With the financial markets asking newspaper companies to atone for their general revenue shortcomings, the question of the nature of the newspaper business – that of a double-digit profit conglomerate or that of a public trust – is underscoring a murkiness that dwells insistently on the fact that not all newspaper empires are equal to the measure of the public trust.
The most dramatic example of this question can be found in the unusually public wrangling between civic leaders in Los Angeles; the LA Times; and the corporate leadership of the Tribune Company, owner of the LA Times. The Los Angeles community leaders are asking Tribune to either invest in the LA Times or sell it outright to someone who will. The LA Times editorial leadership has publicly refused to apply the staff cuts that Tribune’s leadership is insisting upon. In the middle are the profits and the public.
This matter of the Public Trust (caps intended) is one that is more shapeless than the more tangible data one can find in a financial report. And this is what makes it so difficult and so compelling. The public trust is a direct extension of democracy itself – with free societies believing that true power resides in the trust the public puts in the institutions that govern the maneuverings of society.
Newspapers were established to satisfy and to serve the public trust. For example, The Wall Street Journal was established in the 1800’s to offer objective financial perspective in the face of fictional claims made elsewhere in newsletters posing as legitimate news sources – particularly around the explosion in equity investment the railroad industry inspired. In the case of The Wall Street Journal, there were significant losses in household wealth due to the dubious claims of other illegitimate sources – and the establishment of WSJ was a function of public order.
There were many newspapers that took similar steps and made similar claims – particularly with regard to regional judicial and other governmental reporting. Some were successful and some failed – however, these newspapers took admirable steps to retain the full spectrum of the public trust.
But somewhere along the line the public trust was given a lower relegation in comparison to the pursuit of unabashed profit models promised by larger empires eager to collect newspaper titles across the country. Greed overtook the boardrooms of the very constitution of these companies – and the threat of public trust erosion became more apparent.
One result was the broad incorporation of Associated Press content. The Associated Press effectively acts as an outsourcing venue for written journalism. The Tribune Company, for example, is currently working to untangle itself from this model.
What does an AP selection mean for a news entity? It means layoffs for writers – the core mainstay of a given newspaper business. Releasing journalists in the pursuit of more profit represents an erosion of the public trust – as the readers have previously contracted with the given publication to report on the matters that most concern them. The readership did not ask for amalgamated newsfeeds among the pages of their respective regional newspapers. Corporate boardrooms asked for them.
For instance, I live in New Jersey – where The Star Ledger is on the verge of going out of business. Pick up The Star Ledger and a significant portion of the content is Associated Press stories. What does that say to the local community? It is a drive-through McDonalds-like journalistic experience that has lost its particular voice and resonance and has lost also its connection to the people and to the prospective audiences in the community. You might as well pick up USA Today or go to Google News.
So we have entered an environment where journalism is a commodity. And commodities have unstable shelf lives – in terms of stock prices. Just look at oil.
However, not all newspaper companies are equal. For example, Washington Post won 6 Pulitzers in 2008 – a sweep by every measure. Though Washington Post employs a smattering of AP content, their continual ability to win awards and to be respected in the manner that they are cannot be accomplished with a reliance on AP content. Winning 6 Pulitzers is a feat born out of a firm commitment to the national public trust.
The Washington Post has a heritage of upholding and defining the tenets of the public trust – and it is this heritage that affords them the high quality audience they enjoy today. Quality attracts quality – it could almost be a law of physics. The Pulitzers and the top-shelf quality of their journalism compel a top-shelf audience to come back for more. This is a media-agnostic experience – not at all tied to the confines of a printed product.
Quality audience attracts quality advertisers, which in turn attracts quality revenue. There is proof and truth that one can have it both ways – satisfying both the public trust and the financial needs of the organization.
Dangerous precedents abound if the public trust is ignored. Two recent decisions by the New York Times come to mind.
The first concerns their recent move to dissolve the International Herald Tribune’s website. Imagine if you lived in Paris and regularly accessed the IHT. Then tomorrow it disappears – only to be replaced by generic "global" New York Times content. Is this not a breach of Europe’s public trust?
But the second New York Times decision is a bit more manipulative. When New York Times presented the John McCain marital affair scandal, the editors were pressed by the Republican establishment to source the story. The paper could not provide a source for the story that befitted standard journalistic integrity. This was a defining moment for them, as they had clearly taken journalism into the space of opinion and abandoned the public trust altogether in favor of their particular political agenda. This abandonment removes them from objective and reasonable thinking – a dangerous place for a mainstream national newspaper.
So the public trust / profit equation can be equal, but there is considerable differentiation in the application of this balance. It comes back to the kind of intellectual Darwinism free societies have long championed but rarely understood.
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