BOTTOM LINED
“Dollars or Sense,” the headline on City’s article about the Democrat and Chronicle, May 4) caught
precisely the issue that is dominating the local Gannett daily.
Though the D&C has for decades been one of the community’s most precious and powerful
instruments, its recent decision making and news policies have now been exposed
as a bottom-line obsession.
Writer KrestiaDeGeorge
repairs much of that deficit, throwing light into dark spaces. The most
important conclusion of his article is that Gannett management has adopted a
policy of squeezing both the news and the news gatherers, and — to greatly
benefit the bottom line — proclaiming the opposite.
As a former D&C staffer, I identified with Rochester Newspaper Guild members who, because of
management policies, are continually frustrated in attempting to deepen and
extend their daily news coverage to fulfill the community’s needs.
But management continues to tell the Guild: “No matter
how praiseworthy you and your goals are, you must do it with reduced staff,
tight wages, and less news space. The stockholders’ bottom line overrides
everything.”
Based on mounting competition from the broadcast and internet
media, this is a blind, reactionary policy that can only speed the demise of
what used to be, in the 15 years I worked there, one of the finest publications
in New YorkState.
Mitchell Kaidy, Crittenden Road, Rochester (Kaidy
is a former president of the Gannett editorial union, Local 17, American
Newspaper Guild, AFL-CIO, as well as former president of the New York State
Newspaper Guild.
BROADCAST NEWS
Reading your article on the Democrat and Chronicle (“Dollars and Sense,” May 4), I was able to
draw many parallels to the state of local radio and television news in this
market. The bottom line in the media industry, both print and broadcast, is
profit. A prime example of this in our Rochester
market is what has happened to WHAM.
WHAM radio used to be an important news department in Rochester.
Journalistically, it was an independent voice, and the WHAM 5 o’clock news hour was as much of a voice as the
big-three television stations were. However, in came Clear Channel.
Due to lax deregulation of broadcast ownership laws by the
FCC, Clear Channel came to own WHAM, and now that WOKR TV is known as WHAM,
what were the two juggernauts in the Rochester media landscape have become
nothing but shills. WHAM-AM’s news broadcasts now exist simply to sustain the dominant
ratings that Channel 13 has enjoyed for years. A voice in the media landscape
has been lost.
The sign of a strong market is not only quality local television news, but independent radio
coverage as well. WHAM no longer has a strong staff of reporters, looking for
their own answers; instead they simply echo what Channel 13 is reporting.
Wait until WROC and WHEC TV turn up the heat in the ratings;
then you will truly see WHAM-AM (still enjoying very high ratings numbers) used
simply as a vehicle to drive Channel 13’s numbers. It’s a damn shame that it
has to be this way.
Luckily, this market is not subject to television duopolies.
Granted, Clear Channel may own Channel 13, WHAM, Hot Talk, The Fox, and The
Nerve, but imagine if they owned FOX 31. With the relaxed regulations by the
FCC, this is entirely possible. This could mean that entire news departments
could be consolidated in the name of profit. You’ve seen what duopolies have
done to radio: Brother Wease is doing spots that air on The Zone. Imagine if
that came to your television set: if during American
Idol on Channel 31, Don Alhart was telling you to watch Channel 13 WHAM
News at 11.
The sad thing is, this can happen.
The lucky thing is, it hasn’t happened in this market. Yet.
Name withheld by request
PROFIT RULES
Kudos for Krestia DeGeorge’s
well-researched and balanced story on the changing face of the Democrat and Chronicle (“Dollars or
Sense?” May 4). The telling of this disturbing tale was long overdue. And City once again produced the kind of
thorough, fair, and insightful journalism this town and this country
desperately needs.
When I was a kid, a popular riddle was: What is black and
white and red all over? Answer: the newspaper (black and white and READ all
over). Well, newspapers are no longer simply black and white and, sadly,
they’re no longer read all over the way.
Neither the problem nor the solution to the decline of daily
newspapers is black and white. What’s happening to the D&C is simply one example of what’s happening to countless
corporations and organizations. You don’t have to look far to find other
examples of workers and quality being sacrificed on the altar of profit.
The corporate model of profit above all else and rigid
top-down management continues to do deep damage to our culture. That all
non-management D&C sources (save
one who spoke only in his capacity as union president) would talk only under
the veil of anonymity speaks volumes about the lack of trust and safety
fostered by management.
The D&C’s shrinking staff, shrinking readership, and shrinking coverage is symptomatic of
the worldwide trend toward seductive electronic technology, the explosion of
choices and subsequent weakening of once-dominant media, the frightening
complexity of the world, and the increasing sense of impotence to control or
change the course of events. The latter breeds the kind of numbness publisher Hunkealludes to when he refers to
“people’s disengagement and lack of interest.”
I’ve been a lifetime
reader of the D&C, and I will
continue to be. While there is much I still enjoy about the D&C, I’m saddened by its pandering
and dumbing down.
Its photos are great, and staff photographers frequently
tell a moving story. Its periodic in-depth series dealing with local problems
and situations serve the public well. Its ongoing day-in-the-life series puts a
human face on our suburbs. Its Speaking Out pieces give voice to divergent
views. Several of its columnists are like members of an extended family: You
may not always agree with them, but you’re glad to hear from them.
Yet some changes smell of profit over public trust.
Ever-greater advertising space and smaller staffing has dictated ever-shrinking
content. The average article, review, column, editorial, and letter-to-the editor
is shorter than its counterpart from past decades. Just as the
short-attention-span imprint of TV programming is obvious in USA Today, the McNewspaper
imprint of USA Today is obvious in
the D&C.
Their periodic tinkering with format illustrates how “different”
is sometimes merely different, not better. The recent change to the Living
section is a case in point, a classic example of pandering to what the bosses
think will better appeal to a young audience accustomed to split screens and
graphically busy websites. It’s a reflection of what has happened to so many
magazines in this era of mass ADD: pumped up visuals, fragmented layout, and
shrunken content.
City refers to “the D&C’s strict guidelines for
more mugshots and more quotes from minorities.”
The recent domination of black faces in the pages of the D&C is nothing short of reverse discrimination. It distorts the
racial mix of the metropolitan reading area. A newspaper of record should
report the world as it is, not as it wants it to be. Leave the editorializing
to the editorial page. As one reporter who was told to squeeze a photo of an
African-American into the story said, “We’ve gone off the deep end.”
And off the deep end is editor Magnuson’s preoccupation with
reader relevance. Isn’t newspaper management supposed to give the public what
it needs as well as what it wants?
Perhaps the most accurate explanation for the state of the D&C was publisher Hunke’s business-speak statement, “We’re an operating
unit of a large multi-national corporation.”
I have great compassion for what newspapers are going
through, and I want them to survive and flourish. The communications revolution
has invaded their lofty security. Change is a constant, but I don’t think the
way newspapers should change is to try to be more like TV or the Internet. Let
them focus on their unique strengths. Let newspapers be newspapers.
Rick Taddeo, Irondequoit
FED UP
Thanks for a very interesting article about a newspaper that
first created its own monopoly in this market, and then quickly set about
making itself irrelevant (“Dollars and Sense,” May 4).
I have a couple of stories to share. The first takes place
in 1997, when I was working as a copywriter for the advertising agency handling
the D&C’s account. The paper was already experiencing problems, and our pack of angry and
confused clients from Gannett were flailing about, trying to find a solid
marketing position to attract those lucrative “Gen-Xer’s.”
Writing taglines is one of the most difficult and
frustrating assignments an advertising writer can have. We had gone through
list after list of taglines. Reams of paper. Making one last attempt, my
creative director went to the D&C offices for yet another caffeine-propelled presentation. They had moved the
marketing target yet again, and I was vainly trying to write to it.
“No, no, no!”
“No?
“You’re not getting it!”
“OK. Could you at least be clear about what you want
this tagline to express?”
Much client anxiety, followed by furrowed brows, finished up
with this Hall of Fame outburst: “We want the tagline to say, This is a kick-ass paper for a kick-ass town!”
My creative director, God bless
him, smiled and politely asked: “How long have you lived in Rochester?”
Story Number 2: About two years later, my wife and I were getting fed up with the D&C‘s
multiple typos, misspellings, and omitted words. One Saturday, we discovered
several typos and two major problems. One was a serious factual error in the
sports section. The other was incredibly poor writing and editing of a news
story; the victim and the perpetrators became so confusingly entwined that the
reader couldn’t distinguish one from the other.
I called the editorial staff, leaving a detailed message and
later got a call back. The editor whined. “We don’t have enough people. We
can’t get good proofreaders. We don’t have enough time to fact check.”
When Monday rolled around, I cancelled my subscription.
I now take my news from internet sources,
get my weather from WHAM, and read City for in-depth analysis of Rochester issues. It works for me. Obviously, it works much the same
for thousands of others.
The D&C is the
newspaper version of the old Catskill comedy circuit joke: “Oy! The food here is so awful!”
“Yes… and such small portions, too.”
Tom Laemlein, Darwin Street,
Rochester
This article appears in May 18-24, 2005.
