This Is The Real MSM

Fascinating item from Boing Boing. This is why John and Mary American are poorly informed about what's what.

Dan Gillmor's Center for Citizen Media blog features a thought-provoking speech-transcript from a veteran journalist, Tom Stites, who has worked at many newspapers and magazines. Unlike many old-guard journos, Stites doesn't wring his hands over the ignorance of young people or the flight of advertising dollars to Google. Instead, he points his speech at the effect on democracy wrought by changes in reporting styles at the remaining news-media, a news-media that no longer cares to reach broad audiences. This is fascinating stuff, with the ring of a revealed truth about how the world got where it is:

When I was breaking in as a reporter, I ran the police beat for The Kansas City Times. The managing editor, a crusty old guy named John Chandley, explained that he wanted me to provide at least a short item about every siren heard each night in all parts of the city, so our readers would know what had happened. And he meant all parts of the city, rich and poor. This kept me hustling, and to this day I remember the lesson: The newspaper I worked for wanted to sell papers to every household in the area. They wanted 100 per cent market penetration, or as close as they could come to 100 per cent. In 1962 and 63, when I was a police reporter, dailies everywhere wanted 100 percent market penetration. Newsday, where I worked in the 1970s, approached 85 per cent penetration at its peak, the record for American newspapers. Now it's about 40 per cent. David Laventhol, Newsday's editor when I worked there, wanted to make sure his staff valued all the paper's readers. "Never forget that you're writing for the man in the bowling alley," he told us over and over, back in the days before gender-neutral language became the norm.

Now fast-forward to the late 1980s. By this time I was associate managing editor of The Chicago Tribune, and all the talk among the news management was about editing the paper for the top two quintiles of the income distribution. That means that 40 percent market penetration is the goal, not 100 percent, and that The Trib cares little about 60 percent of the people who might be its readers. And these people are the men and women in the bowling alley. Why doesn't The Trib care? Because these days nonaffluent people shop at Wal-Mart, and advertisers like Lord & Taylor and stores that sell fancy wines don't want to pay for circulation among people who can't afford their wares. It's as simple as that.

So 60% of US don't matter.

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