Great minds thinking alike, Pt. #38 … This “comment” came literally minutes after I read the piece in question.
“Any thoughts on Kate Parry’s pretty extraordinary column on how Strib editors either:
“A. Dumb down NYT stories for Strib readers, or
“B. Improve NYT stories for Strib readers.
“Depends on how you look at it, I suppose. But in general, watching Perry try to explain that cutting “12 inches” out of a story (god forbid, a story “run long,” as Parry puts it) is actually a good thing because it gets rid of all of that pesky “background and details.”
“There’s been a lot of whining and crying about the Strib’s new owners and how they’re going to potentially gut the paper. Fair enough. But I don’t think that there’s been near enough whining and crying from readers and journalists-who-should-know-better about how current Strib staff (and I’m not just talking about high-ranking editors, either) are just as culpable in destroying its journalistic credibility, mainly via dumb acts like “improving” NYT stories.”
I have no idea who the “commenter” is, but something tells me he/she has a working knowledge of the editing practices at America’s second-tier newspapers.
Parry’s column, available here is fairly typical Company Ombudsman-speak. Everything the company does is reasonable and thorough and beyond reproach. All decisions are made with intention of providing better information to Star Tribune readers, everyone involved works extraordinarily hard, (editors in these reports are always “scrambling” over last minute shifts in news flow, etc.).
But yeah, the idea of the hard-working Strib wire editors, (several of whom, like Parry, are Pioneer Press refugees), cleaning up, toning down, editing out and plugging in better copy than the New York Times original — especially on something like this US Attorneys scandal — smacks of the ever so slightly of professional hubris. (“Really. You know better?”)
Not that the Times is all-knowing and infallible, mind you, (we all remember Judy Miller, right?), or that new, tastier items aren’t available from other sources. But 95 times out of 100, I’m just fine with reading THE ENTIRE Times reporting job on a story like this … which is why I have the Times’ lead stories e-mailed to me every morning, and why I buy the paper version two-three times a week. (I subscribe to the Wall St. Journal, because I really want to know when to roll my hedge fund winnings.) Speaking for myself, I don’t need the Strib’s truncated, re-arranged version of these stories at all. In most cases I’ve read it all the day before … in its’ entirety.
But then, they’re not publishing the Star Tribune for me.
What’s ironic here of course is that the Strib cuts and pastes dozens of New York Times stories a week because it long ago stopped pretending to regularly cover national and international events as part of its’ own personal mission. They’ve farmed out all that fundamental, big-story action.
But then, because of its constricted newshole, it compounds the problem by retreating even further. By slicing and dicing the work of news organizations that are still devoting resources to national/international coverage the paper isn’t even providing the full-service of the best aggregator websites/internet competition.
Put another way, this repackaging and compacting, (and based on experience I can assure you these stories rarely if ever INCREASE in length … shorter is always better), just gives voracious news consumers — once thought to be every paper’s most loyal customers — another reason to seek the original reporting at its’ source.
But then, I suspect the Strib wire desk isn’t cutting this stuff up for its “voracious” readers, if you know what I mean. At the risk of sounding wholly elitist, there is a significant difference in the Times’ and Star Tribune’s view of their target audience.
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