Paul Simon's Last Column

By: Paul Simon This editorial ran in the Nov. 24, 2003, issue of E&P.

The sun is setting on the days of family-owned newspapers and radio and television stations. I wish that were not so. More and more people who make the decisions about the number of news personnel and other matters are business types, with limited experience, if any, on the news side. Most of these corporations are publicly held, and those in charge of these corporations understandably want to please the stockholders.

If the newspaper or television station is making a 15% profit, they want to boost it to 16%. I have sympathy for an appetite to make money but not for the all-consuming zeal that looks only at the short term. I once published small, weekly newspapers, 13 of them in four printing plants. I wanted my newspapers to make money or they would fold. I also knew that if those newspapers served their communities well, the communities would prosper, and in the long run, so would the newspapers. I can't prove that formula works, but my strong impression is that it does.

Pulitzer prizes are nice, but I sense they're not as important to most of today's CEOs as the profit margin, though they know that a good reputation adds to marketability. So news treatment by reporters, who are spread too thin, tends to be superficial. Personal scandals and controversies that would not have made the news 30 or 40 years ago often are the big news items. "It's what the public wants," we're told.

This excessive attention to the trivial, to the scintillating, is not good for the nation and is not responsible journalism.

The following incident illustrates the point so well. During my service in the state legislature, Paul Douglas, a great U.S. senator and my political mentor, called and asked me to introduce a resolution in the Illinois General Assembly urging the U.S. Congress to make the corn tassel the national flower. He would then introduce the measure in the Senate.

Because of my great admiration for him, I said yes. But as I reflected on it, I really did not want to do it. That night, I called the senator and asked, "Are you sure you want me to introduce a resolution on the corn tassel?" The professor-turned-senator laughed and responded with a lecture that taught me something about politics and journalism.

"Paul," he said, "if you want to stay in public office you have to get media attention. The substantial things you do generally will not get attention unless they are involved in a major controversy. The media loves trivia. You have to do a certain amount of that to stay alive politically. No one will get angry with you because you want to make the corn tassel the national flower. And don't worry, it will never pass."

What is important is always a subjective judgment. The proclamation of the Declaration of Independence made page two of The Hartford Courant. But consistent media inattention to basic problems in our society is inexcusable. It breeds discontent and indifference.

Part of the diminished reporting of important news is caused by a reduction in the number of reporters. Television, radio, and newspapers are victims of the shrinkage caused by mergers and the bookkeeping mentality of those who make big media decisions, people who are not news-oriented but dollar-oriented.

The Chicago Sun-Times, for example, once had excellent reporters on the Washington scene: Jerome Watson, Basil Talbott, Mike Briggs, Lynn Sweet, and others. Today, the Washington bureau of the Sun-Times is one person, Lynn Sweet. She files good copy, but one person cannot do what several formerly did. That is being repeated over and over in television and radio and at other newspapers.

A 2001 survey of newspeople by the Columbia Journalism Review showed 84% of those polled found newsroom morale low, while only 15% think it is not low. One of the major reasons: profits taking priority over good reporting.

Excessive pandering to stockholders is as bad as any other form of pandering. It is of more than passing interest that the major mutual funds that try to invest in socially responsible corporations do not have any newspaper stock. I do, but I buy in companies that I believe are more than money machines.

It is important to remember the words of Tim McGuire, who stepped down in mid-2002 as president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors: "We do not make Wheaties, and we do not make car bumpers. We make newspapers for a free society." To make profit an all-absorbing pursuit does not serve the nation well, and in the long run, it will not serve the media outlets well.