tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32665668463996592192024-03-13T21:55:30.736-04:00That's the Press, BabyThe future of newspapers, copy editing, and how it all relates, like everything else, to department storesDavisullhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02871644412923946894noreply@blogger.comBlogger315125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3266566846399659219.post-91351101777499154752012-07-12T11:25:00.003-04:002012-07-12T11:25:58.577-04:00The Moving Finger Writes, and Having Written... As noted, I'm now in a position to end my career working for a newspaper in a department store. Life was too busy to post in the runup to moving to 801 Market St.<br />
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We;re on the third floor all the way from the bridge over Ninth Street (at the left) to Eighth Street on the right. That's the whole company; the newsroom is on the third floor of the main building, The Inquirer to the front. Where the two-story added height at the center of the building is, is where the elevators are; the Daily News is to the rear of that.<br />
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All in all, it's a very nice office space, and bless them for adaptive reuse of a building; Philadelphia still has three of its old department store buildings (one of which is still a Macy's) plus parts of two others, the Chestnut Street additions to Gimbel Bros. and N. Snellenburg & Co. Compare with Detroit (no Hudson's, no Crowley's, no Kern's) or most smaller cities. But also, in today's terms, look at that building (with the smaller one to its left) and imagine -- this was just one store. And there were five others like it. Compare this with even your largest big-box store or mall department store.<br />
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Our old building at 400 N. Broad was pretty decrepit by the time we left. The collapse of the newspaper business had left us unable to do most maintenance, the downsizing had meant large areas were abandoned. But it was in looking at that building in our last days there that I realized part of why the history of old department stores (and what, it is becoming increasingly clear, will soon be the history of old daily newspapers) interests me in ways that don't appeal to others.<br />
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The movers taking our belongings down the freight elevators had no idea that those were there to move the chases with lines of lead type and engravings from the composing room to the stereotyping room where the mat was made to form the printing plate. The odd steps leading from the lobby to the Daily News newsroom indicated that it wasn't public access, it was simply a way into the mailroom where the papers were bundled for distribution. Along the sidewalk on 15th Street is a long rail bolted into the concrete; that was to keep the trucks from backing over the sidewalk as they pulled out with the papers. One of the last things to go was what we always called the "APS room," where, when I started, union printers controlled the output of film from the typesetters. It was still being used for what now is known as prepress until a couple of months ago, even though the printing plant moved away almost two decades ago.<br />
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When my wife and son and I were shopping at the Herald Square Macy's last winter, I came across a place on one of the higher floors where I remember my father saying in 1964, after riding the wooden-slat escalators: "This place is a dump." It's an entryway into the bowels of the store, and the fact that it is still there in 2012 means there's nothing they can do about it. Like the painted-over rotunda in the old John Shillito & Co. store in Cincinnati, or the odd, narrow entryway into Gilmore Bros. in Kalamazoo, it was just one of those things, a mark of the improvised, quirky, adaptive uses that institutions such as department stores (and newspapers) had to make back when technology was heavy and our expectations were less determined by set design and virtual backdrops. Weird, sure. Best we can do. Deal with it.<br />
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The Macy's store in Cherry Hill Mall, the oldest enclosed mall on the East Coast, is 51 years old. A 10-year-old shopping there with her mother is in a store built 41 years before she was born. For me, that would have been 1911, just around the time that the William H. Block Co. store at Illinois and Market Streets in Indianapolis was being built. Yet the Cherry Hill Macy's (built as a branch of Bamberger's from Newark) is clearly simply a cousin to the Macy's at Moorestown Mall that was built about 10 years ago after the old Wanamaker's branch was pulled down. It's a suburban box, three floors, escalators built in the middle, no nooks or crannnies to speak of. Whereas when I was young, it was clear that the downtown stores of Ayres, Wasson's and Block's were already from another era. Part of Wasson's was built before the Civil War and had ceiling fans because it was not air-conditioned. At both Ayres and Wasson's, alleys ran through the center of the stores and you had to watch for traffic as you went from part of the main floor to the other part. This was just seen as normal -- teach your kids to watch for trucks in the middle of a department store -- and then it became irrelevant when Ayres at Glendale didn't have an alley in the middle.<br />
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The merchants wanted to build modern, air-conditioned stores at which space could be utilized more economically, because, as Jan Whitaker's books on department store make clear, owners came to realize that an architecturally interesting building drew attention away from the merchandise, and every square foot needed to pull its weight. Shoppers, for the most part, didn't care because they were there to shop, not wonder why there were steps in the middle of the third floor at Pogue's or why the escalators above the third floor were in a different part of the store from those on the main floor. And then there were the people like myself for whom that created a personality, that made an Ayres an Ayres and made Indianapolis Indianapolis. But clearly we were in the minority.<br />
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And so it was with newspapers as they increasingly fade into that dark night. Those who grew up in St. Louis may remember when the makeup of the Post-Dispatch was so chaotic that the page folios were used to fill space by the printers; the page number floated around each page at random. This made the Post-Dispatch very different from the regimented look of the Louisville Courier-Journal, and made it clear you were in St. Louis and not Louisville. But, it turns out, just like the shopper at Famous-Barr didn't really care how it was different from Stewart's but was there to buy shoes, the readers who looked at newspapers didn't really care about the endearing quirks of their paper. They read the articles and ads regardless of how they were presented, and once someone gave them a new way to read them, one that didn't involve ink on your hands and bad jumps, they were happy to move on.<br />
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Two years ago I would have said that daily newspapers, despite their problems, would always survive because newspapers weren't like film. Film was just a medium on which pictures were taken; the picture was the point to the viewer, not the medium, and thus digital media made Kodak irrelevant. But a newspaper, to me, was a way of organizing and presenting information that was more than the sum of its parts. The printed page was not just film; it had value in and of itself. It's clear from the growth of replica editions and tablets that this is true to some degree. But it's also clear that the many positive attributes of print advertising simply can't overcome the combination of low price and targeted delivery found online, and thus newspapers, like any high fixed-cost industry, simply can't cope. And so the film question is irrelevant. The "this is my newspaper" question becomes so as well. Some people will miss daily newspapers the same way they miss downtown department stores, but those who never used them, or who simply found them irritating, overly complex warehouses with no free parking and lines for the elevator, will of course see nothing to miss. In the end, the big stores and the daily papers were not essential. They just were lovable.<br />
<br />Davisullhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02871644412923946894noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3266566846399659219.post-80712495825874305112012-05-31T10:36:00.000-04:002012-05-31T10:39:57.258-04:00The Newhouse modelGee, has it really been two months away. ACES conference. Problems with a new editing system. Moving the newsroom. New owners. Inflamed Achilles tendon. Probably have lost all my readers. Thought about just letting it fade away -- who blogs now, anyway... Whoops, it turns out that's the answer!<br />
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<a href="http://apple.copydesk.org/2012/05/24/a-day-we-wont-forget-for-a-long-long-time/">As Charles Apple said</a> in his great blog for ACES, we will remember the day -- the day when Advance Publications turned its Digital All-In strategy from a curiosity associated with the poor economy in Michigan into an incipient national policy by saying that its newspapers in Birmingham, Mobile, Huntsville, and New Orleans -- gasp, New Orleans, where we still remember people eagerly scooping up Times-Picayunes after Katrina, where the newspaper has proudly boasted of its highest household penetration rate in the nation -- will move to three-day-a-week publication in print and put their major emphasis online.<br />
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There are many things to be cynical about here -- this will result in a large loss not only of jobs, but of compensation as people must reapply for jobs. To hear it discussed, daily coverage may be more on a blog model. I don't know how Advance runs
these days, but in the old days when I worked in Flint, the model was -- as long as you made enough money that you did your proportional share of supporting the Newhouse family, what you did with the rest of it was up to you. When times were good, this meant that many once-mediocre papers -- such as the Times-Picayune -- suddenly became really good. Now times are bad and are projected to remain so forever. And these papers are in monopoly markets (in the old days) and so Advance can do whatever it wants -- as opposed to, say, the family's beloved Newark Star-Ledger.
As a diehard printie, I have been in mourning for days.<br />
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But at the same time I have to look at this from the other angle and see it this way -- is Advance the only company that really is committed to the philosophy of Digital First as opposed to merely talking the talk?
Earl Wilkinson of the International Newsmedia Marketing Association <a href="http://www.inma.org/blogs/earl/post.cfm/why-inma-will-keep-talking-about-culture-change-at-newspapers-1">has been writing extensively</a> about how publishers are saying the biggest enemy in their embracing the future is their own staffs -- people who grew up in the newspaper business, were successful in it, loved it, adapted to it, and really can't think of how to do things except in the way they were taught to do it for decades. (As a <a href="http://www.phillymag.com/articles/death-and-life-philadelphia-alt-weekly/">new story in Philadelphia</a> Magazine puts it about the owners of alt-weeklies: "It’s that they care just enough to be paralyzed—to lean back and do nothing and watch their papers, their brands, their properties, bleed."<br />
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(Note to reader: This is a really long post, but it didn't provide a good way to break it into two.)<br />
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In newspapers, we study things, we analyze the risks, we create committees, we do mockups, we expect that the time and money to do things the "right" way should be provided. We don't like things that damage our historical integrity. We like to build securely on the foundation we have established, to make things that will stand the test of time. Meanwhile, people who do not care about these things as much keep developing new online products that people immediately flock to and love, even if their attention proves fickle and they abandon them a few months later. As a <a href="http://www.inma.org/blogs/marketing/post.cfm/former-publisher-steps-past-trees-to-survey-the-newsmedia-forest">former Australian newspaper executive </a>put it: "Forests of customers are not holding their breath, waiting for a newspaper to launch with a new font or with a few more photos, or a new writer or two. In fact, they are not waiting for anything. People are quite happy with the news they are receiving, whether from news brands or Facebook or Twitter. It is up to publishers to provide them with an alternative that is better than what they are now content to consume."
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I don't like the fact that publishers seem to be blaming their problems on the people who work for them. Generally people will follow a clear direction, and you play the cards you're dealt. But Advance has apparently decided to have a new deal. And these sometimes are people who, as with the <a href="http://www.richmondbizsense.com/2012/05/29/when-media-general-woke-up/">executives of Media General,</a> just said for years, "Heck, we've got a strong business and we just have to cut to keep it afloat," instead of saying, "Holy cow, something's gone really wrong here." And now they blame their staffs? C'mon. But still...<br />
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The Internet utopians and digiterati for years have been saying, "Stop trying to defend your dying or dead print business." Had they simply used the word "declining," they might have gotten more traction. But they had seen the future and had little respect for those who had not. And those who held the fort thus felt they had to defend it, because -- that's what you do when under attack. Still, other than screaming "Never trust anyone who wants to run a printing press," what was being said?<br />
<ul>
<li>Newspapers have to be smaller. People have more things to read and no longer are willing to block out 20 minutes to just "read the paper."</li>
<li>Newspapers that simply state the next morning what people already know are irrelevant.</li>
<li>The cost structure of daily print newspapers is not sustainable without classified revenue.</li>
<li>People during a week go back and forth among print and online.</li>
<li>It's not that many young people don't read print newspapers -- it's that they don't want seven-day delivery.</li>
<li>The mistake many newspapers made with online -- well, one of the mistakes -- was to base the cost structure not on being a startup or smaller, lower-paying venture, but to run them as corporate divisions with the staffing a mature organization would bring.</li>
<li>The "story" -- in terms of being the 20-inch summing-up -- no longer works for some news events. People want little bits of update -- to follow the story in real time like it was a TV show. The omniscient lead is off-putting.</li>
<li>All that money that's going to defend and support the "declining" print product should be spent on digital development instead. In the short run it may look like throwing good money after bad, but in the long run if you don't, you'll be stuck with a print product no one reads and a digital product -- no one reads.</li>
<li>The skills of your legacy staff may not match today's business requirements, no matter if you have the best newspaper staff in the country.</li>
<li>Local news isn't as important to provide daily as national news. People like to catch up on their community once or twice a week. They want to gossip about Obama or Romney every day.</li>
<li>Instead of trying to serve everyone in the market -- the business model of "our customers are everyone within range of our trucks" -- figure out who your customers really are, serve them, and forget most of the rest.</li>
</ul>
Lots of companies have said, "Well, Digital First." But it seems that only Advance Publications -- which was forced into this in Michigan by the Detroit papers' decision to cut back home delivery while still printing seven days a week (which I have been told, although not authoritatively, had something to do with a condition in the JOA agreement affecting Media News Group's share of the pie if it didn't publish a daily newspaper until 2012) and the resulting loss of preprint business in its newspapers in Ann Arbor, Flint, Saginaw and Bay City, which were reeling from the then-current collapse of the auto business already -- said, as a result, "You know, we can do this today. We don't need to keep the daily newspaper alive for a couple more years. We can turn it into a thrice-weekly and suffer no ill effect -- because, except for Sunday, no one buys the paper for anything except ads anyway." (Last part my interpretation.)<br />
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At first the answer was to kill the Ann Arbor News -- which, although a reasonably large and seemingly successful paper, had had market penetration problems for years and was getting weaker as Ann Arbor became ever more a suburb of Detroit -- replacing it with a twice-weekly mix of hometown-weekly and alt-magazine -- and drop the other papers back to three days a week. Demand -- apparently much of it by politicians who wanted their night meetings covered -- brought back a fourth day outstate. But the seed was planted. What was the point of a Saturday paper if people could get high school sports online? What was the point of a Monday paper if the only real news in it was sports? And what was the point of a Tuesday paper since Tuesday had always been the weakest ad day after Saturday? Here was a model. Maybe. Maybe we didn't want to do it, but we did it.<br />
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For the rest of Michigan, a different model was tried later -- the Detroit model of seven-day publication, but three-day home delivery. Apparently the conclusion Advance has drawn is either 1) if you're only going to home deliver three days, you don't need the other four days in print, or 2) further research is needed to see if you can get away with just the three-day-a-week print paper.<br />
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Also, it appears -- I'm not completely sure -- that Advance is going to a more blog-centric model for breaking news. Now, the Los Angeles Times has done this online, but then has people write a print paper story as well, or offers one or the other -- it seems that in New Orleans nothing will be written specifically for the paper, everything will be repurposed. Really, the print paper will only exist as something for people to be weaned off of. And this is quite a volte-face, for until recently Advance had been using Birmingham as a model of its commitment to print.<br />
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(At this point it is worth noting that <a href="http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/mediawire/175370/times-picayune-employees-could-learn-next-week-if-theyll-be-part-of-nola-media-group/#more-175370">one of Newhouse's advisers is Jeff Jarvis. </a>Longtime readers of this column will, of course, know that name. Jeff has at least, apparently, learned not to scream, "Print is dead." One assumes he is now getting consulting contracts from people who do not wish him to say that.)<br />
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To do this, Advance in Alabama and Louisiana is getting rid of a number of things:<br />
<ul>
<li>As in Michigan, it's getting rid of its old newspaper buildings, moving reporters and assigning editors into smaller downtown offices.</li>
<li>By reorganizing itself as a new company (NOLA Live) or whatever that's in a fundamentally different business (no longer a daily newspaper), it is in essence laying off its entire staff and hiring back who it wants -- at, in many cases, doubtless lesser pay.</li>
<li>By eliminating seven-day delivery, it will abandon that sizable chunk of senior-citizen readers who don't have computers or who buy the paper every day just to work the puzzle -- but whom advertisers have no interest in reaching, because they don't buy anything. It can do this because with new ABC rules including digital editions, the hit to circulation figures will not be as extensive.</li>
<li>By eliminating a lot of production costs, it will be able to adjust its profits -- and the Newhouse family's checks -- more toward what an online site can actually produce, which will never be what print could.</li>
<li>By making the print product into essentially a higher-class triweekly, it can compress advertising into three days, presumably making it a more efficient vehicle for the print advertiser.</li>
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One has to assume that based on its experiences in Michigan, Advance believes this will work. One also has to assume that Advance, by being willing to wager the farm in a way no one else has, is willing to say -- if it doesn't work and our papers fade into irrelevance, well, they were going out of business anyway in the long run and at least we weren't subsidizing the same level of losses in the short. If we lose the franchise, we were going to lose it anyway. This is, after all, the company that let the Long Island Press, one of America's largest dailies, simply wither into insignificance. And let's not forget the St. Louis Globe-Democrat.<br />
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As an earlier edition of this blog noted, we have now entered the era where some cities will have daily newspapers and others will not depending merely upon who owns the franchise. (Papers near New Orleans, such as the Baton Rouge Advocate, have said they will continue seven-day publication. Indeed, there are still seven-day papers near Detroit.) What happens to the daily paper in your town now depends on its owners' long-term business strategy.<br />
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What this means to the people of New Orleans who have seen the Times-Picayune as part of their city's rebirth; what this means to the people of Birmingham who have seen the News as a vital part of investigating the county's miasma of bad decisions; what this means to the people of Huntsville, Mobile and Pascagoula, who suddenly live in cities without daily newspapers -- this remains to be seen. Some opportunists will jump on this bandwagon in other cities, others will "study it with interest" but hold back to see the advertising numbers at the end of the year. The same thing is happening in England, where the Johnstone Press <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=49188">has said </a>that by 2020 it expects most of its papers to be weeklies, whereas <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=49362&c=1">another major publisher </a>has said it is basing its strategy on seven days in print now and then.<br />
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Advance did a heck of a job in its own papers of trying to spin this as a wonderful thing, an advance, so to speak, and not do the usual newspaper thing of "To our readers, we regret that circumstances cause us to..." And as meters and pay walls grow in popularity, more publishers will be saying -- if I can get circulation revenue off digital, why should I pay for diesel fuel and ink? On the other hand, the daily print newspaper has been a market avatar. Why throw away the thing that makes you distinctive? As <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/28/business/media/the-times-picayune-new-orleans-and-a-doomed-romance.html?pagewanted=all">David Carr noted</a> in the New York Times, "A newspaper, even one short on advertising, is a great ad for at least one thing: the paper itself. The constancy of a daily paper — in
the rack at the convenience store on Frenchman Street or on the tables of the coffeehouse on Maple Street — is a reminder to a city that someone is out there watching. Important journalism will still be done at The Times-Picayune. ... But you have to wonder whether it will still have the same impact when it doesn’t land
day after day on doorsteps all over the city."<br />
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And what does this do to the civic leadership of these towns -- is a daily newspaper something like a symphony orchestra, something you need to have to be taken seriously even if it doesn't make money? (The civic leadership is still largely people who grew up with and were validated by newspapers.) And while we're at it, what exactly is Warren Buffett's strategy for Omaha and Richmond and Greensboro?<br />
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But we have now crossed a line. A major newspaper publisher has said it is no longer necessary for a major city to have a major daily print newspaper. Now, the ball is in the hands of the readers. My gut feeling: Many of them will say how sorry they are and how much they miss it -- on social media, as they look for links to things friends tell them they want to read..<br />
<br />Davisullhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02871644412923946894noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3266566846399659219.post-18944665104308983952012-03-30T12:18:00.003-04:002012-03-30T12:18:57.198-04:00Final LaurelsOn Thursday, the <a href="http://jimromenesko.com/2012/03/29/laurel-miss-leader-calls-final-edition/">Laurel Leader-Call</a> in Mississippi -- a four-day-a-week newspaper for the last few months, which still qualified it as a daily -- suddenly announced, We're done. This is it. Goodbye. Doubtless the death-of-print people will hail this as another example of the triumphs of the digital world.<br />
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But -- Laurel, Miss.? This is even weirder an epicenter than lower Michigan.<br />
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It seems to be in large part a different story, one that's been seen before. Community Newspaper Holdings owned the Leader-Call, and had people in the community write local columns. One of them was Jim Cegielski, who moved to Laurel in 1996, possibly -- it's hard to track some of this stuff -- from right here in Burlington County, N.J. (He may be the same Jim Cegielski who wrote a fan book about Howard Stern, or he may not.) At any rate, when the newspaper holocaust started in the mid-2000s, CNHI apparently cut off its freelance local columnists' pay, asking them to write free. (Getting this from a<a href="http://thereviewnews.net/v2/content.aspx?IsHome=1&MemberID=1799&ID=14493"> fuzzy copy </a>of a front page of the ReView.) Among them were Cegielski and some other local citizens, including Mark Thornton, who became editor of the ReView, who was a local businessman. They started a competing weekly newspaper, the ReView of Jones County, which <a href="http://irjci.blogspot.com/2012/03/daily-succumbs-to-local-weekly-in-s.html">delighted in pointing out </a>what it considered the shortcomings of the Leader-Call. It also pointed out that the Leader-Call's owners were based in Alabama. Didn't know there was an Alabama-Mississippi feud, but apparently.<br />
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This wasn't a matter of a small newspaper not having a Web presence -- the Leader-Call posted everything, while it appears that the ReView kept stuff behind a paywall. It's hard to tell, there's little online documentation. But we've seen this before in small towns. Big newspaper company lets go of publisher, editor, columnists, whoever. Publisher, editor, columnists, whoever, being the sort who have determined they plan to spend their lives in this community, get P.O.'d and start their own weekly newspaper. They defy the conventions of the newspaper business and get personal about the competitor. They often run articles with a bit more of an attitude than the competition, and go to John Q. Storekeeper and say, Now don't you want to keep your money in the community?. Local merchants put their ads in the locally owned (and cheaper) competitor. As there aren't that many local merchants, the established paper's profit margin quickly falls away.<br />
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The publisher of the upstart always says that the big, bad chain paper isn't serving the local community. And it very well may not be. However, it usually was serving the community just fine until it let him or her go. (How many upstart weeklies and websites and journalism critiques are started by people whose initial motive is revenge!) There's nothing wrong with this at all. It's old-fashioned newspaper warfare. And today, the winner doesn't feel the need to go to six days a week, because daily obits and the like can be published online. But it doesn't say very much about the future of journalism in print or online. It says a lot more about, don't piss off the wanna-be opinion makers in a small town. If Jim Cegielski indeed was the guy who wrote a book about Howard Stern, CNHI should have known that he was going to take having his pay cut as 1) the Evil Empire against the Little Guy and 2) don't be bound by the conventions of propriety.<br />
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At my first job, in Richmond, Ind., we had a weekly paper, the Graphic, run by a man named <a href="http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Big+media+target+weekly+newspapers.-a070396132">Vic Jose.</a> Our paper had no classified base because the Graphic basically gave away the ads. It merely needed enough money to enable Vic Jose to opine every week on what was wrong with Richmond and the world. (Full disclosure: His son lived next door to my mother and I went to grade school with his nephew. In the small world of the North Side, Vic Jose was a childhood friend of Kurt Vonnegut Jr., whose uncles owned the Vonnegut Hardware Co. where my grandfather and grandmother worked.) Vic was often attacking the Pal-Item. The Pal-Item rarely even deigned to notice Jose. In part, Vic was running an alt-weekly without the counterculture gloss. Vic was a hard-working, often crusading journalist tilting against the windmills of the power structure and the Way Things Are, who cared deeply about his community, his country, freedom of the press, and the role of the small-weekly, mad-as-hell type newspaperman. But because the Graphic very clearly was the voice of Vic Jose, it could say things that the Pal-Item -- both when it was owned by a prominent local family and when it was owned by Gannett -- thought it could not do. The Pal-Item saw itself as part of the civic leadership of the community. It felt it needed to reflect a balanced opinion. It was in the same civic sphere as the Second National Bank and Knollenberg's. Vic Jose saw himself as Vic Jose. He was a leader in the chamber of commerce, he was a contributor to civic causes, but the newspaper reflected him and not "responsible opinion." I expect the Laurel Leader-Call saw itself the same way as the Pal-Item. The ReView doubtless saw itself as a guerrilla band of local journalists saying what the Leader-Call wouldn't say, couldn't say. All well and good. But if the Leader-Call had kept paying those community columnists, they would have seen it as a perfectly fine newspaper. The lesson to take from this is: The people who want to be community journalists are not doing it because they care about your newspaper. They care about what they want to say. They can turn on you in a second. Deal with them at your peril.<br />
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CNHI wasted no time in shutting off the Leader-Call's server. That paper is just gone. You can only see some cached pages. That says to me, boy, this was personal. Someone in CNHI, I'd say, just got tired of dealing with the problem in Laurel. The question now is: What does the ReView of Jones County become? Does it reach out to all the people who liked the Leader-Call? In doing so, does it become more of a typical newspaper? Time will tell.Davisullhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02871644412923946894noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3266566846399659219.post-59898922177922398972012-03-13T11:02:00.002-04:002012-03-13T13:43:12.767-04:00Time Fades AwayWent last night to hear Michael Lisicky speak on Gimbels at the New York Public Library and promote his book, "<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Gimbels-Has-Michael-J-Lisicky/dp/1609493079">Gimbels Has It"</a> -- and announce he's working on a book about Filene's in Boston as well as a "memories" sort of book about all four big department stores in Baltimore, not only Hutzler Bros., which he wrote about previously, but Hochschild Kohn & Co., Stewart & Co., and the Hecht Co./Hecht Bros/May Co. operations that ended up being one. Michael is such an engaging speaker -- I didn't realize he also is the Baltimore town crier. If you love old department stores, and you see him listed in your area, take the time and the effort. Amazingly, the building in which he spoke -- not the main library, but across the street -- was built as the store of Arnold Constable & Co. when it moved to Fifth Avenue from Broadway.<br />
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Michael was asked by a member of the audience why Gimbels did not survive, and he cited its stubborn resistance to moving "out of the middle" -- department stores had tried to be all things to all people, and when they lost the "price" market to discounters such as, originally, E.J. Korvette and Kmart and Caldor, some, such as Macy's -- remember, its longtime motto was "It's Smart to be Thrifty" -- and Bloomingdale's realized they could never underbid those stores, particularly on hard goods, and traded up. Gimbels continued to appeal to its traditional customer, but more of its traditional customers were leaving for lower-priced stores and, more important, their children just didn't come in at all -- they didn't see themselves as Miss or Mrs. Oldsmobile Kingsford Briquette. And as Michael noted, if you don't get the next generation through the doors, you are doomed.<br />
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Gimbels in New York also pursued an odd branch policy -- all in for a few years in the 1960s, then they forgot about branches until Bruce Gimbel came up with the Gimbels East idea to redefine Gimbels with an upscale store on the Upper East Side. But, like Oldsmobile with the Aurora, Gimbels East couldn't redefine Gimbels in the New York mind when Gimbels itself was sitting a few miles away. Macy's, Michael noted, had branches all across the country -- San Francisco, Kansas City, etc. -- from which ideas like "the Cellar" emerged. While Gimbels operated in four markets and was generally profitable outside New York, it tended not to see its units as sources of inspiration -- where would McDonald's be if the Big Mac, originated in Pittsburgh, had been ignored by corporate? Gimbels was Just Doing Business, which had worked well for so long but whose era was grinding to a close.<br />
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Michael didn't mention (his talk being about department stores) the effect that new entrants into the clothing field had on department stores as well. Indianapolis in my childhood was not a city of specialty stores, having essentially Morrison's and a couple of smaller stores (Peck & Peck, Schamberg's) for women and Harry Levinson for men, as well as L. Strauss & Co., a clothing store that was more like a department store. But even cities such as Detroit with many more clothing stores -- Winkelman's, Himelhoch's, and B. Siegel for women along with the national Franklin Simon chain and neighborhood stores like Belle Jacob, and Hughes Hatcher Suffrin for men -- weren't operatiing in the complicated environment that started to emerge in malls with the Gap and the Limited, and then exploded into today's world of Old Navy and Zara and H&M and niche stores like White/Black and Hot Topic. While the discounters, and later the big-box stores, ate away at department stores in appliances, furniture, and home goods, the smaller clothing stores pulled in the younger fashion shopper -- in part by being a place Mom would never take you.<br />
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So when Michael was asked -- as I'm sure he always is -- could different management have saved Gimbels, his answer was -- probably not. "Macy's," as we know it today, is not even Macy's -- which went bankrupt in the 1990s -- but Federated Department Stores, which decided that "Macy's" was a brand that meant "quality department store" across the country in a way that "Lazarus" or "Bullock's" or even "Marshall Field & Co." didn't. And "Macy's" refers to a company that operates most of the surviving store units of the divisions of Allied and Associated and Mercantile and Dayton Hudson and Marshall Field's that DID successfully trade up in the 1960s but became too beset by competition to operate as independent units -- too much money spent on having divisional staffs, different advertising, different tags, different profiles -- but when you go into a Macy's, chances are you're going into what still looks in some way like a Bamberger's or a Denver Dry Goods or a Foley's or an L.S. Ayres. While the names didn't survive, the companies didn't survive, most of the downtown temples of retailing didn't survive, the Macy's store in Cherry Hill Mall was built in 1961 -- it's now 51 years old, younger by less than a decade than then were the downtown Ayres and Block's stores I went to as a child in the 1960s that felt like Chartres Cathedral. It just doesn't feel that way because it was built the same way department stores are built today and not the way they were built even just 10 years before Bamberger's opened in Cherry Hill.<br />
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So Michael's answer -- and he, as I do, loves department stores of the past not just for the trivia and stories but because these stores defined their communities and their communities defined them, Trenton was Dunham's and Wilmington was Kennard's and therefore Trenton was not Wilmington -- was, with a tinge of sadness, that these things just went away. Society changed, retailing changed, people's self-perception changed, the middle class changed, transportation changed, zones of safety changed, and in the end we're pretty lucky that all these stores operating as Macy's are still here, let alone the occasional Boscov's and Bon Ton and Younkers.<br />
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The implication this has for the newspaper business is, alas, pretty clear. We won't get into it now, but we will in a subsequent column.Davisullhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02871644412923946894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3266566846399659219.post-10506813434996655542012-03-01T09:59:00.000-05:002012-03-01T10:03:00.617-05:00Department Store Buildings of York, Pa., No. 2As mentioned in the previous post, York, Pa., was a city of strong department stores, one of which was the base of one of the country's last department-store chains still existing. The Bon-Ton appeared to be the strong middle-class store, with the upmarket store being Charles H. Bear & Co.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLkP-L-MRFKvGaOkOs8PevJ8h5pSk6xmCp9Zzq6RnBYAal_3ZTj7kPbJ80fX5oLHGhKxh-ysQEmFdstnbPtGXdo9tt8JIMrOyLKz86y-1r_PKhDKYTrxdIgFGHqlBR-kQVhfLa-MjpjHRx/s1600/bears.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="247" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLkP-L-MRFKvGaOkOs8PevJ8h5pSk6xmCp9Zzq6RnBYAal_3ZTj7kPbJ80fX5oLHGhKxh-ysQEmFdstnbPtGXdo9tt8JIMrOyLKz86y-1r_PKhDKYTrxdIgFGHqlBR-kQVhfLa-MjpjHRx/s320/bears.bmp" width="320" /></a>Bear's was at the northwest corner of the "square" -- which, as in so many Pennsylvania cities, was an intersection with the four corners notched back, presumably to allow a small town hall or market in the center in colonial times. The same thing was done in Camden, N.J., where to my knowledge no such structure was ever built in the small "square" that resulted. This is different from the "diamond" found in Wilkes-Barre or the many courthouse squares across the Midwest and Southwest in that it was simply an enlargement of an intersection and not a city block turned over to a public purpose, or even a large "market" widening such as in Reading or Harrisburg. Nevertheless, these "squares" served to anchor downtown in Allentown, Easton, and York, and I'm sure in other smaller communities.<br />
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Charles H. Bear o<a href="http://www.ydr.com/ntbf/ci_4336800">pened for business</a> in 1888, and his location never changed from 1 W. Market St. Bear, a York native, had taken over the established business of Jordan & Bro. Sometime before 1909 the business passed into the hands of his children Charles Jr. and Jennie. After World War II it was being run by, presumably, the widow and daughters of Charles Bear Jr., Anna Bear, Nora Deardorff, and Charlotte Stock. Charlotte Stock appears to have enjoyed skeet shooting, as did, <a href="http://newspaperarchive.com/huntingdon-daily-news/1969-06-09/page-4">according to this article,</a> Robert R. Rodale of Emmaus, of the famous Organic Gardening & Farming family. Not that it matters, just a curiosity. In 1970 the surviving Bear heirs sold the store to the expansion-minded Zollinger-Harned Co. of Allentown, which closed seven years later after expanding into the Lehigh Valley as well.<br />
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Here's a <a href="http://www.yorkblog.com/onlyyork/2010/12/more-memories-of-stores-in-dow.html">fine photo </a>of downtown York, looking north on George Street from Market, in the mid-1960s, before downtowns fell apart. Bear's at this point has a "modern" front, but it's a tasteful one. The photo above shows that the building has been put back as it was. The Bear store seems to have taken up at least three buildings and probably four (the low building facing the alley with what appear to be a couple of old skylights).<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBwlN1KltaUvNxKmcFblqkV-NKoTyNMuUEYHD9TfTmJKW_YR6cFJ3TGMqQPz9jxWh1l5w8pmVuYtbBU7tcglWqZjkNSrq1g0erw8zH7SBu4fQZNiUbeNcBNvxZBgECnEbmJ02TywDcQ-a-/s1600/wiests.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBwlN1KltaUvNxKmcFblqkV-NKoTyNMuUEYHD9TfTmJKW_YR6cFJ3TGMqQPz9jxWh1l5w8pmVuYtbBU7tcglWqZjkNSrq1g0erw8zH7SBu4fQZNiUbeNcBNvxZBgECnEbmJ02TywDcQ-a-/s320/wiests.bmp" width="247" /></a>Finally, a quick look at P. Wiest's Sons at 14 W. Market St., one of the stores owned by the Hydeman family and its various branches. One member, <a href="http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=45056279">Albert,</a> who ran Wiest's, became a noted collector of American art. Another, <a href="http://coins.ha.com/c/item.zx?saleNo=1136&lotNo=2455">Edwin</a>, owned "the Mona Lisa of Rare Coins." Peter Wiest founded the store far down West Market in 1848 and moved closer to downtown after a flood in the 1880s. When Harry Wiest was the only surviving Wiest son, he brought two former Gimbels executives, Leon Hydeman and James Rodgers, into the ownership. (Leon Hydeman at one time operated a small department store in Norristown, my records show, but Moses Hydeman, the family patriarch, had been in business in York.)<br />
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The York County Historical Society has an amazing collection of the business records of Wiest's showing that the Hydemans also had an interest in Yard's, a Trenton store. The same partnership also ran <a href="http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2293&dat=19361004&id=FhsnAAAAIBAJ&sjid=ZgMGAAAAIBAJ&pg=5491,3527759">Kennard's,</a> the Wilmington, Del., store, as this article obliquely indicates by mentioning James Rodgers. (The only way I knew this was that Kennard's and Yard's both had the same motto: "They do sell nice things at...(store name)." No one would copy that except for common ownership.) This operation kept itself pretty low-key; Rodgers lived in Philadelphia, and directory listings for the various stores would only mention the manager in most cases, although occasionally a reference to a Rodgers or a Hydeman would slip in. Yard's and Wiest's never were the dominant stores in their communities, and Kennard's simply outlasted the previously dominant Crosby & Hill's. The owners seemed to be willing to spend enough money to stay in the game by opening suburban branches, but not to try to win, as was shown when two Philadelphia stores invaded Wilmington in the 1950s because the local stores were seen as weak. Perhaps this was because the owners' main interests were politics, art, coins... Not every department store was owned by obsessive merchants who lived and breathed retail.<br />
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When TTPB returns to looking at old department store buildings, it will go back home again to Indiana.<br />
<br />Davisullhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02871644412923946894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3266566846399659219.post-56320203233491435442012-02-21T10:07:00.000-05:002012-02-21T10:07:14.878-05:00Department Store Buildings of York, Pa. No. 1<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgufA6601gEBYhmP-xrzPaoqslo3-iFl0B_lhGorF0Bg-80BescHPtzKEclkDA7jIDZYLWEb_OWMRxy_PzBFaTS3jdet8o2eeA2ieDJfmmteZfM5dWbrQgVM1FmtdW5MwSXXO04SI9fTZn2/s1600/york+bonton.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="270" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgufA6601gEBYhmP-xrzPaoqslo3-iFl0B_lhGorF0Bg-80BescHPtzKEclkDA7jIDZYLWEb_OWMRxy_PzBFaTS3jdet8o2eeA2ieDJfmmteZfM5dWbrQgVM1FmtdW5MwSXXO04SI9fTZn2/s320/york+bonton.bmp" width="320" /></a>York, Pa., a small city west of Harrisburg, was like Wilkes-Barre in that it was the home of a number of department stores, one of which had a significant impact on national retailing. That is the Bon-Ton, which still operates a large chain of stores. Here's a look at what was the main Bon-Ton store in downtown York; which became the corporate headquarters even after the store had closed.<br />
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The company name was S. Grumbacher & Son for many years, and it started in Trenton, N.J., as Grumbacher Bros., involving Samuel and Jacob Grumbacher. The brothers went their own ways and Samuel Grumbacher maintained his own store, which eventually became S. Grumbacher & Son when Max Grumbacher became a partner. Grumbacher's sons and sons-in-law spread across Pennsylvania to open their own Bon-Ton stores; Louis Samler in Lebanon was notably successful, but Max's move to York created the modern chain. The story of the Bon-Ton is too extensive to relate here; the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bon-Ton">Wikipedia article</a> outlines how it sucked up Hess's, AM&A's, and eventually Carson Pirie Scott and Younkers after its own regional expansion that included buying Eyerly's in Hagerstown, Md., and opening branches in downtowns close to York in the 1950s. The Bon-Ton has had struggles in recent years as one of the last determinedly midrange department store chains. A new leader was named this year, the first from outside the Grumbacher family, which still owns the company. Here's hoping he can turn the Bon-Ton around. The picture shows the Bon-Ton store at 100 W. Market St. after its false front from the 1950s had been removed; it had a large Bon-Ton logo on it and the name S. Grumbacher & Son as well. Rooftop views such as this show the persistence of the skylights that let in light before there was today's level of electric lighting, and I'm assuming that all the area with the same color of roofing belonged to the store.<br />
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York also had (not pictured here) the farthest-east branch I have been able to find of the Interstate Department Stores brands, although it is rumored there was one near Troy, N.Y. In the mid-1920s, a Stillman's was opened in the building at 31 E. Market St. that had housed James McLean & Sons, then the oldest department store in York. Rudolph Blick, one of the Interstate "old hands" from the Midwest, was the first manager, and as near as I can tell another one of them, Franklyn Mason, was in charge when the store closed in the late 1960s, when lower-end department stores were being wiped out by discounters and the York market had been invaded by Baltimore-based Hochschild Kohn with a new mall store, which led the Bon Ton and another York store, P. Wiest's Sons, to make suburban moves of their own. Stillman's was to the east of the city's other department stores. In 1940 it moved into a new building right next door that was the first air-conditioned department store in York.Davisullhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02871644412923946894noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3266566846399659219.post-82944256375468740502012-02-15T10:27:00.001-05:002012-02-15T10:27:33.641-05:00Die, Infurior Bieng!Some department store buildings from York, Pa., are lined up and were to appear today, but some things are just too good to pass by.<br />
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In Canada's National Post on Feb. 13, a writer named <a href="http://www.nationalpost.com/opinion/lonely+life+lowly+copy+editor/6142758/story.html">Yoni Goldstein </a>decided to hail what he sees as the imminent end of copy editing as a good thing for the world. That is, unless this was a piece of satire so deep that it already would have closed on Saturday night.<br />
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First, let's take it as a simple expression of his opinion. There's no point in getting into his ad hominem descriptions of we who are "cynical, gruff, and weird in social situations" or his feeling that copy editors only apply "arcane" style rules. The Washington Post once famously wrote an article in which it characterized what "all" Pentecostals are like. We all get a certain license to be idiots.<br />
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It is Goldstein's conclusion that would raise this to the level of extreme Internet utopianism. He writes:<br />
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"... Online news sites and blogs tend to be nearly completely unconcerned with the kinds of typos and grammatical errors that copy editors are paid to seek out and fix. ... <span style="line-height: 1.333em;">Still, this is no reason to get sentimental about the lowly copy editor. If he is unacknowledged within the newsroom and a relic online, it is because we as readers have evolved. We no longer sweat the small stuff of proper hyphenation and correct usage of semi-colons - it's the ideas and opinions that we're after. If a few words here and there are misspelled, so what? We're smart enough to know it hardly matters to the quality of the story or argument."</span><br />
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As I said, this COULD be simply a piece of satire written with tongue so far in cheek as to not be visible. Because it turns out that Yoni Goldstein, M.A. in English literature, 2003, at York University, former editorial board member of the National Post, former assistant editor of the Canadian magazine Maclean's, and former editor of something called the Book for Men, and current blogger for the Huffington Post Canada, also writes pieces such as this:
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"Reaction to [Prime Minister] Stephen Harper's Davos announcement of coming changes to <a href="http://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=old%20age%20security%2065%2067%20huffington%20post&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCIQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.huffingtonpost.ca%2F2012%2F01%2F30%2Foas-cuts-old-age-security-canada_n_1242069.html&ei=_dkrT7vOM6OA2wW_ue2UDw&usg=AFQjCNEYuKITf__zIsG_BwR9F6zxVUPqKQ&cad=rja" style="border-bottom-style: none; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-top-style: none; border-width: initial; color: #0088c3; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; list-style-type: none; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: none; outline-width: initial; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_hplink">Old Age Security</a> was predictable. "Poor old people" was the general tenor -- one day they're heading jauntily toward retirement at 65, but now, because of our emotionless jerk of a prime minister, they'll have to work an extra two years.
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"Well, boo hoo. Am I the only one unmoved by the 'Won't someone think about the old people' cries? Because it seems to me that working an extra two years is the least old people and soon-to-be-old baby boomers can do for the rest of us....
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"Oldies have already been working for 40 years; they're used to the routine and it's my understanding that old people love sticking to routines -- that they turn into shriveled head cases when their daily schedules don't follow predictable patterns. So staying at work (combined with regular consumption of prunes) is actually the healthiest option for them....
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"We know that we know more than you -- we've grown up in a world where all knowledge is available at the click of a mouse. The collective wisdom of the Internet trumps your meandering stories of personal hardships. We're the wise ones, not you.
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"So, old people, it's time to get up off the couch and make yourselves useful. No more free rides here."
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So at this point, I might be saying: Yoni, what you would truly need a copy editor to tell you is, I didn't know Jonathan Swift, but you're not Jonathan Swift. At some point, you've got to put a phrase in, a wink-wink, that says, "Hey, folks, I'm writing this as satire." Simply being over the top no longer counts, because people who really believe what you're poking fun at have been there before you and have said it already. Part of the collective wisdom of the Internet is that it is impossible to be over the top. Someone will try to surpass you just to show he or she can. And despite the old saw, words can harm.
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When the Internet era was just catching fire, Mickey Kaus, one of the earliest big-name political bloggers, wrote enthusiastically about the layoff of copy editors (in what by today's terms would be small numbers) at the Los Angeles Times. I can't find it in a search of <a href="http://www.fray.slate.com/blogs/blogs/kausfiles/default.aspx?p=15">Kausfiles, </a>it was years ago. Kaus' point was that some reporter he knew at the Times could write, as he saw it, flawless copy on a wristwatch keypad, and that all that copy editors did was mangle this 100 percent wordsmithing with their useless questions and "arcane" rules. It was clear that Kaus had had his subjunctive modes tied up in a knot about this for some time. He was not being satirical.
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In this, he reminded me of a former editor at a newspaper far, far way and his tale to me of why he had abolished the local copy desk: "I'm a smart guy. I was a reporter for 20 years. Copy editors asked me a lot of dumb questions. Savvy?" Well, I savvied, and praised the stars I was leaving.
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He may have been a smart guy, though I must humbly admit it was not apparent to me. He may have written flawless copy. He may have had copy editors who were obsessed with small points or arbitrary rules they couldn't back up. My experience in 35 years in newspapers is that most reporters do not write flawless copy, and about two-thirds of them know that. Those who do write nearly flawlessly for the most part appreciate the backstop. Those who do not and know it appreciate that someone is there to make their work better or at least stop it from being misinterpreted. Those who do not appreciate it tend to see writing as a form of masturbation -- I'm giving myself pleasure, and man, it feels good.
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So either Yoni Goldstein thought he was aiding the cause of copy editing -- but did so too subtly that it was too easy to believe him, in a world where business-side cost cutters, egomaniacal writers, editors in chief obsessed with "feet on the street" are constantly looking for justification to get rid of all those picky, delaying, self-righteous copy editors who don't understand today's world -- because if you spell the prime minister's name Steven Harbor and follow it with "He're one superdooper dickhed," you'll get more web hits than a reasoned piece of political commentary will draw. ("Fuckin'-A! The prime minister's a dickhead! Pass me another Molson.") Canadian humor can be more savagely cutting than American. Or perhaps Yoni really does spend his days doing hand jobs. Perhaps he will enlighten us. A contribution to support the <a href="http://www.copydesk.org/">American Copy Editors Society -</a>- which does have Canadian members -- would be a nice way to show it.Davisullhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02871644412923946894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3266566846399659219.post-54563829695842389752012-02-09T10:01:00.000-05:002012-02-09T10:04:39.931-05:00Department Store Building of the Wyoming Valley<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilk_6WJhmAUz6e8eo2mYM1FgotFSQAPXSx3NsOEgrUxXleXGfsERpvnWvHz1m-THQSR8q_TPSWtKX5GiYfxwyMHpLKD_JjxmAFGyXMgPNS9MnVBojw2IjgkWHqDBrkcl5Ds4eTJUF3H6SK/s1600/wilkes-barre.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilk_6WJhmAUz6e8eo2mYM1FgotFSQAPXSx3NsOEgrUxXleXGfsERpvnWvHz1m-THQSR8q_TPSWtKX5GiYfxwyMHpLKD_JjxmAFGyXMgPNS9MnVBojw2IjgkWHqDBrkcl5Ds4eTJUF3H6SK/s320/wilkes-barre.bmp" width="320" /></a></div>
Enough philosophizing about newspapers. Time to return to looking at buildings that once housed the department stores that were a city's pride.<br />
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Wilkes-Barre, Pa., "the heart of the valley that warms the nation" in the days of anthracite heating, was a great city for department stores -- there were five locally owned major stores in the mid-1950s on one block of South Main Street and around the "diamond," as Public Square is sometimes called. Of those, two buildings remain, one of which amazingly is still a downtown department store.<br />
<br />
First, the fallen. Bergman's Department Store was founded during World War I by Justin Bergman. I have not been able to discover whether he was related to the Bergman who owned the Bon-Ton store in Altoona, one of myriad Bon Tons not related to the York, Pa.-based and still-existing Bon-Ton chain. While Bergman's remodeled in 1950 and held an open house, by 1958 it was gone from downtown, having moved to the area's first major shopping center, the Narrows in Edwardsville, which drew from all the towns in the area. Often this sort of thing followed a fire in those days, but I can't see any reference to one. The Bergman family, including "Mike" Bergman Jr. and relatives Seymour and John Dimond and Charles Pfifferling, ran the store until the Hurricane Agnes floods that so devastated the city.<br />
<br />
Also a victim of Agnes was the <a href="http://wyomingvalleyphotos.blogspot.com/2008/02/lazarus-wilkesbarre.html">Lazarus Department Store,</a> 57 S. Main St., which had nothing to do with the larger Lazarus chain in Ohio. The store was founded as Lazarus Bros. by Asher and Henry Lazarus in the early 1890s after Asher Lazarus ended his partnership with Solomon Langfeld, who with his own brother Feist operated a department store in Wilkes-Barre for a number of years. In the World War I era the store was sold and reorganized as the Wilkes-Barre Dry Goods Co., which became part of the giant Claflin bankruptcy that spawned two chains. It ended up in the hands of the Milliken family's Mercantile Stores. While Mercantile, which had a strong commitment to its downtown stores, kept its chain going until 1998, the flood damage was too severe for Lazarus to reopen. Lazarus had also had a branch in Pittston.<br />
<br />
Then there was the <a href="http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=154104497937338">Isaac Long Store</a> at 17 Public Square, one of two major stores founded by Longs in Wilkes-Barre. Isaac Long's descendants Harry and Julius Stern ran the store until 1955, when it was sold to the Cleland-Simpson Co. of Scranton, operator of the Globe Store and for a time owned by John Wanamaker. It also was a victim of the flood.<br />
<br />
The l<a href="http://wyomingvalleyphotos.blogspot.com/2008/01/pomeroys-down-town-wilkesbarre.html%20http://wyomingvalleyphotos.blogspot.com/2008/01/pomeroys-down-town-wilkesbarre.html%20http://wyomingvalleyphotos.blogspot.com/2008/01/pomeroys-down-town-wilkesbarre.html">arge building</a> in the photo in the upper corner of the diamond is the other Long store, which was begun by Jonas Long and then continued as Jonas Long's Sons. The store's original address was on Market Street, which until the 1890s was as prominent a shopping street as Main Street. Jonas Long's sons Charles, Louis, Bernhard, Arthur and Edward took over the store and expanded into Scranton. That may have been too much, because the Scranton store was sold to Isaac Oppenheim and became the Scranton Dry. William MacWilliam, an executive of Fowler, Dick & Walker, then took over the Wilkes-Barre store and for a brief time it was MacWilliam's, which also had a branch in Nanticoke. In the late 1920s Allied Stores purchased it and made it a Pomeroy's unit, thus this is one of the three surviving former downtown Pomeroy's stores, with the others in Pottsville and Easton. Harry Adamy, a spokesman for Pennsylvania merchants in fighting the sales tax in the 1930s, was later pulled away from Lazarus to manage Pomeroy's -- a cross-chain switch that was very rare, people generally moved from store to store within one company..<br />
<br />
Pomeroy's opened a suburban branch on Route 6 in the 1960s, but the Great Macyization happened at the Wyoming Valley Mall, where what is now a Macy's was previously a Kaufmann's (Pittsburgh) and a Hess's (Allentown) and had been opened as a Zollinger's (also Allentown). Whew.<br />
<br />
Finally -- and still operating -- at the bottom left of the photo, with the greenish front, is the aforementioned Fowler, Dick and Walker, the Boston Store, now a <a href="http://www.timesleader.com/business/WILKES-BARRE_BOSCOV_rsquo_S_TIMELINE_11-05-2008.html">Boscov's</a> branch. George Fowler, Alexander Dick, and Gilbert Walker created the partnership in Wilkes-Barre in 1879 after having worked together in Meriden, Conn.. In 1881 Fowler and Walker moved to Binghamton, N.Y., to open a second store. Walker later opened a third in Evansville, Ind., and the men remained partners even though they were spread across the country. FD&W had other branches across Pennsylvania, New York, and Indiana at various times. In Wilkes-Barre, descendants of Alexander Dick took prominent roles, among them Malcolm Burnside and Millard DeMun; in the 1960s the chairman of the store was named Alexander Dick. (FD&W was clearly a Scots store, although not part of the great Scottish-American department store chain Syndicate Trading.) My colleague Jim Remsen, who grew up near Scranton, remembers radio ads mentioning "Fowler, Dick & Walker." In Binghamton, however, the store was called "Fowler's," perhaps because that was where the Fowler heirs mostly lived. FD&W was sold to Al Boscov in 1980.<br />
<br />
A couple of the links here are to a fine local history photo site called "Wyoming Valley Photos" posted by someone I can only see identified as James.<br />
<br />
<br />Davisullhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02871644412923946894noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3266566846399659219.post-65016099201811391032012-02-02T11:03:00.000-05:002012-02-02T11:04:13.399-05:00Onward, Part ThreeIn the early days of “TTPB” it tried to make the point that print offered a pipeline into readers’ homes, and that the newspaper business could forget the concept of a pipeline at its peril. It is cheered by <a href="http://www.goupstate.com/article/20120118/ARTICLES/201191010">the endorsement of print </a>by Halifax Media, the new owners of the former NYT Regional papers. It hopes the new owners in San Diego find their way. At the same time there are decisions such as that of Booth Newspapers to cut back home delivery to such an extent as to try to force people to get the news online (or at their own inconvenience), which, as <a href="http://www.newsandtech.com/whats_new/article_4022e34c-3aeb-11e1-9f55-0019bb2963f4.html">Doug Page notes </a>in a controversy-drawing article in News & Tech, simply changes them from one among 1,400 daily newspapers to one of about 100 million websites.<br />
<br />
These moves say that the newspaper business is no longer just a one-size-fits-all model in which the New York Times and the Kingman Daily Miner essentially do the same thing. Different companies try different strategies. Time will tell which succeed. And the end product is that cities that now have daily newspapers may not have them, while other cities will – a daily newspaper may be like an Olive Garden, there’s one here and one there, but not one way over there. Not every town big enough to have a daily newspaper has a Macy’s, and nowadays not every town big enough to have a Macy’s has a daily newspaper.<br />
<br />
This seems inevitable, though regrettable.
But then, the files of the Library of Congress are filled with old titles that when they closed left their cities without a daily newspaper. Here in New Jersey, Union City, Hoboken, Dover, Passaic, Long Branch, Toms River, Elizabeth, Red Bank, all had local daily newspapers that foundered for one reason or another. Typically a larger nearby competitor would pick up part of the slack, but no one covered the heck out of the town in the same way. And local people said, “Sure was nice when we had that Elizabeth Journal,” and either read another paper or watched “Good Morning America.” Somehow for most the gap was filled. (The people in City Hall, of course, varied between exultation – we no longer have someone watching our every move – and agony – we no longer have someone doing a story every day about our every move!)<br />
<br />
News is not a necessity. The closing of their local Food Fair or Wrigley Market did not stop people from going to the grocery. Newspapers’ Achilles’ heel has always been their sense of indispensability, because for the most part the people who work for them, business side or news side, find them indispensable and therefore feel, wrongly, that they need do little to promote their use. (Remember the downbeat Renault ads in the 1970s at the end of which George C. Scott intoned, “It sells itself”? Sure are a lot of Renaults on the roads here.)
Most of us believe in what we do, and many of us are terrified that we are doing the wrong thing. We need to listen to owners who say, yes, there’s a future for print as well as a future for newspapers in digital. We also need to look for owners who are willing to support that with marketing, with promotion, yes, with progress editions if they want, with intelligent efforts focused on the desires of readers and not the importance of the First Amendment. (The First Amendment is vital, but it’s not going to make me buy a newspaper.)<br />
<br />
Newspapers are too un-hip to do a Cadillac-style reinvention to the voice of Robert Plant, but they need to avoid how Oldsmobile spiraled into the grave by having a choir out of a 1950s soap ad sing, “This is not your father’s Oldsmobile.” Because we cannot simply change ourselves into the Huffington Post. And we need to not listen to the people who say, there is no future for you unless you do exactly what I say, which, amazingly enough, is exactly what I want to do.<br />
<br />
We need to remind ourselves that a website got it wrong about Paterno, CBS got it wrong about Paterno, and yes, some newspapers got it wrong about Paterno, but the AP didn’t, the New York Times didn’t, my own newspaper didn’t, most newspapers didn’t, not in print or online, and the reason is that we don’t see ourselves as organizations throwing out the baby to have the coolest 21st-century bathwater you’ve ever seen. At the same time, we need to remember that Hearst’s people made things up, Pulitzer’s people made things up, there have always been and always will be journalists who make things up or publish half-baked rumors because they’re good stories.<br />
<br />
Part of the reason newspapers cracked down on this was that their advertisers wanted a reliable, truthful, respected medium in which to advertise so that their own ads would be seen as believable. Left to ourselves, we could have kept on writing the legend. Storytelling is easier when you can fill in the gaps with speculation or obtain the information by, say, tapping into someone’s voicemail illegally; when you can say, “Hey, someone told us this, what are we going to do, not publish it?” Yes. Someone will publish it anyway these days. It just shouldn't be you.<br />
<br />
We need to acknowledge that in many ways we will always be unhip and that even if we end up publishing only a tablet-based product with an associated website, what we do is compile, create, and distribute a product to customers, and the ideals of journalism and the needs of the writer are part of that but are not the core or only competency of the industry. We want to meet people’s needs for a journalistic product, but we are not foundations to underwrite journalism. It just seemed that way when newspapers were licenses to print money. A foundation may be a successful journalistic model, on a small scale with a tight focus. But it has not been terribly successful in the newspaper business and it would be folly to try to make ourselves into it.
As Page wrote, “Your job as a newspaper executive is to figure out how to successfully operate in these tricky times while still holding your business true to what it is: a newspaper.” It is easier to ignore this if you believe that your business is simply journalism.<br />
<br />
If you want to be a pure journalist, with no strings holding you back in your service to society; if you want to analyze the communications patterns of a wired world and write articles on paradigm shifts; that world offers you more opportunity than ever before. Good luck to you. And then there is the newspaper business, which, despite what its many critics say, does not exist only as a sort of catalyst to allow the creation of journalism. Unlike the motto of “Newspaper Death Watch,” the death of newspapers would not necessarily bring about the rebirth of journalism. It would just be the death of newspapers. Journalism might be better. It might be worse. Newspapers are not what holds journalism back from the salvation of the world. The inherent limits of journalism and human nature do that.
Newspapers exist to bring a community together and they exist to sell dry goods. They exist to shine a light on society and they exist to not gratuitously offend longtime readers. They exist to take principled stands against the misuse of power and they exist to be part of the town’s power structure. They exist to quote professors decrying the hold sports has over their campuses and they exist to run 16 columns of college sports results on Sunday. Newspapering is a business, and journalism is an idea.<br />
<br />
Newspapers employ journalists, but do not exist simply to enable them. If that becomes the case, the focus becomes them and not the customers. Which of the business practices being trotted out now will be successful, we will see. But newspapers need to remember what they are about, even though scores of journalists will deride them for that and work to make them feel uncomfortable about themselves.Davisullhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02871644412923946894noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3266566846399659219.post-91513581731227399532012-01-30T10:00:00.000-05:002012-01-30T10:00:06.315-05:00Onward, Part Two<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Perhaps because we are enjoined to spew out of our mouths
that which is lukewarm, it’s always been hard to say, when confronted with the
imperfections of newspapers as opposed to the ideals of journalism – well, this
newspaper may not be perfect, it may not be as good as it can be, but perhaps
it’s better than any of the alternatives that could reasonably be expected to
occur. But part of it was, it was just the way things were. One didn’t speak
back in those days of how international coverage was being passively underwritten
by automobile dealers and Realtors. The concept didn’t even enter one’s head.
There was advertising revenue, there was spending on news coverage, things went
into a big pot and then someone doled out the honey.</div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">At least that was the case in newsrooms, most of which were
into the 1970s before the concept of “a budget” took hold – not a news budget,
but a spending budget. Until then, you spent money, and if you were spending
too much money, the publisher told you to spend a little less for a while. The
publisher was never going to give the newsroom enough money to break the bank,
and the editor had a pretty good idea of what he could spend – but it was still
a business where, as happened in Alabama in the 1990s, the editor of Newhouse’s
Mobile paper could be talking to a company official about wanting to obtain a
sister paper’s coverage of University of Alabama football and be told, well,
why don’t you just hire your own beat writer? It was informal, ad hoc and, as
long as the owners got enough money to live their lives the way they wanted to,
not terribly complicated.</div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
We, of course, as journalists, were too high-minded and
high-status to think about things like how the money was divided up, which
brings us to progress editions. At my first two papers we did progress
editions. Whether you were a reporter or an editor, you were assigned stories
for the progress edition. (For those unfamiliar with the idea, it is a
once-a-year section extolling the community’s economic growth and prospects,
and including company-by-company profiles, which, depending upon the local view
of things, were variously 1) done totally on a journalistic basis, or 2) assigned
based on who bought ads but still were written objectively, or 3) were written
as puff pieces that were guaranteed when you bought an ad. But they were done
by the newsroom and not the advertising department.)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I, like everyone else in the newsroom, resented doing progress
editions. It wasn’t my regular job. It was shilling for someone who bought an
ad. It had no news peg. It wasn’t what I went to college to do. It did not
benefit society. That was what advertising people did – promised an advertiser
anything to get money. I was above that. I was a journalist. These were
elements from a less ethical past, when reporters took free liquor at Christmas
from the mayor. Still, I had to do it, so I tried to write the best article on
the National Automatic Tool Co. that I could. But I knew nothing about its
business, had no interest in what it did, and, to be honest, looked down on the
people who worked there, managers and workers alike, as people who spent their
lives assembling National Automatic Tools, whatever they were, while I was
living in the world of ideas, of abstractions, of political and generational
change, hanging out with hip young people who didn’t drive pickups, didn’t go
hunting, didn't follow conventional morality, and didn’t wear flannel shirts except to be cool.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the second year of my doing progress edition work – I believe
this year I had to edit the stories – I asked the managing editor, why do we,
professional journalists, have to do this crap? It is beneath us. To which he
answered: You may not have noticed, but no one advertises in January and
February. It’s winter. Most people don’t buy new cars. Most people don’t buy new houses. Knollenberg’s
and Elder-Beerman don’t run big sales. People
just buy what they have to, so other than the supermarkets, businesses don’t
advertise. This is how we make money in
January and February, by appealing to the vanity and civic pride of the Wayne
Works and the Second National Bank and the National Automatic Tool Co. They
want to advertise in the section because everyone advertises in the section and
if they don’t, someone at the Rotary will say, “I see you didn’t advertise in
the progress edition. Aren’t you for our city’s progress? Are you having, er,
financial problems?” If we didn’t do this, we would have less money and would
have to do less the rest of the year. So
go edit the damned stories.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I was amazed, given that the American economy no longer is
based upon local industries such as the National Automatic Tool Co., to see not
only that progress editions are still being published, but that the reaction to
them – in this case from a journalism professor – is exactly the same. Justin
Martin, Ph.D., Honors preceptor at the University of Maine – yes, I had to look
“preceptor” up, it basically means “head of the honors program” –<a href="http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/business-news/the-biz-blog/journalism-and-business-values/160368/bangor-daily-news-progress-edition-promotes-local-businesses-advertisers/"> reacted unfavorably</a> to a progress edition in the Bangor Daily News, the local paper for
the main campus in Orono. Unlike in my day, the stories were advertorial.
Unlike in my day, the section was labeled as advertorial. But as Martin notes:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“According
to the author of the articles, these stories focused only on companies that had
previously purchased advertising from the paper. Editors, though, weren’t
transparent about this with readers. Atop each of the seven full-page articles
extolling the virtues of the businesses, there was no note to readers
indicating the stories were linked to money coming into the newspaper. The
content was delivered on broadsheet newsprint, not the smaller inserts of, say,
Best Buy offerings or Parade magazine, which set the content apart from a
paper’s own news. And the newspaper’s name listed beneath each of Fitzpatrick’s
bylines seemed likely to confuse readers into believing these were standard
news stories on <st1:state><st1:place>Maine</st1:place></st1:state> businesses.
The minuscule
disclaimer is not enough. This insert feeds readers copy that looks like vetted
news. In the version of the insert published online, the notice that the
coverage is linked to advertising is invisible unless one zooms in considerably
on the front page.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Martin – who, and I know this is a
cheap shot worthy of Michele Bachmann, not only mentions his doctorate in the tagline, but once in the
article where it is not really necessary -- is severely offended by all this. His
feeling: “Readers have virtually no way of knowing
that the upbeat coverage of the businesses is connected to paid advertising.
Even if readers saw the extremely small identification of an ‘advertising
supplement’ on the front page of insert, is that enough? Readers don’t know the
content inside is a thank-you to companies that have written checks to the
paper. The section’s front page boasts in very visible type that ‘<st1:state><st1:place>Maine</st1:place></st1:state> has a rich business history, and within these pages you’ll
find great examples. And we’ll honor seven of those businesses that have stood
the test of time with in-depth histories.’ This language leads readers to believe The
Bangor Daily News is independently appraising these companies. When flattering news coverage is in
any way linked to paid advertising, news providers have an overriding
obligation to fully disclose that quid pro quo to the public. Of course, it
would be better if news outlets simply resolved not to flirt with deceiving
their audiences in the first place.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Well, all well and good, except, of course, we have not
proved that anything in these stories is false, overwritten or deceptive beyond
the fact of their existence. The editor of the Daily News, after some hemming
and hawing, promised in the future to try to have each article labeled as “advertising.”
And I’m not writing to defend the section – it may be a piece of junk.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But here it
is 2012, after years upon years of collapse in the newspaper business, and Preceptor
Martin, Ph.D., remains as high-minded as Young Journalist Sullivan was in the
1970s. The answer of “this is how the Bangor Daily News pays its bills in the
winter” would doubtless not satisfy him. The answer of “we do this so that we
can provide more and better journalism in the news sections” would not satisfy
him either, any more than it would have me back then, although it would now.
The only answer that would satisfy him is, “Journalism must be above commerce.”
Because, of course, journalists should not have to deal with the sort of messy
matters that confront the publisher of the Daily News – or that confronted the
owners of the National Automatic Tool Co., which did not last much longer than
my story about it. Journalists place in society is to do journalism, and the car
dealers can subsidize the cost.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At this
point in my life, my prescription would be somewhat different that Martin’s,
although we might agree on some points. Make it a news section. Do two or three
good stories about business in <st1:state><st1:place>Maine</st1:place></st1:state>
and <st1:city><st1:place>Bangor</st1:place></st1:city>. Then have reporters do
stories on firms that buy ads – not just a 1x2, you have to buy a quarter-page.
Tell them the reason they are doing these stories is that today’s equivalents
of NATCO – the hospitals, the trucking companies, the firms that fill the
office parks -- are where most of the readers work. Their stories, their companies’ stories, are
usually untold in the newspaper, which will never notice them unless they go
bankrupt or have a layoff. (We will spend our time focusing on government and
agencies for the disempowered.) And no, we don’t want a piece trashing these
companies. But it doesn’t have to be slimeball stuff either. It’s just a piece
saying, here’s what the CEO or whoever says
the next year looks like for his company, and exactly what it is his company does, and what his company's local payroll is, and is that up or down from last year, and so forth. And now you, our local journalist
employee, actually know something about the people who write the checks that
pay your readers who spend money on the newspaper and its advertisers. And now
you, our local journalist employee, understand that your own paycheck comes
from much the same place. And yes, we're going to call it a progress edition, and no, we're not going to use it to critique capitalism or call for Realtors to get 2 percent commissions or ask how the CEO can live in a $1 million house while people are homeless.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But if you
can pay for more and better journalism through stratagems such as a progress
edition – which John Q. Reader is not going to give a fig about its provenance
one way or the other – in this financially challenged era, and can benefit your
newspaper, then, to channel noted journalism critic Sarah Palin, “Sell, baby, sell.” It may not be perfect, but these days it's as good as can reasonably be expected to occur.
Part Three
to come.
</div>Davisullhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02871644412923946894noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3266566846399659219.post-17487282732186130442012-01-25T10:09:00.000-05:002012-01-25T10:09:02.689-05:00Onward, Part One<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
A story for Bloomberg News<a href="http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-23/deadline-approaches-on-survival-of-newspapers-nathan-myhrvold"> by Nathan Myhrvol</a> reminds “TTPB” that
two things happened to the newspaper business as we knew it and only one of
them has to do with new approaches to journalism. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One is that the growth of the Internet provided an
alternative to classified advertising that was easier to use, less costly, and
more versatile. People started fleeing in large numbers from classified before
newspaper circulations started to follow suit. The falloff in newspaper revenue
since the high-water year of 2005 has been tremendous, but how much larger it
would have been had volume after the dot-com crash followed its usual
upward slope with the recovery. Instead, newspaper advertising volume remained
pretty flat in the first years of the 21<sup>st</sup> century, and revenue
was boosted through raising rates. It’s true that people were pounding on the
door looking for ads. It’s also clear that a lot of people were no longer
pounding on the door.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The other is that not that many of the attacks on benighted
newspapers from journalists – need we mention the name Jarvis here? -- are not only about the loss of revenue and the
industry’s generally poor, disorganized, and fitful response. Some critics have
concentrated on the interplay of the decline of the business model and the
journalism produced – the always thoughtful Howard Owens, the redesign artist Alan
Jacobson, and Alan Mutter with his continuing chronicle of the industry’s descent
into the flame. But others would have been attacking daily newspapers if
classified revenue was still storming along, if a way had been found to finance
newspapers in print as well as adapt to the Internet age. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Their criticism, to me, is that “newspapers” does not mean
the same thing as “journalism,” and either 1) should or 2) since it doesn’t,
newspapers should just die.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The momentary crisis over “Is Joe Paterno dead” shines light
on the point. Until its premature obituary Saturday night, <st1:place><st1:placename>Onward</st1:placename>
<st1:placetype>State</st1:placetype></st1:place> <a href="http://chronicle.com/article/Extra-News-Blogs-by-Studen/63474/">was being hailed</a> as an avatar
of the new way, of throwing out all the barnacles that have held back newspaper
journalism. It was being hailed
in the same way that “underground” newspapers had been hailed. It was being
hailed somewhat in the same way that the “new journalism” had been hailed. Now,
these guys at <st1:place>State College</st1:place> just made a mistake in the
same way that UPI used to make mistakes. They thought they had something and
they didn’t. Careers should not be ended. But is their process, their approach –
described in the article as “smashing some sacred journalism traditions, quaint
rituals like editing, striving for objectivity, and verifying rumors before
publication” -- truly a model for us to emulate, or is it simply the desire to
let the id run free?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There’s always something to appeal to journalists,
professors, and other critics who want to decry newspapers for being, as they forever
have been, not hip, not disinterested, and not solely devoted to the care and
feeding of journalists. They call out newspapers as institutional. Subject to
the whim of editors who may not be as knowledgeable as they should be. Closely
allied with the traditional power structure. Wary of “offending” their longtime
readers. Subject to competitive marketplace pressures. Occasionally willing to
kill stories to satisfy car dealers, real estate agents, and the like. Aimed at
a mass market that doesn’t know <st1:country-region><st1:place>Uganda</st1:place></st1:country-region>
from <st1:country-region><st1:place>Uzbekistan</st1:place></st1:country-region>.
Reporting on the deeds of institutions and not the needs of people. Mainly
printed to sell dry goods. Alternating between a principled stand against
intimidation and fear that their readers
are so easily swayed that they will lose them unless they “balance” the
editorial page 80-20. In big cities, largely staffed (until recent years) by
college-educated cosmopolitans whose interests were not the same as Joe
Sixpack’s. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And some of the critics are people who strode into
newspapers full of purpose and ideals and self-regard, as we all did, and then
were told, after writing a poetic 250-word lede or wanting to spend six months
researching the problems of adoptions from Tanzania (if there indeed are such
problems), that, well, we don’t do that. Give me 10 inches on this car crash. Some
of us said, OK, that’s what the job is, and others said that this was not what
they intended to do with their lives and talents, and therefore what they had
been told to do was wrong, irrelevant, out of date.</div>
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<br /></div>
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From the time of the penny press, through the muckracking
era, into the attempt to create PM, through the readership of I.F. Stone’s
Weekly to the era of alt-weeklies, and now to today’s world of the Huffington
Post, there have always been efforts to break the perceived stranglehold of the
establishment press, the mainstream media. And there have always been people
who portray themselves as the honest seekers of the truth as opposed to the
dull scribes, who feel that if we could just break down the walls of tradition
and process and manufacturing there would be a journalism that would finally
shine its light on the darkest corner, finally do its fullest part to end
whatever evils one perceives. Oh, and a journalism that would never, ever make
me change my lede or trim to length.</div>
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<br /></div>
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And all of us bow before this criticism and feel duly
chastened, because we know we are not as high-minded as we once were, and with
the loss of revenue we can lose faith in what we do, which, as <a href="http://www.yelvington.com/content/what-newsrooms-should-learn-kodak">Steve Yelvington</a> noted, traditionally has been to work in a business whose core competence was manufacturing
and delivering a product to people’s homes. </div>
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<br /></div>
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Newspaper companies would like to tell you that their core
competence has <u>always</u> been storytelling or creating content. They would
like to say this because in part they believe it, in part because they want to
believe it, and in part because they see the business of delivering a product
to people’s homes falling apart. But this is not what they have been.
Regardless of whether you spent gadzillions on journalism, like the New York
Times, or tried to eke out an inferior report on starvation-level expenditures,
as the Jelenic-era management of Journal Register did, the product was essentially the
same. You brought together whatever you had, news and ads, you put it on pages,
you printed them, and you delivered them. That was the business. </div>
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<br /></div>
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What you made into the content and how much you paid to get it
was secondary, and was to some extent a loss leader to give people a reason to
buy the product. Your customers were your advertisers and people who paid to
have something in their hands every day as they sipped their coffee. Your
customer was not the needs of society. Your product was not simply journalism.
You were glad that your business allowed you to commit journalism, within
certain strictures – such as not “offending” longtime readers, not being
critical of 6 percent real estate commissions, and being gingerly in covering
the affairs of the powerful who decided whether they would buy ads. It was not
ideal. It looked to ideals for inspiration and fell short. Still, the good far outweighed the bad. But to some, the fact that there was bad simply invalidated
the good.</div>
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<br /></div>
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<i>Part Two to follow.</i></div>
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<br /></div>Davisullhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02871644412923946894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3266566846399659219.post-31595256150460633152012-01-18T10:07:00.000-05:002012-01-18T10:09:37.889-05:00All the World's Knowledge, and It's TheirsOn this morning when the always unimpeachable Wikipedia<a href="http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20120118_Internet_blackout_known_as_Black_Wednesday_begins.html"> decided to show us </a>that it is not simply a group of public-spirited citizens trying to bring the benefits of the link economy to everyone, but, in the end, just another business engaged in protecting its own interests at the expense of its customers -- even though, like any business, it would say that its long-term interests are of course in its customers' benefit, what's good for General Motors is... -- it brings to mind a recent Harper's article on Amazon's control of the book business.<br />
<br />
The story isn't available free online, but it basically concentrates on the Amazon-Macmillan feud over pricing. (Here's a look at <a href="http://www.ipublishcentral.com/campaign/IPC-Newsletter/nl_aug10/market_watch.html">publishers' options </a>in the wake of that.) The piece is a jeremiad and not utterly convincing in broadening from its example to a universal argument that the gospel of "efficiency" is a corrupting influence on America. But its main argument is that companies like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Apple -- and, yes, Wikipedia, even though it is organized very differently -- are just as much monopolists as Andrew Carnegie or John D. Rockefeller. Rockefeller presented what he was doing as ultimately in the public good by rationalizing the oil business to prevent price wars that drove producers out of business and to share the cost of capital investment so that the benefits of oil could be made available to the world. Doubtless it did that. It also did many other things not quite as beneficial to all.<br />
<br />
Does that mean that Larry Page is a latter-day Henry Clay Frick? No, and it doesn't have to, although Jeff Bezos seems much more the Rockefeller of our day. We're not seeing goons going after Wobblies; those battles have been outsourced, if they are to happen at all. And instead of the railroads setting ludicrously high prices for Midwestern farmers, we see Amazon selling online books at a loss. So perhaps it is different and the innovative giants of our age are merely enabling a flowering of human culture unlike what has ever been seen. Perhaps legislation such as that Wikipedia and others are fighting are continuing attempts by the Old Economy to strangle innovation and restore monopolistic controls.<br />
<br />
On the other hand, Wikipedia told all of its users and contributors today: You may think this is yours. We've told you this is yours. But we own it. And we can do with it what we want. That's the way of monopolies and oligopolies. In the end, they get arrogant. Can't be helped, probably. That's not the point. The point is that millions of people around the world still believe, "This time, it'll be different." That coolness and connectivity are worth any price that those who offer them exact. That the people who offer them are the good side of Steve Jobs without the bad. Maybe they are. Or maybe Google is today's Standard Oil.<br />
<br />
The public needs to debate and decide, but somehow the flow of information seems to have made it harder to hear anything except talk about issues where the lines were drawn in the pre-Internet era -- so many of which still seem to be <a href="http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20120118_Corbett_aide_who_edited_journal_resigns.html?cmpid=124488429">men talking about whether women were created </a>by God as vessels for babymaking and little else.Davisullhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02871644412923946894noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3266566846399659219.post-88083119455521290202012-01-05T09:33:00.002-05:002012-01-05T09:37:40.843-05:00New Year, Same Issues?<br />
So little time, so much to do, this falls to the bottom. Thanksgiving,
Christmas, who has time to blog? So the world has probably forgotten about “TTPB.”
<br />
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But a number of interesting things have happened since last
we met:</div>
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<br /></div>
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Does <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/industries/berkshire-hathaway-completes-200m-deal-to-buy-omaha-world-herald-newspaper-company/2011/12/26/gIQAFMhrIP_story.html">Warren Buffett’s buying </a>of the Omaha World-Herald – which
included a number of smaller dailies in places like <st1:city><st1:place>Kearney</st1:place></st1:city>
and <st1:city><st1:place>Council Bluffs</st1:place></st1:city>, not that anyone
noticed – mean he sees signs of life in the newspaper business? Or does it just
mean that in his old age, Buffett, to whom the World-Herald is barely an
accounting mention, wanted to help out some fellow Omaha citizens – the company
was employee-owned – by giving them a payoff before the value of their shares
went down to nearly nothing?</div>
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<br /></div>
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Does the Albany Times-Union’s <a href="http://www.timesunion.com/business/article/Times-Union-buys-new-press-2397243.php">announced purchase of a new press </a>– an increasingly rare investment in iron – mean that there’s a future
for printed newspapers in the mind of the Hearst Corp.? Or does it just mean
that publisher George Hearst, whose name is on the company’s door, got to
finally buy the press he announced he was <a href="http://blog.timesunion.com/editors/a-new-press-for-the-times-union/844/">buying back before everything went bad</a>, one he
can leave as his legacy?</div>
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<br /></div>
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Will the move by the Columbus Dispatch to<a href="http://www.dispatch.com/content/blogs/inside-story/2011/08/new-deal-with-cincy.html"> print at modified Berliner size</a>, and print the Cincinnati Enquirer as well, find
acceptance with readers who say they like the size better? Or, by the time the
new size debuts, will people have simply found the whole thing
irrelevant regardless of size?</div>
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<br /></div>
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And is it not interesting that while a few years back,<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Barbara_News-Press_controversy"> a big ethics dustup </a>at the Santa Barbara News-Press brought condemnations down on its
publisher, in this straitened era <a href="http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/environment/muck/article_c406fde0-21f2-11e1-8afa-001871e3ce6c.html">the changes at the far larger San Diego Union-Tribune</a> (now to be called U-T San Diego) – the publisher’s saying, “Yeah,
we’re going to support a new stadium,” as well as running a jingoistic slogan
on the front page – have merited only a few harrumphs? Is this because the <st1:city><st1:place>San
Diego</st1:place></st1:city> paper has been seen in the industry as an underachiever for most of its life? Is it because the editor who was fired at <st1:city><st1:place>Santa
Barbara</st1:place></st1:city> had many friends and allies in the business
from previous jobs? Will the new publisher’s stated creed that the U-T should
be “a cheerleader and a watchdog” resonate with readers who feel that
newspapers have become cranky scolds telling John Q. Public how unenlightened
he is for being against – oh, people like a newspaper employee-blogger who would think that calling America “the world’s greatest country” is jingoistic and
lacking in journalistic objectivity rather than simply a heartfelt statement of a beloved and universally understood fact? Or is
it just that no one really cares anymore what a newspaper does?</div>
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<br /></div>
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Pretty pessimistic thoughts for this pro-print blog, but the
losses, the defections, keep piling up, each one giving you a little less money
to operate with, while – not just in the minds of the digerati, but in any
real-world scenario – creating internal resentment in companies because one has to
keep spending most of one’s money on this THING, this PRODUCT, instead of
spending it on these other new things that seem to bear more promise, while your
competitors don’t have to. And it reminds this department store fan how within the scope of a few years, department stores went from being essential to being easily ignored -- from symbols of their cities to places you went to when you had to.</div>
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For Christmas I got three department store books – <a href="http://www.vendomepress.com/the-world-of-department-stores/">Jan Whitaker’s great look </a>at department stores around the world (though primarily in the
United States, France, England and Japan), and two of the History Press’
offerings on local department stores: <a href="http://historypress.net/catalogue/mobile/productdetails.php?productid=978.1.60949.299.1">“Look to Lazarus”</a> (in Columbus) and <a href="http://historypress.net/catalogue/mobile/productdetails.php?productid=978.1.60949.398.1">“Burdines”</a> (in Miami). At
various points in one or another of them are reflected three points:</div>
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<br /></div>
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1), that as the shopping mall developed from strip centers
into enclosed regional behemoths, the mall in essence became the department
store – serving the same destination function. The department store then became
one of the less-exciting departments in the mall-cum-department store, because
its fixed costs, traditions, and multiple bureaucracies made it harder to change
than a Spencer Gifts or a Limited. Substitute “Internet,” of course, for “shopping
mall.”</div>
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<br /></div>
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2), that we need to always think about the money. Burdines Inc.,
for example, which dominated <st1:place>South Florida</st1:place>, was sold to
Federated Department Stores in the 1950s after Allied Stores, seeing an
opportunity, started opening Jordan Marsh stores nearby. Burdine’s had largely defined
the Florida resort-wear look among department stores, but didn’t have deep
enough pockets to compete with Allied on the one hand and the rise of
discounters on the other. It had a wonderful business and loyal customers and had done great work, but
just take away a small percentage of that and your profit margin is gone.
Substitute “other web sites” for “Jordan Marsh” and “discounters.”</div>
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<br /></div>
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3), that trying to cover every bet may get you to the same place as not trying to cover every bet -- it may be that you just can't win. Metropolitan department stores felt they had to
open branches everywhere to be competitive and cope with the defection of
shoppers from their downtown stores to suburban sites. But as an official of the F. and R. Lazarus Co. noted, you increase your costs nearly three times fold with three stores, but your
business doesn’t increase by the same amount, because much of it is just transferred from
one site to another. You spend X times 3 to make X times 2. As a result, service, training, and upgrading kept being
cut back, making the department stores less distinguishable from what had
previously been seen as inferior competitors. This was simply the
law of unintended consequences at work. It remains to be seen whether “multiple
platforms” is the substitute for “branches everywhere.”</div>
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If Hutzler’s in Baltimore, as noted in <a href="http://historypress.net/catalogue/mobile/productdetails.php?productid=978.1.59629.828.6">Michael Lisicky’s book</a>, had just moved its operations from downtown to Towson, it could have had
a very profitable store for years – but could not have stayed competitive in
the market as Stewart’s, Hochschild Kohn, Hecht’s, Penney’s, and Sears flooded
the market with branches. But by having to open more and more stores to remain
in the community consciousness, the company was drained – as in the end were
most of its competitors, all from trying to keep up with each other and
everyone else. Substitute “multiple platforms” for “suburban sites.” Hutzler’s was the best department
store in <st1:city><st1:place>Baltimore</st1:place></st1:city>, but that did
not save it. Its competitors were seen as perhaps not as good, but as good
enough – which put them and Hutzler’s in the same category. "Less efficient" doesn't mean "worse" -- it just means "more costly."</div>
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Well, let’s not think about that. Let’s end with a paper
that believes in print, the Washington (<st1:state><st1:place>Pa.</st1:place></st1:state>)
Observer-Reporter, as forwarded by my relative Larry Stratton: Online, this article has been read 283 times. <a href="http://www.observer-reporter.com/or/story11/01-03-2012-Papers-Editorial">Help it out.</a> Spread the word.</div>
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<br /></div>Davisullhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02871644412923946894noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3266566846399659219.post-50372339197384833702011-11-15T09:32:00.001-05:002011-11-15T11:15:29.510-05:00Third Floor, News"Irony" is, like "hopefully," one of the most "misused" words in the language -- and largely for the same reason, that it easily fills a linguistic hole, having come to mean "isn't it interestingly peculiar and perhaps ordered by fate" rather that simply "isn't it the opposite of what I just said." Personally I feel that both of them have come to these meanings through the need for a secular word like "inshallah" -- God willing, even if he doesn't really will it. In any event, it is personally ironic in the new sense that my employer announced Monday that it <a href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCcQqQIwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.philly.com%2Fphilly%2Fnews%2F133854188.html&ei=uX_CTpufKMbx0gHhs5GIDw&usg=AFQjCNHY0pMnyfDccsUOk_M3PYKHPojNkQ&sig2=ZIMc1qAUfpWgE2WbOR--2w">would be moving</a> from the building built for it in the 1920s to the building built for the department store Strawbridge & Clothier in the 1930s. I assume this means I will close out my journalistic career working in a department store, although whether that happens when I want it to or when circumstances occasion it is, well, inshallah.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLxHGqodZmBd2F_aDFNJmlGzL6iqtnP2O9_1tNKAeFLcpJmzZ6IBPnXYcOMGsaLrWTvYDO-XLIWD3ljJ3wdta2vjZPtJctOCtulBRSKCAn2RUhDkMtOi_85SSuDExUt_XyDWX_7QzWYxd0/s1600/strawbridge.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="177" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLxHGqodZmBd2F_aDFNJmlGzL6iqtnP2O9_1tNKAeFLcpJmzZ6IBPnXYcOMGsaLrWTvYDO-XLIWD3ljJ3wdta2vjZPtJctOCtulBRSKCAn2RUhDkMtOi_85SSuDExUt_XyDWX_7QzWYxd0/s200/strawbridge.bmp" width="200" /></a>We'll be on the third floor -- not just our newsroom, but one newsroom for both papers plus the website, and people from other departments there as well. The payoff for us and the city is apparently a desire to turn the current semi-dead zone on Market Street between Sixth and 12th Streets -- there are lots of stores, but not the sort to appeal to conventioneers or 21st-century yuppies -- into a brightly lit and happening place. Inshallah. Part of that will be video screens displaying the news from Philly.com. Perhaps it will be called Inquirer Square, but it is more likely to be Philly.com Square if it comes to that.<br />
<br />
According to <a href="http://departmentstoremuseum.blogspot.com/2010/07/strawbridge-clothier-philadelphia.html">BAK's Department Store Museum,</a> a wonderful site for photos, logos and store directories, the third floor of Strawbridge & Clothier in an era many of us would remember was: Pickwick dresses and coats, misses' dresses and sportswear, Today's Woman, contemporary dresses and sportswear, New Editions, Trend Shop, Country Club sportswear, Devon Shop, Philadelphia Shop, furs, bridal salon, millinery, and Junior World. In other words, the province of middle, upper middle, and lower upper class women. I guess I'd rather be there than in toys and hardware, which seems more like us but was on eight -- that's right, you went to the eighth floor of a department store to buy paint, and then carried it on the elevator or down seven escalators, past notions and jewelry and out to get on the subway or to your car in a nearby garage. Just unimaginable today, and just normal back then. I wonder if they sold ladders.<br />
<br />
Certainly I will mourn leaving our building. I remember coming for my tryout in June 1983, taking a walk on Sunday, turning onto Broad Street, seeing the Ivory Tower of Truth, and thinking, wow, if I get hired here, I have made the big time. Most newspapers are diving out of their buildings as fast as they can, whether old ones as in Worcester or new ones as in Iowa City, because they were built with now-unneeded pressrooms and mailrooms to stuff thousands of copies of papers thick with now-lost classified advertising with now-nonexistent inserts, and had room for lots of classified ad takers to answer the phone taking those now-lost ads, and room for prepress operations to prepare ads that now come in as PDFs, and at lots of papers, alas, room for now-laid-off copy desks to prepare the next day's paper, city by city. You can stick most newspapers' local operations in a small corner of an office park now, so it's at least nice that we still need 125,000 feet plus people working at the printing plant and at our South Jersey office.<br />
<br />
It wasn't the Internet era that caused the New York Daily News to leave the <a href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=4&ved=0CD4QFjAD&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.aviewoncities.com%2Fnyc%2Fdailynewsbuilding.htm&ei=qIHCTrWAA4bl0QGr9q2dDw&usg=AFQjCNEUgWecT7NCQ3V4JzI8fz2aD86pPw&sig2=OcOTfSZ4Vc9uOj2mSacvsg">beautiful building</a> built for it on East 42nd Street, or the Cincinnati Enquirer to depart 617 Vine (which was kind of a dump at the end) for a downtown office building. With satellite printing plants, the space they had and the way it was configured was unworkable. In some ways we should have left 400 N. Broad years ago, after we moved the pressroom out to Upper Merion, but times were good enough (and our neighborhood was just marginal enough) that we could afford for years to have large parts of the building sit idle -- a waste of space, particularly before we spun off half the building to the school district. The Internet era has pulled the Atlanta Journal-Constitution out of downtown and the Bergen Record from its Hackensack office overlooking the Manhattan skyline. The Miami Herald will lose its beautiful view overlooking Biscayne Bay soon, and the Seattle Times will move a block away to an office building it already owns The sale of these iconic buildings will allow the newspapers' owners to pay off some debt, which is a good thing, as they can't raise the money from nonexistent classified. As various churches try to tell us, a building is just a building and not really the church. But parishioners often have a hard time with that. If a building is beautiful or holds memories, while it may not be meaningful or affordable anymore to the organization that owns it, it may be priceless to those who gather there.<br />
<br />
I've watched a TV pilot and a movie be filmed at 400 N. Broad. I had the composing room prepare a fake front page as my son's birth announcement. I remember how important I felt the first time I was invited to a meeting on the 12th floor, where the Knight Ridder board met when it was in town. I recall walking past the loading docks under the building and seeing a man who had been stabbed lying there. Those things will become just memories, and at least I also have memories of shopping at Strawbridge & Clothier, although not on the third floor. My mother recently said, it's not that things are changing, things always change, it's that everything now changes, and so fast. But perhaps that has always been part of getting older. So we will move to Eighth and Market, and we will try to keep ourselves going, one hopes with print still being a big part of that, inshallah. Last week when the Penn State board announced at 10:15 p.m. that Joe Paterno was fired, we had to make over story after story, headline after headline, in 75 minutes to reflect the news. It was working to put out a newspaper, and yes, even today, how sweet it is to do so.Davisullhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02871644412923946894noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3266566846399659219.post-28466396132365619942011-11-14T09:28:00.001-05:002011-11-14T10:00:41.321-05:00Department Store Building of ... Washington, Pa.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTqfIu1dNtpDpvA9Vh2DVeBXawXv6YHcc8bftSm-Vk5Y8JrDl88DgnbHDvejJnQ6XZvc17Lw7Zj2wPGOORXBO64nHDnsTtEcF1roRg-JzPWhjQLvu1t-WtPSrvkHzt1hdMq3XvjHEQt82R/s1600/caldwells.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="233" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTqfIu1dNtpDpvA9Vh2DVeBXawXv6YHcc8bftSm-Vk5Y8JrDl88DgnbHDvejJnQ6XZvc17Lw7Zj2wPGOORXBO64nHDnsTtEcF1roRg-JzPWhjQLvu1t-WtPSrvkHzt1hdMq3XvjHEQt82R/s320/caldwells.bmp" width="320" /></a></div>
Washington, Pa., was not a good place for department stores. Perhaps it was too close to Pittsburgh by first the West Penn Railways and then by car; but that didn't stop Troutman's in Greensburg, similarly close to the metropolis, from growing into a large regional chain. In comparing the histories of any regionally based businesses, such as newspapers or department stores, one sees -- particularly in the second-level markets -- chances taken or not taken, dominant figures arising in one location but absent in another, and sometimes just luck, such as being particularly hard-hit by the Depression.<br />
<br />
Evansville, Ind., had, like most cities of 100,000 or so population, a number of department stores in the late 1920s. By 1940, Andres', Bacon's and Lahr's were all gone. A local operator, Leo Schear Co., bought the Lahr's building, and Interstate Department Stores established The Evansville Store there in the early 1950s, but there was a near-total break, one that didn't happen in Fort Wayne or South Bend or Peoria or Flint. Evansville was badly hurt by the Depression, heirs to stores died at the wrong time, a women's store, deJong's, was particularly dominant in the market -- but it was just one of those things.<br />
<br />
For whatever reason, Washington had its problems. Perhaps it was the strung-along business district, going for blocks on Main and Chestnut Streets; perhaps it was some other factor. Downtown's one big department store, such as it was, was the Caldwell Store at 26 S. Main St, which is the three-story building to the right of the taller buff-colored building opposite the courthouse. Originally the A.B. Caldwell Co., it was owned for years by his widow and children, one of whom lived in Chicago and another in New York. In the late 1920s it fell into the hands of Sankey Metzler. By 1960 it was owned by the Wohls, neighborhood-store owners from Pittsburgh who also bought a store in New Kensington, Silverman's. The Wohls quickly faded from view and the Cox family from McKeesport bought it. But Cox's was not a department store, simply a clothing store, although the Coxes did try to keep what now was Cox's Caldwell Store going as it had been. Eventually Troutman's saw an opening and went into a mall along I-70 in the late 1960s, an early small-city mall for the region.<br />
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In researching department stores I try to confine myself to downtowns. Many cities had small outlying shopping areas from the late 1890s that had department stores. Generally, these stores either stayed small or moved downtown, so the study technique works most of the time. With cities such as Camden, N.J., where downtown was strung along for blocks, or Bridgeport, Conn., where Skydel's in East Bridgeport was one of the major stores, it helps to know that going in. Washington, Pa., had such an area on West Chestnut Street that I ruled out, and thus I didn't do much about the Vera Co., which began there and moved closer to Main Street on Chestnut in the 1910s. After the Crash the Vera Co. stopped being listed as a department store and I paid little attention, but from the ads in Life magazine and elsewhere in the 1950s that told "where to get" new products in cities -- filling a page with names of local stores -- it seems the Vera Co. was the dominant store in Washington and not Caldwell's. And no, it wasn't a first name of Vera, but a family name, much like Mechanic's in Manchester, N.H., was named for a family named Mechanic and was not the Mechanics' Store or such for millworkers.Davisullhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02871644412923946894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3266566846399659219.post-33373188473338057102011-11-08T14:22:00.002-05:002011-11-08T19:34:02.780-05:00Is This a Corner, and Is It Being TurnedThere was long a saying: Newspapers are like elephants. It may take them forever to move in a meaningful way. When they finally do, get out of the way.<br />
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The fact that the Times paywall has actually been successful -- at least in the short run -- seems to have brought people's courage back.<br />
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So <a href="http://www.cjr.org/feature/confidence_game.php?page=all">read this. </a>It's long, it's sometimes difficult, and it takes forever to get through the anecdotal lede -- but read it. And then ask yourself: Is our "digital strategy" really the right thing?<br />
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There are so many highlights here. Among them:<br />
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"In the debate over journalism’s future, the [future-of-news] crowd [Jeff Jarvis, Clay Shirky, John Paton, Jay Rosen, etc.] has had the upper hand. The establishment is gloomy and old; the FON consensus is hopeful and young (or purports to represent youth). The establishment has no plan. The FON consensus says no plan is the plan. The establishment drones on about rules and standards; the FON thinkers talk about freedom and informality. FON says “cheap” and “free”; the establishment asks for your credit card number. FON talks about “networks,” “communities,” and “love”; the establishment mutters about “institutions,” like The New York Times or mental hospitals. ... The consensus believes that reporters and editors must enter into deep, if not constant, contact with readers via social media, especially Facebook and Twitter. The consensus favors “iterative” journalism—reporting on the fly, fixing mistakes along the way—versus traditional methods of story organization, fact-checking, and copyediting; it favors spontaneity and informality over formal style and narrative forms."<br />
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"FON’s practical prescriptions—what it calls engagement with readers—have in practice devolved into another excuse for news managers to ramp up productivity burdens, draining reporters of their most precious resource, the thing that makes them potent: time." "Seeing news as a commodity, and a near valueless one (Paton above says its value is<a href="http://jxpaton.wordpress.com/2011/06/08/wan_ifra/" style="color: #bb0000; outline-style: none; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">“about zero”</a>), is a fundamental conceptual error, and a revealing one. A commodity is the same in Anniston, Alabama, as it is in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Whatever local news is, it’s not that. <br />
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"As a consequence, fon thinkers have derided subscription pay walls as old-think by a generation that just doesn’t get it. Shirky and Jarvis, in particular, vocally dismissed <em>The Wall Street Journal</em>’s early successful pay wall (a then-heretical, now-vindicated decision made by Dow Jones’s then-CEO Peter Kann), then the <em>Financial Times</em>’s successful pay wall (financial news, somehow, is not a commodity; it’s magic), and other spot successes as anomalies. Nor did they hesitate to point to the collapse of TimesSelect, <em>The New York Times</em>’s early experiment in 2005.... But now look: the new <em>Times</em> paywall, a metered system allowing some free access, but charging for unlimited use, is working. After just four months, 224,000 users were paying for access to the paper’s website, far ahead of projections. As <em>Advertising Age</em> noted, combined with the 57,000 Kindle and Nook subscribers and the roughly 100,000 users whose digital access was sponsored by Ford’s Lincoln division, that meant the paper had monetized close to 400,000 online users. (Another roughly 765,000 print subscribers registered their accounts online.)" <br />
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"We can see now that the news-as-cheap-commodity argument was all along an <em>ideological</em> one couched in economic terms. The idea that “information wants to be free” (a partial quote of Stewart Brand, who well understood information’s value) was a catechism, a rallying cry, voiced by a certain segment of the digital vanguard. Subscription services, “walls,” don’t fit into a networked vision. It’s worth pointing out that the commodity idea gained traction only because of the generalized collapse of news-business <em>advertising</em> models, a collapse that had nothing to do with <em>editorial</em> models. This isn’t to say that the content was good or not good, only that the collapsing ad model had nothing to do with it. The problem with conceiving of news as a commodity is that it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. If that is what you think of it, that is surely what it will become. It may be okay for academics to sell this thesis, but shame on journalism executives for buying it." <br />
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"Journalism needs its own institutions for the simple reason that it reports on institutions much larger than itself. It was <em>The New York Times</em> and <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/28/business/28melt.html?pagewanted=all" style="color: #bb0000; outline-style: none; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Gretchen Morgenson</a>, followed quickly by Bloomberg’s late <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aTzTYtlNHSG8" style="color: #bb0000; outline-style: none; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Mark Pittman</a>, who first pried loose the truth about the bailout of American International Group: namely, that it was all about Wall Street, led by Goldman Sachs. Those tooth-and-nail battles were far from fair fights—Goldman’s stock-market capitalization is about fifty (that’s “five-oh”) times that of the <em>Times</em>’s parent. Whether it be called <em>The New York Times</em> or the <em>Digital Beagle</em>, we must have organizations with talent, traditions, culture, bureaucrats, geniuses, monomaniacs, lawyers, health plans, marketing divisions, and ad salespeople—and they must have the clout to take on the likes of Goldman Sachs, the White House, and local political bosses." (And yes, TTPB was saying this back in 2009.) <br />
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"In the second decade of the twenty-first century—thanks in no small part to FON thinkers, including, sad to say, Rosen—journalism is now enslaved to a new system of production. Publishing is now possible all the time and in limitless amounts, forever and ever, amen. And, given the market system, and the way the world is, that which is possible has quickly become imperative. Suddenly, the “god” of the old twenty-four-hour news cycle looks like lovely Aphrodite compared to the remorseless Ares that is the web “production routine.” And this new enslavement—trust me here—hurts readers far more even than it does the reporters who must do the blogging, tweeting, podcasting, commenting, and word-cloud formation until all hours of the day and night. This is why, IMHO, journalism is great these days at incremental news, not so good at stepping back and grabbing hold of the narrative. In some circles, this is frowned upon.</div>
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"The cruel truth of the emerging networked news environment is that reporters are as disempowered as they have ever been, writing more often, under more pressure, with less autonomy, about more trivial things than under the previous monopolistic regime. Indeed, if one were looking for ways to undermine reporters in their work, FON ideas would be a good place to start:</div>
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• Remind them, as often as possible, that what they do is nothing special and is basically a commodity.</div>
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• Require them to spend a portion of their workday marketing and branding themselves and figuring out their business model.</div>
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• Require that they keep in touch with you via Twitter and FB constantly instead of reporting and writing.</div>
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• Prematurely bury/trash institutional news organizations.</div>
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• Promote a vague faith in volunteerism.</div>
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• Describe long-form writing as an affectation or even a form of oppression; that way no one will ever have time to lay out evidence gathered during extensive reporting. Great for crooks, too."</div>Davisullhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02871644412923946894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3266566846399659219.post-5850628064104075662011-11-03T10:17:00.004-04:002011-11-03T10:54:20.469-04:00Basements, Bars and Bad DaysSo the end is here for Filene's Basement. Of course, like Borders, Filene's Basement has been lurching toward extinction for years. In the wake of the Campeau Collapse of two big department store firms, Filene's Basement -- the first basement store run as a separate unit by a department store, known for years as Filene's Automatic Bargain Basement -- was spun off as a separate company from Filene's, the Boston store. The thought was that Filene's Basement had a national reputation for bargains and kookiness -- there were always tales of women stripping down to their undergarments in the middle of the store to try on bridal dresses -- that would make it a low-price leader. But Filene's Basement without Filene's never got past being marginal, stores opening and closing, strategies coming and going.<br />
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It goes down with its current owner, Syms, which for many years was a similar "automatic" store -- size tags were by color, for example -- that emphasized low price with limited service at a time when the department stores were doing away with their Subway Stores. Part of the problem seems to be that no one could replace Sy Syms, including his daughter. Part is blamed<a href="http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/the_syms_saga_from_rags_to_riches_Mpd5exiOT6ikS9RQ02IgFJ"> in this story</a> on Bank of America. (Why not? No one likes them at the moment.) But it is also noted that Syms (and Filene's Basement) were prominent before off-price online sites, before Neiman's and Saks ran their own off-price stores, before places like Tanger outlet centers.<br />
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Schumpeterians might want to call it all "creative destruction," but sometimes destruction is just destruction. The term "creative destruction" strikes me as the flip side of the belief that "change is good" -- because change is progress. Sometimes change is just change. Something replaces what was there and we come to adapt to it and no matter what it is, some people will really like it, and so we say "it's progress." But sometimes, it's just different, neither better nor worse. If Nordstrom fights a Filene's Basement or Syms by opening Nordstrom Rack, if people buy clothes online instead of phoning in an order (or mailing in a coupon) from a printed catalogue, you probably have some saving in costs, but really neither better or worse. It's just change and not particularly creative, except in a very limited sense of the term.<br />
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The town in which I live -- one of 22 "dry" towns in New Jersey -- will vote next week on whether to allow liquor in a question whose advocates state limits licenses to Moorestown Mall, which has fallen on hard times. The mall owner promises major renovations. As Michael Lisicky notes in<a href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=4&ved=0CC8QFjAD&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.departmentstorehistory.net%2Fcontact.htm&ei=V52yTuuYJ8Pe0QHu67TQBA&usg=AFQjCNG3Qa-viG3vD32L7fDt3_OzuwXXFw&sig2=6rMRSvzJj_fqHh2AHe5J5g"> "Gimbels Has It!," </a>Moorestown Mall -- one of the country's earliest enclosed malls -- was always a second-tier mall, established because Strawbridge & Clothier would not allow any other Philadelphia department stores to join it at Cherry Hill Mall in the early 1960s, when the perception of South Jersey was changing to "affluent suburb" from "tomato fields." Lit Bros. was already in downtown Camden, so John Wanamaker and Gimbel Bros. went to Moorestown as their alternative to Cherry Hill. After the Great Macyization, both malls ended up with Macy's; Cherry Hill has Penney's and Nordstrom, Moorestown has Sears and Lord & Taylor, but Cherry Hill has clearly become "downtown South Jersey" and Moorestown seems to be sliding into dead-mall status.<br />
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Last night we listened to a conference call held by the mall's owner (which also owns Cherry Hill) on its effort to have liquor licenses allowed in Moorestown for the mall. Many people fear that somehow this will allow bars on our cute Main Street; others think part of Moorestown's perceived exclusivity comes from a lack of liquor. Most of the people on the call spoke in support, but one asked, instead of getting, say, McCormick's & Schmick's, can't you bring in more department-store anchors? The owner essentially responded with, what department stores would those be? Any number of dead malls are a result of malls having been overbuilt because Smith & Son went into Mall A and Jones & Bro. went into Mall B. As department stores declined, one mall became the "new downtown" and the other faded, because both had the same national stores and the only reason both had been built was because Smith didn't want Jones in his mall. Throw in off-price, catalog, online and ... boom. Noncreative destruction.<br />
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The answer to "why fine dining?" is that fine dining can't be replicated on the Internet or sent to outlet centers in the middle of the Pine Barrens. Fine dining can't be downloaded or streamed. You have to go there to have it. Once you're there, maybe you'll buy something else. Even if you don't, you'll see the mall as an upscale experience rather than one step above Wal-Mart. Our restaurant critic <a href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CBsQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.philly.com%2Fphilly%2Ffood%2F20111101_Two_chefs_and_a_show_in_Philly__Ripert__Bourdain_just_what_audiences_ordered.html&ei=9Z6yTuGuIcPy0gHfs4TWBA&usg=AFQjCNFF2Ip2FYRjFo6_Qql7a7MjHEGq-A&sig2=FEZaWo8E516asQ77dNLRRQ">wrote this week</a> about how celebrity chefs have become our current stars. Certainly they come into our homes on TV the same as other stars, but the reason for their fame -- their food -- is not something that can be supplied On Demand, and thus we gain cachet from having been there or at least knowing about it. Fine dining is the opera of our times, hedonistic and fattening though it may be, because it can't be replicated on the Internet. Its exclusivity is less open to devaluation. When everything is everywhere, it has no particular value.<br />
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Which is part of the problem facing newspapers, which used to have some level of snob value because if you read them you knew more than the next guy who didn't read them. Now news is everywhere and at every time and knowing it gives you no advantage, so why pay for it? About which I can only point to the decision of my former employer <a href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CDAQqQIwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fgrcentral.wzzm13.com%2Fnews%2Fnews%2F63528-newspaper-delivery-cuts-disappoint-some-subscribers&ei=wqCyTrOTKePx0gHEqcnLBA&usg=AFQjCNHbTGdes2ajL37ibVwv3u6SdKNJaA&sig2=Ya_YZTfhFj6nPYFAYB_gpQ">Booth Newspapers </a>to cut home delivery of four papers in Michigan to three big insert days and say: How sad. Who would have dreamed that economically bereft, blue-collar Michigan would become the test kitchen for moving all readers online? On the other hand, why not? If print newspapers are going to be, as a story about Minneapolis described them, a "premium product," and you have a state that seems unlikely to be able to afford premium products, what do you lose by dumping them? You're losing already. I remember the Grand Rapids Press when it was a daily giant in terms of number of pages -- like the Columbus Dispatch, it so dominated its region that you had to advertise in it. I see it at my brother-in-law's house and it looks like a small-town daily in terms of size. So why not force everyone to take the e-edition or just read it three times a week? If you lose half your readers as a result, you're probably making even more money. And like Syms, we seem to already have passed the era when people would moan about the loss. But creative destruction? Nah. Just destruction. Better? It might be. But it might not. In the end, though, we'll tell ourselves it is, because it makes life livable to think so.<br />
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<br />Davisullhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02871644412923946894noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3266566846399659219.post-11872795754077597182011-10-26T16:19:00.001-04:002011-10-26T16:21:29.616-04:00Jarvis In, Jarvis OutThose who have been longtime followers of this blog know that for whatever reason it early on became fixated on Jeff Jarvis. But there was always the question of, OK, but he is Jeff Jarvis and you are TTPB. So you know naught and he knows much. Ergo, know thy place. (Just snipe.)<br />
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The New Republic<a href="http://www.tnr.com/article/books/magazine/96116/the-internet-intellectual"> has published</a> a review of Jarvis' <a href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=jeff%20jarvis%20public%20parts&source=web&cd=8&ved=0CG8QFjAH&url=http%3A%2F%2Fbooks.simonandschuster.com%2FPublic-Parts%2FJeff-Jarvis%2F9781451636000&ei=1WaoTsO8E6LL0QGCvZGLDg&usg=AFQjCNHxMV0L7PLuD5RGgx26ysWkmUtO_Q&sig2=BPtZcinDtJJ1WMsIwSJovA">new book, </a>"Public Parts: How Sharing in the Digital Age Improves the Way We Work and Live," written by Evgeny Morozov, who admittedly is t<a href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=the%20net%20delusion&source=web&cd=5&sqi=2&ved=0CEIQFjAE&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.publicaffairsbooks.com%2Fpublicaffairsbooks-cgi-bin%2Fdisplay%3Fbook%3D9781586488741&ei=AGeoTvmEHcTV0QGEneWMDg&usg=AFQjCNGk06bYLRdvBbYCp8g9v6B6smzz7g&sig2=aczaixo5oz_8amYie8r34A">he author</a> of "The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom." Clearly the battle lines are drawn.<br />
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To me, Morozov does a wonderful takedown of Jarvis' view that the link economy, the conversation, the very netness of the net, constitute a door into a new realm of human understanding and probable happiness. But the point is not that Morozov's views are close to mine in terms of Internet utopianism and the dark cloud it has left over businesses such as newspapers, which lost their mojo in the face of its orthodoxy of "the future," one, inevitable, inescapable, and undeniable.<br />
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The point is that this is a debate between clear points of view, without the one feeling it must cringe and apologize for its backwardness or obtuseness or whatever before daring to present its thus fatally weakened case. This review takes the position that Jarvis, Clay Shirky, Jay Rosen, Chris Anderson, etc. represent a point of view that has some validity, has many weaknesses, does not respond well to having its positions challenged, and wrongly sees itself as the avatar of The People when in fact it is largely interested in promoting some people (those who espouse it).<br />
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And yes, it may simply be coincidence that the rise of the belief in Internet utopianism followed in short order the final collapse (in most places except Nepal) of belief in communism as the expression of the will of the masses, as the rejection of the opiates of the people, as the embodiment of historically determined progress. Or it may not. But that impulse is part of human nature and has to go somewhere. As Morozov notes in asking why books like Jarvis' are so sought after by the bewildered public: "What better way to make sense of it all than to claim that the source of their perplexity is in fact a part of some inexorable historical process that has been unfolding for centuries?" Mr. Zuckerberg, there is a gentleman here, name of Marx, who wishes to talk to you.<br />
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Morozov quotes the novelist Chuck Klosterman as saying: "The degree to which anyone values the Internet is proportional to how valuable the Internet makes that person." This is true whether it is simply the Webmaster for a small organization or the prophet of what is proclaimed as an unavoidable revolution. The first is a person with a good job that cannot easily be filled; the second is, well, a prophet seeking followers. Morozov writes, "Internet intellectuals like to tell companies and governments what they like to hear -- including the kind of bad news that is really good news in disguise (<i>you are in terrible shape, but if you only embrace the Internet, all your problems will be gone forever!)" </i><br />
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In the newspaper business, unmanned by instant electronic communication -- Tony Ridder's nightmare of 1996, free online classified, having come to pass -- the prospect of a universal solution was too good to pass by. A decade later, newspapers still can't figure out what to do, as their problems continue. To which Jarvis would have an answer, and he would be partly right: You did not fully embrace the Internet. But even if they had, they would simply have had a different set of problems that they had even less experience in trying to solve. There is a difference between using a technology and surrendering in its seductive embrace.<br />
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Like anyone else, TTPB is happy to find someone with respectable credentials who upholds its position. And it regrets once telling a colleague that the Internet was "the future," as it is still fashionable in newspaper circles to say. The Internet is part of the future. There were people who hoped it would just go away, and they were pretty silly in the end. But the future is the future. The Internet does not necessarily determine or program the future, although those who see in it the New Jerusalem can tell us how they feel it inevitably must be done. We can follow that advice if we want; or we can evaluate it against other advice. Perhaps we are getting to a point where we will again see the Internet as one useful technology among many and not the long-awaited moment that makes straight of the way of the Lord, whatever Lord that is.<br />
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<br />Davisullhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02871644412923946894noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3266566846399659219.post-9156690008252593032011-10-20T10:30:00.000-04:002011-10-20T10:30:31.811-04:00At the CoreHave been on the road a lot -- last week in New Orleans for a board meeting. As in most large cities, the buildings that housed their department stores are still there, though with alternate uses. (Other than basket cases like Detroit, department store buildings tend to be reused in large cities -- it's the medium-size ones in which they are torn down because no one can think of any economic use for a big downtown building. The Zara chain not only has taken over part of Woodward & Lothrop in Washington, it now occupies the former <a href="http://roma.corriere.it/roma/notizie/cronaca/10_dicembre_9/negozio-zara-18144051076.shtml">Rinascente s</a>tore on the Corso in Rome.)<br />
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The buildings of both Maison Blanche Co. and D.H. Holmes Co. in New Orleans are now hotels. It's a shame that no one will be able to experience again the quirky Holmes store, which went through interconnected buildings fronting on four streets, but good that it isn't just a large hole in the ground.<br />
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One then sees the many Target and Wal-Mart stores as well as the Macy's and Dillard's and again asks, why did these stores that dominated their markets for generations die? The answers, of course, are clear and found many places, sometimes here. But one is that they built capacity to handle a period when they were the dominant games in town, and then had trouble backing out of it when a new type of competitor -- the one-stop, single-floor suburban discounter -- became the "default" option. Newspapers have had the same problem, now spending money to shutter printing and inserting plants that in some cases they built only a decade earlier.<br />
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Most department stores faced another problem -- they wanted their customers to be, to some degree, everyone and anyone, and to that end they sold not only nearly every class of merchandise (basement stores! women's floors! the Tribout Room!) but nearly everything that was for sale except cars. Recently I was in Prince George's County, Md., which has a couple of Macy's that before the Great Macyization were branches of the Hecht Co. It was a time warp to go into these stores, which Macy's has not spent very much on -- the Marlow Heights store was like walking back into Block's Glendale in Indianapolis in the early 1960s. (Lovers of Googie architecture take note, it has an <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/mdroute5/383153583/">outdoor stairway with a canopy</a> straight out of the Space Age.) At the Prince George's Plaza store, a derelict auto center reminds that not just Sears, but local department stores did tuneups and sold tires -- sometimes at freestanding locations not in a shopping plaza parking lot. And you could still see where the garden center was, back when upscale suburban department stores also sold plants, fertilizer and mowers.<br />
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Omnia omnibus ubique -- all things for all people everywhere, as Harrods' has it. That idea created the great stores so many of us remember -- and here's a plug for <a href="http://www.departmentstorehistory.net/contact.htm">Michael Lisicky's new book on Gimbel Bros</a>., just out. When enough of all people turned away from buying all things, the weight of the department stores began to collapse them. The existence of Macy's, Sears, Penney's, Dillard's, Kohl's shows that the department store is not dead, but the department store that contained everything for everyone is long gone, and the department store that stood as a Pillar of the Community is gone as well. If Harrods truly followed its motto just in terms of the London market, it would be as dead as Simpson's of Piccadilly or Whiteley's of Bayswater. Harrods is all things for a few people -- the rich and the tourists.<br />
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Wal-Mart found out the danger of trying to appeal to everyone when, near the end of the most recent era of prosperity, <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=3229759">it tried to draw in a more upscale shoppe</a>r and found it had alienated its core users. Newspapers' institution of online paywalls to me means that at last they are realizing that they cannot be all things to all people anymore in the online world, where anyone can be everyone. They have to decide who their customers (and potential customers) are, which means realizing that 1) a lot of people will never be your customers and you shouldn't care and 2) you actually don't want as customers a lot of the people who visit your website, except to gather some low-hanging-fruit revenue until you can figure out if you can do away with it. Digital dimes will never replace print dollars, but with a defined, committed, enthusiastic customer base you can at least sell ads for digital dimes, as opposed to the digital pennies available to anyone with an open website.<br />
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Early in this blog I argued that the essential advantage of print was that it created a pipeline to the reader -- a separate distribution system apart from general dissemination -- and that we needed to exploit that. Still think so, but the apparent years of economic malaise ahead keep pressing in. Paywalls create another pipeline, and<a href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=poynter%20time%20for%20paywalls&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CBsQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.poynter.org%2Flatest-news%2Fbusiness-news%2Fnewspay%2F149953%2Fits-time-5-reasons-for-taking-the-plunge-into-a-metered-paywall%2F&ei=0yygTqbDCcHY0QGn_rCKBQ&usg=AFQjCNHSTjWzA0jKzelY9an5kJ3S631PxQ&sig2=3_l7Iu9KZDHxIywZfi2a0A"> the tide seems to be turning</a> in their favor. I remember a conversation with my managing editor back in 2002 or 2003, at which time the Times and the Post were playing chicken over a paywall. When one of them does it, she said, we will do it too. Neither did it, and the newspaper business went into years of decline while talking pointlessly about the conversation. Then the Times did it, and even though the Post did not, the newspaper business rule is that if the Times does it, it must be right. Your traffic doesn't fall off that much, and what you end up giving up is ad inventory you couldn't sell anyway. You get to know your customers and satisfy their needs instead of trying to walk down the street with a sandwich board surrounded by thousands of other people walking down the street with sandwich board. And you even see some resurgence in the print business, particularly on Sunday, from people who didn't really object to a print newspaper or paying you, but didn't want to feel like suckers for paying for something others got free.<br />
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The hardest part of this is realizing that you will never again be what you were, no matter how successful you may be. That's hard for people who have been successful to give up, particularly when they hear from longtime customers who really don't want you to change. I was talking with a colleague who came to the paper in boon times and remembered arriving at this giant operation and saying, "Wow, I have really made it." It was a wonderful time, a wonderful feeling, and no one else is likely to have it ever again. We sure don't have that sugar high anymore. But it doesn't mean you can't be successful both as a business and journalistically.<br />
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And one has to be willing to realize that long-established customers are going to hate what's happening and let you know, even though they can do nothing to make your situation better. Having heard from them in my job for years now, I realize that they'd be happy if Hecht's came back with its garden and tire centers even though they might never go there. They liked 1970 and would like to have it back. I'd like it too, but that won't get me a ride on the subway. You may have to continue to alienate some of these customers, which is really hard. There is little more pathetic than a reader in her late 80s who tells you that by dropping "Ziggy" you have taken the last bit of joy out of her life. (I do not exaggerate.) But if you continue to spend money on "Prince Valiant," which seems to now be jumping the shark by apparently having <a href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=charles%20apple%20prince%20valiant%20flash%20gordon&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CB4QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fapple.copydesk.org%2F2011%2F10%2F16%2Fwho-is-that-mysterious-stranger-in-king-arthurs-court%2F&ei=LC6gTsKDL6P40gGt1MmYBQ&usg=AFQjCNEdxvOEsuGSAZo-BzbsgjE_mLn35A&sig2=ATQi4y86epe90294mNaikQ">Flash Gordon appearing in a crater</a>, just because a few people have read it for 60 years and no one else reads it, then you're the Hecht's garden store manager looking across the street at Home Depot and saying, "But they'll come back. I know they will." They're not coming back to a department store garden center after Home Depot. But they will do business with you for what you can do better. And never forget -- what we can do better than anyone else <a href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=moozakis%20david%20sullivan&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCEQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.newsandtech.com%2Fcolumnists%2Farticle_80ab0bee-eada-11e0-a186-001cc4c03286.html&ei=cy6gTsWEEOnr0gHAhK3PBA&usg=AFQjCNFjYWsxDcmHkP85HL7shUWeim4tgQ&sig2=bu45xahZZ5zzD-pTEXoLNA">includes print</a>.Davisullhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02871644412923946894noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3266566846399659219.post-22327496046115222512011-09-28T11:13:00.000-04:002011-09-28T19:09:14.059-04:00Still Joined at the HipAs has been pointed out, the original purpose of this blog was to draw parallels between the department store and newspaper businesses – a purpose that has been largely forgotten. Permit me then to quote at length from a <a href="http://yalepress.yale.edu/book.asp?isbn=9780300149388">wonderful book,</a> “The American Department Store Transformed, 1920-1960,” by Richard Longstreth:<br />
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“The financial challenges identified by department store executives during the 1920s persisted over the next thirty years. … The percentage of revenues consumed by operating expenses…. continued to plague profit margins. … Even more ominous was the fact that department store sales formed an increasingly smaller percentage of retail sales overall. … Even in the best of times it was all the industry could do to hold its own.<br />
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“Equally daunting was the challenge from competitors. … What was seen as a potential problem in the 1920s became a very real one in the 1930s as the low-cost items that chains purveyed appealed increasingly to a consumer public with shrinking disposable income. Even more threatening was the fact that chains were expanding the scope of goods they sold, treading ever closer to the department store’s traditional base. …<br />
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“The persistence of economic challenges to the big stores led to mounting debate over the future of the industry. Considerable discussion was percolating by the eve of the war over whether the basic way that business was conducted should change. At the core of the debate lay the department store’s identity. Criticism of the status quo abounded….”<br />
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A writer for Women’s Wear Daily blamed the situation on “antiquated ... methods… The process had to be ‘streamlined’ so that the ‘merchandise is instantly accessible.’ … Increasingly, the great emporia were being admonished for employing ... methods that would surely bring about their demise…<br />
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“Service was upheld as the hallmark of the department store’s reputation. By abandoning this mode the great emporia would, in the words of one prominent retailer, surely lose much of their ‘character and prestige,’ becoming just another ‘low-cost distributor.’ …<br />
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Harvard professor Malcolm McNair in the 1950s “admonished the trade for failing to grasp changes in consumer habits brought about by supermarkets and other chain stores. The distinction between the kinds of merchandise these outlets sold, he intimated, was irrelevant. The lessons transcended such particulars…<br />
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"A flurry of critiques ensued, all now strident in delineating the department store’s intransigence. The great emporium was equated with the brontosaurus. …<br />
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In 1952, WWD noted that “‘many adults grew up with the idea that their department store was the center of life of their community. Contrast that … with those who have grown up in the last 15 years or so. … The department store is not highlighting the excitement of visiting their establishment.’ ….<br />
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"Furthermore, Albert M. Greenfield, chairman of the City Stores, emphasized that many of those who shopped were comparatively young. Wartime routines and the self-service structure of the supermarket had conditioned them to independence. Merchants underestimated the intelligence of their public, he charged.”<br />
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Substitute “newspaper” for “department store” and “Internet” for “supermarket” or “chains” and indeed, there is nothing new under the sun. Longstreth devotes the next 200 pages of his book to discussing what department stores did, and anyone who grew up in or near a city before the big stores began to shut down will find not only enlightenment here, but nostalgia. A different era for newspapers, of course, but what to do? Hint: It begins with determining who your customers are and what they want – which necessitates saying that everyone is not going to be your customer no matter how many offerings you have, a problem that all once-titanic businesses (railroads, department stores, newspapers, Microsoft) face and have trouble facing. Yes, more to come.<br />
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As an aside, I was amazed to learn that H.P. Wasson & Co., one of the three department stores in Indianapolis in my youth, was the first “windowless” department store in America. Part of my love for Moderne design came from seeing the unique Wasson’s building in the midst of the blocks of traditional buildings downtown; another source was the lettering used when the entrances to the William H. Block Co. were redesigned in the same era. From early parking garages to suburban branches and downtown redevelopment, it’s all<a href="http://yalepress.yale.edu/book.asp?isbn=9780300149388"> here.</a>Davisullhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02871644412923946894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3266566846399659219.post-22003923206974944392011-09-09T10:48:00.002-04:002011-09-13T13:36:44.965-04:00Out With the Old...Wow, what a depressing week in the newspaper business again. Layoffs here, layoffs there, as Charles Apple <a href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=2&ved=0CCAQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fapple.copydesk.org%2F2011%2F09%2F07%2Flayoffs-layoffs-and-more-layoffs%2F&ei=vCJqTqmPEOn10gHz0_TyBA&usg=AFQjCNEdn8Qiy7ubuLXovOWgQ2ziDq-JxA&sig2=fy7ZkA7bOMRcOI5guBWb7Q">notes</a>. One of my former colleagues was laid off in Dallas for the second time there. Yeah, we laid him off, too.<br />
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At times like this I have to turn to my favorite upbeat source of news about traditional newspaper operations, <a href="http://www.newsandtech.com/">News & Tech.</a> As Chuck Moozakis <a href="http://www.newsandtech.com/columnists/from_the_editors_desk/article_a6b2c09a-c8ff-11e0-b860-001cc4c002e0.html">writes:</a><br />
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"I understand that the Web and mobile audiences are important. But in order for newspapers to serve those audiences ... print is the engine that must be carefully nurtured and maintained."<br />
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He quotes a consultant, Sam Wagner, as saying, "We seem to want to leave the broadsheet here to die; in the States nobody wants to take the chance to really shake up their product and really try to redo it, whether it's content, size, or shape. Circulation is declining, page counts are declining, but people are afraid to change. To do nothing seems to be on a path to death to me ... What do they have to lose?"<br />
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And as Jim Chisholm -- boy, I want to meet this guy someday, I may have to go to France to do it -- <a href="http://www.newsandtech.com/columnists/article_b4007552-c900-11e0-b78c-001cc4c002e0.html">says</a>,"Don't believe everything you see in our own medium. ... Only about 8 percent of the industry's revenues are from digital. In the United States, that percentage is a bit higher, around 12 percent, but still nowhere near enough to sustain the business."<br />
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Of course, to this, digital fans would say -- not enough to sustain the business you have, but abandon that business and it is. In the old days, if I remember this figure right, you budgeted newsroom expenses as around 11 percent of your costs (since most of your money goes to paper, ink, plates, trucks, and carriers). As John Paton, whose newly ascendant Journal Register Co. just <a href="http://www.newsandtech.com/dateline/article_caff765c-d96a-11e0-b24c-001cc4c03286.html">apparently engineered</a> a back-door coup of Dean Singleton's Media News Group, said this week, online revenue by the end of the year <a href="http://newsfeedresearcher.com/data/articles_b37/newspapers-digital-mediapaton.html#hdng1">will cover</a> the cost of newsrooms. Chisholm's figure indicates that is correct. The issue then is, at what point do you say you also covered the cost of ad salespeople, business-side employees, and (if you're doing a paywall or replica edition) whatever you call your circulation department and your increasingly important promotions and community events departments, at which point you say, shut off the presses and let all those pressmen, drivers, and contracts with ink companies go. While Paton is careful to say that print will be around "indefinitely," any copy editor can tell you that word has two meanings.<br />
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U.S. newspaper companies say they are committed to whatever platform the customers (ad and reader) prefer, but it's clear many of them want to help consumers give up print, whereas in the rest of the world that pressure is not so strong. If you see it as inevitable, that's a good thing. But one of the mottos of this blog has been to challenge the idea, "If current trends continue..." What do you want the current trend to be? Who do you want your customers to be? If your definition of "local news" is "we have a few reporters to do the big stuff but most local news is Mrs. Smith putting her announcement of the book club on our site free," then heck yes you want to tell your print readers they're stupid and get out. The future then is, have volunteers do most of the work for you, and reap the profits.<br />
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Admittedly, News and Tech's advertising base is people selling print products. And its columnist Marc Wilson, <a href="http://www.newsandtech.com/columnists/article_4e1826e0-c900-11e0-b65c-001cc4c002e0.html">reporting</a> on a Borrell Associates survey, noted that a "panel of industry experts" -- this column was about Yellow Pages, so I don't know what industry this is -- 21 percent said "fewer than 100 daily newspapers in North America will exist in print form" within three to five years, and 63 percent in total said that would happen in 20 years or longer. It's hard to know what to do with that -- does that mean "exist in print form every day" or "exist in any print form at all," and also hard to know if that the people answering knew that means 1,300 out of the 1,400 or so daily newspapers in the United States and Canada, taking the typical American position that Mexico is not part of North America -- but even admit N&T's upbeat attitude, the views of the Minneapolis<strike> publisher</strike> editor that in more than five years, the Star Tribune might be a <a href="http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/romenesko/145224/star-tribune-editor-longterm-we-think-sunday-print-and-digital-weekly-might-be-a-good-solution/">Sunday print product with daily digital news </a>-- well, it makes you wonder if Moozakis is, probably like me, just a person who still loves printed newspapers even as the country says, go fish.<br />
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A final word on layoffs. We journalists and our amen corner -- academics, goo-goo advocates, and dyed-in-the-wool readers -- tend to believe that cuts in editorial staffing will inevitably lead to less readership and thus less advertising. But advertisers have always used tons of media that don't involve editorial staffing, and readers complain about reading wire stories they've already seen on TV or the Web -- i.e., big stories -- not about wire stories that didn't make the top of Google News; they complain about a paucity of local news, but don't really care if the local news was written by the local antiques dealer. There's probably a relationship there between news and advertising, but if it were as strong as we think, news departments wouldn't have to deal with continual staffing cuts. People generally just want to read something they haven't read before.<br />
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ADDED NOTE: Thanks to Vince Tuss for correcting the title of the Minneapolis executive quoted.Davisullhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02871644412923946894noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3266566846399659219.post-62320459301225604462011-09-07T10:28:00.000-04:002011-09-07T10:28:11.939-04:00Department Store Building of ... UniontownMy relative Larry Stratton has been getting acclimated to his new home in southwestern Pennsylvania, and has even been taking the local paper from Washington, Pa. We'll get to Washington in a bit, but first here's a surviving store building in Uniontown, which for a coal-mining capital had two very sophisticated stores.<br />
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<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYP-ShCms-rWl-sh-7OiIyENyjEkSrdKiZzDqkfbL1U2Kn2TM7Kbu8JifqaZsGbNOf9obXUuZiiQbjMEnVcxV_maO8XJsyqK3DTNRIloGrCCvfSP9iyxci1lAO0ZJ-Z9DZMh9M2_EZSUdK/s1600/metzler%2527s+uniontown.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="289" nba="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYP-ShCms-rWl-sh-7OiIyENyjEkSrdKiZzDqkfbL1U2Kn2TM7Kbu8JifqaZsGbNOf9obXUuZiiQbjMEnVcxV_maO8XJsyqK3DTNRIloGrCCvfSP9iyxci1lAO0ZJ-Z9DZMh9M2_EZSUdK/s320/metzler%2527s+uniontown.bmp" width="320" /></a>Most people probably remember this store at 22 E. Main St. just as Metzler's, but it was linked to a large regional operation. The genesis of the chain was the Wright-Metzler Co., which started in Connellsville with two Wright brothers and Sankey Metzler. Metzler was a West Virginian who took over the Uniontown operation. After his death in 1939, his son William took over, and then it went into the hands of daughter Martha and her husband, Daniel MacDonald. </div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
</div>As noted here before, the Metzler stores were interconnected with stores Warren and Latrobe, as well as, briefly, Washington, Pa., all of which eventually went in other directions. What I haven't been able to track down is if there was any connection between the Metzlers and the Kaufmans, who owned Uniontown's other big store, N. Kaufman's Inc. Nathan Kaufman, a merchant from Brownsville, Pa., bought what had been Rosenbaum Bros. in Uniontown in the wake of the Depression. Day-to-day operations went into the hands of Bailey Greenwald in the late 1950s, although Kaufman's son William was still the owner. The interesting question is: When I was in Uniontown a few years ago, a house on the same street that Bailey Greenwald had lived in was owned by one Sankey Greenwald. The chance of "Sankey" being coincidental would seem minuscule. So did the Greenwald and Metzler families intermarry? Nothing exists online to show such a connection; indeed, many of the references to Sankey Metzler in Uniontown are to this blog. But if anyone reading this in Uniontown knows whether its two department store families finally became one, let me know.<br />
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NOTE: IT'S ONLY WEEKS AWAY: The release of Michael Lisicky's newest department store history, this one profiling Gimbel Bros. Start storing away your money now to buy it!Davisullhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02871644412923946894noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3266566846399659219.post-46755174715874202592011-08-25T10:38:00.000-04:002011-08-25T10:38:24.088-04:00Department Store Building of ... Happy ValleyIt's been far too long since I posted a department store building photo. This is one I know well -- the former Danks & Co. store in State College, Pa., address 148 S. Allen St.<br />
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<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">Danks & Co. was based in Lewistown, about a half-hour south of State College. Lewistown was the shopping center for a large range of industrial small towns. Its iconic store was E.E. McMeen & Co., which became a branch of the Bon Ton chain from York, Pa., during its second expansion in the 1950s. Danks was founded by George Danks of Burnham, Pa., one of those towns, in 1924. It operated various branches, one of which opened in State College in 1942 in a moderne-designed building rare for a department store, let alone one in a small town.</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHkhC24890vgwKDQN6GL36w6r-b8nPtaEAu3rQ0XGlu15fB9WlKDIgvL_IsuIjSEQ2979FuZgf8Wp7DcMsTkN1zwds_55uT87hQKYQzcCamH5wIqbVRuV7CF9TLJmkrSrvWrHJZ8MxdeRP/s1600/danks+statecol.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="259" qaa="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHkhC24890vgwKDQN6GL36w6r-b8nPtaEAu3rQ0XGlu15fB9WlKDIgvL_IsuIjSEQ2979FuZgf8Wp7DcMsTkN1zwds_55uT87hQKYQzcCamH5wIqbVRuV7CF9TLJmkrSrvWrHJZ8MxdeRP/s320/danks+statecol.bmp" width="320" /></a>Although Penn State made State College a reasonably sized city, college towns were rarely draws for regional business. To serve the students and the professors, they often had to have a different mix of merchandise than was wanted by the residents of surrounding towns and farms. Thus, the Danks store in State College was not large. </div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">The Danks chain <a href="http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1995-05-14/business/9505140166_1_stores-downtown-malls">closed in 1995,</a> including the Lewistown store -- which, along with the Bon Ton, had been rebuilt in suburban strip-mall style, though still downtown, in an urban renewal effort. To me, Danks in State College remains the building where I first had lunch at a Panera Bread location with <a href="http://www.linfield.edu/masscomm/faculty.html">Brad Thompson,</a> who then taught at Penn State and now is at Linfield College in Oregon. The building's main use is to house the <a href="http://theatre.psu.edu/">Penn State Theater Center</a>. Now, that's adaptive reuse -- bread and circuses, so to speak.</div><div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>Davisullhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02871644412923946894noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3266566846399659219.post-65224304937752015742011-07-25T19:35:00.001-04:002011-07-26T15:26:14.050-04:00Once in Love With AmyThe redoubtable Mario Garcia -- the collapse of American newspapers has led him to do most of his work overseas, more's the pity for us -- had, well, a THANG, as my former colleague Wendy Dowkings used to say, for Amy Winehouse. He makes no bones about it. Her death caused him <a href="http://garciamedia.com/blog/articles/amy_winehouse_a_tribute--your_pages1/">to collect </a>some front pages from Europe and South America reporting her death.<br />
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Looking at the pages -- and as a copy editor, reading the headlines to the extent I could -- may indicate why American newspapers have such a youth problem.<br />
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From Il Secolo XIX in Bologna: "Enormous talent and fragile soul: Winehouse may be the Lady Diana of Rock. Fans besieged the star's house crying." The emotion of the opera. But they're Italian. We move on.<br />
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From Bild in Germany: "We must grieve today about Amy Winehouse. The police found her dead in her London apartment. She was only 27." Perhaps German newspapers all speak in the first person plural. We move on.<br />
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From Las Ultimas Noticias in Santiago: "The sudden end to the solitary diva. Amy Winehouse died at her home at 27. Her mother: 'It was a matter of time.' She had been depressed for a month after breaking up with her last boyfriend." But this is a paper that plays soap-opera entertainment on the front every day. We move on...<br />
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From Clarin in Buenos Aires: "Amy Winehouse: An early goodbye. The renowned English singer was found dead in her London home. She was 27 and had a history of addictions." Seems pretty straightforward. But even here, a hint of sympathy.<br />
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From Correio in Santiago do Bahia, Brazil: "Amy at the end. Singer, 27, found dead in London." The same (and I'm not completely sure of that translation.)<br />
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From Correio Braziliense: "Curse of 27 silences the voice of the 21st century." Referring to the deaths of Cobain, Joplin, Hendrix, etc. -- and assuming its readers know what it means.<br />
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From El Tiempo in Bogota: "Amy Winehouse dies. She was found in her London home. The artist was famous for her excesses." Hmm, we must be getting closer to the United States.<br />
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Now, for three from the U.S. that Mario collected:<br />
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The New York Times: Amy Winehouse (1983-2011): British Retro Soul Singer With Troubled History.<br />
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Los Angeles Times: Amy Winehouse (1983-2011): Iconoclastic pop singer found dead. The five-time Grammy winner inspired a new generation of vocalists.<br />
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New York Post: They tried to make her go to rehab, she said No No No! Amy Winehouse dead at 27.<br />
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So in Europe we hear of her fragile soul, for which we must grieve. In South America we hear of the depressed solitary diva whom we bid an early goodbye, the voice of the 21st century famous for her excesses. Callas! Duncan! Nijinsky!<br />
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OK, these are just the papers Mario selected, as are those in the U.S. But the U.S. reader is calmly told of the death of an iconoclastic retro soul singer -- whatever that may mean -- who inspired a new generation -- whoever they are -- but whose troubled history including refusing rehab.<br />
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It's a random sample, but it seems to me that papers overseas -- and OK, Mario didn't include any from England -- assume their readers know who Amy was, embraced her or her music, and mourned her passing. Here in the U.S. (and, OK, somewhat in Colombia), we first must assume that our readers have no idea who she was -- which we try to remedy with somewhat vacuous terms -- and in some cases, make sure we understand she was not an avatar of traditional American values. (But hey, she won five Grammys! So she must have been somebody.) <br />
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There's an ocean of difference between "Fragile Soul" and "Troubled History," and it's not just one of Italian vs. English, and it doesn't mean we have to go there. (And until this weekend, I had never heard a note that Amy Winehouse sang.) But it does convey the attitude of detached Olympian judgment that people accuse American newspapers of having -- and that does not work in the 21st century, when emotional connection is all.<br />
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More to come on emotion.<br />
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UPDATE: Today (Tuesday) my paper had a sympathetic tribute, as did the Burlington paper. So perhaps it just had to get out of the hands of the newsside and over to the features desk. Does this mean arts writers elsewhere work on weekends?Davisullhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02871644412923946894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3266566846399659219.post-82276738433957226442011-07-20T10:00:00.002-04:002011-07-21T18:21:00.075-04:00Little Comic ReliefFirst off, to correct an error in the last post, <state><place>Durango</place></state> isn’t on the <place>Front Range</place> – obviously I know nothing about <state><place>Colorado</place></state> geography. Got it confused with <city><place>Pueblo</place></city>. Reminder: Copy edit your own blog!<br />
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The question was, can newspapers reach 18-to-30-year-olds? Here on the East Coast we have the Metro chain in <place><city>Boston</city>, <state>New York</state></place>, and <a href="http://www.metro.us/philadelphia"><city><place>Philadelphia</place></city>,</a> survivors of the brief free-sheet spurt around the world before getting news on the Internet really took off. (It also publishes in nine cities in <country-region><place>Canada</place></country-region>.) It tries to answer that question in the affirmative.<br />
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Our Metro runs only a few stories each day – typically the most important city government story, brief national and foreign entries, entertainment news, and very little sports. Although it is distributed around town, it is mostly associated with rail commuters (they tried it on buses, but it just led to cluttered buses). While serious stories are written seriously, much of the paper, including its entertainment coverage, is far more conversational than even the most conversational traditional newspaper. It does not try to break news to any extent, though I'm sure here and there it has gotten something first. Much is written in first person or as a Q and A. It runs stories on careers, education, and the like aimed at people coming up in the world, not people already there or planning for their children’s education. It has lots of advertising -- some days it makes my own paper look comparatively adless, though I'm sure the ad rates would barely support a pigeon.<br />
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Do young people read it? Sure. It’s free. It’s on the train. Do masses of young people read it? I have no idea. In <place>Europe</place>, however, where Metro is under different ownership, it has become, at least in one survey, <a href="http://www.mediaweek.co.uk/news/1078858/FT-widely-read-European-elites/">the most-read free newspaper</a> among the wealthy. I guess watching every euro counts. <br />
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Metro used to have a couple of comics, but no more -- interesting in view of the comics <a href="http://blogs.westword.com/latestword/2011/06/denver_post_yanks_doonesbury_peanuts.php">cutbacks at the Denver Post,</a> including “Doonesbury,” which is as close to a sacred totem among journalists as any comic except “Pogo” has ever been. It turns out that few readers of the Post were initially discomfited by these cuts, which took out some low-hanging fruit ("Scary Gary"? "F-Minus"?) and some very costly comics while leaving the “Beetle Bailey”s of the world. (Perhaps resentment has grown since then.) The thinking seems to have been, the only people who read comics are the seniors, and all they want is the strips they’ve had their whole lives. Many of them have had “Doonesbury” for much of their lives, of course. But we’re talking, for that generation, of repeats of “Peanuts,” plus things like “The Family Circus,” “Hi and Lois,” and “Beetle” – most of which could be called repeats even if they are new. (Two of the most venerable strips, “Blondie” and “Nancy,” have been reimagined over the years and while not cutting-edge fare at least are not in an endless “Groundhog Day” loop.)<br />
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(Locally, the Philadelphia Daily News this week went to one tabloid page of comic strips, after going down to two a couple of years back from three... with some panels on a facing page.)<br />
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Add to this that the three largest papers in the U.S. for the last three decades do not run comics, and one starts to wonder whether the role of comics has been overblown for years by people who will howl if you give them a choice about taking away their daily visit with Sgt. Snorkel but who, if the comic was simply retired by its authors, would just say, Oh, well, guess I'll read something else. "Steve Canyon" had a huge readership, and then it disappeared and there was no more to be learned about Stalky Schweisenberger and almost no one canceled. When I was a kid papers didn’t have massive numbers of comics; big papers would have a page, small papers might run four. An editor might get into a financial fight with a syndicate and all of a sudden "Li'l Abner" no longer ran, and people might have been discomfited but they found something else. It was only when competing papers started going out of business that newspapers ended up with multiple pages of comics, fearing that someone who read an afternoon paper would only adjust his or her biorhythms enough to take a morning paper if it let him or her keep up with “Hagar the Horrible.”<br />
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Many older readers still see the comics as the equivalent of Jay’s monologue, a humorous or heartwarming fillip to the depressing state of the world. But it seems to be becoming clearer that trying to fill the pages with 30 comics is spending a lot of money to chase few people. <br />
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Young readers do not come to the paper through the colorful Sunday comics in the way they did when nearly everything except comics was black and white. (How would young readers relate to “Funky Winkerbean,” “Rhymes With <city><place>Orange</place></city>” or “The Piranha Club” anyway? There's this to say for “<city><place>Garfield</place></city>” -- even though it seems mainly an exercise in filling contracted space, at least it’s new to a 7-year-old. ) Young readers are hardly going to wait for a once-a-week session with the Sunday funnies, and the dailies are scrunched into minuscule space so that we can keep running strips that debuted in papers dead for decades.<br />
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Perhaps young readers would be better satisfied by having one or two strips that were actually relevant and funny to their lives. But burying them amid the Beetles and Flagstons would not work.<br />
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And perhaps, as with stock listings, newspapers should think about just blowing the whistle on comics – I say this with trepidation, I love newspaper comics and have always read most of them that weren’t “The Girls in Apartment 3-G” – and, like college papers, finding one or two locally or regionally drawn features that would provide a break from the news that would be exclusive to them. If people were only taking the paper to find out what that hilarious Lt. Fuzz was up to today, perhaps those are customers who are no longer essential to us at that price of keeping them.<br />
Still more to come.Davisullhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02871644412923946894noreply@blogger.com0