The New York Times

According to The New York Times website, home delivery of their Sunday edition is available where I live in Richmond, Indiana.  Earlier this year I tried to take them up on that, buying a subscription online and eagerly awaiting that first Sunday morning when I would get to indulge in a paper-reading experience long enough to get me through at least one cup of coffee.

But that first Sunday, the paper didn’t show up.  ”Oh, yeah, that’s probably just some issue getting you in the circulation system,” the phone rep said when I called.  ”We’ll get it to you next week.”

Week two, no paper.  ”Sorry about that, don’t know what happened there.  Hold on while I call the distribution center.”  They concluded it was just another circulation issue, and assured me it had been straightened out for sure this time.

Week three, no paper, and the phone rep was equally apologetic, but had no additional routes to pursue.  ”Let me make sure I understand,” I said, “you theoretically offer home delivery in my area, but in my case, there’s nothing you can do to make that actually happen?”  The best she could do was offer to put a manager on the phone, but then when she tried to do that, she said all the managers were busy at the moment, and so one would have to call me back.

I cancelled my ethereal subscription and abandoned all hope of that particular luxury for now. But it seems worth noting that with newspapers fretting day in and day out about attracting and retaining readers, the least that one like the New York Times could do is coordinate their circulation operations to put a paper in the hands of people ready and willing to pay for it. If that part of the business model is falling apart, I think that puts them somewhere between “not likely to prosper” and “doomed.”

I don’t take any pleasure in making that assessment.  Apart from still longing for a leisurely Sunday morning paper-in-hand experience, I long for a time when the hard work that goes into high quality journalism is again appreciated and valued enough that papers like The New York Times and even my local Palladium-Item can again be a centerpiece of public discussion.

It was fascinating to watch the film Page One, which documents a few days in the life of The New York Times and its staff as they talk to sources, discuss angles on stories, bid goodbye to laid off co-workers and consider the future of their industry.

The film is part love letter to what The Times has been, part behind-the-scenes chronicling of how the paper is made, and part rumination on the possibilities for what will become of the newspaper in the age of the Internet.  It’s narrated by NYT reporter David Carr, who is fiercely protective of the paper’s reputation and role in society, and Page One doesn’t apologize for portraying The New York Times in an overall favorable light.   The few times when its fumbles and failures (Judith Miller’s Iraq WMD reporting, the Jason Blair scandal, etc.) come up, they’re quickly swept into the bigger picture of how all the good it does outweighs those unfortunate course corrections.  But even with that bias, it’s a great  look at the roller-coaster ride of producing a modern print newspaper.

The Palladium-Item

In April of 2010 I took the time to post here about why I was canceling my print subscription to The Palladium-Item, Richmond’s daily newspaper, and so it’s only fair that I take some time to note that I re-subscribed early this year and have continued my subscription since.  A few things happened to prompt that:

The first was that I was running for local political office for much of 2011, and it felt important to see the print edition of the paper as everyone else would see it – the prominence and layout of news articles, the placement of photographs, the political ads (mine included) sprinkled throughout.  This was quite useful, and a number of times it meant that I could see how the political coverage was coming together in ways the online version of the paper didn’t necessarily show.  (As I’ve said elsewhere, I also think the Palladium-Item did an outstanding job covering this election, devoting significant amounts of their already strained resources to provide voters with unprecedented levels of information about candidates…that alone feels worth having supported.)

Second, Kelly noted one day that when she only reads the paper online, there’s much less of a sense of knowing what’s going on in the community.  This is ironic given that there’s probably more information about community events and happenings online than there ever can be in the print edition, but I agreed with her that the experience of serendipitously encountering an upcoming play, fundraiser or art show is much more intact while turning the pages of the paper than it is when browsing a website.  You have to do a lot of clicking and scrolling to find the same information online, and there’s still some value in the editorial and even pay-for-visibility processes that go into raising something to visual prominence within a finite amount of space.

(I should note, too, that there are times when some content from the print edition of the paper can’t be found online at all.  I saw this firsthand a few weeks ago when they were able to publish in printed column form my observations on the closing of Really Cool Foods, but because of some licensing issues, it couldn’t be redistributed online.  But the print edition readership is attentive – I had a lot of people coming up to me for days afterward to mention the column.)

Third, one of my reasons given for canceling my subscription last year was the relative chaos and toxicity of the public conversations happening on the paper’s website comment sections, and they’ve since addressed that to a large degree.  Just this fall, the paper switched to using Facebook for story comments, which requires commenters to use their real name (as governed by Facebook) while still leaving the option for anonymous users to share their views elsewhere on the website.  Yes, there are plenty of privacy concerns that come with depending on Facebook for this function, but in this case I think the benefits outweigh those concerns.

Lastly, over the year I’ve just come to have a new appreciation for the role a daily newspaper plays in the life of the community, and the role that the Palladium-Item plays in the life of Richmond and Wayne County.  In the past I think I’ve blamed some of the lack of debate or civic engagement in our community on the paper’s own choices – what to cover, how to cover it, etc.  There’s no doubt that those choices make a difference, but I’ve also come to see that the choice not to be engaged in public life is unfortunately one that many members of this community make for themselves on a regular basis, and no amount of great reporting or special features are going to change that alone.

Further, if I imagine a day when the Pal-Item announces that it is closing its doors, I can only see Really Bad Things that stem from that when it comes to our community’s ability to address the challenges in front of it.  In the past I might have thought that citizen journalists or some of the other less formalized news-gathering efforts in town would step in, but my recent experience is that Richmond doesn’t nearly have the critical mass of people and platforms in place to really make that work.  So even with limited financial and personnel resources, even with an over-dependence on advertising, even with editorial or coverage choices I might disagree with, a functioning daily Palladium-Item is a much better thing for Richmond than no paper at all.

My concerns and suggestions from past critiques still stand; I still hope the paper (and the industry as a whole) is able to move toward a model that blends print and online editions more seamlessly, that allows me to pay money to see fewer advertisements, and that continues to provide unique value through a focus on in-depth local reporting and commentary.  I’m even looking for ways to personally contribute directly to that focus – more on that later.

But for now, I’ll continue supporting the existence of the Palladium-Item with my subscription dollars and appreciating it as a unique link to the place I live.

What’s your current relationship with your local paper?  And can you drop your copy of the Sunday Times off at my house when you’re done with it today?

I’ve gone from subscribing to the paper seven days a week, to just the Friday/Saturday/Sunday package, to just the Sunday edition.  Here’s why I’m going to finally let go of receiving a print edition altogether:

1. The print edition has been taken over by advertising. I understand that ads have long-been the bread and butter of a newspaper’s business model, and I’m willing to tolerate some reasonable proportion of ads to content in order to get the content.  But when the roll of paper that shows up on my porch is seemingly made up of 95% advertising and 5% content, I can’t justify it.  The resource usage is ridiculous given that I immediately recycle or throw away that 95%, and I just don’t like the sense that I’m primarily paying to support a conduit for advertisers to influence me, instead of for something that’s primarily a journalism product.  (For what it’s worth, the online edition has also been taken over by advertising, but at least there I can automatically block out the ads with software.)
2. The local news coverage is understandably but unacceptably thin. With a shrinking staff of reporters and more pressure than ever before to produce headlines that sell papers, I find the coverage of local and regional issues and news to be lacking (at least according to the standard I put forth two years ago).  When they do cover local issues, it’s rarely with a depth and perspective that challenges and engages me as a reader and citizen.  I believe the Pal-Item staff has great intentions and are working their butts off to cover as much as they can, but that doesn’t mean the P-I is sufficiently living up to its role as the local newspaper.
3. The Palladium-Item hosts some of the most toxic public conversations happening in our community. If you read any given article on the Pal-Item website, there’s usually at least one person (and sometimes many people) offering uninformed, insulting, immature or outright hateful comments.  The most egregious comment-makers are sometimes reprimanded or even banned, but it hasn’t changed the tone of the general conversation.  When I talk to other people out in Richmond about the Pal-Item website, our conversation almost always turn to the harm being done by the online discussions happening at pal-item.com.  On principle, I don’t want to help fund that conversation space any more.  It’s only fair to note that the Pal-Item also facilitates some very helpful conversations too via their “PI Live!” online interview segments – more on that below.
4. It’s not my job to support a struggling business for the sake of offering support alone. I’m sad about the decline of print journalism, and I’m especially sad that it’s declined so far in my town, which sorely needs a good local paper.  But I don’t think it’s my job to keep funding a model that isn’t working, just because I’m nostalgic.  I’ve stayed on with my subscription as long as I have somewhat out of guilt – “oh no, I don’t want to contribute to the downfall of the newspaper industry” – but it’s increasingly clear that that industry hasn’t sufficiently regarded trends threatening its existing business models, and it’s not my job to bail them out.
5. I can get the same information for free online. I’m Internet-connected to the point of lunacy, and so I can pull up the tidbits of Palladium-Item content that I’m interested in at a moment’s notice on one of the glowing rectangles I surround myself with all day.  Sometimes I even learn that information sooner via social networking sites and other community resources.

So, with all of those things considered, I can’t think of a reason to keep paying to have a roll of ads (with a sprinkle of articles thrown in) show up every week.

But make no mistake, I WILL give the Palladium-Item my money again – maybe even MORE money – if the conditions are right!  Some possible scenarios:

1. They find a way to bring in additional reporters or other staff to produce a more substantial and well-rounded news product.
2. They allow me to pay a slightly higher subscription fee in order to not receive all of the ads that come with the Sunday edition.
3. They make available an online edition that doesn’t have advertising at all, or that at least implements it much less intrusively and much more tastefully.
4. They charge a small fee for live viewing of community events and interviews with community leaders (and then make a time-delayed version available a bit later).
5. They more fully embrace citizen journalism and crowd-sourced content, while avoiding ridiculous copyright/licensing policies.

Print journalism will either reinvent itself, or it will fade away.  The Palladium-Item will either reinvent itself, or it will fade away.  In the meantime, I’m done with supporting the in-between option – it doesn’t work for me.

What about you?  If you’ve kept your subscription to a print newspaper, what factors support that?  If you canceled or never had one in the first place, why?

1. Watchdog journalism involves writing stories that hold public officials accountable for their actions or stories that help to right wrongs in the community, for example. In what ways could we improve in this area?

The Palladium-Item is to be commended for its consistent presence at government and institutional meetings, no matter how boring or routine they are.  That said, the paper often seems to be getting its stories out the door about important or controversial issues just as those items are reaching some sort of final decision point.

At some level I’m sure this is what many decision makers and news makers would prefer – their jobs are easier when there’s less time for the public to be outraged before it’s “too late.”  And it’s true that it’s still the responsibility of the citizenry to make itself aware of what issues are before, say, Common Council, and not depend entirely on the paper to note items of possible interest.  But I would be pleased to see the Palladium-Item try to maintain even more context on community issues that are under discussion, before they’ve reached a point of ostensible “no return.”

On the other side of the matter, there’s the issue of accountability once a wrong or disservice has been committed.  The general “media strategy” practiced by most public figures in this community when they’re involved in something controversial is “wait a few days and everyone will have moved on to something else.” They’re generally right that the collective memory of the community is subject to manipulation and distraction – hey, what’s that shiny thing over THERE….oh wait, sorry – and so we do need the paper to look back at how decisions were made and hold the decision-makers accountable.  It can be tough sometimes when the mindset of the reporter understandably becomes “how many more stories can I do about disingenuous plotting by council members to de-fund the Human Rights Commission, we already DID that one?”   But know that nonetheless, I think there’s a real thirst in this town for follow-up and perspective on those kinds of things, because they help us remember what we did wrong, and how we can do better next time.

And when election time rolls around, don’t just print the candidates` answers to questionnaires and their prepared responses at a debate – show us their voting record, their public statements (or noticeable lack thereof) about important issues, their actual contributions to the community (instead of their provided list of affiliations).  Tell us their story in a way that fits into the larger narrative of the community, and don’t take their word for it.

2. The Sunday edition of the Palladium-Item has, by far, our biggest single-day circulation. Past feedback tell us its the day our readers have the most time to spend with the paper. It’s also an important day to our advertisers because of the bigger audience it enjoys. What could we do to make that edition special for you?

When I sit down to read the Sunday paper, I don’t want to just read articles, I want to have an experience.  Yes, I want it to be like reading the New York Times.  I want there to be options, different subject mater, formats and voices.  I want to be challenged and amused and provoked, and then I want to sit back and think about that, and then I want to move on to another article or section and do it all over again.

The current experience of reading the Palladium-Item on Sunday is about a 10-15 minute process on average, and some of that is getting all of the advertising circulars separated out and thrown away so I can tell how much “real” content is left.  That’s not even enough time to get me through a cup of coffee and breakfast, let alone a lazy Sunday morning.

Okay, I know that it’s unlikely the Pal-Item is going to be able to ramp up content production to NYT Sunday levels.  And I know that short of a rich uncle depositing some bags of money in your laps, you’re physically limited by the number of staff you can afford to have working on that edition.  But if you have resources to expend on making the Sunday edition “special,” please make sure you focus on expanding your reporting and news analysis – that would feel very special to me.

3. We want our Web site to be viewed as a primary source for breaking news in our area. How can we make that happen? What would that look like on pal-item.com?

I’ll tell you exactly what it looks like: collaboration with other sources of local news to display their headlines and links to their stories on your site.  Yes, I really said that and no, I’m not kidding.  With your current staff resources, you can’t expect to always be the first news organization to break a story, and so you have to position yourself to still be the place where people come to read about breaking news, even if it’s not your content. If they know that if they go to Kicks96/WHON and G101.3/WKBV and Twitter and the EDC site and the Chamber site and WayNet.org and so on to find stories and information you don’t have yet, then pal-item.com will always just be one stop along the way for most users, not a primary source.  You need critical mass.

The nice thing is that the pieces are all almost in place for this to happen.  If you can collaborate with other news reporting / news breaking entities to insure that RSS feeds are readily available, you can build a “breaking news portal” with little technical effort.  Yes, they might build their own breaking news portal too, but that’s okay.  Really, trust me.

Also, crowdsource it.  Find trusted local readers (even if they have conflicts of interest and affiliations and biases) and give them the power to post information directly on your breaking news pages (or via their own RSS feeds, Twitter streams, etc).  Don’t moderate it, don’t filter it, or if you do, let other readers do the filtering and moderating along with you.  Yes I really said that, no I’m not kidding.

4. Traditionally, newspapers have had a leadership role in their communities, and that’s something we would like to continue here. How would you suggest we take a greater role in that?

As I think you and your colleagues know, being in a true leadership role is not something you can necessarily choose or create, it’s something that’s earned over time by consistent acts that bring something to the community with integrity and perspective.  The paper has one of the loudest voices in town when it comes to shaping the thoughts and conversations of our everyday lives.  If I were running the Pal-Item, I would ask every day, “does our news product and the work of our staff use our loud voice in a way that builds up the community, informs and challenges our readers with new and different perspectives they’re not getting elsewhere, and helps create or promote a vision for a sustainable, enjoyable future that can be enjoyed by all?”  If there are times when the answer is “no,” make changes and move on.  If there are times when the answer is “yes,” then you’re serving in an important leadership role, keep it up.

I know the values implied in this question are very different from the traditional journalistic imperatives that shaped a newspaper’s role in a town for so long, but times they are a changin`.

5. What can we do to improve customer service?

I’ve never had a negative customer service experience with the Palladium-Item.  That said, one weird thing you could resolve is the way you ask people to submit information or letters to you through your website.  There’s the filling out of a form and the cramming of text into a small text box, which is totally inconvenient if you’re submitting a press release that’s already been prepared as a PDF or Word DOC.  It’s understood that the Pal-Item staff use e-mail (and sometimes you print their addresses in the paper), so why not provide direct e-mail as an alternative to the weird form?

Also, take the lead in getting this community to use QR Codes.  Please? Thanks.

…

Thanks to Jason for asking for reader/public input on the paper’s operations and future.  If you have your own thoughts on what the local paper needs to do to stay relevant, engaging, and, ahem, solvent, feel free to share here or on Jason’s blog post.

Here’s an interview PBS did with Goodman about her arrest, including video from the scene:

For me, a good local news story is one that reflects the things that are happening and the experiences people are having in and around our city and county. For it truly to reflect a local point of view, the story should include the perspectives, thoughts and emotions of local people, and preferably be written by someone who has a local context for (even, dare I say, a personal investment in) why those things might matter.

If it’s a story about a local event, the story should give some insight into why the event happened, who made it happen, who it affected, and what it means for the future.

If it’s about something good that happened, the story should reflect the resources and time and energy that went into making that good thing happen, who benefits from it, and how it can be built upon or replicated in the future (especially if we as a larger community have some opportunity we should seize).

If it’s about something bad that happened, the story should reflect the context that led to that thing happening, who was in a position to create a different outcome, who will be impacted by it, and who is in a position to prevent it from happening again (especially if we as a larger community have some responsibility to bear).

Are stories like “new chain restaurant opens” or “former local resident featured on reality TV show” local news? Sure, they affect us in some way, and they reflect the character and life of our community to some degree. But are they the *most* worthy local news stories? Are they the *most* reflective of who we are and who we want to become?

Maybe not – maybe there are other stories that are more integral to the life of our community now and in the future. Maybe there are other stories that are more substantial, more deserving of the attention than they get. Maybe there are perspectives, thoughts and emotions that aren’t represented well or even at all in the typical selection of local stories. Maybe there are ways we can look at what happens here and what’s possible here that would really change how we see ourselves, how we think about how to spend our time and energy.

I don’t have the answers or know for sure, but those “maybes” are what I think about when I consider whether or not the local media are doing a good job of reporting local news. Unfortunately, in many cases the hopes I have are in conflict with the business model and cultural role that media organizations embrace, and so I often end up disappointed.

If you’re interested in local media issues, you might also enjoy my occasional podcast about the same, The Richmond News Review.

But Jackson conveniently (though perhaps unintentionally) omits a few key factors from his soliloquy on credibility, and the most key (in my opinion) is that he and the Pal-Item staff get to choose how the fruits of their important journalistic endeavors are presented to the public, and in ways that almost completely determine how the information will be processed and used by their readers.

The size and font of a headline. The tone and connotations of the words used to sell and introduce a story. The photo that accompanies a story – how is it lit and cropped, what is the caption, how does it present the subject. The amount of column inches devoted to a story and its impact, and where in the publication they are placed. The quality and length of the quotes from sources that provide “balancing” viewpoints. The opinion pieces that accompany a major story, and if/how they blur the perceived line between reporting facts and editorializing on them. How many follow up stories are done. Whether or not a special section of the Pal-Item website is created to draw more attention to a series online. And so on. All of these variables could ostensibly be said to have little or nothing to do with the “truth” that they help deliver, but all of them make up the all-important framing of the information and how it will be received.

Just as the majority of the public may not have the time to do the research and uncovering that the Pal-Item admirably takes on, the same majority does not have time to follow up on the sources or the research quoted in the resulting articles, and cannot necessarily, then, create for themselves a balanced view of a given issue without significant time and resources that most do not have to spare. And so they rely on what’s available: the Pal-Item and the few other limited news sources available. I will certainly agree with anyone who says it is the public’s responsibility to verify the information from first hand sources if they are going to act on it (or perhaps even spread it), but we all know that this isn’t how public opinion is formed in this town or most any other. People see headlines from afar, gossip about what they might mean, and at best bits and pieces of articles are skimmed and extracted for further digestion. The implications of a story, and the emotions and thoughts its presentation evokes, become the story itself. Any good journalist or page layout editor or news staff member knows this, too: framing trumps truth. (If you want to know why and don’t want to take my word for it, I recommend Metaphors We Live By by George Lakoff and Blink by Malcolm Gladwell.)

Jackson notes that if the Pal-Item ever did make a factual mistake or some other error that required addressing, there’s always the great rectifying tool, “the correction.” But we all know that unless you’re scrambling to make things right in the wake of your own Jason Blair scandal, corrections don’t get front page headlines with a full page photo, and they very rarely contribute to refining the framing of an issue. How do you publish a correction apologizing for the size of a headline? And perhaps that’s why no one has sought corrections or clarifications from the Palladium-Item on these difficult issues: they feel that it really doesn’t matter in the end, when the principles of fair and balanced reporting on a given issue have already been superseded by printing what sells papers. Maybe that’s the Pal-Item readership just not holding up its end of the bargain? Maybe we need more Letters to the Editor about how the Editor spends his or her time? You’re reading mine.

I admire Rich Jackson and his staff, and I think that on the whole they do an excellent job of balancing the difficult requirements of being the only local printed news source in a town where news sometimes comes hard (see: every front page weather story they’ve ever had to write). And I admire that at least some there subscribe to some greater notion of objective truth that every citizen in our community has a right to access in some pure form. But I don’t think they should fool themselves – or their readers – by denying that they have (and often exploit) the ability to present the different sides of that truth while also significantly shaping how it is received, and what people do with it. If they ignore that truth, no triple-checking of facts or Code of Ethics will restore their credibility as a journalistic entity.

Related, I think it’s important to note that NBC Nightly News has enabled comments on their weblog that chronicles the production of their nightly network newscast. I didn’t really consider it a blog until they did that, and even though the comments are moderated, they’ve really taken what I would consider to be an important (and somewhat risky) step in bringing the culture of blogging to mainstream media. Today’s series of posts on Brian Williams` travels with President Bush were particularly unique. Next in line: during commercials, instant messaging with the anchor about the segment that just aired? Hmmm.

But whatever their troubles, to imply that Don Holbrook is the sole reason for them seems unfair. To do so by bringing out questions about his education and employment history, and to identify specific spending choices he made (e.g. “the large, multi-sectional, desk that he bought for $8,000″) out of the context of the organization’s internal affairs, seems outright malicious. Whether it’s the EDC board members or some other political players or the Pal-Item’s own news editors that are driving this effort, I hope they’ll consider stepping back and reconsidering how they want to present this information to the public.

What Wayne County does *not* need right now is further erosion of public confidence in the overall hope for economic development in the area. If certain staff or board members need to go, or if budgets need to be tightened or re-thought, so be it – but the people who decide those things should be having those conversations together and reporting on the results, seeking public feedback through their own channels, not through the Pal-Item opinion page. To have those conversations on the pages of the newspaper is disrespectful to Don, to each other, and to the public who deserve better from officials working on taxpayer time.