Ben sent me this link: Farewell Remarks from the editor of the LA Times. It’s a NYT pub of the departing speech by ousted LA Times ed James O’Shea. It goes into overdrive on page two:
This company, indeed, this industry, must invest more in solid, relevant journalism… We must build on our core strength, which is good, accurate reporting, the backbone of solid journalism, the public service that helps people make the right decisions about their increasingly complex lives. We must tell people what they want to know and — even more important — what they might not want to know, about war, politics, economics, schools, corruption and the thoughts and deeds of those who lead us. We need to tell readers more about Barack Obama and less about Britney Spears. We must give a voice to those who can’t afford a megaphone. And we must become more than a marketing slogan.
It’s a good piece, from someone who can speak of the newspaper crisis with some authority. Newspapers all over the world are facing trouble as readers evaporate under the internet sun, and O’Shea acknowledges this as a real and difficult phenomenon.
I don’t know that this message goes far enough, though. American (and global) newspaper journalism has declined for a number of reasons, and not all of them are summed up by “misplaced news priorities in newspaper management”. Another relevant link, this time via Making Light: What’s really wrong with newspapers, has more on this, identifying six key problems that got US paper news to its current unhealthy state.
For the record, the six problems are (1) The creation of monopoly markets and cartels of newspaper ownership. (2) Consolidation of newspapers into large, publicly held companies. (3) Reduced investment in journalism. (4) Emergence of a conformist agenda. (5) Collapse of leadership. (6) Advertising model proved unsustainable.