Seeing Red

Sorta busy this wet morning, but I couldn’t help myself from weighing in on the Strib redesign, over at MNSpeak, so rather than fritter away more time, I’ll do the really gauche thing, and quote myself:

Everyone can agree that newspapers are losing readership, but the basic problem is believing that management can think (or focus-group) their way out of the mess. It seems to me that media managers are too busy looking at other media–TV, web, radio–and too covetous of form.

Reporters and others on the front-line of journalism have been losing the battle of form over content for some time, and it is demoralizing, I think, to look at the results of the Readership Institute study, which seem to suggest that readers need to be pandered to. That every story must have some service-related lede that immediately tells a reader how she can USE this information in her own life. Just another step toward all-consuming narcissism. The thing is, it turns out readers tend to get bored with being spoon fed precisely what they think they want and expect from their media. It’s like having a jukebox (Or an iPod playlist) that never gets updated.

If newspapers begin to be run like commercial radio–i.e. strictly a number-crunching science about “what most people want”– then that leaves very little to the imagination of editors OR reporters.

I have a vested interest in the “art” of print media, so I’m biased. If you want to be cynical about, you could ask how many new members The Current REALLY has– how many serious music-heads willing to put their money where their REV-105 was.

My problem with what I see of the Strib’s redesign is a) the page-layout editors have won, and are effectively running the newsroom; b) how many outer-ring soccer moms do they need to add to the circ, and are there that many more of them than traditional, old-fart readers who actually enjoy and appreciate a newspaper with some hard news in it? Do they not run the risk of alienating their most loyal customers–if they haven;t already lost them? (Good reason to believe this is already the case, judging by the number of “media professionals” I know in this town who admit to glancing at the Strib maybe once a week or so.)

On a positive note, I’m really looking forward to the online redesign, since that’s really the only way I read the paper anymore. It has been a bit of a mess for a long time, and it could be so much better about equating better with the paper version. When you read the NY Times in paper everyday, as I do, then glance at the website, there is almost perfect parity, and I find that reassuring. The Strib is the opposite of this, in my view.

ALSO: I just read over at Romenesko that the Chicago Sun Times is considering shutting down their tabloid newspaper the Red Eye Streak, now that the Chicago Tribune has decided to make the Red Streak Eye free. I was a little taken aback at publisher John Cruikshank’s bald cynicism–he has no qualms about saying the whole thing was merely a financial play, a counter-check to the Red Streak Eye. And he wonders why it didn’t gel with readers. No, I guess he doesn’t. It is certainly his perogative to protect market share, and if that means launching a facade (like the fake desert town they built in Blazing Saddles), I guess the conclusion is that you can pay people to do just about anything. Cruickshank says Red Eye Streak succeeded, because it was only supposed to prevent Red Streak Eye from gaining paid circulation. Right-oh. I thought the idea was to capture young readers, to develop the next generation of newspapers, to get out there on the bleeding edge of print media where you might get a glimpse of the future (if any)–but no. See, here’s the basic problem: no real editorial insights, just desperation in the marketplace. What the real goal might have been, one should think, would have been to simply make more money by capturing new advertisers, and on this score Cruickshank is, under his breath, conceeding to the Red Streak Eye– which HAS succeeded in lining up plenty of advertising.

UPDATE: D’Oh! Katie McCollow writes to say, “Maybe readership is down because journalists can’t be bothered to get simple facts straight.The Chic Trib puts out the RedEye. The Sun Times puts out the Red Streak.” Duly noted and corrected. Never could keep these papers straight. Strike that Streak, Eye Eye! (11/23)

For what it’s worth, it is (to my mind) a significant leap of vision and faith to convert to controlled circulation. In a world where the New York Times is free (more or less) to anyone in any cafe in the country, where many of the classics of Western literature are available through Google, do people really equate price with quality? Did they ever? Is Lucky magazine better than the New Yorker, because it costs more? Do you seriously think Minneapolis.St.Paul magazine is a better and more substantive read than City Pages? If you do, y’know, I hear there’s a bridge for sale in Brooklyn…