Washington Post Ombudsman Michael Getler spent the last two Sundays
lamenting the decline of newspapers. Both columns criticized to the
lack of hard news on the front page and the use of anecdotes at the
start of what hard news there is. Others noted the general age (and
decrepitness?) of editorial writers and their references–they keep
talking about Franco who’s still dead and some guy named Kissinger gets
half the page when he wants it.
What surprises me is how little
those in newspapers really care about their non-customers. One of Peter
Drucker’s basic tenets is that you learn more from them than from your
customers. What would department stores look like if they listened more
to their non-customers when Wal-Mart was young? Minneapolis-based
Dayton’s launched Target to appeal to more moms. It later merged
with Hudson’s, a Detroit-based chain, and Marshall Field’s of Chicago,
changed the company name to Target and then spun off the old-line
department stores. Federated and May are merging, so are Sears and
Kmart. And Wal-Mart is the largest company in the world based on
revenues, with stores in Japan, Mexico, England, and China.
Newspaper
editors have convinced themselves that their readers/viewers are
sensible and intelligent, and they need to soften their product to be
more like People or Us if they want to appeal to the philistines and
ideologues who don’t read them. The reason people complain about bias
is that opinion and anecdote take up more space than facts do. I buy a
paper when it has compelling news on the front page. I skip to the next
story when the facts in the story are interspersed over 10,000 words
and the first bit of real information is on the jump page. The CJ Online provides more information than the N&O and costs 50 cents less.
