Flippin mad

Perry Flippin was a longtime columnist for the San Angelo Standard-Times. I read the first three paragraphs of many of his articles. (Sorry, I like San Angelo, but the guy was locally focused and I could never get into what he was talking about.)

I said "was" because he was recently fired for budgetary reasons, and in his final column, he chose to go out guns blazing. My wife brought this to my attention last week, but I forgot to get around to it. Then, when I got to work Sunday, I noticed it had made the rounds on the office e-mail.

He’s gotten a lot of "preach on, brother," praise from a lot of sources. My basic reaction: I respect anyone who goes out calling things like he sees him, but I don’t see anything as new information, and like most speaking-truth-to-power rants, it tends to leave a lot out.

So, as I drank way too much coffee today and need to burn off some energy, here are some excerpts from the column with my reactions. I’ve also been hearing people complain about this for a long time, so I’m letting some steam off myself.

Here’s a link to the whole column.

Excerpts in italics.

"Today, instead of serving primarily as watchdogs, we deliver entertainment fodder interspersed with glitzy ads for consumers. The newspaper's value is measured not by how well it reflects and elevates its community, but by how much money it makes.

I have always respected newspapers as truth-tellers, but we have studiously avoided disclosing just how profitable newspaper publishing is. For a clue, stroll through William Randolph Hearst's magnificent California castle, San Simeon."

Yes, the castle was built from the 1920s –’40s by a family who took truth-telling so seriously they bragged about starting the Spanish-American war on over-hyped and probably incorrect information. Anybody building a castle lately?

I’m doubtful of anyone who tells me that a newspaper was once judged by "how well it reflects and elevates its community," especially after bringing up the Hearst papers as a model.

Kind of like your Mom and Dad telling you about how sex never happened outside of marriage back in the day. Everyone just got married by 21 and babies tended to arrive about six months later.

Rule of life, No. 47: Someday, when you are older, you will probably want to project your loss of innocence onto society as a whole. Don’t do that.

"Publishers sold their souls on the notion that only the immediate bottom line matters. I believe newspapers are slowly committing suicide to satisfy corporate moguls and grasping stockholders.

How do CEOs earn fat bonuses? In part, by putting loyal and talented employees such as me on the street.
...
Yet the salvation of newspapers may come only when Wall Street gets out of the news biz and puts presses back in the hands of private owners - as it was before this roller coaster ride began."

He’s dead-on about corporations bleeding newspapers dry, cutting their best people and refusing to hire and train the next generation.

Still, the real question is why. If the primary motivation is greed, and you have smart business-type people running these corporations, why run these businesses into the ground? Why not take a short-term profit-cut to keep your industry at a healthy level and bringing in the cash for decades to come? That makes no sense ...

"Complicating the outlook is the ever-evolving technology that brings vast information reserves to tiny instruments, such as the iPhone. Hundreds of video channels come streaming off satellites.

None of those sources, however, will cover a local City Council meeting, or check the local police blotter or staff the local football game."

A gizmo can’t cover a council meeting, but someone with an iPhone can cover a city council meeting and not have to pay for paper and buy gas for trucks to take it to your house.

As a complete non-expert, I’m giving it about 20 years until the idea of a paper newspaper will be quaint. I grew up hearing that newspapers will survive until everyone starts taking their computer with them to their bathroom.

Now you can take it with you to the bathroom, the elevator and your wife’s hospital room after the baby’s delivered.

Part of me groans at the idea: The newsroom of frantic typing, cursing, smoking, drinking is dead. The paper bought in tons and the ink by the barrel, the final product pored over by customers hungry for information. Of course, it was dead even before I got into the business.

By high school, the number of people who read the paper consisted of me and my fellow journalism students. It’s done nothing but go down.

Besides, if we’re supposed to be so environmentally concerned, where do we get off blowing through as much paper as we do and then using a gas-heavy distribution system?

"Storytelling can't be automated."

Actually, it can be.

"When employees are regarded merely as interchangeable parts, casualties such as me become collateral damage in the never-ending drive to maintain unrealistic profit margins.
I believe the lives and health of Americans are being sacrificed in the interest of corporate greed.

The problem is much broader than the newspaper industry. Similar conditions prevail in retailing, medicine, education, transportation, manufacturing - practically any endeavor that preaches the heresy of "do more with less."

Let's be truthful: We're doing less with less."

People love to go all teeth-gnashy about corporations, and it’s often well-deserved. But most people who have spent some time in the business know the only thing worse than working for corporate-owned newspaper is working for a non-corporate-owned newspaper.

There have always been some exceptions, but most family-owned papers were (are) hit-and-miss operations. And usually they’d miss.

You’d end up working as the publisher’s publicity hit man, attacking people he wanted attacked, ignoring the things he wanted ignored. I recall people talking about having to write positive "news" stories on a new real-estate development that just happened to be owned by the publisher’s son.

And the policy decisions could verge on the insane. Once a journalism prof told me about a publisher at a paper roughly the size of the one in Denton, around 20,000 circulation.

The owner’s wife decided that the paper needed a fashion reporter. So they hired one, and sent her to a fashion show in PORTUGAL.

And don't even bother trying to hold them to some reasonable approximation of labor laws.

It’s easy to forget that a lot papers became a lot more professional over time as corporations took over and the boss became accountable to someone else.

"I remember the good ol' days, before everyone was obsessed with 40 percent "retention" and a thousand points of marketing bullwhiz."

I wish my Grandpa were still around to tell me what "bullwhiz" means.

"It's hard to remember when people loved newspapers more than they loved money."

I’ll bet it is, because it never happened.

Here’s what I think the deal is. Newspapers are dying, but it's a natural death. The idea of waiting for news doesn't make a lot of sense when you can get it instantaneously from as many sources as you want.

Papers are no longer a growth industry in the U.S. Corporate-types know this, so the plan is bleed papers dry and earn as much money as possible. Everyone is moaning that the family-owned operations wouldn’t have done this, but the families were the ones who decided to sell as soon as the price was right and the going got tough.

The worry – the web sites that crop up in the newspapers' place are going to have a scrunching effect on the industry. The press room disappears. The circulation department goes away.

I imagine they’ll hardly bother with photographers anymore, and just give most reporters cameras.

And I worry about the people who’ve given their lives to the job, and whether they’ll be able to find a decent place to go and have the opportunity to tell good stories.

But newspapers? Be prepared to move on.