RIP, Ann Arbor News

Yesterday Mlive.com broke the news that The Ann Arbor News, my hometown newspaper, would be closing in July, to be replaced by AnnArbor.com. The paper has long been called “The Ann Arbor Snooze” and has shrunk to near ad circular size, as reduced advertising revenues required the paper to cut back on reporting and printing costs. The article on Mlive.com also reported that a handful of other Booth newspapers in Michigan would be reducing employee wages or cutting back to several days a week to survive.

It’s sad that Ann Arbor, the city in Michigan with the lowest unemployment rate (7.3% in January), would lose its paper first, but that is probably because Ann Arbor is also best able to convert to an online news format. The new AnnArbor.com claims that “92% of the Ann Arbor community has the skills and technology set-up to receive and engage with online news.” Yes, what will the other 8% do, and whose responsibility is that?

I admit I never read more than the headlines on the front page of The Ann Arbor News, the weather forecast, and the cartoons–and that was years ago. I got community events news from The Observer (the print edition is still far superior to their web presence: they’re going to need to do something about that soon), and national news online. My mother prefers the print format of the news but admits she was planning to cancel her subscription in the near future anyway, after decades of receiving the daily paper, because there was no longer any content in the paper she couldn’t get elsewhere….

Could this have been avoided? I’m tired of asking the question. People have been advising The News for well over a decade on how to adapt to the times, and they either botched the attempt or it simply wasn’t a feasible business model. The fact is that the community will adjust, trees will be saved (let’s be honest: printing newspapers is no longer sustainable or responsible), and more people will be out of work. Someone I know in the printing department hasn’t been able to find a new job, despite already having searched for months. She woke yesterday to hear the news of her impending layoff on the radio. That makes me feel sick to my stomach for her. But what to do?

I want to find an economically viable alternative to The News and take advantage of this vacuum to meet the needs of the community while employing some good people, but I don’t know how to get people to pay for news when it’s not crucial to them, and advertising revenue only covers the most basic (in this economy maybe uselessly so) of reporting. AnnArbor.com might just be the best option. I’m eager to see how they handle the transition. Maybe local news is just one more thing that needs to contract when times are tough. RIP, Ann Arbor News.

Jon Stewart Is In The Studio, Doin Ur Job

Jon Stewart just asked some tough questions that I’ve been waiting to hear financial journalists ask since the stock market started tanking:

How did no one see this crisis coming? Or did some people we trusted to advise us see it coming and do nothing? Why?

Why aren’t journalists and the news networks asking the tough questions?  To whom are journalists responsible?

How can a network like CNBC claim to have omnicience (“In Cramer We Trust”?!) on financial issues, then pretend nothing happened when they clearly screwed the pooch? How can they treat serious financial issues like a carnival game?

Journalists are currently facing a crisis in their own industry, and as Rocky Mountain News reporters point out, if investigative journalism goes away, who will really look into corporate corruption and tell people what is going on? Who, indeed? But then again, who is doing that now? A comedian.

Here’s my question: Could the fact that news media have largely caved to the pressure to entertain people rather than inform them of important news be the major reason they are unable to sustain profitability? Maybe it’s only partially about the medium they use to deliver the news. If a news network offered me real answers instead of a zoo of meaningless commentary, I might actually pay for that content. How about you?

White-Collar Third World

If you’ve ever worked on a blog or for a publisher with online content, you know that it can be nonstop, frantic work. The online editors I’ve known have been chained to their desks and phones, fueled by caffeine drips, trying to churn out interesting and timely content for voracious readers 24/7. Voracious readers are great! Don’t get me wrong. But our insatiable appetites for free information in real-time are starting to look like our Wal-Mart shopping. We want it fast; we want it on the cheap; we want more of it! And this is creating a huge problem–for us.

As consumers of media we need to realize we’re driving market forces that are driving down writers’ and editors’ salaries, shuttering thousands of publishers, and in the process reducing the scope and quality of the content available to us. It’s natural for people to want cheaper items, goods, and services as quickly as possible. If we value quality reporting and writing, however, there is a bottom line to how much time and money it takes to provide publishing and reporting services, and I think we are crossing that line right now. You know that when The New York Times is defending bad decisions about which stories to run, it’s an epidemic.

I got pretty excited at the chance to write for a high-profile Web 2.0 startup site this week. I knew they didn’t pay all that well but was considering the gig to gain visibility and experience. When I watched their tutorial on how to pick an assignment, though, it became obvious from their screenshots that six months ago the company paid two to three times as much for the exact same content. It wasn’t great pay then, and an editor admitted to me that pay had been a “real sticking point” lately. No shit. Not only was it insultingly, prohibitively bad pay, but they were literally advertising the fact because of their sloppiness in editing the tutorial videos… which probably occurred because they laid off the majority of their in-house editorial staff a month ago due to financial pressures. Anyone else feel the pull of that downward spiral?

The editor politely laid out how much time it took writers to put these assignments together, and it boiled down to below minimum wage for research, writing, two to three rounds of edits, wiki coding the article, an extensive style guide to learn, AND only being paid for each article on acceptance. Basically, high-profile companies are beginning to offer third-world wages because they can or have to to stay afloat. What kind of content do you think that pay is going to buy for their organization and readers?

How much do you value quality reporting and writing? Are you happy to accept writing and reporting from people who either are paid $2 an hour or have to cut major corners in order to make their living as writers? What information might you as a reader miss out on because no one is being paid to find it for you? There is a debate raging right now about the entire business model media is built around, and my lil ol’ blog post isn’t going to resolve that issue. (See Mitch Ratcliffe’s post about the economics of journalism at ZDNet for a great analysis.) It seems important to me, though, that readers realize there is a cost to the free and constant flow of online content. Maybe awareness of this fact will help engage people in finding a solution that serves both industry and consumers.