The third in Salon's series on the major media conglomerates. This one concentrates on the book review. I was pretty ho-hum about it since I'm not a book review reader. I'd like to be, but I feel I'm already far behind in reading a lot of books that are already out. I'm also not much of a fiction reader. Jess has told me that I need more fiction (she's right) and I've made an effort. My other personal problem is that I get most of my news off the web now. The only book review I consistently read is the one in Harper's. Nevertheless, there are two quotes that struck me:

"Until you can show me that your subscribers are willing to pay more money because of the quality, I sort of feel like the average reader isn't that sensitive to the quality at a certain level, and you really do need to make decisions that sometimes seem short-term in nature, because you chose to go public, and shareholders really do deserve a return." -- Laura Fine, Wall Street media analyst

"Editors are now under extreme pressure to tap the widest possible audience. As a result, they are abandoning the journalistic risks and literary quirks that once made the morning paper feel alive and important." -- article

I find the second more telling than the first. However, the first illustrates another side of the attitude I rebuked MSFT for having as it prosecutes public school systems for copying software. Fine points out that since the papers have gone public, they have a responsibility to be profitable. She's right, they didn't have to go public, and having done so, they have a responsibility to be profitable. However, those same papers need to keep in mind their greater responsibility to their readership base which is far larger than their shareholder base. Investors don't expect cyclical industries to have world-beating profits in a quarter when their product isn't in high demand. In turn, investors, if shown the responsibilities of a newspaper by those publishers, won't expect them to beat estimates every quarter. It's not a wealthy business. Moreover, it's a business that has a responsibility to disemminate information to the masses. This leads to the second quote. The masses aren't necessarily all interested in the same things. A newspaper isn't a product that appeals to a large population for a single reason. Different people read the paper for different reasons. Recognizing that is important. Of course, this drive to the bland will eventually push readership to smaller, more dynamic publications that actually care about quality and important stories. However, eventually we are all dead.
- posted by levinson @ 7/19/2001 11:18:00 AM