Op Ed: SOMEbody Gotta Cover The Story, As U.S. Free Press Fails

(SALEM) - When I worked as Wires Editor in Boston for United Press, we had a Bureau Chief named Hank Minott --famed for his newsroom shout when chaos threatened-- intermittently always, more often than not.

No matter what the first-content of any one shout, he always ended with “SOMEbody gotta cover the (insert word) STORY!”

AND somebody did --on the dead run, conscientiously, completely and professionally-- if you wished to keep on coming to work there.

That was then.
Things have changed over the last thirty years --NOT for better, but for much worse-and-sinking.

Thousands of citizen-participants met in Memphis last week to work out what can still be done to reform, rebuild, restructure, and reshape the fundamental communications channels so essential for all democratic governance at all levels.

(Examples abound for print-side press-failures these days. “See also” any issue of any major daily newspaper, or any issue of the three major journalism reviews over the past full decade.)

What they learned from each other in hundreds of seminars, presentations, issue panels and demonstrations at Memphis is now established fact.

What they taught many around the nation, seeking somehow to preserve, protect, strengthen and even extend these same functions, fundamental not only for the future of the print-side press, but for the nation itself, is that we now are “blessed” with rapid new digital technologies to carry on that tradition --and those same essential functions-- if we are wise enough, and have the will to move forward quickly.

Today the vaunted “free American press” print-side -- pressured into premature denigration by Wall St. dollar-demand, despite continuing constant profit margins double nearly all other industries-- is not just endangered, but rapidly sinking into fundamental, threatening disarray. The print-side will never disappear: There are learning functions best served by the flexibilities and rapid review it makes possible.

There will continue to be a “daily newspaper” in different, primarily digital, format --accessible on every kind and level of viewing device.
The IPod et al is only a bare beginning, broadly supplemented by rapid revolution in format and function for the cellphone, too.

There is now an alternative to print-side.
There will be many more, including everything from IPod to hand-held Blackberry to “Micro-Pen”, et al; all receiving rapid transmission of instant news AND essential life-shaping information.

Already one or the other has become ubiquitous for teen-agers and their parents; for corporate execs on the run; for governance agency personnel; and for many others --including the “ordinary Joe” and his tribe.

But as with all previous world-shaping new technologies, the digital formats offer depth, diversity, speed and cost-effectiveness.
That is why they are becoming broadly integrated into our life-style, our learning habits --and our home environments.

With all of this, can “the Home Learning Center” be far behind, with instant access to the entire world of information for anyone, at any time?
Internet access is fundamentally a prime essential of life-now, and will soon be supplied via new economic means, similar to water, sanitary system, power, and similarly-essential utilities.

There is already a world-shaping lead established in every other major communications-demanding economic, social and governance user-group. “We” may be stupid, but “us” is not nearly such a slow-learner.

Where a single newspaper has survived in any town or city, where several once prospered previously, the circumstances --even for monopoly manipulation under management by a once-strong chain-- are now so slim and demanding that most find themselves slashing staff, cutting out content long covered, and shutting down on once-basic “Must-Do”s.

That is professional suicidal, as many press pundits have rapidly, if ponderously, pointed out.

You cannot compete by consistently cutting your own content, staff, coverage and community functions. Subscribers may merely notice --but advertisers pay on people-reached --and circulation continues to collapse across the entire nation, with Wall St. watching closely.

Page-sections drop from 4 or 6 or even 8 --to a thin-2. Paper-quality is cut; and even page-size trimmed, despite the curl and the loss of quality for illustration --and advertising presentation.

Probing investigative reporting in the community interest disappears since it demands too much staffing and long-working time, as well as maintenance for many strong professional relationships as sources.

Stories essential to the public understanding go unreported or slowly, sloppily-done, by inexperienced personnel still working on the needed skills - and inhibited by their own inexperience.

Popular guidance and informative-issue reporting slows or even disappears, for the same essential elements-demanded; values are lost when incompetently covered by the same inexperienced beginners at low salaries.

But staff-salary vulnerability is one of the few major cost-areas still under corporate control --with no thought of journalism’s longtime community responsibilities allowed to interfere while Wall St. fires up the heated declaration for that next corporate board-meeting.

Public concerns are complex these days. They demand top-quality competence and constant effort to keep up in both background and current-issue levels. Then there are those taxing relations with extremely authoritative pundits pursuing those specialized interests.

These fundamental revisions in operations and presentation also find similar change --enforced by ever-rigorizing economics-- underway throughout the news-gathering, preparation and publication, and most especially in the distributing processes, which allows the print-side operate in the first place.

Much of great magnitude was learned-and-shared at Memphis, of that you can be sure.

What will it mean? When will it happen here? Either could be the next logical question --especially with our Legislature “at work” in the “Salem Arena”, rebuilding ethical operational rules and reworking the tattered cult-confrontation consequences.

OR perhaps it should simply be:
What HAS ALREADY happened here, given our current one-paper, monopoly-managed, longtime-questioned and still-ongoing Capitol City demonstration.

(Editor’s Note: For ongoing information rapidly occurring nationally and internationally on this exceptionally important --and volatile-- set of issues, see: www.freepress.net)

Salem-News.com Top Stories

2025: Hope for the Best, Prepare for the Worst

Two Wars with No Way Out

No One Owns the Future

The Ugly Origins of Trump's America First Policy

A One-State Solution Could Transform the World

Comments Leave a comment on this story.

All comments and messages are approved by people and self promotional links or unacceptable comments are denied.

Henry Ruark January 30, 2007 1:58 pm (Pacific time)

SLM et al: Happens am familiar with Ol' Smedley and his record. He was famous for "telling it true", which was one reason mentor-early/on directed me to his story. Far too much is again "timely" --and as we finally "make the connections" the time for grenading may even yet arrive here...

S. LaMarche January 30, 2007 4:04 am (Pacific time)

Henry, just finished reading the essay by Smedley Butler called "War Is A Racket" written in 1935. He was a retired General in the Marines, serving from 1898-1931, and was the man who at the bequest of then Oregon governor, began the Oregon State Patrol in 1932. The treatise is a twenty minute read., available,(free),from Smedley Butler,U.S.M.C. website. He won two Medals of Honor and was an outspoken opponent of the "profiteers of war".,even as a serving officer. The last sentence in the short story is "The Hell With War".,and he has a fine idea on how to accomplish this. I was stunned at it's timeliness.

Henry Ruark January 29, 2007 10:28 am (Pacific time)

To all: "See also" The Media and The Message,OREGONIAN B4,1/29,from Tim Rutten, LA TIMES Media Reporter; and also Big O Main Edit, same page, making dead sure connection between corporate attitudes and behaviors and the press and media debacle is very clear indeed...

Henry Ruark January 28, 2007 4:14 am (Pacific time)

To all: We have the greatest nation this Earth has ever seen...if we will only make it so, given the strong guidance of real leaders from the Founders on. BUT it takes caring persons who will speak up and shout,when nessary...and act in "whatever way it takes",too and continuously. Let your voice be heard, by those never-listening before... "Keeping quiet will never start the riot".

common sense; January 27, 2007 7:47 pm (Pacific time)

oversight commitee informs me Chesty Puller Not the Commandant, but a silver bar Lt.in Nicaraugua campaigns, later to become the most decorated Marine in history, eventually promoted to Lt. General, but considered a little too blunt to be the C.M C. at that time. thank you and error not reflected on Salem-News.

common sense; January 27, 2007 5:55 pm (Pacific time)

"all that's required for evil to prevail is for good people to do nothing" and as of now I think "Silence is not and option!",they have been chrome plating life for long enough to lose their own concept of direction and our military is now a privatized securety firm protecting the C.E.O.s of corporate "worldom" and has been since Teddy Roosevelt and before! The rationale behind the early landings in central America was quoted by the then Commandant of Marines Chasty Puller., as an invasion of a soverign country to protect the produce mafia in the states by militarllly supressing the locals into slave wages, so United Fruit and others could maintain the highest profit margin and we could eat cheap banannas! Folks, we have a chance to turn it around. Vote this time! Silence is no longer a option!

Albert Marnell January 27, 2007 2:59 pm (Pacific time)

I like the quote from Teddy Roosevelt and it applies now more than 100 years ago! I do not live far from Sagamore Hill. Now if they want some WW1 artifacts, they can have it. You put them in good with me Henry!

Albert Marnell January 27, 2007 2:51 pm (Pacific time)

To The Liars, Great Comment!.....it looks like yet one more person sees things clearly. If we grow in numbers maybe we can live again! I too hate Prison Planet ( see Alex Jones sites). What about the other 99.99% of the population that does not have a clue and is more concerned with watching "American Idol" or a football game? They are both the same crap of mind control under the guise of entertainment. Watch this or that on bubblevision while we sell you fools up the river. Newspapers, magazines, radio are all part of the Murdoching of the world.

Henry Ruark January 26, 2007 9:58 pm (Pacific time)

O-tan et al: This is a major function for every responsible journalistic operations in every daily and every other media operation in our nation, whose very life depends on the "license to operate" supplied by the First Amendment: “Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of today.”-- President Theodore Roosevelt, 1906. Note it operates on politics as well as on business.

Henry Ruark January 26, 2007 9:42 pm (Pacific time)

O-tan: As in your own experience, intensely resent all those slimy,slippery dollar-chasers killing off what many fine real "soldiers" have given lives to build for us all. Goes far beyond corporate plunder and pillage into realm of desperate despoilation of our original U.S. principles, learned the hard way starting even before 1776. IF job done right, we'd never be where we find the nation and ourselves now.

Osotan January 26, 2007 9:05 pm (Pacific time)

how could I say more?

Henry Ruark January 26, 2007 2:36 pm (Pacific time)

Prefer late word from Editor and Publisher (Oct. 06) --the Bible of the business ? See "Fixing Print" their cover story in that issue: "From Wall Street analysts to bloggers keyboarding in their bathrobes, from sophis- ticated customer-segmentation market studies to cocktail party chatter,newspapers these days hear a single message: Change or die. Change like your audience has changed,like America has changed. Or watch it all slip away--the profit margins that are the envy of oil companies, the overstuffed Sunday paper that lands with a thud, the credibility that makes something news when the newspaper says its news." (PAGING NEW IDEAS By Mark Fitzgerald and Jennifer Saba, pp. 22-30, EandP, Oct. 2006) Not one sentence in whole piece about "liberal" dailies doomed by any "conservative" rejection --but plenty about precisely the points covered in the Op Ed. For example: "We're just now making the changes that should have been made fifteen years ago," says Earl Wilkinson, executive director of International Newspaper Marketing Association. In fact, interior references in the article point sharply to distortion-perversion and incompetence brought on by dollar-seeking corporate management forcing coverage supporting conservative political and economic policies as ongoing reasons for stadily-dropping circulation, and disastrous advertising debacle on classified and other space-sale. "Newspapers face a choice", the writers state (p.25)"because consumers are already exercising choice."

Henry Ruark January 26, 2007 8:06 am (Pacific time)

Start with "Corporate Takeover of America's Newspapers" -1993 !-Jim Squires, former Chicago TRIBUNE editor. ISBN o-8129-2101-1. Next see "News About The News" -2002; Leonard Downie, Robert G. Kaiser, for decades reporters at W.POST. ISBN 0-375-40874-6 "...skewer the profit-hungry miscreants and extol the solid, serious practitioners of a vital craft." -David K. Shipler, NY TIMES Pulitzer winner. Quick-count here shows more than 40 similar...list available on request.

JAFO January 26, 2007 7:18 am (Pacific time)

Mr. Murdoch is as "liberal" as Rush Limbaugh.,Pat Buchanan or Ann Coulter and Fox News's "balanced opinion" is quite possibly owned by him too, and if not.,should be!

Henry Ruark January 26, 2007 6:45 am (Pacific time)

Marco: ID-self with emailer and I'll send several (of more than 100) references here disproving that,from academics, editors, owners, professional journals, et al, et al. It is one of lies set up to protect corporate conniving ownership controlling "free press" for own purposes, starting with double-return of most businesses. Fact is fact, and what you peddle is propaganda, prompted by trends-covered here. I await your ID, send to S-N Editor; can mail printed page pile if you prefer, will even pay postage !!! - provided you then reverse-self right here.

Marco January 26, 2007 6:14 am (Pacific time)

The main reason the press is dying is because it's controlled by liberals whose story selections are no longer trusted by the public.

Henry Ruark January 26, 2007 5:35 am (Pacific time)

Izzy Stone, famous reporter, editor, publisher insisted" "All governments lie !" --so many times great new biography (at Library) is so titled. We never knew how right he was until last eight years.

The Liars, January 25, 2007 10:10 pm (Pacific time)

are having a hard time covering their lies now.,in taking the "privacy card" away from the people under the guise of "homeland security", (where have I heard that before?) they have exposed their own corruption.,playing on fear., greed.,and anger as it were, they are now running scared.,you guys tell Murdoch to "put it where the moon don't shine" and keep it up!.,thanks Mr. Ruark

[Return to Top]

Op Ed:
SOMEbody Gotta
Cover The Story,
As U.S. Free Press Fails

Quick Links

DINING

MUST SEE SALEM

AUCTIONS - APPRAISALS

CONSTRUCTION SERVICES

ONLINE SHOPPING

Advertise with Salem-News