Our Man in America: Demise of print media and reporting standards

By Wan Lixin | 2009-12-10 | NEWSPAPER EDITION

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EDITOR'S note: Shanghai Daily writer Wan Lixin is on a three-month study tour in Virginia, United States. This is the fifth of his impressions about the country.

LAST Friday our delegation of 20 media representatives paid a visit to The Washington Times in Washington, DC.

Only then did most of us realize that the paper itself had been in the media spotlight lately.

The Washington Post, the city's biggest daily, reported in a front-page article by Howard Kurtz on Thursday (December 4): "The Washington Times, which gained a strong foothold in a politically obsessed city as a conservative alternative to much of the mainstream media, is about to become a drastically smaller newspaper."

It is reportedly laying off at least 40 percent of its 370-person staff, reducing its coverage of local news, sports and features, and emphasizing free distribution.

At about lunch time we were led to the mezzanine floor to overlook the largely deserted newsroom. Even though most staff might have been braced for bad news in the wake of the Times' management shake-ups since November, the depth of the reductions could only be stunning.

One executive from the Times counseled us not to lend credence to any reports except those in the Times itself, but the paper's Pulitzer Prize-winning photo director, J. Ross Baughman, said he more or less agreed with the Post's observation that "By attracting such marquee conservative names as ... and with reporters who sometimes out-hustled the competition - the Times punched above its weight class, building a nationally known brand."

The newspaper reportedly has lost an estimated US$2 billion since it was launched in 1982. For the Post, news about a small competitor' reduced print presence might be more of an unpleasant reminder of the print media's plight in general.

As a matter of fact, on November 25, the Post reported (also by Kurtz) that "The Washington Post, in a significant retrenchment, is closing its remaining US Bureaus outside the capital area."

The report revealed that the Washington Post Co's newspaper division, which includes several smaller papers, lost US$166.7 million in the first three quarters of this year.

A frequently cited explanation for newspapers decline is people's easy access to Website news, which, in addition to being free, can be constantly updated, and thus more accurate. But I wish to point to another not so salient development: technology is not only destroying print media, but also putting an end to quality or real news, by disrupting journalists' news-gathering process.

Some fellow journalists have been complaining that today they not only need to meet the newspapers' daily deadline, but their schedule is more and more driven by digital sections' constant demand for updates, making them unable to conduct detailed analysis, or write in-depth stories that can take days or longer to put together.

Recently a DC-based Xinhua reporter told us that when she is going to an interview she must also take along a video camera, a camera, an MP3, and various other e-gadgets to meet the demands of the digital section.

The nature of the news is also evolving, as it is increasingly driven by ratings and circulation figures. For instance, to get viewers hooked to a channel, one trick favored by TV stations is to deliver news in ever-tinier bits, with the news tickers at the bottom of the screens serving as another attraction. But even this may not be working.

A US survey suggests youths here in the US derive their knowledge about current events chiefly through comedy shows or other entertainment, in a process known as infotainment.