Last Updated: May 26, 1999
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It’s still the content, Stupid: 1997-2010
Content session: You say provocative, I say tense
Discussion of the future of newspapers brings together
people with very different visions; discussion of the role of online news
brings the most reaction
By Thomas Walton
Is it the coming new millennium that has newspaper editors all atwitter?
Is it the prospect that sophisticated machines are turning us all into
push-button compositors?
Is it the fact that many newspaper newsrooms have become quiet, carpeted,
color-coordinated, docile places, unlike the noisy and exciting dens of
din most of us remember from our "good old days" in this business?
Whatever, we are a neurotic lot as we watch our industry reshape itself
and the calendar ease steadily toward the year 2000.
Maybe that’s why 1996-97 ASNE Convention Program Chair Tim McGuire,
editor and senior vice president of the Star Tribune, Minneapolis, was
so determined to include a panel session on our collective uncertainties.
He called it, "It’s Still the Content, Stupid: 1997-2010," and given the
often combative nature of the discussion it generated, it was appropriately
named.
Panelists included Ted Leonsis, president and CEO of America Online
Studios; Diane McFarlin, executive editor of the Sarasota (Fla.) Herald-Tribune;
Ron Martin, editor of The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Constitution;
Regina Joseph, vice president of Think New Ideas Inc.; Farai Chideya, a
political analyst with CNN; George Benge, executive editor of the Journal
and Courier, Lafayette, Ind.; and William Bass, senior analyst with Forrester
Research.
And while largely cordial, the tension level nudged upward whenever
this diverse group speculated about the content, and form, of American
newspapers over the next several years. The principal protagonist: AOL’s
Leonsis.
This is a critical time for American newspapers, Leonsis noted. "Your
circulation is stagnant and your ad rates are up."
He also sounded a warning. "We have 800,000 subscribers in New York
City now," Leonsis said. "The New York Times is at 1.1 million. At some
point in the next six months we will pass them." Fortunately, he said,
the Times accepts AOL’s role and embraces it. "We’re partners with the
Times."
That got the attention of Atlanta’s Martin, who insisted that American
newspapers know how to gather, report, and present information better than
anyone, including, he added testily, those upstarts at "America On Hold."
Added Lafayette’s Benge: "What we do as newspaper journalists is unique.
As long as we do that, we’ll be OK."
Joseph offered a hopeful appraisal of her own: Newspapers online, she
said, are simply papers formatted for an additional medium and additional
audience.
McFarlin placed her faith in newspapers as an American institution of
long-standing. Other news sources, including computerized services, go
after a national audience, she said. "Mine is local." Joseph sounded a
cautionary note, however: "Institutions tend to move slowly."
Defining content proved as difficult for the panel as nailing Jell-O
to a tree, to borrow an expression from a wise Washington veteran who once
tried to describe the art of making foreign policy.
Is content set by a geographic community, one panelist wondered. Don’t
forget the generational community, offered another.
Benge had his own idea on that: "Content," he said, "is an angry father
marching into the editor’s office wondering why his daughter’s basketball
team doesn’t get the same coverage as the boys’ team." From one end of
the convention room to the other, editors nodded in silent sympathy and
recognition of an episode they had all shared at one time or another.
The contentiousness was plainly evident several times during the discussion,
and CNN’s Chideya took note. "I can’t believe how adversarial this has
become. There’s a lot of tension here."
AOL’s Leonsis had the same reaction. "I was not comfortable with the
tension level here," he said as the session began to wind down. "We like
newspapers."
Panel moderator McGuire wasn’t distressed at all by the provocative
and frank discussion he led.
"I love it. My dream is fulfilled," he said of the panel’s contribution
to the convention.
It was Will Rogers who once noted that all he knew was what he read
in the newspapers. Perhaps we can conclude that no matter what form our
newspapers take in 2010, it will still be the content, stupid, that determines
our fate.
Walton is editor of The Blade, Toledo, Ohio.
