Journalists bear share of blame in newspaper failure

Yes, when you lay all the pieces of paper in front of you to decide who is at fault for the demise of the newspaper, you have your usual suspects: Senior management, economy (nonsense), the Internet (more nonsense) - but rarely do you ever see journalists in that mix.

Sure, if you put out a poor product, people won't read it and therefore ad revenue typically dips with that as well. But telling journalists they are indeed a major part of failing newspapers is for the most part, unheard of.

Lazy, lazy, lazy...

North America has some of the finest journalists in the world. And, each newsroom has its go-to guy or girl for breaking the big stories. If a newsroom is lucky, they have a couple of these people to count on. The one common denominator in these successful journalists is they don't know what a clock is, they exhaust themselves digging up the best stories they can, they have a competitive fire that needs no stoking - but most of all, they have a passion to discover and deliver the truth to readers.

If you have a handful of these people on your staff and you have a newsroom staff of 20 or 30 - that represents a too small a percentage.

I would assert that the typical journalist is lazy. Not only that, but the typical journalist is often intelligent enough to try to appear busy and productive - but at the end of the day produces drivel. And little drivel at that.

The typical journalist believes the assignment editor should hand-deliver in secured manila envelopes a hot story they can sink their teeth into and turn into a lined story. Why aren't they out where people are, or better yet, where their sources are, to try and build rapport and dig something up?

The typical journalist (especially those out of school in the past 5 years) believes news gathering is done by surfing the web (usually competitors news sites, or the radio sites, or even television) so they can inform the editor of something they might be able to turn into a story that day. As if to say: hey, I found something out there. They refuse to believe they can dig up stories by being on their beat and getting to know the people and places around them.

The typical journalist scoffs at making extra phone calls when only one or two will do.

The typical journalist whines about edits made or requests for additional information (because God forbid the editor knows what they are doing).

The typical journalist only thinks they should be working on one or two stories per day. Even if they are re-tapping press releases.

If you are an editor and you are reading this, you know who these people on your staff are. Yet, we choose to pay them... 30, 35, 40, $45,000 per year. If they produce two 6-inch stories per day, you are paying them a little more than $10 per inch.

Why aren't we getting 20 inches a day out of them, and we could reduce the staff by one or two and save the company some money?

Nope. We'd rather bloat our newsrooms with underachievers, so we can make sure journalists have jobs. We'd rather pay ne'er-do-wells than crack the whip on the average and over-achieving journalists we have on staff.

We'd hear complaints, we'd hear objections - we'd hear the cranky business reporter whimpering about the fact he's got so much to do (when he only produces one decent story a day - usually from a wire report).

The bottom line (no pun intended) is we need to get more out of our journalists. We need to teach them to manage time, to juggle assignments and how to write on demand - and still cultivate their beats.

If we have more journalists than we legitimately need to do the job - then costs rise, people are not productive, they get even lazier - and the first place management always looks to cut is the area where they aren't generating income - which is editorial.

We need to do vastly more with fewer journalists on staff. We need to hire journalists who don't know the clock, who want to exhaust themselves digging up leads, who are competitive and who have that passion for the truth.

Journalists themselves are a major problem for news organizations. Newspapers have enormously bloated newsroom staffs with people producing far less than they should. They need to cut newsrooms down and expect MORE.

They need to set a precedent with incoming journalists and demand a certain level of excellence from them from the beginning and the senior reporters must embrace that and show their leadership in the same regard.

When running a business, you need to make sure costs are below revenue in order to make a profit. But in doing so, you need to make sure your department is operating at maximum efficiency. Today's journalist rarely allows that to happen. They are, typically, by nature, a lazy, procrastinating, self-involved, 'somebody owes me' sort.

Journalists need to be wary of being this person and also be wary of becoming it after too long.

Journalists need to understand that a newspaper encompasses all aspects from sales to distribution to editorial - and all parts must be working effectively and efficiently for a newspaper to survive.

Even them.


FdS