Mainstream journalists defensive about start-upBy Steven T. Jones
Reactions by many mainstream media journalists to the formation of the Bay Area News Project – a nonprofit news operation supported by KQED, the UC Berkeley School of Journalism, California Newspaper Guild, financier Warren Hellman, and possibly The New York Times – have been hostile, petty, dismissive, self-serving, and misleading.
It’s no wonder the public has turned away from big newspapers and is clamoring for media reform. Rather than focusing on the public benefits of more journalism, mainstream media journalists seem to have adopted the media consolidation mindset of their corporate masters.
A central theme of the criticism has been wariness of competition. The SF Appeal today reports on a memo to San Francisco Chronicle staff written by Metro Editor Audrey Cooper in which she vows “to smash whomever is naive enough to poke their noses in our market.”
Friday’s Chronicle story on the news, which was buried back in the business section and written by James Temple, frets, “some believe it could also threaten the remaining local news industry.” That trope was also sounded in an East Bay Express blog post by Robert Gammon (formerly of the Oakland Tribune, which is part of the anti-competitive MediaNews empire) entitled “UC Berkeley Threatens Bay Area Journalism.”
Yet there’s a rather obvious central flaw to their arguments: the nonprofit project won’t be competing for advertising revenue, so it won’t force “Bay Area news organizations to make further cuts to stay competitive,” as Gammon claims. Journalists competing to do better and better work is the kind of healthy competition that benefits everyone and shouldn’t cost anyone their jobs.
When I broke the news of the new venture on Thursday, I talked to several journalists who were either independent or with small organizations, and none of them worried about the competition. So why does the Chronicle, with a newsroom that will still be about six times as large as the startup, worry so much about this venture?
Also on Friday’s business page, columnist Andrew S. Ross opted for a dismissive tone in the third item of this column. “So nice of local private equity maven and philanthropist Warren Hellman to help out the New York Times to cover ‘local business openings’ and suchlike in the Bay Area,” he snidely and deceptively begins, before going on to mock an executive compensation controversy at the Times (a publicly held company subject to SEC regulation, unlike Ross’s privately controlled and highly secretive boss, Hearst Corp).
But other responses show they’re actually worried. Temple quote Chronicle Publisher Frank Vega’s official “response” to the start-up with such non-responsive quotes as, "Since we began our efforts earlier this year to secure a strong future for The San Francisco Chronicle, we have made substantial progress." Um, Frank, the question was about the Bay Area News Project.
The Cooper memo also shows that they are totally lacking in reflection about why people have stopped reading the Chronicle, which is what led to the paper’s fiscal free fall. They opt for a “strong and intimidating presence” and self-promotional cheerleading rather than simply doing good journalism and letting that speak for itself.
“I woke up so excited today. Today's paper was suburb. It's been really strong recently -- and just wait til Sunday!” she wrote with all the verve and gusto of a sorority rush director. And then Sunday’s paper was a total snoozer, with such riveting “Bay Area” lead stories as a funeral in El Dorado Hills and a Republican convention in Riverside County.
The Guardian and many of the Chron’s other “competitors” were quick to rally to the newspaper’s defense when Hearst threatened to shut them down. We did so because we believe that well-funded, professional journalism is about the public interest, not simply our narrow self-interest.
It would sure be nice to see Chron journalists return the favor and begin focusing on doing good journalism and supporting whatever Bay Area entities – from the Bay Guardian to the Bay Area News Project – are also willing to support that crucial mission.
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Comments (2)
We can hope the competition from BANP will prod other local media to improve their news products.
Meanwhile, it's also interesting to ponder what would happen if the student journalists participating in the project tried to organize.
Posted by Richard Knee | September 29, 2009 02:20 PM
While I'm as sharp a media critic* as anyone (as a former San Jose Mercury News editor married to a 33-year Chronicle reporter, now both refugees from the collapsing newspaper industry), I disagree that the travails of the news biz are due to the quality of the journalism.
Associates have often commented to me that the Chron is collapsing because of its left-wing or right-wing slant, depending on the commenter, obviously. But newspapers with both liberal and conservative viewpoints are similarly struggling.
Crappy journalism used to make big money. Top-quality journalism has been known to fail economically. The problem is that newspaper industry leadership blew it and failed to navigate their industry through the changing media world -- something that the current and recent industry leaders really can never live down; their "epic fail," as my teens would say, will be their epitaph.
One theory is that they were so willing to give away the news content because they viewed it with contempt, as it didn't directly generate revenue and cost money to produce.
Posted by Caroline | October 11, 2009 11:02 AM