Surprising results on newspaper discussion

By Al Portner

About a week ago, I started a discussion about the newspaper business cycle among several relevant groups. There has been a great deal of interest and a number of replies.

My goal in starting the discussion was to stimulate discussion on three specific points.

First, do writers think reporting is an intrinsic need for a successful representative democracy? Second, if media is the watchdog, then its practitioners should be paid well for all the abuse they take in serving that role. Last, I was hoping for new ideas about sources of money to pay all those necessary salaries.

I don’t have any firm answers myself. Obviously, from what is happening in the economy generally nobody else has many suggestions either.

A non-profit, charitable, endowed model was suggested by a fundraiser op-ed in the New York Times. Not a terrible idea, but a tall mountain to climb. According to the article, the Times alone would need an endowment of about $5 billion to maintain its current newsroom staff. Nationally, the idea could cost about $114 billion.

A group from the American Press Institute called "Newspaper Next" has agreed that there is a problem. Another group of newspaper executives has announced through their website, http://www.newspaperproject.org/, that things are not as bad as they seem.

What is surprising, however, is the extreme vitriol with which a number of the replies to my discussion were written. Bottom line is that there is a tremendous built up anger and dissatisfaction out there towards media in general and newspapers in particular. Some comments are directed at management. Some replies are directed at the writers. Other anger manifests as being flat out general frustration.

There is a perception abroad in the land that the media used to be bi-partisan and non-judgmental. The opinion is that reporting was better in "the good old days." Was it ever thus? Should it be? Where did this "independent media" notion come from anyway?

Very few of the replies or comments from various quarters address any of the three questions posed. I suspect that the responses I did receive do speak volumes. Probably, they express a view akin to seeing forests from among the trees.

Al Portner is a former daily newspaper editor and publisher who has operated newspapers in seven states from Maryland on the east to Hawaii on the west. He is currently the proprietor of The Assignment Desk, LLC, an editorial services consortium with over 200 affiliate writers, photographers, and designers.

Portner is also the author of hundreds of articles and the forthcoming non-fiction book “Mark Twain and the Tale of Grant’s Memoir.” He can be reached at alanportner@theassignmentdesk.net. The Assignment Desk URL address is www.theassignmentdesk.net.