The Dullsville Daily News
The question of what makes newspapers so boring has become as popular as "What makes the sky seem blue?" or "Why does the moon look larger against the horizon than it does overhead?" and is almost as enigmatic. The most frequently mentioned culprits are weak writing, unimaginative line editors, drudges on the copy desk, the shrinking news hole, corporate owners obsessed with the day's stock price, blogs and "the crisis in readership." Each of these is a factor, but blaming them is like blaming a painting contractor or a brickmason for an ugly building when the architect is truly at fault.
In fact the Dullsville Daily News is put together by the architects of boredom in a festival of smoke and mirrors called "the news meeting." The time and etiquette vary from paper to paper. Sometimes they're at 3 p.m. or 5:30 p.m. or later. But it hardly matters since little if any of tomorrow's paper has actually been written.
Instead, tomorrow's newspaper is based on "the budget," a fanciful document puportedly having summaries that accurately reflect stories in preparation. In some instances, the budget items or "sked lines" are terse, perhaps a sentence or two, and at other times, the line editor thoughtfuly plops down the first 15 or 20 inches of some hapless reporter's raw copy, typos and all. (If reporters had any idea how many department heads see their unedited copy they would pay more attention to spelling, style and grammar).
Although none of these stories exist, they are hotly debated by the managing editor, maybe the executive editor and the various department heads. At a small paper you'll have the city editor, business editor, sports editor, somebody from features who sits timidly in the corner since their section is done, a page designer or two, and the photo editor; and at a large paper, there might be 20 people sitting around a table, all trying to impress the bosses. Every story is great and every story should be on Page 1 above the fold with a two-column headline, either as a hard news story or a "reader," which is news meeting talk for a feature.
I recall one meeting I attended where an obvious dog of a story was pitched for the front page. In the right hands, it could have been well done--maybe. But given the threadbare subject and the reporter, a very pleasant person but a one-trick pony as a writer, it would have been just as easy to go into the clips, get the last story, change a few details and run as is. But no one said anything. A few chins were stroked, the story was given dutiful thought and then passed on to the B section.
That boring story (and, as predicted, it was) might have found its rightful place buried in the metro pages, but that sidesteps a more important question: How did it get written in the first place? The answer is simple. Someone at the news meeting (guess who) has a soft spot for those kinds of stories, and so they get written over and over in different forms and different lengths.
All of this is communicated by osmosis from the department heads to the assignment editors, the line editors, the reporters and at some point it veers off to the news desk. If someone at the news meeting likes a certain style of bad puns in headlines or photos of baby animals at the zoo or is a wonkster who thinks "process stories" on government are the print equivalent of Viagra, you can be sure that tomorrow's paper is going to be filled with exactly that.
Translation: boredom.
The prescription is drastic--nothing less than an upheaval in newsroom culture. Dump the news meeting. I can just imagine windows shaking at offices in newsrooms from coast to coast. What?!
It may come as surprise to the nation's right-wing pundits, but newspaper people are the most conservative folks in the world, at least where their paper is concerned and all changes are unwelcome. Just cut the hours in the cafeteria and watch the petitions fly like snow in January. So the prospect of getting rid of something as enshired in the halls of journalism as the news meeting does not seem likely.
Now the people in the news meeting are usually smart, interesting, engaging people. You could go to Starbucks with just about any of them and expect a lively conversation on a broad range of issues. Most of them were writers and a few of them were fairly distinguished at one time. A few of them were gifted line editors or assignment editors. They wouldn't be there otherwise. The problem is not with the individuals. The difficulties arise when you gather these folks in a room to make decisions.
In fact the Dullsville Daily News is put together by the architects of boredom in a festival of smoke and mirrors called "the news meeting." The time and etiquette vary from paper to paper. Sometimes they're at 3 p.m. or 5:30 p.m. or later. But it hardly matters since little if any of tomorrow's paper has actually been written.
Instead, tomorrow's newspaper is based on "the budget," a fanciful document puportedly having summaries that accurately reflect stories in preparation. In some instances, the budget items or "sked lines" are terse, perhaps a sentence or two, and at other times, the line editor thoughtfuly plops down the first 15 or 20 inches of some hapless reporter's raw copy, typos and all. (If reporters had any idea how many department heads see their unedited copy they would pay more attention to spelling, style and grammar).
Although none of these stories exist, they are hotly debated by the managing editor, maybe the executive editor and the various department heads. At a small paper you'll have the city editor, business editor, sports editor, somebody from features who sits timidly in the corner since their section is done, a page designer or two, and the photo editor; and at a large paper, there might be 20 people sitting around a table, all trying to impress the bosses. Every story is great and every story should be on Page 1 above the fold with a two-column headline, either as a hard news story or a "reader," which is news meeting talk for a feature.
I recall one meeting I attended where an obvious dog of a story was pitched for the front page. In the right hands, it could have been well done--maybe. But given the threadbare subject and the reporter, a very pleasant person but a one-trick pony as a writer, it would have been just as easy to go into the clips, get the last story, change a few details and run as is. But no one said anything. A few chins were stroked, the story was given dutiful thought and then passed on to the B section.
That boring story (and, as predicted, it was) might have found its rightful place buried in the metro pages, but that sidesteps a more important question: How did it get written in the first place? The answer is simple. Someone at the news meeting (guess who) has a soft spot for those kinds of stories, and so they get written over and over in different forms and different lengths.
All of this is communicated by osmosis from the department heads to the assignment editors, the line editors, the reporters and at some point it veers off to the news desk. If someone at the news meeting likes a certain style of bad puns in headlines or photos of baby animals at the zoo or is a wonkster who thinks "process stories" on government are the print equivalent of Viagra, you can be sure that tomorrow's paper is going to be filled with exactly that.
Translation: boredom.
The prescription is drastic--nothing less than an upheaval in newsroom culture. Dump the news meeting. I can just imagine windows shaking at offices in newsrooms from coast to coast. What?!
It may come as surprise to the nation's right-wing pundits, but newspaper people are the most conservative folks in the world, at least where their paper is concerned and all changes are unwelcome. Just cut the hours in the cafeteria and watch the petitions fly like snow in January. So the prospect of getting rid of something as enshired in the halls of journalism as the news meeting does not seem likely.
Now the people in the news meeting are usually smart, interesting, engaging people. You could go to Starbucks with just about any of them and expect a lively conversation on a broad range of issues. Most of them were writers and a few of them were fairly distinguished at one time. A few of them were gifted line editors or assignment editors. They wouldn't be there otherwise. The problem is not with the individuals. The difficulties arise when you gather these folks in a room to make decisions.
Labels: Black Dahlia, Books and authors, City Hall, LAPD, Streetcars
posted by Larry at 11:03 AM
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