What's Black And White And Dead All Over?

If this story is any indication, then the answer to that question will be the two main newspapers of the city of Philadelphia, something I point out with no joy whatsoever (and I also posted over here.)

As we learn from the E&P link above…

PHILADELPHIA - Philadelphia Newspapers hopes to use $35 million in new capital to settle nearly $400 million in debt and emerge from bankruptcy.

An opposing creditors' plan would leave the newspapers saddled with up to $85 million in debt, making it difficult for The Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News to survive, a company lawyer said Tuesday.

Lawyer Larry McMichael offered broad outlines of the competing reorganization plans after a hearing Tuesday, but neither has been filed in court.

A new judge handling the case chided various parties involved Tuesday for offering ''untenable'' options to resolve the company's finances, which McMichael described as ''under water.''

''To one degree or another, everyone involved ... is overplaying their hand,'' Chief U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Stephen Raslavich said.

He ordered all sides -- the company, creditors and the union representing writers and photographers -- to stop bluffing or risk having the city's two largest dailies fold.

In anticipation of this story, former Inquirer writer (and current New York Times correspondent) Michael Sokolove wrote this feature article for the Sunday Times Magazine. He recounts the history of both papers, from their treatment as Walter Annenberg’s “poor stepchildren,” to their sale to the Knight Ridder chain (which subsequently ushered in the Inky’s “salad days” of 17 Pulitzer Prizes from 1975 to 1990), to their present calamitous state under the ownership of Philadelphia Newspapers (and the company’s most visible presence, Brian Tierney, pictured).

Sokolove continues…

Tierney is the central figure in Philadelphia’s newspaper drama today — an imperfect, improbable savior who in his previous role as the city’s most prominent public-relations executive was hyperaggressive, and often bullying, in his interactions with reporters. No one would compare him with (Ben) Franklin, except perhaps in his self-confidence. But he has taken to newspapering with a convert’s devotion. In one of our conversations, he had to stop talking for a moment as tears came rolling down his cheeks. He was telling me about a speech he gave to an adult-education group, a routine appearance until the moderator asked everyone to join hands and pray for The Inquirer and The Daily News. “It was unbelievable they would say a prayer for us,” Tierney said as he reached under his glasses to dry his eyes. “But they care. You know, it’s not like we’re some radio station thinking about switching from Top 40 to a salsa format. This is the people’s work, a public trust.”

Cue the tinny violin (a little late in the game to play for sympathy, Tierney).

Bankruptcy proceedings in which the parties do not amicably come together on terms for restructuring debt are fluid and unpredictable. The Philadelphia newspaper case has been particularly rancorous. A possibility exists, probably remote at this point, that the papers could just fold, making Philadelphia the winner of a dubious sweepstakes: first major American city to be left without a daily newspaper. Alberto Ibargüen, president of the Knight Foundation, which finances journalistic innovation, told me, “It’s going to happen somewhere.”

…

(Tierney) has taken his public relations mind-set to newspapering. He says he thinks the industry shares too much bad news about itself — “The audience for TV news is tanking, but do you ever hear them talk about that?” — and he was an early advocate for the idea that newspapers ought to begin charging for online content, a notion that has recently gained momentum.

As far as TV news “tanking,” as Tierney put it (and I’ll get to the content-charging argument in a minute), this tells us that, though the Internet has taken away some of the TV news audience…

…give the broadcast networks credit: they've been much quicker to implement changes to address viewership declines than their print compadres of the twentieth century, and the changes encompass both the form and content of the nightly news broadcast. Viewers now are invited to log-on to the network's web site to post their comments, view/read side-bar stories, download the broadcast to their iPod or view it on another mobile device. In many cases, the broadcast networks have allocated air talent to create a nightly newscast tailored for and distributed on the web, above and beyond the bonus coverage that's so often available on news stories broadcast on television.

Does all this mean that nightly newscasts on TV will end any time soon? Hardly. There is this thing called "reach." For all their attrition, particularly among viewers ages 18-34, the network newscast still reaches more than 20 million households on a typical night. Second, as for June 2008, 57% of the 113.3 million U.S. television households have cable television, but 43% do not, according to National Cable Television Association data, and these cable-less viewers rely more on TV than on the Internet for news. Hence, it appears, at least for the next decade, the network newscast will retain a sizable audience.

Sokolove also spends part of his feature discussing the whole “business model” issue, which of course is critical…

…parts of the system are actually not broken at all (referencing a prior quote about “old systems breaking before new ones are formed,” in this case pertaining to news gathering). Journalists still know how to gather news. And the Internet is a step forward in disseminating it. What’s broken is the pipeline that sends money back to where the content is created. Most of it is available to readers online, free, including on newspapers’ own Web sites, where it is not sufficiently supported by advertising.

What to do (or, more precisely, not to do)?

Well, as far as charging for online content is concerned (thus perpetuating some long-discredited business model), I would say that kos makes some interesting (if profanity-laced) points here about how newspaper executives want to make money basically from search engines purposely directing users to newspaper sites to drive up the sites’ hit counts so they can charge as much for advertising online as they would in print (with user subscriptions making up the difference).

Uh, yeah…let me know how that works for you guys, OK?

Continuing with Sokolove…

“We do the brawny work,” Tierney said, sounding like the C.E.O. of some smokestack industry. “The Web efforts, they add something. I congratulate them. Let a thousand flowers bloom. But if somebody thinks in any short term, or even medium term, that the answers are those things, they’re kidding themselves. I know I sound like a heretic in that I won’t come out and say, ‘They’re the future.’ But they’re not. The brawny work is what we’re doing, and the brawny vehicle to carry it is the printed product.”

Once more, I give you kos here (who might as well be talking to Tierney)...

If you're in such a bubble that you haven't seen the dozens of news operations online that are producing "detailed responsible empirical journalism", then you are hopeless. (The news exec’s) biggest problem? They continue to act as though their medium is inherently superior when news is medium agnostic.

And on the subject of arrogance, Sokolove briefly makes reference to the fact that Tierney awarded himself a $350,000 bonus last year as the company’s unions voted to postpone $25-a-week raises for each of its members at the request of Philadelphia Newspapers (noted here).

Also, if Tierney were serious about “letting a thousand flowers bloom,” then as I said here, he (along with just about every other “dead tree media” exec) would have realized that online news/commentary sites are not the enemy, and that a rising tide could float all boats (or at least, the most worthy ones), as they say.

In addition to the points raised by Sokolove, though, I would like to offer my own peculiar insight here.

It’s all well and good that there are people crying and praying for Philadelphia’s two major metropolitan newspapers (not a bad thing if it saves jobs), but I think Sokolove does a disservice here by ignoring the recent editorial controversies stirred up by Tierney, notably his decision to offer Bush torture memo architect John Yoo some prime editorial real estate (here). I have no hard data on the impact of those decisions (in concert with the general right-wing slant of most corporate media) on circulation, but my somewhat educated guess is that it is not beneficial (I will readily admit that the economy looms larger as a factor in whether or not people subscribe to newspapers).

I realize that people read newspapers for different reasons – perhaps the stock ticker, the comics, local news, obituaries, movie listings – but to me, the life blood of any newspaper is the Op-Ed page (any “newspaper” without it might as well be a nuisance direct mail solicitation or a supermarket circular).

And the Op-Ed page of the Philadelphia Inquirer (and their Sunday “Currents” section – always thought that was a stupid title), on balance, has been so uninteresting and so hopelessly biased for so long that I can’t remember when it was actually good. And a big reason why I haven't said anything for a little while about Smerky, Ferris, Little Ricky, etc. is because, though what they say is often controversial, at least it was timely, but now it isn't even that (they just end up rehashing something I've already posted on, so what’s the point of repeating myself – I should note that Dan Rather called here for a presidential commission on our media, which is a good idea, though it would likely lead to the much-needed examination of conservative dominance embodied in our news organizations with initials for names which is not desired by way too many in this country).

At least the Bucks County Courier Times, in addition to its steady diet of right-wing hackery, publishes Gene Lyons or someone from Media Matters on occasion (and David Sirota a couple of times) to at least give a nod to the fact that there’s more in the “brawny vehicle” of a newspaper than Tierney thinks there is (though, as long as I’m mentioning the Courier Times, an editorial this morning said that a supposed “issue” in the health care debate is “will (health care reform) snuff out granny”…pathetic).

(And that, once more, drums home the point to me that newspapers don’t realize that their editorial content is now more obsolete than ever before, since an entire web-savvy audience would know the answer to that ridiculous question – and have probably known for some time – before it was ever posed in print.)

Most of us lament the loss of traditional, iconic realities in our lives (in this region, consider the night club Ripley’s, the Budd Plant in Northeast Philadelphia, and the Horn and Hardart restaurant chain). But if somehow the prayers and entreaties on behalf of the Inquirer and Daily News fail to forestall their demise (as well as that of papers in the past and potentially in the future), it will be in large part because of market forces beyond the grasp of the management of these organizations, as well as their failure to innovate in both the generation and distribution of content.

And it will also be the fault of individuals who thought so little of that content that they refused to seek it, support it, or demand that it meet a standard of excellence required for us all to make informed decisions concerning our own lives, that of our families, our communities, and ultimately, our country.

Update 8/21/09: Sounds like a band-aid solution (re, a second "local group" is trying to save the first "local group") when what is needed is something radical, but we'll see (saving jobs is always a good thing).