Walter Pincus on Newspaper Narcissism
There’s a lot to disagree with in Walter Pincus’ CJR essay “Newspaper Narcissism: Our pursuit of glory led us away from readers” but I find it to be a welcome tonic anyway. I think it’s pretty clear that the financial problems of the news business extend beyond the issue of declining readership. But it’s also totally clear that it’s better, financially, to have more readers rather than fewer. And while it’s by no means obvious that doing better work is the best way to get more readers, I do think it’s absolutely vital for people working in the media to have some kind of faith that doing a good job and attracting an audience are related issues.
At any rate, it would be wishful thinking to assume that if everyone just rolled up their sleeves and did the job right that the money would inevitably follow. But quality issues are relevant. And most of all, for people who are actually engaged in the process of writing about the news, trying to do a better job of writing about the news is the aspect of the situation that we’re most in a position to do something about.
23 Responses to “Walter Pincus on Newspaper Narcissism”
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May 9th, 2009 at 1:13 pm
And most of all, for people who are actually engaged in the process of writing about the news, trying to do a better job of writing about the news is the aspect of the situation that we’re most in a position to do something about.
Do you mean covering the news, or “writing about the news?” If the latter, what exactly does that phrase mean?
As to the chicken/egg question of “declining readership due to low-quality product” vs. “low quality product due to declining readership,” I’m still uncertain which side I’m on. There seems to have been a semi-conscious decision in the print media in the late 1990s to push for a lowest-common-denominator intellectual approach with an eye toward maximizing circulation and boosting ad sales. If you want examples of this, you can compare the writing in the “Arts & Leisure” section of the NY Times from ten years ago to the writing in today’s edition. I know I quit reading the Times around 1999 for that reason–I’m not sure how many other readers did the same.
May 9th, 2009 at 1:27 pm
The impression I got from the piece wasn’t so much that writers need to “do better work.” Rather, I read him as saying writers need to do better work that’s also what people want to read. His example of the Post running 11 part series in search of Pullitzers is the perfect example of a newspaper doing “good work” that nobody wants to read.
I think the notion that you should give people what they want rather than what elite reporters and editors think they should want is key.
May 9th, 2009 at 1:34 pm
When I first started working, about 2000 through 2002, I used to buy the NYT and at least two of the big three weekly magazines. I was 18 in 2000, but it seemed like the world was a big place, and I read quickly so it wasn’t much of an imposition to read he paper and become acquainted with it.
That pretty much stopped with the run up to the war. At that young an age, and I’d imagine to a lot of people who just started to pay attention in that era, the media really did seem corrupt and completely in bed with the government. To a kid that age, the only difference between this country at that time and some soviet-style dystopia was that few people got disappeared, mostly they media just pretended we didn’t exist.
The media deserves what it gets. They no longer serve a purpose in our democracy, save to undermine it.
May 9th, 2009 at 2:12 pm
I think the key isn’t necessarily in what they do, but how they do it. A lot of newspapers are very inept at presenting information, which is essentially their job, reporting pertinent information. While the long-form article was the sole form available in earlier days, nowadays technology and other changes have made great innovations possible in information presentation.
For example, I was reading an European (German) paper, which was at the time reporting on a government budget. Now, the traditional way an U.S. newspaper would go about reporting this is the long-form multi-paragraphed article, accompanied by a few small charts and graphs. The European paper, however, had something like 6 pages full of pie charts, bar charts, various graphs and other presentation formats you can think of of, which presented the requisite information in a very effective way, with blurbs of paragraph writing in between serving in explicatory roles.
What occurred to me what that the generic American long-form article was freely available online, anywhere, whereas the German special report was proprietary to that newspaper, only, and thus, I would have been willing to pay for that newspaper, as well as obtaining a subscription if this is done on a consistent and regular basis.
What’s strange is that while American papers shy away from informative charts, graphs, and illustrations, they splurge on huge page-spread photographs that would have been equally informative scaled to one-quarter the size. One article I saw had a man leaning a lamppost occupying like a third of the page; it was a an annoying waste and indicative of editorial laziness.
May 9th, 2009 at 2:14 pm
That pretty much stopped with the run up to the war. At that young an age, and I’d imagine to a lot of people who just started to pay attention in that era, the media really did seem corrupt and completely in bed with the government.
This is purely tangential the overall decline of newspapers. Newspapers die or live; that has very little to do with Iraq War reporting. Quit dragging out all these useless bogeymen. Newspapers have been dying for a long time, and anyways, correlation is not causation.
So, in short, shut the fuck up.
May 9th, 2009 at 2:29 pm
This is purely tangential the overall decline of newspapers. … This is purely tangential the overall decline of newspapers.
And you seem to misunderstand symptoms and causes. The poor reporting on the Iraq war made a lot of symptoms of journalism’s problems harder to ignore than they were before.
May 9th, 2009 at 2:39 pm
I want Studs Terkel, Mike Royko, Carl Kolchak. What I get are Jayson Blair and Judith Miller; not only are newspapers now widely perceived to be corrupt house organs on a par with the company newsletter, but the practitioners don’t want to do any actual, you know, investigative reporting.
This is confirmed by the students I see enrolled in our journalism program. The thought of these well-coiffed specimens who drive better cars (courtesy of their parents) than I do ever actually sorting through rubbish, doing the aggressive in-you-face thing with the local chamber of commerce, etc leads me to expressions of hilarious (but accurate) derision.
May 9th, 2009 at 2:46 pm
Soullite, I was interested in your story. The run-up to the war was when I pulled cable. Media coverage of the war was/is heinous. If they can’t be honest about that—
Nevermind Myles, he’s constipated.
May 9th, 2009 at 3:11 pm
Who got Myles all het up again?
May 9th, 2009 at 3:18 pm
“So, in short, shut the fuck up.”
Hey tough guy, make him.
May 9th, 2009 at 4:03 pm
[...] Drum links to it. Matt Y has things to say about the piece. Daniel Akst in the [...]
May 9th, 2009 at 4:57 pm
This is confirmed by the students I see enrolled in our journalism program. The thought of these well-coiffed specimens who drive better cars (courtesy of their parents) than I do ever actually sorting through rubbish, doing the aggressive in-you-face thing with the local chamber of commerce, etc leads me to expressions of hilarious (but accurate) derision.
Ahh yes, people from wealthy families are always to be regarded with suspicion in all things. They probably harbour class prejudice as well, you know.
May 9th, 2009 at 6:46 pm
The thought of these well-coiffed specimens who drive better cars
You know, in Britain, they wouldn’t just be well-coiffed. They would be physically taller than average.
Count yourself lucky that in America you don’t have look, literally, up to your social superiors.
May 9th, 2009 at 7:24 pm
Well, no, it’s from simple observation; they do attend my classes after all, which is how I happen to know their majors(I’m curious as to how I would have known this otherwise. Let’s hear what your reasoning
.) And I can tell you that, whatever else they might be, hardworking and motivated they aren’t. Not judging by the amount of homework they turn in, or the quizzes they actually take.
May 9th, 2009 at 8:13 pm
And I can tell you that, whatever else they might be, hardworking and motivated they aren’t. Not judging by the amount of homework they turn in, or the quizzes they actually take.
I don’t dispute that and believe that this conclusion comes from experience and observation. I was disputing the connection between this and being well-coiffed and having cars provided by their parents. I think that describes most students from all backgrounds; the dedicated are a minority, in my experience, whether their parents give them a car or not. It’s an easy stereotype and expression of resentment that I’ve heard my entire life–since I am hard-working etc., people express surprise when they find out I am from a well-off background, which I find quite insulting.
As stated, I am from such a background—the coiff, the cars—and am also a teacher. I have taught in rural areas at community colleges where the students are the first in their families to go to college; I have also taught the sons and daughters of the rich and famous. I have seen no difference in levels of commitment or dedication, though I’ve often heard the connection between privelege and lack of motivation that you articulated above. It’s a socially acceptable prejudice, but just as lacking in evidence (beyond correlation=causality) as other prejudices.
May 9th, 2009 at 10:24 pm
You’re not making a lot of sense here. Or if you are, then you’re wrong. Perhaps you could try again to explain what you mean?
May 10th, 2009 at 12:56 am
On Scent’s basic point: yes, J-school is a very different apprenticeship than the one Pincus served in the NYT and WSJ copy-rooms.
On the other hand, how many WaPo / NYT writers are J-school grads? Additionally, it’s not as if Pincus or Sy Hersh or any muckraker with a paper-strewn desk is the kind of writer who gets bribed with ponies to take a new job.
Investigative journalism is basically a vocation anywhere; trouble is, the kinds of stories that get hits — talk about recipes for the Obama puppy! — aren’t ones that sell papers.
May 10th, 2009 at 1:38 am
Bill Kristol, Daphne Merkin, Sam Tannenhaus, Maureen Dowd — ? What can they be thinking?
May 10th, 2009 at 9:56 am
I was a reporter & I think Pincus is dead-right.
May 10th, 2009 at 10:27 am
Bill Kristol, Daphne Merkin, Sam Tannenhaus, Maureen Dowd — ? What can they be thinking?
Actually, Maureen Dowd is one of the only readable columnists at the New York Times. She is, as far as I can tell, the only one with a decent sense of humour and proportion. I can count on her columns as being entertaining and fun to read.
The others, not so much.
May 10th, 2009 at 10:35 am
Additionally, it’s not as if Pincus or Sy Hersh or any muckraker with a paper-strewn desk is the kind of writer who gets bribed with ponies to take a new job.
That was actually rather cute and very humanising, the bribing with ponies. Who wouldn’t want to work for a guy that bothers to send ponies to your house?
May 10th, 2009 at 11:36 am
Myles, sure… the quality of a good has NOTHING to do with wheter people buy it. Even when there are substitutions to be made.
Who fucking taught you economics?
May 10th, 2009 at 11:44 am
you spend a lot of time being an obnoxious prick about the things other commenters say, then you turn around and make a mistake so basic a highschooler would have known better.
What I said, or rather what you’ve taken from my personal experience, is established economics. Your wingnutty ass is so god damned used to screaming “CORRELATION DOES NOT EQUAL CAUSATION”, you spew it without fucking thinking.
So why don’t you go stuff rush limbaughs cock back in your mouth. Maybe it’ll shut you both the fuck up.