The gist of a recent meeting Star Tribune publisher Par Ridder had with what is left of his editorial page was essentially this, (not a direct quote), “Readers get enough opinion about national issues in other places, they don’t need it from us.”
Said one Op-Eddie, “His message, basically, was to write with more of an eye on the marketplace, and he sees that marketplace as being less interested in national issues, like Iraq, Scooter Libby, the U.S. attorneys story, than local issues. Essentially its another step in the transition from treating readers like citizens to treating them like customers.”
Another emphasized that Ridder wasn’t issuing a dictum, nor was there any sense that punitive action would be taken if the staff continued offering opinions on Presidential commutations, (which they did the next day), the success of the surge, the role of Dick Cheney or whatever. The pitch was rather another facet of Ridder’s “Business Literacy” shtick, which, as he has explained to staffs at both the Pioneer Press and the Star Tribune, requires gathering the types of stories and reporting them in ways most appealing to customers, which means of course both readers and advertisers.
To anyone outside of journalism this sounds profoundly obvious. If you’re selling cars, lay on the chrome! Hype the MP3 gizmos! Give the people what they want, stupid! But customizing news to fit the tastes of the target market has not been the traditional role of big daily newspapers. Yeah, there’s all that sports coverage and funny pages and weather forecasts and TV review stuff. But the essential news end of the paper — of which the Op-Ed pages are an important facet — are supposed to be about telling people (citizens) what they need to know, whether it pleases them or not.
The most obvious example of playing to your customers and giving them exactly what they want to consume is of course Fox News, where every viewer truly is a customer. None of the Strib Op-Ed team with whom I communicated regarded Ridder’s “suggestion” as having any particular ideological tilt. Rather, it was strictly business. But that still isn’t much different than orchestrating a bread and circuses cable channel.
One of the two occasions I had the good fortune to listen to Mr. Ridder up close — prior to his court appearances, I mean — was a “Business Literacy”-Lite gathering he held for the staff of the Pioneer Press A&E section back in 2004. At one point he explained how he believed it was a good idea to steer the Pioneer Press Op-Ed page into “a conservative alternative to the Star Tribune”. This, as I understood it, made good business sense (to him) as the Pioneer Press trimmed staff and budgets and re-directed its meager resources toward more conservative suburban readers.
I was reminded of this strategy when I learned that as part of pulling away from editorializing on national issues, Par was explicit, I’m told, in seeing no good reason for the Star Tribune to continue making presidential endorsements. (For the record, Par’s “conservative alternate” editorial board at the Pioneer Press famously endorsed … George W. Bush for reelection later in 2004.) And why is is it so damned hard to find that classic on the web today?
Pulling back on local opinions on national issues would have, I can argue, the effect, de facto, of relieving public pressure on the Bush administration which at this moment in its term is under near constant siege as a result of an unprecedented set of blunders and scandals.
I’m sure the White House would be pleased to learn that the largest media voice in the Upper Midwest was taking itself out of the Scooter/Dick/Alberto/Iraq/Attorneys/Halliburton/Climate Change/Katrina/Rummy game and devoting itself instead to issues of more local interest like, nickel a gallon gas taxes, light rail, and “cat-beheadings”, as one Stribber suggested.
The dilemma, as actual journalists see it, (in contrast to Par Ridder, newspaper manager extraordinaire), is that reducing the number of editorials on national issues of very high interest — Iraq, Libby, etc. — would just as likely have the effect of giving avid newspaper readers (citizens) another reason to ignore the local paper in favor of the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal or — for you righties, the always satisfying NewsMax.
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