Where the News Journal Went Wrong

It used to be a sort-of decent paper. It really did. Not a LOT of national news, but some. And pretty good coverage of local news, although it tended to focus overmuch on New Castle County. I'm active in the Dover arts community, and one of my main pleasures was reading reviews about our productions from the N-J's arts critics, particularly the ones written by Rick Mulrooney, who, if not always complimentary, at least called 'em like he saw 'em. That was a very valuable service for local arts organizations. But then a few years ago, we noticed that reviews of Sussex County shows were becoming sporadic. Eventually they disappeared. Then the same thing happened with Kent County shows -- the critics just stopped coming and reviews dried up and disappeared, with a corresponding drop in audiences and revenue. We didn't know it then, but it was a harbinger of not-so-nice changes to come at a paper that had once been a reliable Delaware institution. The changes were small at first, but they began to add up. By January of 2007, they had become so noticeable that I finally sat down and composed a letter to the editors to convey my unhappiness with what was happening to my daily paper. It was returned to me by an anonymous editor with the following comment:

Your letter is more than twice the length of our published guideline for publication. It needs to be about 200 words. To avoid severe editing, please resubmit it following the guidelines. Thank you.

Getting my letter printed hadn't really been my point, as you'll see below. Of course, I was too lazy to cut it down myself, and I kind of thought that was their job, anyway; I later wondered if returning my letter to me and asking me to rewrite it had just been a ploy to sweep what I had to say under the rug. So you never saw that letter, in which I laid out what I found out about why the News Journal was undergoing such drastic changes. That is, you never saw it until now. This is what I sent on January 22, 2007:

As a long-time News-Journal subscriber, over the years I’ve noted several discouraging changes in your approach to the news. One was the decline in the number of stories of national interest appearing in your paper. Another was the discontinuation of arts and entertainment reviews of downstate productions. In recent weeks, however, I’m noting an even more disturbing trend. Your front page is now devoting a major amount of space every day to what can only be termed “fluff pieces” – human interest, technology, and entertainment stories that rightfully should be relegated to other sections further back in the paper. These are frequently “localized” by showing how actual Delawareans use, view or participate in the subject of the article. In recent weeks, your readers have been subjected to such earth-shattering front page news as the daily schedule of the Sisofo family of Glasgow, funny street names in Sussex County, local moms tracking their kids with GPS, and what Delaware restaurateurs think of trans fats. Saturday, however, you hit rock-bottom – since when is a story about the big meany judges on “American Idol,” complete with a full-color picture of Simon Cowell, important enough to qualify as an item of front-page interest? To add insult to injury, the exact same article also appeared where it really belonged, in the Life section! I got curious enough to do a little research and discovered that on November 6th, your parent company, Gannett, mandated a sweeping overhaul of all of its papers’ newsrooms, transforming them into 24/7 “local information centers,” with a focus on web content rather than print. The purpose, of course, is to increase advertising income, which also explains the “keep it local” emphasis. And since we’re talking internet, the reorganization does away with the old-style “desks” – news, sports, etc. – and replaces them with seven areas more suited to interactive online content delivery: digital, public service, community conversation, local, custom content, data, and multimedia. There are to be no new hires at most papers to accommodate this, partly because Gannett expects its readers to contribute content for free, an approach referred to as “crowdsourcing." So I've got a great idea for a story – how about a front-page technology fluff piece on the changes at Gannett? You could easily localize it by telling your readers how the reorganization has changed the focus and content of their daily newspaper, and interviewing them about what they think of it. I’d also be interested in reading about how it’s affecting reporters and other News-Journal staff -- they live right here in our communities, so there’s another local angle for you. Oh, and while we're at it, I'd appreciate seeing an occasional review of a theater production that's staged outside of New Castle County. But only if you’re serious about publishing nothing but local news, of course.

Of course, they never did follow my suggestion, and never mentioned to their readers that their entire philosophy had changed or that they really weren't interested any more in running an actual newspaper. The paper has continued to go downhill since I wrote that, but it was another recent development that prompted me to start this blog. I've noticed that syndicated and wire service editorials are now being printed with little to no information about the authors or the organizations they represent. If I want to know whether a piece is biased or not, I have to research the author myself. The last straw came when the N-J published an opinion piece entitled "AIDS Money is Misspent While the Sick Die" and identified the authors, Floyd and Mary Beth Brown, only as authors and speakers. Turns out they're uber-conservatives -- Floyd is associated with several conservative PACS, is largely credited with starting the Clinton impeachment process, and created the infamous Willie Horton ad. Check out Floyd's bio. My, that sheds a little light on why he and his wife think too much money is being spent on AIDS, doesn't it? I decided that, as long as I'm going to research this info for myself anyway, I might as well share it with others, which is the primary reason for this blog. I can't promise regular updates, but I'll do my best to keep supplying info that the News Journal has decided we don't need to know.