John Oliver in 2014. (Eric Liebowitz/HBO)
Every couple of
years or so, I feel the need to whine about the plight of newspapers. It’s
August. I’m Trumped out. So today’s the day.
Except that HBO’s John Oliver beat me to it with the best defense of
newspapers — ever. His recent “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver” monologue about the suffering newspaper
industry has gone viral
in journalism circles but deserves a broader audience. Besides, it’s funny.
Leavening his important
message with enough levity to keep the dopamine flowing, Oliver points out that
most news outlets, faux, Fox and otherwise, essentially rely on newspapers for
their material. This includes, he says, pulsing with self-awareness, Oliver
himself. He’s sort of part of the problem, in other words, but at least he
knows it, which makes it okay, sort of.
The problem:
People want news but they don’t want to pay for it. Consequently, newspapers are failing while
consumers get their information from comedy shows, talk shows and websites that
essentially lift material for their own purposes.
But somewhere,
somebody is sitting through a boring meeting, poring over data or interviewing
someone who isn’t nearly as important as he thinks he is in order to produce a
story that will become news. As Oliver points out, news is a food chain, yet
with rare exceptions, the most important members of the chain are at the
bottom, turning off the lights in newsrooms where gladiators, scholars and
characters once roamed.
Some still do,
though most are becoming rather long-ish in the tooth. (You can actually get
that fixed, you know.) That any
newspapers are surviving, if not for much longer in any recognizable form, can
be attributed at least in some part to the dedication of people who really
believe in the mission of a free press and are willing to work harder for less
— tweeting, blogging, filming and whatnot in addition to trying to write worthy
copy. Most of the poor slobs who fell in love with the printed word go unnoticed
by any but their peers.
An exception is
Marty Baron, the unassuming executive editor of The Post, recently featured in
the film “Spotlight,” about the Boston Globe’s stories under
Baron’s leadership uncovering sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. It’s a good
movie, not just because of great casting and acting but because it’s a great
tale about a massive investigative effort that led to church reform and the
beginning of healing for victims. (Not to worry, my pay comes as a percentage
of the money I make for the company. This won’t make a dime of difference.)
My point — shared
by Oliver — is that only newspapers are the brick and mortar of the Fourth
Estate’s edifice. Only they have the wherewithal to do the kind of reporting
that leads to stories such as “Spotlight.” What happens to the “news” when
there are no newspapers left? We seem
doomed to find out as people increasingly give up their newspaper subscriptions
and seek information from free-content sources. And though newspapers have an
online presence, it’s hard to get readers to pay for content. As Oliver says, now is a very good time to be
a corrupt politician. Between buyouts, layoffs and news-space reductions,
there’s hardly anyone paying attention.
Except, perhaps,
to kitties. In a hilarious spinoff of
“Spotlight” called “Stoplight,” Oliver shows a short film of a news meeting
where the old-school reporter is pitching a story about city hall corruption.
The rest of the staff, cheerful human topiaries to the reporter’s kudzu-draped
mangrove — are more interested in a cat that looks like a raccoon. And then there’s Sam Zell, erstwhile owner of
the Tribune Co., who summed up the sad trajectory of the nation’s interests
and, perhaps, our future while speaking to Orlando Sentinel staffers in 2008.
When he said he wanted to increase revenues by giving readers what they want, a female
voice objected, “What
readers want are puppy dogs.”
Zell exploded, calling her comment the sort of “journalistic arrogance of
deciding that puppies don’t count. . . . Hopefully we get to the point where
our revenue is so significant that we can do puppies and Iraq, okay?
[Expletive] you.” Yes, he said that. Moral of the story: If you don’t subscribe to
a newspaper, you don’t get to complain about the sorry state of journalism —
and puppies you shall have.
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