" process is already taking place -- it's why subscriptions are falling off a cliff. The product is crap, the readers know it's crap, which is why they're not buying it. Solution: Stop printing crap.
Clearly, their feedback mechanism has gotten seriously out of tune. I think also that they recognize this, and that the idea of allowing direct reader feedback on stories in the queue was born out of some desperation to correct their editorial priorities.
Here's a hint: Try to keep ideology at bay, and follow the facts wherever they take you. Yes, it's often uncomfortable. I imagine Woodward and Bernstein had many sleepless nights. Yet we are the better for their work. Emulate that. Oh, and spike any "story" about Paris Hilton.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
How could they stand it if people wanted them to report negative stories about Obama and positive stories about Bush?
Suppose all press outlets were run democratically, plurality vote, right now.
Given the current popularity of Obama and unpopularity of Bush, how many news outlets do you think would be publishing stories critical of Obama and positively reviewing the policies of the Bush era?
Tweet, tweet.
... vote by approval for a story. It's the ability to have multiple perspectives on a topic published. Ideally, by anyone, but failing that, a fairly representative set of perspectives.
Being able to vote stories up or down could be disastrous when popular opinion and the truth of the content aren't relevant. Are you worried about brown-nosing Obama stories? Obama's pretty popular right now. A press run via democracy might be less likely to publish stories critical of him (or of climate change, for that matter) than an independent press.
It's just like the current group of teachers. They don't care if they actually teach anything, and are upset when someone wants to make sure that the kids are able to read after graduating high school, as long as they get paid for pushing them forwards.
Nobody goes into teaching just to get paid. There's so many better ways to do that. Most people who do it -- as I can attest from firsthand process of going through an education program -- have a pretty wide streak of altruism. The system may grind their best efforts out of them, and like the rest of us, sometimes they're just trying to get through their day, but my observation is that apathy is pretty far from the default state.
Tweet, tweet.
I think that's a little paranoid. Fox declined to show the latest Obama press conference because it was during sweeps week and gets worse ratings than their normal programming.
You, sir, are an idiot.
Exactly!
Now, I'm sure the Tribune's marketeers will whine like crazy that their subscription readership numbers are declining. I'm sure they are - I'm a subscriber to their South Florida Sun-Sentinel, whose overall page count has been dropping like a rock the last 2 years. Comic strips have been dropped to save space, the financial pages are now a single page of pure drivel, and the list goes on.
What they need to realize is that, yes, we the computer-literate can read the same AP or Reuters articles to our hearts' content (and perhaps beyond...) the night before. *BUT* we (or, at least, I) am relying on the reporters and the editors/managers to make sure that there is some sort of local perspective/analysis knitted into the story that appears in print. And, I'm also hoping that the editors will suppress some of the (very) rough drafts of local stories that I have seen on the Sun-Sentinel's web site the night before, that would make any high school English teacher scream in terror, and make us wait until the final version that appears in print. A teaser headline with a graf or two of bare-bones facts is fine, but some of the other crap that's made it to the web (but, thankfully, fell onto the composing room floor) was just that - pure crap.
(And I mean poorly-phrased, inconsistent subject/verb relations, etc.). I'm a EE, not an English major, and I could probably do better than some of the clowns they had on the beat.
What a democratically decided newspaper would put on the front page today (via Yahoo search traffic):
Swine Flu
Christina Applegate
American Idol
Kristie Alley
Jon and Kate Plus Eight
Sarah Jessica Parker
Twitter
Hi-5
Lady Gaga
NBA
Source: http://buzzlog.buzz.yahoo.com/overall/
Three observations:
1) There are media outlets that cover pretty much exactly this list. Good for them. I don't read those and never will. I question their contribution to democracy.
2) I get news from a variety of social media filters, and almost none of the information I get from these very useful selection processes are from this list (the flu outbreak is the exception). That's not to say that my information is better than yours - just that it's what I happen to want.
3) Therefore: A more useful "democracy" strategy might be to help readers select from the vast array of information coming out of organizations like the Tribune and put that on the "front page" akin to Amazon's personalized homepage metrics.
As a journalist, I will say that allowing anyone outside the organization to spike a story pre-publication opens to the door wide open to self-censorship. Critical journalism requires independence, or it becomes PR. Critical journalism is rare enough as it is without this.
If the "news" reporting agencies in this country would quit performing their best Monica Lewinsky impersonations they would not have to worry about polling their readership.
Objective reporting would attract readers of all stripes since the who, what, where, when and why, AKA facts (not opinions) are what we, the news consumers, are looking for.
If I want opinion I will read Ann Landers.
Good riddance Boston Globe!
Oy! Fox taking sides.
Fox is NOT the only one takings sides. At least with Fox, if a politician is caught in a bathroom with someone, the word "Democrat" or "Republican" is used in the first sentence.
All the other major TV and Newspaper outlets will feature the word "Republican" in the first paragraph but will not use the word "Democrat" till the 4th or 5th paragraph
As in "Vermont Sentator So and So (Republican) was caught doing something. Is right up front. But "Utah Senator So and So was caught doing something, blah, blah, blah. He is a Democrat serving in the senate for the last 18 years". Ends up way down in the story.
I prefer my bias right up front, at least I know how they will slant the story. In that at least Air America and Rush Limbaugh have done a service to the public.
Speaking of such things, I am close to a story that has been in and out of the paper about 6 or 7 times. Close enough that I know all the parities involved and I have yet to hear one news report that has been anywhere close to even 25% correct. That scares me. If the rest of the news is like this, I am becoming dumber and less informed every time I read a newspaper or watch a reporter.
It would be nice if we lived in a world where a company only cared about breaking even, paid editors to keep the reporters straight and to help check out facts. Reporters tried to get every side to the story and present them all with as much intellectual honesty as possible. That people would flock to such a paper and buy it.
The Papers, Editors and Reporters would like you to believe that what they do is called "journalism" and all the above is true. But that is not the case. The paper is beholden to it's stock holders to turn a profit. Editors may have an ax to grind and are more favorable to one point of view or another. Or just like to see a story written in a certain way. Reporters want to "change the wolrd", or "cover a big story". It is a huge chore to collect all the facts and to be meticulous in being fair. It is a lot more work than just trying to publish stories that get you recognized.
All of these things go into the product called a "NewsPaper". It is sold to the reader as something open minded, informed and intelligent people read. Even if they wrote at a level opend minded 12th graders read at 20 years ago, and now write at a level for open minded 9th graders. It is also sold to the advertisers as a way to reach a large volume of people who can be influenced to spend their money on the advertisers product.
At best, it is in the stock holders benefit for a paper to strive for a certain bias or for "journalism". At worst, papers that don't deserve to exist will keep being published.
vi +
I once worked for the Dallas Observer, a largely editorial news weekly rag. The music editor wrote an opinion piece that stated things largely as he saw them. It insulted, in some way, one of the paper's advertisers. The music editor lost his job as the advertiser would accept nothing less.
This is a true tragedy in the world of journalism. The editorial and sales sides are always at odds with one another, but I have never seen editorial win... not ever.
To their credit, the journalists at that paper truly work in the spirit that the press is supposed to work under. I have witnessed the animosity first-hand. But too often, money wins.
Wow, I like your thinly veiled sarcasm and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
and that reason is that journalism is essential to the proper functioning of democracy. Without it, the populace will not be informed of the inner workings of the government. As history has shown-- and we only know about these things because of journalists, who have often risked their lives for the greater good-- the government needs to be constantly watched. Watching the government is a heck of a lot easier than refreshing the tree of liberty from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants (to paraphrase Jefferson). We wouldn't even know about things like Watergate, the Pentagon Papers, Abu Ghraib, the current torture discussion, without inquisitive journalists.
The 1st Amendment was first for a reason. Ever wonder why?
Newspapers worked and they worked for 100 years. Here how they worked. Some flashy on the front page above the fold. Something of interest to most people below the fold. Many articles from several different points of view meant to interest a few poeple inside. Very fiew people read every article. Very few articles are meant to be of interest to every person.
Therefore whether journalists are elitists is not the issue. Whether school makes you better is not the issue. I know conservatives all agree that a unqualified and unaccredited and dishonest plumber is the person they want to fix their household fixtures, but even that is not the issue here. The issue that newspapers add value by putting together an mix of stories that will be of interest to different parts of the community, not by prioritizing them based on who will scream the loudest for inclusion. This ratings based system in fact has little to do with the writers, and a lot to do with editors.
In any case, many newspapers already have a rating system. They have the most read, most emailed, most blogged, most linked. This does add value beyond that traditionally added by editors. If one does not like the elite, then go and read something like People, whose content is determined by the celebrity people would most like to screw.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
I think the problem most reporters have is that they have a big struggle to get their editors to let them cover almost *anything* beyond a 3 column inch piece about something on the police blotter. The idea of adding yet another layer of `approval' to any story they're interested in doing real work on is enough to make them want to shoot themselves. ``I'm sorry Jane, the plebs have voted down your investigative report on the financial links between city council members and that corporation currently seeking exemption from planning processes - you'll need to toss the last two months work you've been doing on it. They voted up more stories about Britney.''
If they are selling ad space, then why don't they stop publishing anything at all and sell a publication with ads only?
The newspaper lives and dies by its content, no content, no readers, no readers, no sales and no ads.
Newspapers should look for a business model that takes them back to their original roots: people paying for opinion. When they gave so much prominence to advertisement as the main tool for their survival they moved into the territory of marketing people and all kind of varied snake oil peddlers.
In spite of everything, a content free newspaper can't sell anything.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.