We are the profession of Mark Twain.
For more than 200 years, those men and woman who put ink to paper have acted as the historians and the watchdogs of this country. Like Twain, they have told the stories of their times.
But those times have changed.
And now, professional journalists face a world full of turmoil and change. The path leading to this change has been long, but the change it has spawned has been rapid.
About 600 years ago, Gutenberg (adopting an idea from the Chinese) gave us movable type. Benjamin Franklin showed us how to use that type to inform the public, share opinions and make a buck in the process.
Mergenthaler took it a step further with the Lineotype and, a few decades after that, the boys of Compugraphic showed the world true phototypesetting; and that little history lesson doesn't include the development of offset or digital printing technology.
Steve Jobs set the newspaper world on its collective ass with the development of the Macintosh computer and software for desktop publishing. It was here that journalism's decline began. With the development of the computer, we saw, later, the Web, Parez Hilton, the Drudge Report and the Blogosphere.
That, right after two reporters at the Washington Post helped shine the light on a crooked president, and win the Pulitzer in the process.
Along the way, newspapers (both dailies and weeklies) have struggled to stay relevant, inform the public and, in true capitalistic fashion, make a buck.
But we are our own worst enemy.
Across this state — or any state in the Union for that matter — thousands of talented, professional journalists cover, analyze, report and document everything from the City Council meeting to Michael Jackson's funeral.
Here in Oklahoma they do it for 'below poverty' wages.
After developing an addiction to 20 and 30 percent profit, newspaper publishers and owners here have held wages to record lows, but, at the same time, demanded stellar performance for their employees.
A friend of mine (who works in the industry) estimates that more than 60 percent of the reporters and photographers working at Oklahoma newspapers qualify for some type governmental aid (reduced price lunches for their kids, food stamps, etc.) despite holding a degree and being employed full time.
Look at it this way: The owners and publishers want the taxpayers to help subsidize their staffs because they, themselves, are too cheap to do it.
That's wrong.
But the greed doesn't stop there. Large metropolitan dailies have gobbled up or forced their competition out of business, while at the same time, taking on mountains of debt in huge consolidation and merger efforts.
The end result is that many of these giants won't survive.
The Rocky Mountain News and the Seattle Post Intelligencer are dead. The New York Times is bleeding money, the Boston Globe (owned by the Times Company) is on life support, and Chicago's dailies have declared bankruptcy.
In Oklahoma the state's two largest dailies have laid off huge numbers of talented, prize-winning staff members while they struggle to adapt and survive.
All during a time when people hunger for news.
Newspapers have made their own lives worse by posting their content free on the Internet, devaluing their entire product and those who help create it. In the rush to compete with Internet we cut our own throats. Bigger newspapers -- including the regional and suburban dailies have attempted to become "media portals" by converging video, audio and print into their Web site and still publishing a print product.
A noble idea, but publishers and editors have taken convergence to the extreme by demanding their existing staffs handle every component instead of hiring more professionals to do the work.
Journalists — who already have way too little time to cover stories which need to be covered — now have the added burden of doing the filming, editing and posting of the same event. And the end result isn't something that competes with television, but instead looks like it was cobbled together by a reporter with too much to do.
By limiting reporter's time to focus on quality stories, and by demanding these same professionals take on more and more duties formally performed by others, newspaper publishers and owners degrade their own product. Few papers sell, because the stories in them are all by one source - the Associated Press.
Then the publishers and owners throw up their hands and shout at the rain when their profits fail and circulation declines.
Amazing.
Students in journalism schools today, face a bleak future if the industry as a whole doesn't rise to the challenge and reinvent itself in a way that allows all parties to profit from the effort.
But that, my friends, is the fodder for another post.
For more than 200 years, those men and woman who put ink to paper have acted as the historians and the watchdogs of this country. Like Twain, they have told the stories of their times.
But those times have changed.
And now, professional journalists face a world full of turmoil and change. The path leading to this change has been long, but the change it has spawned has been rapid.
About 600 years ago, Gutenberg (adopting an idea from the Chinese) gave us movable type. Benjamin Franklin showed us how to use that type to inform the public, share opinions and make a buck in the process.
Mergenthaler took it a step further with the Lineotype and, a few decades after that, the boys of Compugraphic showed the world true phototypesetting; and that little history lesson doesn't include the development of offset or digital printing technology.
Steve Jobs set the newspaper world on its collective ass with the development of the Macintosh computer and software for desktop publishing. It was here that journalism's decline began. With the development of the computer, we saw, later, the Web, Parez Hilton, the Drudge Report and the Blogosphere.
That, right after two reporters at the Washington Post helped shine the light on a crooked president, and win the Pulitzer in the process.
Along the way, newspapers (both dailies and weeklies) have struggled to stay relevant, inform the public and, in true capitalistic fashion, make a buck.
But we are our own worst enemy.
Across this state — or any state in the Union for that matter — thousands of talented, professional journalists cover, analyze, report and document everything from the City Council meeting to Michael Jackson's funeral.
Here in Oklahoma they do it for 'below poverty' wages.
After developing an addiction to 20 and 30 percent profit, newspaper publishers and owners here have held wages to record lows, but, at the same time, demanded stellar performance for their employees.
A friend of mine (who works in the industry) estimates that more than 60 percent of the reporters and photographers working at Oklahoma newspapers qualify for some type governmental aid (reduced price lunches for their kids, food stamps, etc.) despite holding a degree and being employed full time.
Look at it this way: The owners and publishers want the taxpayers to help subsidize their staffs because they, themselves, are too cheap to do it.
That's wrong.
But the greed doesn't stop there. Large metropolitan dailies have gobbled up or forced their competition out of business, while at the same time, taking on mountains of debt in huge consolidation and merger efforts.
The end result is that many of these giants won't survive.
The Rocky Mountain News and the Seattle Post Intelligencer are dead. The New York Times is bleeding money, the Boston Globe (owned by the Times Company) is on life support, and Chicago's dailies have declared bankruptcy.
In Oklahoma the state's two largest dailies have laid off huge numbers of talented, prize-winning staff members while they struggle to adapt and survive.
All during a time when people hunger for news.
Newspapers have made their own lives worse by posting their content free on the Internet, devaluing their entire product and those who help create it. In the rush to compete with Internet we cut our own throats. Bigger newspapers -- including the regional and suburban dailies have attempted to become "media portals" by converging video, audio and print into their Web site and still publishing a print product.
A noble idea, but publishers and editors have taken convergence to the extreme by demanding their existing staffs handle every component instead of hiring more professionals to do the work.
Journalists — who already have way too little time to cover stories which need to be covered — now have the added burden of doing the filming, editing and posting of the same event. And the end result isn't something that competes with television, but instead looks like it was cobbled together by a reporter with too much to do.
By limiting reporter's time to focus on quality stories, and by demanding these same professionals take on more and more duties formally performed by others, newspaper publishers and owners degrade their own product. Few papers sell, because the stories in them are all by one source - the Associated Press.
Then the publishers and owners throw up their hands and shout at the rain when their profits fail and circulation declines.
Amazing.
Students in journalism schools today, face a bleak future if the industry as a whole doesn't rise to the challenge and reinvent itself in a way that allows all parties to profit from the effort.
But that, my friends, is the fodder for another post.
Comments
Tell me, oh wizard, how did you get the cool black background all over. I want to get rid of that sickly green background on mine....while keeping the rest of it as is?
Tell me oh wizard, how do you get that cool black background? I want to get rid of the sickly green on mine, but not the rest of the layout.