Tim Sprinkle

Hold the front page, I want to be on it

Well, this is just depressing. From The Sunday Times. Too many journalists, not enough jobs.

Nicholas Tomalin — the wonderful, bombastic Sunday Times writer who died in 1973 reporting from the Golan Heights — thought he knew the answer. In 1969, a happier time for the industry, he began a piece in this magazine by asserting: “The only qualities essential for real success in journalism are rat-like cunning, a plausible manner and a little literary ability.” But if Tomalin were commissioned now, he would strike out that famous gambit and start again.

Today, you’ll need luck, flair, an alternative source of income, endless patience, an optimistic disposition, sharp elbows and a place to stay in London. But the essential quality for success now is surely tenacity. Look around the thinning newsrooms of the national titles. Look at the number of applicants for journalism courses, at the queue of graduates — qualified in everything except the only thing that matters, experience — who are desperate for unpaid work on newspapers and magazines. Look at the 1,200 people who applied in September for one reporter’s position on the new Sunday Times website. You’d shoot a horse with those odds.

These are the signs of an industry at a strange moment. Hordes of young people still want to become journalists; there are fewer opportunities than ever for them to do so. It is no secret that what used to be called the “print media” has been economically straitened. But just as belts are tightened and we are attempting to map our future in the internet age, the legions of graduates keep coming — arts degrees and journalism diplomas in hand — to join the party. Are they, by attempting to start their journalism careers in 2010, making what the hero of Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland calls “a historic mistake”? Is their situation “pre-apocalyptic, like the last citizens of Pompeii… or merely near-apocalyptic, like that of the cold-war inhabitants of New York, London, Washington and, for that matter, Moscow”.

Guess What? Google Isn’t Killing the News Business

At least according to James Fallows' cover story in The Atlantic this week.

Everyone knows that Google is killing the news business. Few people know how hard Google is trying to bring it back to life, or why the company now considers journalism’s survival crucial to its own prospects…. But after talking during the past year with engineers and strategists at Google and recently interviewing some of their counterparts inside the news industry, I am convinced that there is a larger vision for news coming out of Google; that it is not simply a charity effort to buy off critics; and that it has been pushed hard enough by people at the top of the company, especially Schmidt, to become an internalized part of the culture in what is arguably the world’s most important media organization. Google’s initiatives do not constitute a complete or easy plan for the next phase of serious journalism. But they are more promising than what I’m used to seeing elsewhere, notably in the steady stream of “Crisis of the Press”–style reports.

The End of the Newsweekly

Looks like Newsweek is officially up for sale.

Salon has a deeper look.

So what's the problem with Newsweek? I've heard a lot of different theories on the demise of the newsweekly format (turn-around time is too slow, the news cycle is moving too fast, weekly magazines are too much for readers, etc) but most of them, atmo, don't hold water. Newsweek wisely revamped its format over a decade ago, focusing less on spot news (which is stale by the time the magazine hits the printer) and more on in-depth analysis and investigative reporting. Frankly, these efforts are the only reason Newsweek even survived the 1990s. (The Economist, which has never been stronger, is doing the same thing in terms of format.)

So, what gives?

Andrew Leonard, in the Salon article above, pretty much hits it on the head when he calls out Newsweek's dull, dated web site.

I am a voracious consumer of journalism in all formats and I hardly ever find myself at Newsweek.com, whether via a Google search or a link provided by some other party or my own volition. While some magazines -- the Atlantic jumps to mind -- have managed to create lively Web sites while at the same time continuing to produce engaging long-form journalism, Newsweek seems neither to have figured out how to make itself a destination point on the Web or justify its existence in print.

Is it possible that Newsweek's journalists just aren't creating compelling content?

The Death of the Wall Street Journal

Vanity Fair has a pretty interesting excerpt from Sarah Ellison's new book, War at the Wall Street Journal, that examines exactly what went down at 200 Liberty Street when Rupert Murdoch moved into the office and began cleaning house. OK, maybe "cleaning house" is a little harsh, as many staffers left without even being asked. But of those who stayed, the transition from old regime to new regime was swift and deliberate ... and went down exactly as many had feared when Murdoch's buyout proposal first went public.

With eerie symbolic symmetry, the very day of [Marcus] Brauchli's (now at the Washington Post) promotion had coincided with the date of Murdoch's $5 billion bid for Dow Jones, the Journal's parent company. An exceedingly public three-month takeover saga followed, with Murdoch eventually reaching a deal—only after signing an agreement with its previous owner of more than a century, the Bancroft family, to protect the paper's editorial independence. Shortly after Murdoch's bid became public, Brauchli confided to a friend, “I work my whole career to get this job, and now I'm working for Murdoch?”

Within a short time, changes at the Journal had already become noticeable. Murdoch's outspoken statements that there were too many editors at the paper—he was amazed that Journal stories were touched “an average of 8.3 times” before appearing in print—heightened existing anxieties about editorial changes and firings. Traditional “leders”—the long, narrative-driven, front-page stories that had been a Journal trademark—were disappearing in favor of shorter news stories. Brevity had become increasingly desirable, as was anything political. Coverage of the presidential primaries dominated the front page of a paper that had made its name with enlightening features on business and the economy.

We already know that Rupert is a pretty cunning businessman and that he's remaking the Journal is his own (or at least The Sun's) image, but I'd be interested to hear what the old-timers on the inside have to say about his influence. We're down to, what, about 6 really high quality papers in this country? 5? At any rate, when something like the Wall Street Journal comes to an end (that we all saw coming and should have been able to stop) it's worth taking a look.

Besides, Ellison spent 10 years at the paper and is now getting locked out of WSJ press conferences, so she must be doing something right.