Newspaper customers deserve better

When USA Today was born, it was a new concept in selling information. It was dressed differently than other newspapers and it talked differently. It did what seemed almost impossible: it established itself as essential reading to many thousands of buyers throughout the country.

Soon thereafter publishers of lesser papers across the country started to imitate USA Today in format and chatty, vastly overwritten, "feature-ized" and downright poorly written news reports. Gannett, meanwhile, bought many of these lesser papers, including the Advocate of Newark Ohio.

Consolidation is an objective among big publishers, as it is for big businesses of all stripes. The result is a new efficiency that eliminates employees. Another objective is buying competing businesses, as Gannett has done locally, giving it a monopoly in this region. Monopoly status allows corporate-level thinkers to think of new ways to squeeze their customers.

As one example of the Advocate's progress, consider what happens when you visit that business to purchase a pricey classified ad. You are pointed to a chair and a telephone there in the lobby so that you may call someone at God knows where so that you may place your ad - and then you wait to get a human on the phone while the few visible Advocate employees chat among themselves.

That's a long stretch from the days when Betty Hoover, the operator-receptionist, would greet visitors with a pretty smile and direct classified customers across the hall where Elsie Howard would treat you like royalty and advise you on the best and least-expensive wording and placement for your ad.

To corporate-level group-thinkers, it's not the customer's perception of this process that matters, it's whether the newspaper has extracted a pretty penny with minimum expenditure for good employees.

This attitude is exactly what's ailing newspapers today. It didn't begin happening as the present recession started. It began much earlier when corporate efficiency inspired ever-bolder ways to sell newspaper readers as little as possible for the same or greater prices.

Anyone who's read the Advocate for more than a few years can remember seeing features and niceties drop by the wayside. This and that and the other fell overboard. Quality photojournalism went quickly because it's expensive - but so did the more mundane features that require either news space (e.g. the daily television schedule) or cash outlay (e.g. quality columnists). Each of these omissions provided another reason for folks to drop subscriptions and for advertisers to go elsewhere.

The payoff for that attitude among corporate-level group-thinkers in the newspaper industry is reflected in reports by Editor & Publisher:

6/9/08 - "Stock in Gannett, which publishes USA Today, has lost roughly half its value in the last year, as the newspaper industry has struggled with declining revenue and circulation."

6/11/08 - UPDATE: Gannett Freezes Employee Pensions, Ups 401(k)

6/29/08 - Newspapers, reeling from slumping ads, slash jobs

6/30/08 - 'Plain Dealer' Cuts 32 Pages Per Week, Drops Four Sections

6/30/08 - Ventura Paper Latest to 'Reinvent' Itself -- Admits Cost Cutting, Not 'Better' Paper, Is Aim

7/2/08 - L.A. Times Cuts 250 Jobs, 15% of Pages

7/16/08 - "At USA TODAY, advertising revenues declined 16.6 percent in the second quarter compared to the year ago quarter. Paid advertising pages totaled 831 compared with 1,034 in the same quarter of 2007."

I am a steady reader of the on-line Editor & Publisher. If ever corporate group-think is showcased as it affects newspaper readers, E&P is the place: the perfect spot to observe the newspaper industry devoid of good ideas for improving its products.

While the Advocate has vastly improved its local news report in recent months, it still reflects too few people trying to cover an entire county, but that's exactly where the USA Today model and corporate journalism have taken us. Now, with the economy sliding backward, maybe the group-thinkers will have to reflect on the needs and desires of customers.