In an effort to stem the tide of declining circulation at its newspapers and connect again with readers, the Gannett newspaper chain — which owns daily newspapers across the country and USA Today — has embarked on a new strategy of covering and packaging the news called “Real Life, Real News.”
Although the program apparently has not been reduced to paper yet, Cincinnati Enquirer Editor Tom Callinan issued a memo to his staff outlining some of what the program will mean in the coverage and writing of news in Ohio. This memo was immediately posted on Romenesko’s Media gossip page at the Poynter Institute Web site (http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=45) so reporters and editors all across the country could read the internal document.
And quite a document it is.
According to Gannett’s statistics, the newspaper industry expects readership of newspapers to decline 1 percent per year over the next 10 years. Gannett is not willing to accept this estimate as inevitable, however, so it intends to rethink “coverage approaches to connect more often and more meaningfully with readers and potential readers,” according to Callinan’s memo.
Gannett papers will stake out local news as their franchise and then work to make themselves indispensable to readers.
Those papers will “[cover] breaking news and key topics in ways that are more relevant to readers, [carry] out exclusive enterprise and First Amendment stories with readers’ concerns in mind . . . and [write] more about the Moments of Life that are especially important in our readers’ lives,” Callinan’s memo continues.
This would be a sea change in the newspaper industry — where more and more stories over the past few decades have been written to please sources, rather than to make complicated and challenging topics accessible for readers.
In the first half of the past century, newspapers grew in popularity because they were the only continual source of news — and in-depth analysis of world, national and local news. But then came television and national and world TV news reports. Then came the Internet and satellite and cable TV — meaning people could hunt for their own news in their own time.
With the exception of the New York Times and a handful of other national papers that have their own international and national correspondents, most newspapers in this country rely upon their ability to cover local news as the best reason for subscribers to ante up the cost of having the paper delivered to their homes.
But that reliance on local news, according to Gannett’s plan, does not guarantee that the papers will cover and put together the news in ways that are inviting to readers and relevant to their lives. In the middle part of the last century, newspapers were adept at covering the neighborhoods in which people lived, the things they did and the events that affected their lives. Then came an era in which newspapers decided they should be able to predict trends and figure out the future path of events.
Cut it out. If newspaper people could predict trends with any accuracy or get a feel for what was coming next, we would be enriching ourselves by manufacturing the next pet rock or buying winning lottery tickets. Callinan’s memo underscores the dedication of the chain: “Real Life, Real News is about recognizing, valuing and publishing small moments of life, yes, that we may have held up our noses at for too long.”
In the 1950s and early 1960s, many American newsrooms were peopled with reporters and editors who had never been within 10 feet of a college or university.
Most of them started out as copy boys (and girls) and worked their ways up through the system, perfecting their craft along the way.
Then came the era of journalism schools in universities and — how can I put this nicely? — some reporters and editors who had been educated beyond their ability to absorb the basics: If readers don’t find newspapers interesting and relevant to their lives, they will not read them. I think of this as the era of contempt, when editors and reporters seldom if ever considered their readers, but became entranced with pleasing the news sources they talked with every day. This approach has often resulted in journalism that drips condescension and demonstrates contempt for the readers.
Apparently, that kind of journalism is over at the Gannett chain: “We need to focus less on what the tradition-source generated news budgets and wires tell us and more on what we are hearing from our neighbors, friends and families,” Callinan’s memo says.
This is a bold step forward — or maybe back — and one that could pay off in terms of subscription increases and reader satisfaction.
How well it works will depend on the caliber and dedication of the staffs in Cincinnati and the other towns where Gannett papers are published. And, it may have the added benefit — as did the founding of USA Today — of influencing the ways news is gathered, packaged and delivered at papers across the country. This week’s stats:
