BOOK REVIEW
Newspapers'
brave new world
brave new world
By Jim Killam
NINA Communications Coordinator
My college professors used to repeatedly remind young, idealistic journalists why newspapers exist: to make money.
That newspapers reported the news and served as government watchdogs and community forums was a given.
Today's newspaper industry has stood that lesson on its head, to the point where its CEOs need a reminder that this is not just another business, another investment opportunity. Thus is the premise of "Leaving Readers Behind: The Age of Corporate Newspapering" (2001, University of Arkansas Press). The book, edited by Gene Roberts, Thomas Kunkel and Charles Layton, represents the result of the American Journalism Review's Project on the State of the American Newspaper. A second book, due out later this year, will examine newspaper content - in particular, the woeful state of government coverage.
The current volume takes dead aim at the corporatization of newspapers. Of 1,483 daily newspapers in the United States, the number of independents is down to about 280 - and only 12 of those have circulations above 100,000. Small-town dailies and weeklies are being bought and sold at a frenetic pace, usually under the idea of clustering: buying papers in contiguous markets and then sharing resources - sometimes including editorial resources. Fewer companies own more papers than ever before.
The book takes a decidedly negative approach toward these trends. Chapter titles include "The Selling of Small-Town America" and "The End of Innocence." Chicago and its suburbs play prominent roles. NINA members will recognize many of the names, the deals, the rationale and the fallout. There's a map showing Illinois' group ownership of daily newspapers within 100 miles of each other; the book went to press just before Hollinger bought Copley Chicago Newspapers, altering the landscape even more.
The book's best-written chapter paints the frenzied atmosphere at suburban weeklies, beginning through the eyes of Larry Randa, head of Liberty's Chicago suburban newspaper division after his family sold Life Newspapers in 1999. The undisclosed offer had been too good to pass up. Writer Buzz Bissinger treats Randa and other family publishers with sympathy, even if mixed with a tinge of Eastern big-media snobishness about Midwesterners. But he zeroes in on how the rapid decline in independent newspaper voices tears at the soul of America.
"By this consolidation," Randa tells Bissinger, "the newspaper industry has sadly lost a deep personal involvement on the part of publishers of community newspapers. I can't do that, because I can't be in 75 communities at once."
And, the book points out, Randa is among those executives who recognize the problem. Others have no journalistic conscience at all.
[For some reason, this brought to mind a scene from "Caddyshack,"
where young caddy Danny Noonan tells country clubber Ty Webb he doesn't
want to work in the lumberyard.
Ty: What's wrong with lumber? I own two lumberyards.
Danny: I notice you don't spend too much time there.
Ty: I'm not sure where they are.]
Of course, corporate owners aren't inherently bad, just as family owners aren't inherently good. Upon becoming part of a chain, or a larger chain, some newspapers become better, some become worse. But, the book argues, the public suffers when local owners disappear, when 20- to 30- percent profit margins - outrageously high for almost any other business - don't satisfy investors and when newspapers chip away at "the wall" between the news side and the business side. Papers may look the same, or even better, but something has changed.
While the book is short on proposed solutions, it does raise a hopeful possibility: that the public will realize what it's missing, and that the resulting backlash will produce newspapers whose ownership has a real stake in the community.
Also, the Cubs may win the World Series this year.
In the end, "Leaving Readers Behind" will challenge journalists and executives at all levels to think about where our industry is heading. It will give the troops a much broader view of what the generals are doing and why. It may give the generals pause to consider what this all means for our communities and our democracy.
Or, it may be dismissed as an alarmist, idealistic rant against big business. You decide.
Jim Killam is adviser for the Northern Star at Northern Illinois University.
See this book at Amazon.com
Back to Summer 2001 newsletter
Back to NINA Home Page