Editor’s note: This is the fourth in an occasional series asking editors who’ve gone to the web what they would do differently if they returned to newspapers.
Requesting my contribution to an "occasional series asking editors who’ve gone to the web what they would do differently if they returned to newspapers," Tim Wheatley has me following ESPN’s Patrick Stiegman, Yahoo’s Dave Morgan and MLB.com’s Jim Jenks, all highly accomplished pros with great track records who wrote thoughtful, comprehensive pieces on the subject.
So thanks a lot, Tim. Easy acts to follow.
Some of their excellent ideas about multi-platform distribution and customization for readers, audience and business strategies and tying content to revenue were so well presented that I’ll just refer you to their work. No point in rehashing.
Fortunately, I have Jack Shafer, who wrote Bring Back Yellow Journalism for Slate on March 30. His column isn’t about sports, but the theme applies: That as newspapering evolved from free-for-all circulation wars to the highly respected profession of "journalism," some of what made a daily paper a must-have for most American adults was lost.
WHAT WOULD I DO?
▶ CBS’s Stanke: Unleash your beat reporters and columnists to inform, entertain – and have fun with it
▶ MLB’s Jenks: Put a price on everything
▶ ESPN’s Stiegman: Fab 15 list of guiding editorial principles for a successful futur
▶ Yahoo!’s Morgan: I’d change virtually everything if I went back to newspapers
His last paragraph:
"Have the hell-bent professionalization of journalism and the erection of a complex ethical code for its practitioners sapped from newspapers their life force? Can yellow journalism be reinvented – tamed and respiced, perhaps – in a way that preserves its best elements, subtracts the worst, and still glows?"
I’m not suggesting daily newspapers go back to starting wars or sensationalizing gory murders and love trysts. I don’t want sports writers throwing ethics out the window and supplementing their lifestyles with expensive meals, plane trips and gifts from the people they cover. That kind of "professionalism" still matters.
But if I were back in newspapers, some of what "we just don’t do" would be done.
And I’m comfortable with the idea not because times are desperate, but because I’ve believed it since 1977, when a guy named T.J. Simers hired me for my first sports writing job at the Beloit (Wis.) Daily News.
Well, make it 1978. I came out of college pure, head full of all the well-intended ethical notions you learn at a place like the University of Wisconsin. But in eight or nine months I worked for Simers, his ideas that sports writing and presentation were first and foremost entertainment began to rub off.
Simers, of course, rode that thinking to his current home as the love-him-or-hate-him Page 2 columnist for the Los Angeles Times. Say this for him: He has angered a lot of people along the way, living on that edge of his – he once ran a page of the local phone book as his column when the managing editor said he wasn’t getting enough names into the paper – but he has been unwavering in his commitment to the notion that readers should be having fun when they’re reading the sports section.
And as much as I’ve been allowed, I’ve shared that philosophy.
"As much as I’ve been allowed" is key, because in 20 years at a number of daily newspapers through 1997, you could only go so far before running into an unwritten code or ethical constraint that stopped you from going further.
In the mid-1980s, a highly respected sports editor of a major metro and I got into a heated, head-turning discussion in a fancy, revolving Atlanta restaurant about whether beat writers should be allowed to inject opinion into game stories.
My contention was absolutely. The sports editor was of the more standard thinking that reporters should report, and columnists should comment, and there should rarely, if ever, be a crossover. It got pretty loud and continued into the elevator as we left, refined diners a captive audience. I respect the editor as much as anybody I’ve ever worked for, but as much as I’d want him running my newspaper, I thought he got this wrong.
If I returned to newspapers, all my beat writers’ work would be "what" happened – in a game or breaking news story or a transaction or whatever – combined with healthy, pointed doses of "how" and "why."
The conventional response I’ve gotten: "Your beat person doesn’t make those judgments. That job is to objectively report the facts and quote experts to support an idea."
My conventional answer: "If the beat person you pay a lot of money to cover this team isn’t an expert, then you need another beat person."
All of my sports beat people – from high schools through the NFL – would be a combination of reporter, columnist and analyst. It’s sports – and that’s entertainment.
This is not a toy department discussion. Certain fundamentals of what we do – accuracy, no conflicts of interest – would be unchanged. But reporters and columnists would be unleashed with two missions of equal value – to inform and entertain.
I’m tempted to say I think this should be the case for every writer at the newspaper, but that admittedly would be more practical for some beats than others. (I’d have a couple of great crime writers, though: Give me the news – and tell a great, readable story while doing it. "Just the facts, ma’am," worked for Jack Webb, but it won’t for a newspaper in 2009.)
I’d take all this edgy reporting and have just as much fun presenting it. Great design but intelligent use of rapidly dwindling space. Great photos and photo illustrations. And to free up more of that space, I’d probably go down the path even I have found distasteful until recently: move all of the information that can be found anywhere else to the Web site. Box scores – maybe an exception for baseball, whose box format remains best suited for print – standings, golf scores, dog track results, all of it.
You’re going to lose older readers, but you want a compelling package for new ones. And giving them eight columns of information they can find in 500 other places makes no sense. Allot that space to things you can get only in your newspaper.
Some of that space would be reserved for investigative work, coverage of the major issues modern sports leagues and organizations deal with, but with a caveat: The sports section can’t become so serious and self-important that it forgets its primary reason for existing: Give the average person a place to escape from their problems for a few minutes a day.
Combined with all the now-standard online items – video, podcasts, blogs, chats (lots of chats!) – and hopefully a few we haven’t thought of yet, and I’d make my newspaper a conglomeration of unique, compelling personalities, each a must-read (and must-see) for followers of that sport.
Then I’d market the hell out of them and try to entice advertisers to go along. Nike sponsoring my NBA coverage; Gatorade my preps – but with the clear understanding that sponsorship comes with no strings regarding what can be written or said.
Given the way things are headed, it might be too late. But know this: We’d go down swinging.
