If you believe what you read in the blogosphere, the days of newspapers and other traditional media are numbered. Our news will come not on dead trees or via broadcast airwaves, but instead in a digital rainfall of information from thousands, nay, millions, of bloggers and new media outlets. In fact, that’s already happening.
But is it? Not according to a study conducted by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. Instead, what Pew discovered in a review of where news originates was that traditional media are producing the vast majority of the news — 96 percent in Pew’s study of one market.
The market was Baltimore and here’s the tally of where the news came from in the week of July 19-25, 2009: 61 percent from newspapers, 28 percent from TV and 7 percent from radio. That left the remainder to “New Media” and that remainder was . . . (drum roll, please) . . . 4 percent.
Truth is, despite the barrage of negative news about the dinosaur mediums, newspapers and TV stations are the employers of 90-plus percent of the paid journalists in this country. And – what do you know? — turns out that the vast, vast majority of news is produced by people who are paid, rather than bloggers working out of a spare bedroom.
The Pew report was not all good news for newspapers. The Baltimore Sun, for instance, was producing 32 percent fewer stories than it did in 1999 (layoffs and downsizing tend to have that effect on story quantity). TV newscasts were notable not for their depth, but rather for their heavy focus on the old standby: If it bleeds, it leads.
The study also does not mean that new media forms are not having an impact. In fact, many of the stories broken by newspaper and TV reporters were first released on the Web. And these days, the companies’ Twitter feeds might give their own Web sites a run for their money.
But the information gathering, researching, writing and editing for those digital forms of news are still originating from paid professionals. If the New Media gurus think they are going to replace Traditional Media, they had better figure out how to pay them. For the most part, that’s not happening now. If that doesn’t change and New Media is our information source, we will undoubtedly get what we paid for.
Covering ceremonies, press conferences
We’ve had a couple of questions raised about why we didn’t cover a few recent events. The short answer is that we want to cover the news, not necessarily the event.
The two events were a candidate’s press conference, announcing that he would run for a county commissioner’s seat, and the city of Medford’s 125th anniversary celebration. In both cases, we made conscious decisions not to cover them, for somewhat different reasons. In both cases, the news was covered, just not the event.
With the candidate, there was a complicating factor: He had not officially filed for the seat, so we held off running a story on his announcement. It’s a simple safeguard to avoid an egg-on-face moment for us; we don’t run candidate filings until they’ve filed, although that’s a rule that could be waived if the candidate is a notable public figure.
Beyond that, there’s not a lot of value for us or our readers in covering a press conference in which a candidate (or anybody for that matter) delivers an announcement that we can get in a face-to-face interview. We can ask questions, dig for a few more details and generally get more information by sitting down with the candidate (which we did in this case) instead of listening to a prepared statement.
In the case of the city’s celebration, we ran a front page story on the Sunday prior to the event, providing a lot of historical information as well as information about the upcoming event. For most events, and particularly ceremonial events, we think it’s a better service to tell people about the event beforehand, so they can attend if they’re interested, rather than tell them after. It’s clear in talking with event managers that they absolutely prefer that — nobody wants to read after the fact about a great concert or civic event that they would have liked to attend, if only they had known it was happening.
We also want to cover what the event is about, rather than what various officials have to say about it. Medford’s 125th was interesting because of the history that accompanied it, not because of the speeches talking about that history or because of the cake cutting at the event. If you have unlimited reporter resources and space in the paper, you can do both the advance story and cover the event itself, but that’s not a luxury we have.
Ultimately, we want to cover the news, not the press conference. There are exceptions in which the press conference or event is newsworthy, but if it’s to announce the obvious or to provide a platform for self-promotion, generally we’ll pass.