McGuire on Media »

McClatchy bond sale forces some hard realizations about newspaper corporations

October 8, 2012 – 11:04 am

When I opened my email one day last week this subject line greeted me: “Would you lend money to McClatchy?”

It was a note from my financial adviser, Morgan Stanley Smith Barney’s Chuck Kerl. It read: “Tim, I thought you’d find this curious. Someone has a half million of McClatchy bonds for sale that mature in 5 years. If they pay off, it’s a 4.5% yield to call. They are seriously low rated – a single B rating.” The formal translation of a B rating is this: ““More vulnerable to adverse business, financial and economic conditions but currently has the capacity to meet financial commitments.”

However Chucks’ informal and skeptical definition for his clients is “There is a high degree of uncertainty regarding the company’s ability to repay principal or make timely interest payments.” Chuck told me that with the observation, “How the mighty have fallen!”

Chuck knows exactly how far McClatchy has fallen because he “urged” me to sell all my McClatchy stock between $64 and $74. Today, McClatchy stock is trading at $2.39.

I immediately called Chuck with some questions and a comment. My first question was who is “someone.” He explained that Morgan Stanley is selling the bonds and he assumes they bought them from a big investor who wanted to shed them.

My second question was why is the yield only 4.57% if the bonds are that low-rated. His answer frightened me a bit. He said there is such a high demand for bonds of this low rated character that the market settles for a relatively low yield. cIf the bonds are held to the maturity date if 2017 the yield would be 8.4%. Chuck said ‘if the yield was 12 per cent this would be a different proposition!”

My final question was how can I link to this information for my readers. Apparently I can’t. Chuck said you’d need a Bloomberg terminal to get at this offering. He later explained the McClatchy bond was in Morgan Stanley’s bond inventory offered for retail sale. For those who understand this stuff, it’s CUSIP is 579489AE5. It is a 11.5 per cent coupon bond, maturing on 2-15-2017, callable on 2-15-2013. The offer price is 110.847.

My comment to my financial adviser was crisp, clear and final:”Hell no, I don’t want to invest in McClatchy!”

There was absolutely no humor intended in my response. In fact, my quickly formulated answer gave me great pause and forced me to to carefully contemplate what I am feeling about newspapers and newspaper investments these days.

I admit that I have completely lost confidence in the corporate newspaper model.

That’s no small admission for a man who, at 17, stopped delivering papers on a Saturday and started writing sports for the local newspaper on Monday. The newspaper business of the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s made for one of the richest working experiences possible and for a comfortable retirement.

It prepared me to spend several years teaching bright students at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School. And therein lies an irony. I am incredibly bullish about the prospects for journalism, my journalism students and even local news gathering organizations. I am bearish on newspaper corporations.

Wednesday afternoon, a good friend pressed me on why I say that.

It’s not as if I hate newspaper corporations. I believe they have done more for newspapers than independent ownership could have ever done. Yet the digital age demands more flexibility, more attention to local needs and less attention to national efficiencies offered by corporations.

I have become convinced by the drumbeat of bad news about newspapers that corporate ownership simply cannot beat the legacy costs hanging over them. Ill-advised debt, underfunded pension obligations and other “legacy costs” are dragging down companies whose only strength is strong local brands.

That’s exactly what Journal Register CEO, John Paton, argued when he announced that company’s second bankruptcy in three years. “While the Journal Register Company cannot afford to halt its investments in its digital future it can now no longer afford the legacy obligations incurred in the past.” Paton said. He added, “Many of those obligations, such as leases, were entered into in the past when revenues, at their peak, were nearly twice as big as they are today and are no longer sustainable. Revenues in 2005 were about two times bigger than projected 2012 revenues. Defined Benefit Pension underfunding liabilities have grown 52% since 2009.”

I hate the thought that thousand of fellow journalists who worked in good faith for years, face a tumultuous pension future. I hate the injustice of it and I pray more newspaper companies will follow the New York Times example of reducing obligations by offering lump-sum buyouts.

That seems like a solution that carries compassion with pragmatism even though it’s still an uncomfortable option.

But pension costs are an easy target for corporations when the ill-advised decisions by corporate leaders to deeply leverage their companies with huge debt are probably the bigger culprit. In hindsight that debt was a bad idea but the real question is what does it mean for the future? Those local brands have a fighting chance based on current operations but legacy costs are killing them.

One of the most important things on Twitter and the blogs last week was my friend Steve Buttry’s speech to the Arizona Newspaper Association. Steve boldly declared newspapers and journalists need to embrace discomfort. It is amazing to me and should be embarrassing to the news industry that this message is still bold and mandatory.

A lot of creativity gurus like this one, and this one, and this one demand we escape our comfort zone to show real creativity.

Getting out of the comfort zone should be a manifesto for newspaper companies.

One of those uncomfortable issues that needs to be discussed is what kind of ownership structure is going to best facilitate protecting journalism, journalists and strong local news brands?

Certainly a lot of small, local publishers are running scared too and some local owners are making newspapers their personal playthings.

I believe operating independently with corporate steerage would allow newspaper operations to: 1) Understand local needs 2) to adjust fast to specific local realities and 3) they would not be tied to a one-size-fits-all set of solutions dictated from afar.

There is not a simple answer but my skepticism about buying into a McClatchy newspaper bond made it clear to me that accepting corporate ownership as the only solution going forward is naïve and dangerous.

Embracing discomfort by debating whether ownership groups or local ownership provides the best way to serve the journalistic needs of our communities, strikes me as a essential.

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Opinions on pay walls don’t fit in neat sound bites, but newspapers face a tough challenge

September 12, 2012 – 12:15 pm

UPDATE, Sept. 13, 10:50

I noted in this blog post yesterday that the free offerings in the Phoenix news ecosystem were going to attack AZCentral for its decision to construct a pay wall but this East Valley Tribune attack disappoints me.

I’ve always been disturbed by calling people names. This sophomoric move may be hip to some, but it doesn’t cut it for me. It strikes me as a pretty vehement response from a competitor that has already been reduced to a shell of its former self.

Original post:

As I organized my thoughts to discuss newspaper “pay walls” and metered payments Monday evening on the Phoenix public television show Horizon on Channel 8, it seemed like a great time to record my thoughts on the subject for public consumption. The show went off without a hitch and here is a link. I joined Arizona Republic Senior Vice President and Editor, Randy Lovely, and KPHO General Manager, Ed Munson, on the show.

Since the Arizona Republic announced its specific plans for charging consumers for online content, local media has been asking for my reaction. That move goes into effect today. On the website in the right-hand column under the words, “About our new full access subscription model,” is a thorough and sincerely written explanation of the plan from Aug. 12 by Publisher John Zidich.

What most interviewers want, because of the nature of their business, is a nice, concise, “this is dumb or this is smart,” preferably the former.

I got trapped once but I have tried to avoid interviews and one-liners. My analysis of the Republic effort to get more reader revenue and that of all the other newspapers who are joining the pay wall march is just too nuanced for easy, glib answers and, frankly, my opinion keeps shifting.

I am hopeful pay walls can work because they might be able to extend the life of journalism—am institution critical to society. But, the successful execution of pay walls will be incredibly tricky.

As I said in the “This I believe” blog post I wrote May 30, “I believe a middle position is required on consumer revenue. Being “pro” or “anti” pay wall makes little sense to me.”

I also said in that post, “By the same token, the idea that legacy media can find a silver bullet such as tablets, or pay walls, or reinvigoration of old advertising models is silly and reckless. The only silver bullet is dramatic reinvention.” I have come to believe there may be a way pay walls can be an element of that reinvention.

Alan Mutter delivered the tough news Monday that digital revenues are not coming close to replacing declining print revenues. It is little wonder newspapers have sought other alternatives.

The Steve Myers’ piece on Poynter cited above does a great job of detailing the pros and cons of the pay wall argument.

I believe increasing reader revenue is a an essential element of any newspapers go-forward strategy. My alma mater, The Star Tribune, is doing it right. They now have 42% of their revenue coming in from the consumer side and their goal is 50/50. In that piece the Star Tribune’s Rob Gursha talks about how the newspaper is now focused on “consumer marketing.” That is the key to raising the percentage of reader revenue for newspapers.

Consumer marketing has not been part of newspaper’s expertise and a mammoth shift will be required to make it work. For some newspapers a pay wall may be the right answer. I think the critics who vehemently argue pay walls will delay or kill innovation are more than a bit hysterical and are not giving newspaper executives nearly enough credit. If, indeed, as the critics suggest, American newspaper publishers think pay walls will simply reinvent yesterday, they are going to be out of business soon.

The real risk is whether a newspaper like the Republic gets ignored in the rapidly evolving free news ecosystem. Here in Phoenix the noise about paid and free is in high gear. Channel 5 (KPHO) is hammering the point with its audience in promo ads and embedded in the newscast that they are free and “the other guys” are going to charge. (See the Channel 8 video.)

The clear implication is that KPHO is a viable alternative to the paid AZCentral. I spent some time wandering the KPHO site this afternoon. There is no polite way to say this: that implication is disingenuous at best. to say that the comparison is apples and oranges is unfair to that cliché.

I know the Republic well and I often have issues with it, but to imply that KPHO is any thing more than a shadow of AZCentral and the Republic, is simply not realistic or honest.

However, as I said during the television show, KPHO and The Republic are probably going to serve significantly different markets with their websites.

But there’s the consumer challenge. Newspapers now must be in the business of convincing audiences they have the best “mousetrap.” If they are going to charge more money across all platforms, newspapers have to add value, fast and convincingly.

I have been very impressed with the Republic’s new-found aggressiveness in trying to establish that indispensability to readers. Editor Randy Lovely has been communicating often and well with readers.

It is apparent is that the Republic understands this is not a one sized fits all proposition. Not all their readers are going to be interested in paying for deep local coverage. That’s why they’re allowing “casual readers” to look at 20 articles a month.

The New York Times has converted a lot of skeptics and given genuine hope to big regional newspapers like the Republic with a similar plan although the Times position has been strong enough they have been able to halve the threshold to 10 free articles a month.

Clay Shirky, the long-time critic of “walled gardens” has shifted his tone as he has watched the success of the Times and others newspapers. I respect Shirky more than any other journalism thinker. I applaud his willingness to reevaluate. I think he nails it when he says (newspapers have finally given up on ) “the idea that every reader online can be treated as if they were someone who is purchasing the paper, the kind of online equivalent of someone who’s purchasing the paper when it was just a physical product.”

Shirky believes the New York Times, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, the Chicago Sun and and an increasing number of papers copying them, are saying “we will never get a majority or even a sizable minority of our readers to pay us directly, but we can design a system in which some of our most passionate, engaged readers pay us directly, and the rest of the readers, the casual readers, we can keep around for the advertising revenue.”

The Story So Far from the Columbia Journalism School eloquently called the enthusiasts for the Times “fans” and reported that “Fans despite their small numbers accounted for 55% of the site’s traffic.”

What regional newspapers like The Republic are betting is that they too have enough “fans” to make a pay wall work. That is where my concern and a bit of skepticism come into play. The only way the Republic and AZ Central are going enjoy success with a pay wall is if a lot of readers who care about local news become convinced The Republic offers them the best value. Local news has to be worth real dollars.

I think the Republic is making a terrific move by creating AZ Central Watchdog. It is a package of all the important investigative pieces The Republic has done. Right now the lead story in the package is the sensational story of a copper mining dispute that is ripping a part the town of Florence, AZ and much of the state Republican party.

You can always count on Dennis Wagner and Craig Harris for compelling journalism but I found this piece an especially wonderful “must read.” Note all the supporting data and information linked to in the online story. That is a great example of using the web to add amazing value to the story.

Now let me write as a consumer. Until the announcement of the Watchdog section I had no intention of subscribing to the all-access subscription offer. I am now reconsidering, but there’s a rub. That’s because I read the Republic, The Star Tribune and the New York Times every day on my Kindle Fire.

The thing that profoundly disturbs me about newspapers maximizing reader revenue is that I have not seen a single sign any of those companies has the faintest clue I am a subscriber. In fact I have gotten solicitations sent to my home by New York Times and they seem oblivious to my Kindle subscription.

The tremendous FAQ the Republic published today on its website is unfortunately quite clear that I am not included in the full access offer. The question reads: “I have a subscription to The Arizona Republic on my Kindle. Does this give me access to azcentral.com? The answer: “No, at this time we are not able to connect other e-reader subscriptions to an azcentral.com subscription.”

I think this is a serious mistake and while my hunch was this is caused by the intractability of the tablet companies, like Amazon, that company claims on its website, that “We will share the name, billing address, and order information associated with your newspaper or magazine purchase with the publisher. Publishers may use this information for marketing purposes.”

The fact that I will have to pay double is profoundly disappointing. It is not the kind of consumer-friendly customer service that marks a good consumer products company.

It bring us back to newspapers’ toughest challenge when it comes to constructing pay walls. Consumer marketing has never been in a newspaper’s DNA . The consumer-first mindset is what’s going to be required if newspapers are going to effectively increase reader revenue.

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This I believe about journalism, newspapers and the future of media

May 31, 2012 – 2:12 pm

Tim J. McGuire, May 30, 2012

I believe it’s important to pause every now and then to write down my values and thoughts. That’s especially true in the ever-fluid media world where nothing is standing still. This missive will attempt to take stock of where my thoughts are on media on May 30, 2012. I first wrote it a few weeks ago for my colleague Len Downie. We have been discussing a book and I wanted to organize my thoughts. I share it, not because I think it is an earthshaking pronouncement, but rather because it might allow other folks to engage in the same exercise. In fact, I think it can be so beneficial to one’s own thought process, I plan on assigning this same exercise to my graduate students this fall.

This I believe

For me everything starts with appreciating that we are in Schumpeterian Moment.

A lot of things we know and love are going to be destroyed, but a lot of wonderful new things will be created. In a meaningful way, I believe the Schumpeterian moment offers a personality test that will tell young people if journalism and media are for them.. If a student looks at our current news ecosystem and sees promise, excitement and energizing challenge then the media world is for them. If they look at that same ecosystem and rue the loss of what we had and see only doom approaching, that person needs to exit the media world quickly.

Institutions are not in control anymore. The digital revolution has given guns to the deer, and they don’t hesitate to use them. This loss of control has rocked media but it has penetrated all of society. Just ask Netflix, Bank of America and scores of other corporations. Look at insurance, real estate and auto dealers for more examples of how the middle man intermediary has been hammer-locked by consumers in control.

I believe the democratization of just about everything is a good thing, but practically every conflict we read about centers in some ways on institutions desperately trying to hang onto control. Politics, business, education and media are being transformed against their will.

The change in the media world has been fundamental and earthshaking. In old media the formula was simple. We edit. You read. The interactive web made that forced relationship a joke. People can talk, share, argue AND do business with each other.

The newspaper was edited on a 24 hour cycle. You read when we said you could read. TV brought you news on THEIR schedule. We “pushed” news on readers and reader options were limited. Now you read, watch, and search whenever you want and you demand immediacy. Audiences now “pull” the news.

I edited a newspaper in a world where the media controlled the message. All pretenses of control are gone. Blogs, Twitter, Facebook advocacy sites etc end that control completely. Again, this is not a media issue. The digital revolution diminished control of every industry you can mention—-including politics and government!

Most media organizations still too often act as if they are in control. They act like they still guard what Phil Meyer once called the ”information and advertising toll gate.” That’s fantasy. There is no toll gate to be controlled. Readers and viewers can access information and advertising messages at will.

Information and advertising have been commoditized. The big gatekeepers are unnecessary in a free-flowing information world. The smart companies will abandon all pretenses of gatekeeping and start facilitating, guiding and leading consumers through the overwhelming mass of information. Digital First’s frequent commentator, Steve Buttry, describes the new task beautifully.

Journalism is not dead. Print is not dead. Advertising is not dead. Absolute proclamations that they are dead, come from people who can’t sort lofty visions from evolution.

I believe traditional newspapers are profoundly troubled, but not necessarily doomed. Some will go to publishing a few times a week. Some will die and that will be okay. Despite my life-long love affair with newspapers I believe the market will successfully sort itself out. Medium and small newspapers may well survive a long time and newspapers who figure out how to be indispensable will survive albeit, in a weakened state. News operations that find the right blend of digital, print and device-centric content will thrive as long as they yield more and more power to audiences. Publishers must collaborate with their audiences or the market will tell them they are unnecessary.

Print will not go away for some time but it will be not be the primary game very far into the future. Operations like Digital First are smart efforts that need to be studied and parts of their operation need to be copied. I agree with most of what they write and preach.

However, Digital First is not necessarily the Holy Grail and I will be more comfortable when they lead more by example than by mocking. Preaching collaboration in your work environment and then giving the finger to the industry seems short-sighted. I like it when they modulate and take this approach. The news industry desperately needs constructive leaders, but I do understand the frustration when print publishers don’t follow because they are desperately clinging to the past.

As the media world finds its footing, creativity and innovation must be prized. That does not mean that everything that has gone before is lunacy. Certainly, the Schumpeterian moment says things will be destroyed, but that should not mean that just because we adopt certain elements of our past that we are turning our back on innovation.

By the same token, the idea that legacy media can find a silver bullet such as tablets, or pay walls, or reinvigoration of old advertising models is silly and reckless. The only silver bullet is dramatic reinvention.

I believe a middle position is required on consumer revenue. Being “pro” or “anti” pay wall makes little sense to me. I am convinced the term pay wall distorts the conversation. It is nuts to think that in a commoditized news world publishers can use a pay wall like a traditional subscription fee. If publishers think a pay wall is a seamless re-creation of the past they are indeed on the road to perdition.

Increasing consumer revenue from people willing to pay should be the central idea and that only comes from adding value. Adding value to news products needs to be far more targeted than it has been. There will be several ways companies will add revenue. One is through disseminating their product for a fee on any mobile device that will have them. Added-value content in areas like sports, business and lifestyle will offer another opportunity. I believe there is revenue to be had in local news, but I find those efforts right now are largely misguided.

Covering city council meetings and boring feature stories on school principals will not cut it. Successful news operations will redefine local news as true accountability reporting in local areas. They will make the issues from that city council meeting relevant to people concerned about the livability of their city. That will require real reporting resources and it cannot be done on the cheap.

Newspapers and TV news operations need to face that fact that they are not nearly as good as they need to be. There is too much content that’s simply not compelling in major regional newspapers. Hell, much of it is boring.

Consumers only deeply care about their communities when: a) their self-interests are at stake, b)their sense of justice and outrage is piqued, or c) stories of their neighbors truly touch them. That sort of story has to go way beyond a 15-inch bland feature and it requires knowledgeable, skilled reporters, d) names. The old-fashioned community journalists who understood that names sold newspapers and built a sense of community were smart and we were dumb for failing to recognize their genius,e) special interest material like sports.

All this adds up to differentiation. Only when news organizations focus on making themselves fundamentally different thant the commoditized news aggregators and become true curators of the genuinely important stuff in their community will they excel.

News site publishers need to understand one crucial element of Econ 101: Abundance and scarcity. Old time journos loved life when news, information and advertising were scarce commodities. Newspapers had the presses and nobody else did. Publishers controlled access, information and the channels of delivery. When things are scarce prices and rates are high. The digital age had made information abundant and information is now cheap. The smart entrepreneurs are going to understand that and the operators who choose to act as if they are still in a world of scarcity face almost immediate extinction. Advertising inefficiencies are being replaced by efficiency.

I believe we all waste our time when we look for culprits in the demise of mainstream media. In the same way cars replaced horse and buggy 100 years ago and changed our world, the digital age replaced the industrial age. Our media world was disrupted and blaming the leaders on duty at the time or wishing for yesterday is a fool’s game. It happened. Get over it.

I believe we set about forging a new journalistic future by doing a lot of things differently than we’ve done them in the past.

At the top of that agenda we must find new ways to measure every thing. The search for metrics to gauge audiences, effectiveness and most of all engagement with our audiences must be one of our most important quests.

We have to find new imaginative ways to serve advertisers who want to attract new customers. That may include selling them classic advertising but we have to change the mission to helping advertisers draw customers. Once we do that I believe a lot of new opportunities will emerge. Steve Buttry has some great revenue ideas that serve advertisers. Ken Doctor has some important ideas too.

The goal of finding new revenues should not be to return to the Golden Days of 30+ percent profits. The goal should be funding quality journalism while we make a profit consistent with that of other industries. Capitalism is great. Greed sucks.

I also believe a key to the mainstream media future is the successful integration of two groups of citizens we have held in disdain for too long. The first are people from outside the news industry. We have to let go if we are going to reinvent. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. We need new blood from other more entrepreneurial fields.

Second, we need a massive infusion of youth. Students in today’s best journalism schools, such as my own Cronkite School, are doing and thinking important stuff. We need to stop offering them jobs we designed 40 years ago. We need to get them into our organization and urge them to invent. We need to offer them freedom, challenge, entrepreneurial opportunities and veteran wisdom and then watch them go like hell.

Journalism education needs reinvention too. I’d love to see a series of conferences on how to redesign the entire process and this dramatic speech by Eric Newton should be the centerpiece of that discussion.

Every aspect of our business model must be rethought. We must think differently about content, costs and revenue sources. Delivery channels, partnerships, collaboration and competition also need to be re-conceptualized.

I believe newcomers to the media world are acing us out of investment dollars because they are fresh, exciting and see no boundaries. We have to look more like a startup and less like plodding behemoths.

I continue to believe government funding is a very bad idea. We have to be capable of more creativity than that. In fact, I believe we have to start teaching creativity in universities and make it an essential part of every training curriculum. I am going to do two weeks on Creativity and Invention for my graduate 21st Century class this fall, but my dream is to introduce such a course to the regular journalism curriculum. I’d also make critical thinking a part of that dream course.

I believe that as we reconsider journalism, our values and ethics are going to become a major battleground. Already, ethics are under assault and the temptation to follow the Gawkers and Deadspins of the world is becoming irresistible to many. But rather than holding our breath until we turn blue hoping that old ethical values will return, we need to enter into a dialogue about how ethical values should look in the future.

I believe we have to change our mindsets to welcome the idea that digital innovation has unleashed a plethora of tools that can make journalism more exciting and effective. As my colleague, Dr. Leslie Jean Thornton says, “we have to appreciate that the tools are not the products. They are tools.”

We should not get hot and bothered about Twitter and Facebook, those particular brands could be passing fads. Social media and the power of citizen conversation is not fleeting and we need to respect and appreciate that our society has been deeply changed by that power.

I believe it is negative to focus on the fragmentation and commoditization of news. It is far better to realize that a diversity of voices, a diffusion of power and a democratization of media tools should lead to more robust dialogue and, with luck, better citizens.

Social media has great power and potential, but only as a tool to allow us to manage, curate and invent.

I believe journalistic organizations have to be more proactive in thinking about and developing standards for the future. The very definition of news is under attack as we get overtaken by the journalism of political beliefs, personal opinion, special interests, public relations, hidden agendas and advertising. I read somewhere that there are now four PR people for every newsperson in today’s news ecosystem. I can’t find that anywhere on the web, but assuming it is true, it makes quality accountability journalism all the more crucial.

I believe quality news organizations should view the current taste for affirmation rather than information (aka Fox versus MSNBC) as a premier challenge. Rather than passively accepting the ugly fact that too many citizens are enamored of this kind of affirmation, responsible news organizations need to contrast and compare their performance.

In the same way, I believe the significance of verification, context, independence, ethics, motivation and journalistic accountability are essential and we must fight for to preserve them.

It is easy to condemn the role of gatekeepers in our journalistic past, but there were victories too. Again, I believe a debate over the appropriateness of that function is fruitless. That gatekeeping world is gone, The debate now must be over what role a responsible journalistic organization can play to serve audiences best.

I believe those who view an unorganized world full of citizen journalists as idyllic are smoking something or they are so idealistic they ignore the reality of well-funded special interests.

I believe corporate media is in deep trouble and facing deathly ice floes because they cannot turn their ships in time. Yet, I believe that those who believe the loss of corporate media will be a good thing are terrifically naïve.

Right now news media ownership alternatives are not all that pretty. I believe one realistic option is going to be vanity owners who might attempt to return us to the autocratic days that are happily past.

On the other hand, giant internet companies like Google, Facebook and Microsoft, equity investors, non-profits, bloggers, and thousands of upstart media entrepreneurs are now fighting to own the news in a battle unlike anything traditional media could have ever contemplated.

I am not particularly concerned that right now the American public seems unconcerned about the murky future of journalism. Some polls indicate many Americans might be happier if the press dried up and blew into the prairie, but I truly believe that journalism may be like trash collection. It gets little respect on a day-to-day basis but if the trash sits in my garage for three weeks during a strike my attachment to trash collectors increases dramatically. I believe if Americans were suddenly deprived of enterprise and accountability journalism, meaningful local coverage and engaging story-telling, attitudes toward journalism would change almost instantly.

I believe the future of the news is good because I believe the tools of our age give us more opportunity than destruction.

This I believe, for now.

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A fond memory, a man who offered a hand up, and modern-day bullying

May 14, 2012 – 12:02 pm

I wrote this piece for my hometown newspaper, The Mt Pleasant Morning Sun. It appeared Sunday, May 13. I reprint it here for my regular followers. Read this to understand the controversy to which I refer.

I have followed the recent controversy at my alma mater, Sacred Heart Academy, with keen interest.

I have passionate feelings about the decision not to let Dominic Sheahan speak at the 2012 graduation ceremonies, but for many, those opinions would distract from the point of this commentary. I wouldn’t want to do that.

While I have empathy for everyone caught in this crossfire, my prayers and emotional connection have largely been with a man who I am quite certain has been saddened and hurt by events of the last month, Dominic’s grandpa, Jerry Sheahan.

Jerry Sheahan is one of the most pivotal figures in my blessed life. I have never publicly told him that. In this very difficult month for Jerry, and before either of us pass; it strikes me as important to tell him and the world. I also think the tale carries larger lessons for all of us.

I was born in Mt. Pleasant in 1949 with Arthrogriposis Multicongenita, a congenital birth defect that deformed my limbs. I required braces and almost annual surgeries.

One spring day in 1956 Jerry Sheahan called my dad, Jim McGuire, and asked if Tim could be batboy for Sheahan’s highly successful Little League baseball team. Sheahan and his co-coach (the late) Bob Wohlscheid were both parishioners at Sacred Heart. They had known my parents, Jim and Anita, for years.

Without much notice, a uniform appeared at the house and that evening I was in the Roosevelt Oil team’s dugout. I arrived at the West Side stadium that night more than a little confused. Jerry briefed me on my duties and I tentatively followed his instructions. I vaguely knew only a couple of the players. The game had barely begun when a photographer from the local newspaper, the Mt Pleasant Daily Times-News, showed up at the game.

The photographer took one picture of my back looking onto the field. My omnipresent braces are prominent in the photo. The second picture the paper published showed me handing a bat to a player well more than a head taller than me (Joe Feldman) and the caption said I told him to hit a homerun.

Both captions took considerable liberties describing me as a “gallant sparkplug’ and decreeing I “handled the bats like diamonds.” At the time I was no gallant sparkplug and I don’t think I had the good sense to tell anyone to hit a home run.

There would come a day, however, when I did handle those bats like diamonds and all those characterizations would become more or less true. Roosevelt Oil (later Leonard Refinery) and Little League became an integral part of my springs and summers for the next five years. Usually the season was close to complete by the time I headed for my annual summer surgeries and casts. I still remember minute details of games, seasons and players.

If the players regarded me as an oddity I never felt it for a moment. My sense of team and self-esteem was as strong as the fastball of the star pitcher, John Schade. I fondly remember team picnics at amusement parks and other team outings. I was always front and center in team photos and celebrations. To this day, my good friend Mick Natzel, talks about when we “played” Little League together.

Sheahan and Wohlscheid accomplished their probable goal. The sports-crazed little kid who would never play baseball felt like he belonged to a team. I never felt like the lonely, handicapped boy. Sheahan, Wohlscheid and the players made me feel as if I had a real role with a championship team.

These days I read a lot about the dramatic increase of shameful bullying in schools. It angers me and saddens me that some youngsters are harassed to the point of suicide.

News stories like that make me reflect on two things. First, I reflect on the two young girls I remember in school that were unmercifully teased. Every time I read one of those stories I have a major pang of regret that I never helped them.

Yet, I know why I didn’t. I was just so bloomin’ grateful that I wasn’t the one the other kids were teasing.

That’s when I marvel at how little I was picked on as a young kid even though I “walked funny.” I am convinced much of that was due to my young friends in the community. Practically every kid under 12 knew the batboy for Roosevelt Oil and they knew his team liked him. With the frequent help of my young friends from my Little League team, Mike Hackett, Bill McDonald and my brother Marty I survived those prepubescent years in fine shape. I knew there were always people there to help me.

Jerry Sheahan and Bob Wohlscheid with one big act of kindness offered me a hand up. It changed my young life. I salute Jerry and Bob and I salute all my friends who saved me from bullying.

At the same time I wonder if there is a youngster each of us could save from bullying by caring as much as Jerry and Bob did. And, I wonder if we’re coaching our kids enough to stand up for those youngsters around them who are getting the short end of the stick.

Tim McGuire is a Mt Pleasant native who retired as Editor of The Minneapolis Star Tribune in 2002. He is now The Frank Russell Chair for the Business of Journalism at The Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University.

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People I like and respect can hold positions with which I disagree

May 9, 2012 – 1:00 pm

Jon Talton is a a multi-talented journalist, author and Arizona development critic.

I first encountered Talton’s work when I moved to Phoenix in 2002. I thought he was the smartest columnist in the Valley. Yet, I was always surprised at the “love him or hate him” reaction I received when I publicly praised him.

Talton called it as he saw it on local growth and development, and that was not a popular thing to do, though time proved him largely correct. He now writes a business column for The Seattle Times, probably because of his outspokenness in Arizona!

A few years ago, at the urging of my wife Jean, I started to read Talton’s novels and my respect grew exponentially.

He writes a Phoenix-based series called the David Mapstone series, a Cincinnati-based series called The Cincinnati Casebooks series and he wrote Deadline Man. Deadline Man is a must read for newspaper junkies. It’s an Armageddon-type thriller that is damned hard to put down.

I have read every book he has written, and I say without hesitation Talton can write. His books are incredibly entertaining and he draws wonderful characters. To my untrained, journalistic eye, the line between Talton and the big name mystery-thriller authors is frighteningly thin. Big-time fame has eluded Talton, but I wonder for how long.

A few months ago, thanks to Twitter, @jontalton and I met at a Valley coffee shop. That’s where my respect for him skyrocketed.

Talton operates out of a wheelchair due to a debilitating illness and I had never realized it. As someone who is quite noisy about my own physical infirmities, Talton’s stoicism surprised and impressed me. He was a fantastic conversationalist too. I now consider him a friend.

Mimi Johnson is also a friend of mine. I have known Mimi’s husband, Steve Buttry, for several years and I have encountered Mimi three or four times as she accompanied Steve. Mimi is lively, fun and pleasantly irreverent.

Twitter played a role in my relationship with Mimi too. @mimijohnson is a world champion tweeter. She’s pithy, sarcastic and passionate. My wife only follows a few people on Twitter and Mimi is one of them. A couple of mornings a week she will ask me with a knowing chuckle, “did you read Mimi today? She’s on a tear.”

When I first met Mimi she said she was a writer. I will admit I viewed her as a bit of a dilettante because she couldn’t point to anything she had written.

A few months ago that changed with the debut of Gathering String, a book published by the self-publishing arm of Amazon. In my mind that made Mimi a real, live writer.

I found Gathering String a delightful read. It’s part political intrigue, part paean to an emerging journalism world and part mystery-thriller. It has a little whiff of romance novel to it and sometimes I feared melodrama was just around the corner. Yet, the book engaged me, intrigued me and rewarded me. It had enough surprises to keep me in the game.

Last week my friend Talton published a column he called The Stand.

And that’s where my two friends collide.

Talton challenged Amazon. He informed his readers he was going to boycott Amazon by boycotting a book store panel. He then called his fellow authors to arms against Amazon.

Talton is not engaging in this battle because of Amazon’s alleged predatory pricing. He says he is unnerved because Amazon is not a very good corporate citizen in Seattle, but that’s not the reason for his ire.

I would have been comfortable with Talton’s raging battle on either of those grounds. However, I am decidedly uncomfortable with Talton’s stated reason for cancelling an appearance at a book signing because of Amazon.

He cancelled because one of the people scheduled to be on the panel was published by Amazon’s self-publishing arm—the same self-publishing arm that published Mimi Johnson’s Gathering String.

Talton is candid when he describes his decision in the column. He writes

“On a purely selfish level, I labored in the vineyard for 20 years before I was first published, and published by a respected New York house. I didn’t have the Ivy League or Iowa Writers’ Workshop credentials, didn’t live in New York and go to the parties where one met the “right people.” I was just stubborn. I wanted it badly, to be a published author, and not from a vanity press no matter how tarted up and backed by big money. In the years since my first book, I have worked hard to improve each book, for every time I had to win a legitimate publisher. I would be damned if I was going to share the table with a self-published writer. Harsh? Perhaps.”

I sure think it is harsh. And, I think it’s mistaken. To me, Talton is saying ‘I suffered and by God everybody else should too.”

I despise that position. I find that decrying the fact that people no longer have to wait for the “lucky break’ to get their words in print to be much like endorsing hazing. People who go through initiation into fraternities or sororities always seem intent on making sure the people who come after them suffer just as much as they did. I find that silly and dangerous.

The dynamic tools of our digital age have democratized every process known to man. I am damned happy publishing is one. These tools have given access to the “people living in the vineyard.”

I am incredibly happy Mimi Johnson got her words in print. It would have been shameful if her work got blocked by an overworked, arbitrary and capricious decision-maker in a publishing house. I am convinced the line between Johnson’s book and many “published” books is just as thin as the line between Talton and the big-name authors.

In “The Stand” Talton fears for the sustained life of small publishers like Scottsdale’s Poisoned Pen Press. I think Barbara Peters (Editor-in-Chief) of Poisoned Press is one of the coolest people in the Valley. I don’t want her house to die either.

But in the same way I oppose any unnatural effort to save newspapers, I oppose any unnatural effort to save publishers. I also find it short-sighted and negative to assume that opening access to book publishing to all authors will destroy publishers like Poisoned Press.

I have faith in markets. Mimi Johnson tells me that she is facing a slow slog with her self-published effort. The market is obviously not completely comfortable with this news approach. It is will take time. Meanwhile established publishers, big and small, still have many opportunities to compete in this new redefined market. The market will speak.

If those publishers have difficulty competing it will be because of Amazon’s potential predatory practices, not because it gave access to aspiring authors to take their best shot.

Hazing is never good and I am happy it’s no longer a part of publishing.

And despite our disagreement, I still think Jon Talton is a helluva talent

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When the new media world we live in hits you between the eyes

February 9, 2012 – 5:55 pm

At 10:17 this morning a wonderfully conscientious student emailed me that she was caught in traffic and that she would be late for my 10:30 Business and Future of Journalism class.

The young woman knows I abhor excuses but the next email shocked me. She sent me a picture of the traffic jam she was fighting!

I laughed myself to the floor, gave her several points for ingenuity and commenced class. A few minutes later we were talking animatedly about social media and how it is changing our life.

We talked about the immediacy of information, the self-serving nature of things like Twitter and Facebook. As one student opined, “we love the fact that we can talk and somebody listens!”

One student even talked about her father who is convinced all this “social media stuff” is a fad and young people are shooting themselves in the foot with it.

We used the student’s father as a spark to ignite lot of interesting discussion but then the conversation suddenly shifted.

One student talked about how “lying is so easy on Twitter and Facebook, and a lot harder in person.“ Another student talked about his early teen sister and her friends. He thinks they’ve lost the ability to speak to each other in person and he believes some basic values are being lost.

That’s when I rose to the father’s defense and said the student’s father is not hopelessly out of touch. I said he’s just observing such a torrent of change he is really worried that people don’t understand what’s being lost.

I left that class and called my wife, Jean, who still smells a news story at 20 paces despite being out of the business for 35 years. She told me that before noon today she had received two random “robo” calls hoping she needed guidance on dealing with the $25 billion mortgage banking settlement.

They were probably scammer calls but they came just a few hours after the bloomin” settlement was signed! That puts a whole new light on immediacy. Even the crooks act fast these days!

I laugh heartily when a politician or someone I over hear at a coffee shop longs for the 50’s and 60”s.

As one of of my students so aptly said during our discussion this morning, “We’re not going back!” As they say ‘the genie is out of the bottle,’ and this fast-paced, immediate reaction world is here to stay.

That immediacy, along with the overwhelming ubiquity of news, raises some profound questions about surviving and thriving an ever-changing world with our values intact.

And, as I told my students today the real burden is not going to fall on me. I have only a relatively few years left on this earth of ours. That burden—and privilege–will be theirs.

So, those big heavy thoughts hung over me much of the day until I happened upon this wonderful little piece on 5-year-old love by Diana K. Sugg.
It’s a lovely story about her five-year-old boy falling in love.

Sugg treats the subject seriously and with a reporter’s respect. Even as she illuminates, she warms the reader’s heart.

Call me an old softie, a Pollyanna or whatever you like, but I still believe great story-telling and enlightening journalism will always enrich our lives as we grapple with the turbulence of our changing times.

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If the tablet is going to help newspapers then tend that garden

January 30, 2012 – 6:12 pm

Every morning as I pull my old bones out of bed I grab my Kindle Fire and my iPhone from their chargers.

First, I read some 150 overnight Twitter messages to get a handle on the big news developments. A well-put-together Twitter feed is a great news stream to begin a day.

Then I grab my trusty Kindle Fire and download three newspapers, the Arizona Republic, The Minneapolis Star Tribune, and The New York Times.

This 40-year-newspaperman’s pristine hands never touch an ink-stained newspaper and there is no absolutely risk of inclement weather chasing a folded newspaper around a driveway.

Newspaper content is still central to my life but the dead-tree form of a newspaper is not. While the “tablet as newspaper savior “ debate rages on. I personally believe tablets will serve as an excellent outlet for newspaper content for some years. I doubt tablets can solve many of the newspaper’s revenue problems, but I am fairly sure tablet revenue will prove to be more than chump change.

But there is one thing of which I am absolutely sure, and that is—for me— tablets are the perfect answer.

I live in two places. I care a lot about about two communities, two sets of teams and two sets of politics, characters and obits. Being able to inform myself about both places 365 days of the year is a delightful luxury. And, for good measure I have the incomparable New York Times at my fingertips, including the Monday Media section of the New York Times, the best, most consistent newspaper package I can name.

The Kindle Fire presentation of news is not fancy. Newspapers like the Star Tribune and the Times organize their content on the Fire simply, according to the Front Page, Local, Features, Sports and Business.

For me the elegant organization and prioritization of content—like I find in the Star Tribune and the Times–is what allows any publication to rise above. Call me old-fashioned, but l want to know what the editors value and I don’t want to read my opinion page articles with my news stories.

My experience with the Arizona Republic in the last several weeks has not been near as rewarding as that of the cither two newspapers. Now, I am the first to caution that news is not what the editor had for breakfast this morning so I don’t want my personal experiences to become my agenda. However, I think my Republic experience speaks to a larger industry truth worth discussion.

For weeks the Republic “smushed” all their articles into three categories, features, news and sports and presented them haphazardly. Especially on Sunday not all of their articles even got published on the Kindle Fire edition. The reading experience was dismal and I desperately wanted to understand why.

After wrestling with the Republic’s internal organizational structure for several days I was able to talk to Mike Coleman the Republic’s Vice President for Digital Media. Mike is a great guy. I know from personal experience he is smart, articulate and caring.

My candid 20-minute conversation with Mike was informative, but vaguely disturbing. Mike made it clear he thinks his organization has knocked it out of the park with with its I-Pad edition. He bragged about the large number of page views and the large audience the Republic is serving with the I-Pad. As pleased as he was with that I-Pad edition he was personally disappointed with the Kindle Fire edition.

He admitted it’s been bad and without really making excuses explained that a move to a new content management system has complicated the task. He also complained the the Amazon feeds have been more difficult to work with than the I-Pad system.

Several times during the conversation Mike said “if we had an army of developers……..” I took from that the clear implication the Republic did not have enough digital development resources to solve the problem.

Therein lies the problem for newspapers. All of the competitors do have armies of developers. Facebook and Google get praise for their quick reactions to technical problems. They are obviously tech companies first.

I am fairly convinced by the fact that the Republic problem with the Fire has been solved Monday, that I caught the organization at a bad time and they will continue to fight the good fight to manage the rapidly changing tablet ecosystem.

There is a bigger problem though and that’s can newspapers as a species legitimately play in the digital world?

Newspapers have only two real choices. The first is to admit they are outdated analog companies and die a slow death. The second is to rethink their technical approach and make digital capabilities a top priority with the technical muscle and expertise needed to compete with “real” digital companies.

The path that will not work is to “do the best we can with what we have.” That path leads to perdition.

The interesting irony here is that the second greatest strength of analog newspaper companies, after news, has always been operational brilliance. “The daily miracle”’ really was miraculous and newspapers could beautifully solve practically any operational or logistical challenge.

Critics and newspaper advocates can argue all they want about who did what in the past and who wounded newspapers. That question is becoming stale and irrelevant. The only question that matters now is can newspapers become agile digital competitors?

The tablet is ballyhooed by many as a key element of a viable newspaper future. But unless the same operational brilliance that has always marked newspapers becomes a hallmark of digital problem-solving, I fear the future is dim.

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ASU computer hacking reinforces a valuable truth about digital and humans

January 19, 2012 – 6:37 pm

As we were gathering for today’s Business and Future of Journalism class, one of the students fired off what he thought was a funny line: “This Digital thing isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, is it?”

The joke referred to the classroom problems created by a hacker who apparently compromised the secure Arizona State University computer network.

I took that as a signal that one of my signature rants was in order.

Once class began, I asked the student to explain his point. He must have thought I was a little slow, but he explained that you can’t completely trust this digital age of ours because “stuff like this happens.”

Other students chimed in using words like “vulnerability.” There was an almost palpable feeling of betrayal in the classroom and the perpetrator was the digital world we’ve created. It seemed a widespread sentiment that despite the preaching of professors like me, we’re going to trust the digital revolution at our own peril.

There was some technical talk about firewalls and the need to protect ourselves but it seemed clear to me that even these “digital generation” students view man’s relationship to the digital age as sketchy.

Then a student gave me just the opening I was looking for to make what I thought was a crucial point no student had mentioned. “If we were using a printed book in this class,” the student said, “we could have continued our reading for this class. Her clear implication was that we wouldn’t have been subject to the whims of computers.

So I pounced.

Let’s say that we did use a book in this class, I said. And, the night before our class started, the book store was robbed and all our our books were stolen. The obvious question is would we question the printed book era? Would we worry about the reliability of the written word on dead tree products?

Of course we wouldn’t. We would curse the (insert vulgar name here) who had robbed the book store. Since Cain and Abel, and from the bronze age to the digital age, society has had to worry about scumbags of one sort or another ruining progress.

The figurative light bulbs flashed on in class as students responded to my now semi-hysterical attack on the morally bankrupt hackers who apparently get a big kick out of blowing up ASU for a day or two by STEALING data.

I often worry about society’s occasional efforts to defend hackers. Find examples here, here and here. Most of the people who take that position are “ends just the means folks,” and I get that.

It seems to me that the amount of hacking done for noble reasons pales compared to the amount of malicious, mean-spirited hacking that is akin to knocking over mailboxes and keying cars.

ASU might have been hacked for profit. That’s called stealing and fraud. Or the University might have been hacked because like Mt. Kilimanjaro, “it was there.” That’s the same twisted reasoning used by mailbox bashers and the people who key cars. Either way, the hacking is morally bankrupt and society has some tough choices to make.

Every day we become more dependent on digital and that means every day we become more vulnerable to the human jackasses who think it’s sport to screw with valuable data.

Certainly we need to make systems more secure. But we also need to deal sternly with both the “sport hackers” and the criminals who hold our economic future in their hands.

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The Schumpeterian moment in newspapers will require one litmus test—quality

January 11, 2012 – 1:48 pm

I am back. This is my first blog post since Aug 31, 2011 when I posted a speech I presented to the convention of the Society of Features Editors, Saturday, Aug. 27, in Tucson, Az.

Later that night of the speech, close to midnight, my plane landed in Minneapolis. Within minutes I had fallen and broken my left proximal humerus. Since my right arm has been merely decorative since birth, I was essentially armless for a month and unable to type effectively until mid-October.

After I recovered, the procrastination about this blog set in, the hurly burly of the end of the semester served as an excuse, and then over the last month I’ve fretted about the right subject for my return to this space.

On Tuesday I spoke to my new Business and Future of Journalism class about the Schumpeterian moment, looked at JimRomenesko.com and all was clear for my ride back into the fray.

I wrote about Paul Saffo’s identification of The Schumpeterian moment back in October of 2009. I routinely open a semester with a discussion of the theory there are times that are as destructive as they are creative.

The digital revolution and its aftermath are a perfect illustration of the universal power of the Schumpeterian moment. I get really concerned that journalists and journalism students work themselves into a narcissistic, “woe-is-me” frenzy believing that the media world is the epicenter of this dramatic digital change.

Horse-pucky.

This Schumpeterian moment is affecting practically every industry in the world from manufacturing to insurance to trucking to medicine. Tuesday I told my class an anecdote a student related to me in the fall semester when I mentioned this phenomenon. The graduate student said: “My dad is a senior engineer in an auto plant. He says a few years ago he supervised an entire floor of auto workers. Today he supervises two autoworkers and an entire floor of of robots.” Creative destruction writ large.

After relating that story and my explanation of creative destruction I asked my class of 47 students how many of their parents had experienced the phenomenon in the last few years. More than half, 26 students, raised a hand. The digital revolution is transforming our society at the same time both political parties ignore that reality.

We’ve been talking about dramatic change in the media business for many years now. It seems as if it’s worth looking at some of the changes and sorting smart from dumb.

The New Haven Register and some other Digital First newspapers are closing their printing facilities and farming out the printing to the Hartford Courant. I regret that 105 people are losing their jobs, but the action is a good and necessary one. You’re going to see many more decisions just like that one.

Jeff Jarvis in his book What Would Google Do? eloquently said, “Do what you do best and link to the rest.” That is exactly what news organizations need to do. Concentrate on news, community and revenue-producing relationships and forget the rest.

The New Haven Register owner, Digital First Media leadership, is obviously going to lead the way on this sort of thinking and a good way to follow it is by following John Paton’s blog and Steve Buttry’s Buttry Diary.

Another good example of focusing on what you do best is the New York Times’ shedding of the NYT Regional newspaper group. As an alumnus of the Lakeland Ledger and the Regional group I am emotionally connected to the Time”s 50 year effort to operate quality newspapers on a regional level. By the same token, my appreciation of the Schumpeterian moment allows me to recognize that the Times needs to focus its resources on becoming a premier digital operation. Again, they need to do what they do best, and link to the rest. Running a group of small to medium size newspapers is definitely not what the Times can do best.

The Times regional newspaper sale to Halifax group is a great illustration that we don’t have to salute all change as good. As newspaper prices continue to sink, a lower barrier to entry is going to bring a lot of owners into newspapers who could well endanger the quality of news.

I oppose most litmus tests for new newspaper owners and I pray some real revolutionaries get into the business to shake it up. Viva the revolutionaries, as long as they guarantee local news quality.

Generally speaking, big-footing newspaper staffs with onerous non-compete agreements that will chase off quality good people is not the best way to guarantee quality news.

The Schumpeterian moment is changing everything we know about journalism and the media business. The Rubicon that can’t be crossed is jeopardizing quality journalism.

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Speech to Society of Features Editors argued for a changed journalism mindset

August 31, 2011 – 4:58 pm

This was presented to the convention of the Society of Features Editors, Saturday, Aug. 27, in Tucson, Az.

I spoke to the predecessor of this organization in fall of 2001. It was a hard time. We were reeling from the events of Sept 11. The newspaper business was in what we thought were the pits. The future was in grave doubt. Most of us believed if we weren’t in hell, we could certainly see it from there.

I now laugh frequently at the people who tell me those were the “high times.” We speak of the journalism business of those times in hushed, reverential, even joyful tones. “Those were the great days!”

They didn’t feel so great at the time but who knew the crash that awaited us? The last five years or so have been incredibly difficult for everyone involved in newspapers from CEOs to news clerks. Uncertainty, fear, precipitous declines in revenue, a complete revolution of how we relate to readers. They have all bedeviled us. All those things have led us to today and you’ve survived. Pardon me if I don’t give a big hip, hip hooray for survival.

My task today is formidable. I was specifically asked to inspire you. I am going to decline that invitation. If you get inspired by this speech, I won’t argue, but I am far more interested in provoking you.

I want to confront some ugly realities. Then I want to probe some possible ways to think about changing those realities. I‘d kind of like to tick you off along the way. Tick you off enough that you consider new attitudes, new actions, and a new battle plan.

Let me first explain my current outlook on life. I emphasize current because I am not ashamed to say that for better or worse I have changed. I hope I have grown, adapted and I see the media world far differently than I once did.

I am a lifelong newspaper guy and for a long time that was my exclusive frame. I literally quit my paper route on Saturday when I was 17 and started to work for my local newspaper as a prep sports writer on the next Monday. I didn’t leave the newsroom for 36 years until I retired in 2002. I could see that the business was changing. Editors were being treated differently.

After retirement I explored some possibilities but I soon gravitated to the Academy. Thinking big thoughts has always appealed to me and affecting young lives who want to affect society through journalism was even more attractive.

As a professor specializing in the business and future of Journalism I was forced to confront some startling realities. I had to come to terms with the remarkable pace of change. I say with some pride I had to reinvent myself to shed knee-jerk journalism reactions.

The intimidating power of technology overwhelmed me at first and our relationship is still casual. I am not a techie or one of the “left-wing technologists” who I sometimes think are rushing the future.

Most importantly to our discussion today, on Aug 27, 2011 I am not “a newspaper at all costs” guy.

I have come to agree with the guru, Clay Shirky, who advises us to save journalism, not newspapers.

Shirky argues this in a seminal piece that chronicles the history of newspaper’s demise: “Society doesn’t need newspapers. What we need is journalism. For a century, the imperatives to strengthen journalism and to strengthen newspapers have been so tightly wound as to be indistinguishable.”

Shirky continues, “When we shift our attention from ‘save newspapers’ to ‘save society’, the imperative changes from ‘preserve the current institutions’ to ‘do whatever works.’ And what works today isn’t the same as what used to work.”

I want to leverage off Shirky’s very important admonition today.

I don’t have to tell you that you are in a daily war. You battle for resources, you battle for people, and you battle a society that has devalued your work and that of your institution. You battle to protect what you had.

I understand your sense of siege and I applaud your determination, but I think we have to be cautious about fighting the wrong battles. Figuring out our true, correct fight is going to determine if we go down thrashing helplessly or if we genuinely reinvent.

I remember years ago attending one of those umpteen leadership sessions that had all the answers, most from people who had never even led a three person band! But this one was different because I actually retained something. I’ve retained it for 20 plus years.

The leadership coach told us that it was not our job to lead people through the forest.

It was our jobs as leaders to find the right forest.

The coach said we needed to get way above the trees and scan the horizon to determine the right forest for our team to compete.

I think that’s what Clay Shirky is telling us. When we’re obsessed with fighting newspaper battles, we’re in the wrong forest.

We have to come to terms with the fact that the forest has changed. As I tell my students four or five times every class session, we are in a Schumpeterian moment. The Schumpeterian moment is that seminal moment when the old gets destroyed and the new gets created.

I explain it to students by focusing on the horse drawn wagon business the day the first automobile put-putted through town. A lot of things people valued, from horse shoes to wagon wheels, were destroyed in that dramatic time but so much was created too. What was a multi-day trip from Phoenix to Tucson in 1900 took me about under two hours last night.

Despite some accusations, I did not date both Polly and Anna. Focusing on creation is damned difficult when destruction of things we love is occurring all around us. I get that.

In old media the formula was simple. We edit. You read. The newspaper was edited on a 24 hour cycle. You will read when we say you can read. TV also brought you news on THEIR schedule

The interactive web made that forced relationship of pushing news to audiences a joke. Now audiences “pull” news. People can talk, share, argue AND do business with each other any time they wish and oh, they demand immediacy!

I lived and edited a newspaper in a world where the media controlled the message. All pretenses of that control are gone. Blogs, Twitter, Facebook advocacy sites, etc., ended that control forever.

And let me burst that bubble that says this is all about you.

This is not a media issue. The Digital revolution has diminished the control of every industry you can mention from insurance to retail.

The world I addressed at this conference in 2001 does not exist. For scores of reasons, newspapers have been seriously damaged by this tsunami of digital and economic change.

There is a tremendous tendency to want to blame someone for newspapers’ fate. Fairly often I read tweets and snarky comments that anyone who was a CEO, Publisher or Editor in the 90’s should be summarily shot, jailed, hung by the thumbs or at least shamed into a commune in the desert.

Go ahead if you must. Whip away. I’ll take the blame and I’m sure many more powerful industry people than I, would step up too for your brickbats.

Now did that fix anything?

Assessing blame on editors, publishers, CEO’s, staffers, readers, the Internet or God, strikes me as a massive waste of time. We don’t have the time to waste.

What should be painfully obvious to us is there are many new media arrivals who are handing newspapers their collective lunch. That’s because their success markers are invention, innovation and risk. Yesterday is not their albatross.

While I think historical blame is folly, newspapers and its brain trust will certainly be held accountable in the future if we journalists keep cheering for the wrong thing and focusing on the wrong solutions.

To me, cheering for newspapers over journalism is the wrong thing. Cheering for doing your job in the same way you’ve always done it, is the wrong thing. Cheering for publishing companies to stop the painful wheels of change is the wrong thing.

Since I have been out of the business the survivors have done a solid job of adapting, innovating tremendous and working smarter. I take nothing away from the accomplishments that have started redirecting the ship.

I know some of you are pretty convinced your degree of change has been dramatic and you’ve done all the transforming you can.

My contention, and I will invite you to argue with it when I end, is that nothing newspapers has done is nearly big enough. Little of it is revolutionary enough. Little of it throws out what you know and starts over.

When I talked about this speech to some industry friends they immediately wanted to know what my prescriptions were. They wanted to hear my plans. They wanted a tactical report on their desks by Thursday.

That’s such a “newspaper’ thing to do.

If I had those plans this speech would cost you about 25 grand and my consultant retainer would be even higher.

Instead of giving you a blueprint I’d like to offer a way to think about this challenge a little differently.

The key to future is mindset. We have to change it. It’s negative. It’s fatalistic and it’s defensive.

I do not pretend this is a new thought but it can’t be said enough. The only sliver of a chance newspapers have, to be the players that save journalism, is to fundamentally change the mindset we bring to the task. We must release ourselves from the manacles that bind our thinking.

Let me give you an illustration.

This summer I was the lone attendee at the Minneapolis Star Tribune annual meeting. I have a few shares of their stock and I was curious about how a newspaper that’s been through bankruptcy is talking about the future.

As Michael Sweeney, CEO of Star Tribune Holdings and Michael Klingensmith, Publisher and CEO of the newspaper talked strategy; they focused on their commitment to increase the share of consumer revenue as a percentage of total revenue.

The light bulb went on for me. The brass bands played. Eureka!

I found the Sweeney/Klingensmith strategic construction brilliant.

Now you’re probably thinking what my good friend, John Dille thought when I recounted this to him. John, an adjunct business and future professor at the Cronkite school and the owner of the Elkhart Truth, thought I was off my rocker again for being so enthusiastic and said, “well yeah, a pay wall.”

I grinned, paused and then said, “John would you rather work for a newspaper that is constructing a pay wall or a newspaper that has told you that increasing consumer revenue is your primary goal?”

John’s eyes lit up immediately. He got it. He completely understood the negative, confining implications of the term “pay wall” compared to concentrating on raising consumer revenue

John agreed with me that the Star Tribune idea of focusing on consumer revenue could be massively liberating idea.

That concept makes your Ipad and Kindle businesses imperative. It allows you to engage with consumers in much more targeted ways. Thinking about consumer revenue opportunities with every targeted content endeavor opens up your imagination and, hopefully, consumer wallets. Focusing on your content as a business center rather than as a cost center has to liberate.

Crucial to this mindset change has to be rejection of the one consumer idea that has hamstrung newspapers for the last decade—one size fits all.

An all-encompassing, make-everybody-happy approach made great sense when there were only a couple of scarce sources of news in a town. It makes no sense at all in an era of abundance. Your job is to rise above the cacophony of information and junk on the web and provide your readers with genuine value.

I told some faculty folks the other day that the key to engagement with students is to meet them where they live. Dille translated that as “enter through the consumer’s experience.”

If your features section and your newspaper entered engagement through the customer experience how would your work change? Could you make people pull your news ahead of other sources?

I submit that for most of you, your mindset and that of your superiors still assumes you are in control. It assumes readers have some basic obligation to your product the way you want to produce it. They do not.

When you get back home do me a favor. Go to the supermarket. As you shop, deeply study the consumer focus you’re seeing.

None of those products in that store assume you have to buy them. Notice there are several different toothpastes, all differentiated according to product benefit. Whiter teeth, cavity control, fresher breath, all those things in one. And then let’s talk flavors. Cinammon Rush is my favorite!

There are scores of cereals differentiated by bright, animated packaging and product purpose. Cherrios for cholesterol, Wheaties so I can leap building in a single bound and Bran flakes so I can….well…you know.

Then look at the products that differentiate by price and perceived quality.

Have you ever looked at your newspaper that way? I suspect you haven’t because we have been an advertising dependent business for 80 years. Few of us have ever been forced to think about competing on shelves for attention. And when we have, we’ve thought about our entire newspaper package rather than thinking about discreet offerings that might compete in the marketplace on their own.

Some of you are certainly thinking, well this little, fascist traitor is talking about mmmmmmmmarketing. There’s no place for that kind of language in a family newspaper!

Well, bucko, there had better be or we’re all toast. That smug conviction that its newspaper reader’s job to read us has been wrong for 25 years and it is simply addled fantasy now. You are in the competitive marketing fight of your life. And, please don’t think I am only talking about Sports and Features. News, business and local news can be effective consumer products too.

I do not contend that this particular mindset change will revolutionize your business.

I do contend that our newspaper mindset is holding us back in thousands of ways and we need to dump those limiting mindsets.

Now there may be some of you who are still dismissing my words because you are at your innovative apex. You are convinced that you have moved past that old-fashioned thinking and are innovative pioneers in the newspaper business. I apologize for underestimating you.

I am afraid I am operating under the impression that Google, Groupon, Apple, Facebook and Twitter, new media startups and scores of garage entrepreneurs are out innovating newspapers on a daily basis. I am afraid I find little newspaper innovation breath-taking. I guess I am convinced that risk-takers without the mindset boundaries of newspapering are legitimate threats to newspaper survival.

If you believe I have a point I hope you’ll consider that if journalism is to be saved by newspaper practitioners, the hand cuffs must come off. We can’t think like newspaper people anymore.

We have to have the open minds of entrepreneurs. We have to have the innovative imaginations of liberated explorers. We have to embrace risk like bungee jumpers. We have to listen to young people as if they are our saviors, because they probably are.

If journalism is to be saved by newspaper practitioners who bring the right values of truth-telling, minimizing harm, independence and accountability, then newspaper mindsets must escape the prison of day-to-day crises spawned by business troubles.

Your mindset about what you are doing and why, is going to be the difference between triumph and a slow fade to black.

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By admin | Posted in Business journalism, Future of journalism, Journalism education, Leadership and Management, Media Criticism, Newspapers, Online journalism, Social media, Speeches | Comments (0)

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