“Conservatives say newspapers are hurting because readers are fed up with how liberal they are. Liberals say newspapers are hurting because they've become shills for conservatives and tools of corporations. … Here's what I say: Newspapers are hurting because the people who should be relying on them don't, and because those who do rely on them have decided they ought to be able to do so for free.”
The quote above came from a speech The Isthmus Editor Bill Leuders gave to the Madison, Wis. Rotary Club. The speech was titled “Why Newspapers Matter.”
With that title, I imagine right now some readers are thinking, “Yeah, yeah, we know newspapers matter.”
But Leuders makes some really good points that reporters and editors in the midst of buyouts, layoffs or other cutbacks should hear. Chief among them: Newspapers matter a lot.
First, some background: Leuders still describes himself as a reporter – more specifically as a “newspaper reporter” – despite his “editor” title. And the Isthmus, an alternative news weekly in Madison, has not been spared from staff cuts and the other painful realities of the newspaper industry.
The oft-discussed decline of the newspaper industry is not the Internet’s fault, Leuders said, and the effect of the Web on traditional media is not what concerns him. What concerns him is that newspapers are seriously undervalued by those who should (or do, but don’t realize it) depend on the vital work of newspaper reporters – regular people who have an interest in keeping up on the world around them, from their kid’s school system to the national and international stages. Toward the end of his speech, Leuders said he’s quite discouraged by those who seem “cheerfully ignorant.”
“In fact, newspapers are the source of nearly all of the reporting being done on those three-minute news updates played on local radio stations. Newspapers are the source of nearly all of the commentaries posted by bloggers; they almost never do the hard work of picking up a phone and nailing down a story. They pick up a newspaper,” Leuders said. (Personal note: I witnessed this while interning at a TV station in an earlier life.)
He continued, “My concern is that newspapers seem to be losing traction at precisely the time when they should be gaining it. I worry that people are not replacing daily newspaper consumption with other quality information.”
Leuders then gave – and solidly refuted – five common reasons why people don’t seem to value newspapers anymore (he focuses on newspapers in the Madison area for No. 5). Here is the Cliff’s Notes version:
- Reason: “I don’t have time.” Leuders: “That’s ridiculous. Of course you have time. You just spend the time you have doing other things.”
- Reason: “It’s just too depressing.” Leuders: “There are all kinds of stories in the paper -- good news and bad, stories about people and trends and ideas and business and technology and sports.”
- Reason: “It’s all fluff.” Leuders: “There are all kinds of stories in each and every issue. If you don’t like the softer stuff, don’t read it. And for Pete’s sake, make up your mind: Do you not read papers because there’s too much bad news, or not enough?”
- Reason: “You can’t trust anything you read in the paper.” Leuders: “You can trust almost everything you read in the newspaper. You know why? Because newspaper reporters work very hard to be accurate, and they get an amazing number of things right. Not just facts, names and figures, but nuance and context. We’re the only profession I know of that runs corrections when it makes mistakes.”
- Reason: “Isthmus is the only good read in town.” Leuders: “The truth is that Madison has an unusually large number of talented reporters, on staff and freelance, because it’s considered a good place to live. There are dozens of applicants for every local journalism job. If you can make it here, you might not be able to make it anywhere. But you probably don’t suck. And neither does my competition.”