Making Words Dance by Robert Schmuhl

Author:Robert Schmuhl [Schmuhl, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4494-0025-5
Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing LLC
Published: 2010-03-02T16:00:00+00:00

QUESTION: I heard the other day on National Public Radio a commentary that before too long we’ll be reading our newspapers on TV or computers. In view of modern technology, what do you see as the future of print journalism?

GENE ROBERTS: I think the only thing print journalism really has to fear is its own owners and managers. I think that if it can survive that it can survive anything. What is happening today in journalism is that people are watering down their newspapers to pick up an additional 5 percent readership. There is nothing wrong with picking up an additional 5 percent readership, and there is everything right about it. But you have to be careful that you don’t become superficial and lose the serious reader who has stuck with you through thick and thin.

I just recently talked to a person who is an adviser and consultant to newspapers. She tells me she must have gone into a hundred newspapers in the last few years. At virtually every paper, she finds a certain trauma among the mid-level editors, and the trauma is that they don’t have enough resources to do the job. It’s driving them crazy. The reason they don’t have enough resources is increasingly newspapers have gone public and the ownership has gotten concentrated. Papers have become bigger and bigger, and papers feel under great pressure to meet the expectations of Wall Street. So when you have an economic downturn in what’s a very cyclical industry, people start cutting back on the staff and start reducing the quality of material that is going to the reader. I think this weakens the hold on the reader.

I think there will always be readers so long as we give them something to read and make them want to read. You have to remember book publishing is booming like never before. People are reading out there, and definitely the way not to satisfy all readers is to serve up everything in increments of two inches or six inches or eight inches. When it’s worth only two inches, that is exactly what it ought to be. But when it’s worth two columns, it ought to get two columns.

Thank you very much.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.