GET THE NEWSROOM OUT OF THE OFFICE

By: Bill Gloede E&P's Editor Offers Suggestions For Readership Problem



The Newspaper Association of America confab that took place in New York
last week was perhaps most notable for what didn't happen as much as it
was for what did. There was little controversy, no fear and loathing,
and very little bad news. Since the mood at the NAA publishers meeting
(still affectionately known in these parts as the ANPA) is usually an
accurate barometer of conditions in the newspaper business, times must
be good. And they are. Revenue, profit, and even circulation are up.
The Internet hasn't killed anyone. There's nary anything over which to
wring one's hands.



Still, there is this one nagging problem, one that won't be solved in
the near term, but one that, if it is solved, will ensure newspapers'
prosperity well into the future. That problem is readership.



No matter how you slice the numbers, at least half of America does not
read a newspaper. The industry has looked for decades at declining
readership, and the blame has been laid upon the advent of TV, the
entry of vast numbers of women into the work force, the decline in the
number of shift workers who used to read afternoon newspapers, the
rising rate of illiteracy, even the time pressures of modern life, just
to name a few. No doubt all these factors contributed to the massive
decline in readership that has taken place over the past 50 years. But
there is another that rarely gets talked about, probably because it is
so simple that it may seem naive even to broach it.



Yet, I've had several publishers actually raise the issue over the
years (it never seems to go away). The most recent such encounter came
a few years back when I went out to Hackensack, N.J., to see Mac Borg,
owner of The Record. I'm going to quote him here, from memory,
but I'm certain I remember exactly what he said: 'The biggest problem I
have in the newsroom is getting the reporters up off their asses and
out into the communities they are supposed to be covering.'



Having worked in a few newsrooms myself over the past 25 years, I could
easily see Mac's point. Journalists often like to hang out among
themselves, where they may openly proffer their worldviews, even if
their job at the moment is to cover East Oshkosh. They often have an
open contempt for the people they cover. So they stay back in the
newsroom, using the telephone and e-mail to contact the public
officials and leaders of interest groups necessary to construct their
stories.



The whole business would be better off if not only reporters, but
editors and publishers as well, spent more time in the various
communities served by their newspapers. An evening spent sitting around
someone's kitchen table, drinking stale coffee and listening to a
legion of neighbors armed with bulging file folders sound off about
this issue or that can work better than the best promotional campaign
at attracting and keeping readers. You also learn what's on their
minds.



The trick here is for the newspaper people to speak as little as
possible. The idea is to base reporting on the concerns of the people
sitting around that table and others like it in the community. Public
officials should be made to deal with those concerns. Stated another
way, the press should be a watchdog over government, a skeptical
observer of organized pressure groups, an arbiter of nothing, and an
ally of the people it serves. All the people, including racial,
religious, and political minorities.


There are two related issues here that are not quite so simple - the
news staff must reflect the diversity of the community, lest the entire
effort be seen as a ruse, and, of course, this costs money. A reporter
who has to cover a five-town region is never going to get to know
people in any. And a mostly white-staffed newspaper is never going to
achieve credibility in the African American community.



The debate over civic journalism aside, there is little doubt that
community reporting can work like community policing. When the people
know you, they talk to you, and when they know their neighbors are
talking to you, your paper suddenly becomes relevant.



Newspapers have a unique opportunity at the opening of the new century.
With the continuing splintering of the TV and magazine audience,
newspapers may again find themselves as the only practical mass medium
(pretty much how they started in the first place). To be a mass medium,
however, there has to be a critical mass. Half is not enough.