It’s not the internet the idiots

Common wisdom says that the internet is destroying print media, but it’s not the internet, it’s the generation of editors I used work for. Okay, technically not the editors and publishers I personally worked for, who were awesome women who taught me everything I know about writing, but the “leading” editors and publishers who shaped the course of events from about 1998 to 2005.

When the internet came of age in the late 90s and early 2000 it was clear that it was going to change the way that people got their news. Well it was clear, but no one really bothered to come up to a solution for that. When I graduated in 1999 the question for most small newspapers what do you put on the web, rather than “how do I leverage this fantastic societal shift into a new revenue stream that will make my outlet more credible and financially viable for decades to come.”

I watched newspapers across the country follow the same poorly thought out plan of putting all of their content on a bland page, no reader interaction and accept a tiny stream of revenue from banner ads. Eventually the news websites got slicker but by then the web audience had moved on to blogs and aggregators which were quicker to navigate and more interesting. When I got to Southern Voice in 2008 they still didn’t allow readers to leave comments and by then it was clear that was fueling the visitors to blogs like Huffington Post and DailyKos wasn’t the content, which is marginal at best, but the 300-400 comment flame wars that kept driving its hits.

Still in the face of that editors and publishers have chosen to do what didn’t work for them in the 90s, bland websites with coverage of county council meetings and local sports. The people who graduated J-School in the 80s and early 90s who have been running the industry since I entered still haven’t done anything to innovate, outside of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer which has dumped print entirely.

An undergrad at Harvard can figure out how to make a multi-billion company out of a simple website but an entire generation of editors and publishers can’t even figure out how to make it revenue neutral? As far as I can tell the Baby Boomer, and to a lesser extent Generation X, leaders of journalism have been content to manage audience loss, not innovate, not take changes and not seek to change the paradigm of news because they’re afraid to. They don’t know what to do and so they hold on to a format that isn’t working with the same desperation as a crack whore looking for their next fix. They know what they’re doing isn’t working but they can’t bring themselves to adopt change.

A number of freelance writers like me have been floating the idea of offering lower cost, customized coverage of the Georgia Legislature to small papers in Georgia to be turned down without any consideration. I can’t blame then because content doesn’t drive readership anymore, but it does like they understand what drives readership. The are interested in prep sports coverage, but aren’t willing to pay enough to make it worth my time.

From where I sit, and that’s underemployed because two generations of editor and publishers have failed, what drives content is controversy, opinion and personality. Newspapers especially haven’t embraced any of that, but neither has broadcast news, which hasn’t changed their format and is also losing audience share.
The first rule of writing is to be entertaining, and because this generation of editors and publishers grew up where the audience was a given they’ve never understood that. They inherited these centuries-old institutions and that history was a comfort that they didn’t need to do anything different to find an audience. Most newspapers weren’t really even concerned with increasing their subscriber base, as far as I could tell. The just believed if they produced the same content they would have the same readership so they keep churning out dry, impersonal news created by interchangeable drones.

News that entertains and news that informs you don’t have to be mutually exclusive. Both broadcast and print outlets need to realize that they have to put together a package that people want to read, want to see, and they just don’t get that. Crime blotter and obituaries just doesn’t do it anymore.