Goodbye to the P-I
Yesterday the Seattle Post-Intelligencer published its last paper issue. With a skeleton staff, the Hearst owned paper now will be exclusively on line. Last week I spoke at length with my son Chris, who works for the Associated Press in Bangkok, about the economic problems newspapers face and about the dangers to society from the demise of traditional newspaper journalism. Local NPR station KPLU did a good three part series on the subject. The third part of their story sounds a lot like the conversation Chris and I had.
The news areas that suffer most from these changes are investigative and beat reporting. Investigative stories newspapers used to cover will now have to be handled more by unpaid bloggers with passion or by hired Internet guns funded by special interest groups, and in each case, professional journalistic standards may fall by the wayside. But newspapers were not always professional, and many times investigative reporting was done with a biased vengeance. Friend Joe says when one Seattle paper was on an investigative streak, he looked to the reaction of the other paper to keep things balanced, and now that will be lost. I think the Net and the cable news continuous cycle will fill the investigative void, with varying degrees of professionalism. Lest we give print media too much credit, check the scandal sheet rack next time you check out at the supermarket.
Beat reporting is trickier. These were the people who trudged through the mundane of a specialized environment, cultivating sources and amassing a specialized expertise. There is not much financial incentive to pay for this type of reporting. Public broadcasting, PBS and NPR, provide beat type coverage for national and international news and for some regional stories. Very localized newspapers, supported solely by local advertising, provide the neighborhood news. But the demise of big city newspapers will leave a void of in depth beat reporting. Only specialized blogs can fill the void, but they are a hit or miss proposition.
Underlying this whole matter is technology, and history shows technological advances have always resulted in greater dissemination. But as volume and coverage increase, audiences have more choices, and it can be more work to sort through and find ones that are desirable. Who pays for gathering and disseminating content is something that changes with technology. Radio programming was at first paid for by the sale of radios, then after the sales market was saturated, by advertising. TV was advertising supported from the start, then augmented by cable broadcasts to increase choice and reception quality. Pay satellite radio does not seem to have caught on very well.
Most newspapers gave up charging for Internet news, relying on advertising instead. But many of us use ad blockers, so advertising revenue must be coming from the type of readers who don't know or care about eliminating ads. As long as there are enough of those, the advertising supported model will work. But if ad revenue slips, it is quite a challenge to go back to charging readers who have been getting it for free.
The Associated Press is a news business model that has been around for over 150 years and still seems viable. It works sort of like the Internet, in that it provides content for other providers to use. It is a non-profit co-op, supported by fees paid by its members, who have exclusive legal access to the copyrighted stories. Once the AP news is published, non-members have access to its content and some of them might use it without permission. The AP has right to legal recourse, but probably would not pursue it unless it was extensive and continuous. Consumers of news want new news, not old news, so AP members are the source for the earliest news and the most complete. Maybe the AP model will be one that is successfully used by other networks of bloggers, investigate reporters, beat reporters and local news gatherers to fill the void left by papers like the P-I.
posted by Tom Blake | 10:24 AM
6 Comments:
When I was very young we got three daily newspapers. My father liked the Seattle Times, an evening paper. My grandfather, his father who lived with us, subscribed to the PI, a morning paper. My father hated it. We also got the Seattle Star. I think it was an evening paper, and my father liked it better than the Times.
I learned to read at the age of four, partly because I had comics from three papers to look at every day. The PI met its demise in our family back in 1948 when my grandfather died. The Star went out of business about the same time or so my faulty memory tells me. So we read the Times and looked down our noses at readers of the PI (Pig's Eye). I don't remember why we felt that way. It probably was because the PI was a Hearst newspaper. Hearst newspapers had a reputation akin to the tabloids of today.
Remember that Hearst prouldy took responsibility for getting the US into the Spanish American War in the late 19th century.
My second job was as a Times paper boy. I got that job when I was twelve and progressed up the ranks until I was fired at age eighteen.
I liked that job and made enough money to buy a car when I was old enough to drive. We Times paper boys always looked down on th PI and anyone who subscribed to it.
In keeping with that spirit, I now say good riddance to the PI.
John from Phoenix
I don't recall hearing you ever had a grandpa living with you. Quick research shows he was probably Albert, who died in February, 1949, and from whom you may get your middle name. He outlived the Star, which died in August, 1947. I wonder if he ever read the comics to you.
I was never a P-I fan either. We always took the Times. Some of it was the Hearst thing and some was the morning thing. My brother had the Times route and I helped him sometimes. I also substituted for another Times carrier a few years later. Some local P-I columnists had crossover appeal, notably Emmett Watson. But even Watson moved over to the Times, in 1982.
My daughter Anna and I were just talking about our early reading experiences. She mentioned the comic strips. I don't remember reading them to her, but I do remember reading lots of children's picture books with her, and then she took over the reading herself and has been a bibliophile all her life. I don't remember anyone reading to me as a child. We did not have books in the house, since my step-dad was barely literate and my Mom was private about what she liked to read, which tended toward tabloids. Magazine subscription fund raisers for school brought Life and Look into our home, which took me beyond reading comics and occasional Seattle Times stories.
While personally I don't miss the P-I, I share some of the societal regret expressed by Chris, and I would not go so far as to join you in the good riddance comment.
Research is so easy today. I always thought my grandfather died in 1948. Now I know it was 1949. If my sister Jane should see this she would be so embarrassed. She has done a family tree going back to Bavaria and Ireland. So she has the date right and has sent me lots of documentation about it. I must have ignored it. But I remember my grandfather dying in the room next to me when I was seven. Now I know I was eight, but so what?
Albert is my middle name, and I was named after my great grandfather, John, and my grandfather, Albert. I did not know, Tom, that you knew my middle name. I was always ashamed of it. As a boy I did not know the historical significance of the name, Albert. It is a name representing powerful people. But I always thought it was a fruity name. And I think my friends thought so too. So I tried to keep it a secret.
My grandfather never read anything to me. I always thought I was smarter than he. He worried my parents because he would take the bus to Pioneer Square and visit with the bums there. That was way before it was a tourist attraction. Only homeless people hung out there. My parents took all his money away from him, but he would steal change out of my mother's purse to take the bus there. My parents were so afraid he would get hurt, and he craved the conversations he had with the homeless. I cannot form a judgement about this because I was so young. I can only report what I remember, and my memory is probably faulty.
My sister Ruth taught me to read. She was ten years older than I. I remember going to kindergarten when I was five. I cried my eyes out because I was terrified about being away from home. That year the kindergarten I went to started a new reading program. They had never taught reading before. I did not like school. I wanted to be back in my own house. I cried the minute I entered the room. The teacher tried to stop my wailing by giving me a book saying "take a look at this. We are going to learn to read the book this year". I interrupted my sobs to tell her I've already read the book. She laughed and I cried harder.
I don't really wish good riddance to any newspaper. But they are dinosaurs. We have a newspaper for the community where I work. I think community newspapers like ours will last longer than city-wide newspapers but they are all doomed. Newspapers are trying to provide more in depth coverage of current events. And they are covering more "human interest" stories. I think it will fail.
The in depth coverage will be better handled by weekly or monthly magazines. Human interest long ago was overtaken by the tabloids that will probably outlast everything else.
I think we will soon see large cities with no newspaper except for tabloids and other very local papers.
The very local newspapers such as we have at our retirement community will last longer. But it is not really a newspaper. It is more like a shopping news.
We are seeing a relic passing away. We should lament its passing, because it represented one of the key freedoms of our constitution. But then we need to get over it and work its replacement into our democratic ideals.
John from Phoenix
I don't think the name Albert was a problem. Washington Governor Rosellini of our time (1957-1965) was Albert. Years later (1972), Bill Cosby premiered the Fat Albert cartoon show, but we were over 30 by then. A direct male ancestor of mine brought the name Albert from Germany, but the last holder of it was known as "Bob". My middle is Michael, which I liked, but could never remember how to spell. I don't like the "Junior" custom, so my oldest son shares Michael as a middle and has passed it to his son.
There have to be some interesting stories in the background of your grandfather. Too bad he never passed them on to you. My grandson is five and a half and I wonder when he might benefit from some tales from Grandpa.
I don't remember any reading in Kindergarten. I remember learning letters from the nuns and the Dick, Jane and Spot books, which I seem to recall as being a little bit disappointing use of a newly learned ability to read.
I think some newspapers will survive, but we will never see the proliferation of the past.
My sister tells me that the reason they taught reading that year in my kindegarten was that the age was changed (probably the month) when a child could enter first grade. As a consequence, some children were spending a second year in kindegarten. To make it more interesting to them, they adopted the reading program.
My grandfather had lots of stories, but I already told you that I thought I was a lot smarter than he so I don't remember them. He would tell fantastic stories at the dinner table. The only one I can remember now is that somewhere he was in a rainstorm where one side of the street got rain and the other side was dry. That story emphasized my belief that I was a lot smarter then he. After living in Houston and Phoenix, I realize now he might have been telling a true but exaggerated story. Such a sharp deliniation of rainfall would be very rare in Seattle.
I'll ask my sister to put together an anthology of his stories.
John from Phoenix
Maybe the anthology will include your grandfather living in a location that makes the rain story more plausible. Seattle does sometimes get showery weather where a passing rain cloud sends us from sun to rain and back to sun again all rather quickly. Those are the times when we have the four seasons all in one day - and it can seem like spring on one side of the street and autumn on the other.
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