Arthur Salm: Advice for the U-T’s new owners

Comment by: Bob Laurence Posted: May 7, 2009, 6:38 pm

Mr. Salm is right when he points out that the newspaper industry “responds to a loss of customers by reducing both the size and quality of its product.” But he forgot one point: The industry not only reduces the size and quality of its product, it also RAISES THE PRICE! Talk about dumb.

Comment by: Alpiner Posted: May 7, 2009, 10:09 pm

Sorry, from this conservative’s view, the U-T’s problems were not from an overly right-winged editorial policy. Because much of the time those of us with a rank and file conservative bent did not agree with their editorials either. They never gave a fair shake to Duncan Hunter or other conservative politicians who did not kiss up to them. You are right to state that they seemed to cater to blue-blooded La Jolla over the average East or South County resident. The problem was not just mediocrity, but a weird arrogance along with it. From its editorials to its news coverage, there was a sense that they seemed to not like their own readers. They had the circulation, but never did anything with it. It was like they owned the town, but nobody lived there.

Hopefully there still is something to save at the U-T and build from. I wish the new owners nothing but success. San Diego still needs a strong U-T.

Comment by: John Micheal D. Posted: May 8, 2009, 8:32 am

Writers writing about newspapers almost never mention advertising. (see article above).

Newspapers are not dying because people are not reading them, they are dying because the advertisments in them are no longer cost effective. The ad dollars have gone on line, starving the newspapers.

Unless the ad issues get fixed quick, RIP paper newspapers.

Comment by: Ronn Rohe Posted: May 8, 2009, 9:57 am

Thank you, Art, for the analysis. Team up with Goldsborough and you’ll have a book on the whole business. I switched to the Times about 12 years ago when I finally had enough of Winner and Kittle. And they’re still there, and so is my subscription to the Times.

Comment by: wayne Posted: May 8, 2009, 1:13 pm

Right on, brother. I read that Platinum plans to retain Winner as editor. That tells me all I need to know about the new owners.
You’re off a little about one thing: Less than two decades ago there was a lot of talent, including yourself, on the T side of the U-T before the merger. But then, inexorably, most all of it went away. The clueless Winner remains. Gee, is there a connection here?

Comment by: Sharon Jones Posted: May 8, 2009, 5:33 pm

We have 2 wars, a global financial crisis, a growing government — and fewer reporters covering the action. Who is going to step into the void and serve as watchdog? Check for corruption? Hold politicians to their promises? Online media (which pays reporters a pittance, if at all)? TV (which is conditioned to rip off newspaper stories)? It’s a sad time for those who believe that good journalism is an integral component of a strong community.

Comment by: David Kusumoto Posted: May 9, 2009, 2:36 am

To suggest that most of the U-T’s woes are rooted in political partisanship toward the right — is really tilting at windmills — it is negative wishful supposition, the product of a conspiratorial mind despite the nation’s new era of supposedly post-partisanship.

Moreover, it represents a disproportionate dismissal of what’s going on throughout the United States in every major city providing news content — by errantly putting a sanctimonious moral compass in the middle of a red vs. blue battle that should no longer be a factor.

Simply put, advertising dollars have fled, not because of political slants — but because all of us reading these very words — have fled to the web to get information of greater immediacy and timeliness. While I concede allegations of mismanagement by the names you named who currently fill the uppermost posts — a regime change will not — I repeat, will not — fix the U-T’s woes. And I have no horse in this race. The paper will survive — threadbare, yes, but it will survive as a one-horse broadsheet amid competing outlets, e.g., Daily Transcript, SDBJ, SDNN and Voice of San Diego.

In my view, the more the U-T embraces the 21st century as an era whereby DAILY information is dessiminated electronically is the preferred “first choice” means of staying informed — with the print product serving as a supplement for more in-depth coverage and undated features — the better off it will be.

According to LAST WEEK’s analysis in Editor & Publisher about the latest numbers from the Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC) — 24 of the nation’s top 25 newspapers by circulation took a subscriber bath from March 2008 to March 2009 — with revenues down accordingly. (The only paper reporting an “uptick” in subscribers, though not corresponding profits, was the WSJ.)

Again, a column like Arthur’s — that “baselines” its arguments about the U-T’s decline on: 1) a refusal to shift accordingly to the region’s changing POLITICAL demographics, 2) poor newsroom management, and 3) disinterested prior owners — while giving only a nominal nod to the poor performance of metropolitan dailies nationwide regardless 1, 2 and 3 above — is at best, terribly naive — or at worst — terribly misleading.

You’re preaching to a choir of mostly news junkies. Get out there, away from the elite — and you’ll find they’re not reading the daily newspaper for reasons altogether different than those you state. You’re still too close to everything. I’m pals with many GREAT U-T reporters and in my view, it’s a high-hatting insult to suggest the U-T’s troubles are as nefarious or as convoluted or as sarcastic as you state. Again, regime change may make you feel good, but it’s a fleeting and hare-brained solution. It doesn’t get to the root of the problem. Hopefully a business model can be arrived that can make the electonic news enterprise 30-50% as lucrative as it during the boom years of newspaperdom.

In sum, San Diego will always need columnists and writers/reporters/critics. We’ll just get them in a different way.

Like we are right now.

Comment by: David Kusumoto Posted: May 9, 2009, 6:40 pm

** No single person — past or presently employed at the U-T — will DARE to proffer ANY opinion IN PUBLIC that’s NEGATIVE — about Karin Winner. Arthur Salm’s clever musings about “shaking things upside down” — was, in my view, a safe “broad-stroke” means to get at the “usual suspects” without naming anyone directly.

** But that’s not the signature of a TRUE columnist in the classic tradition, e.g., who’s fearless about the personal and political ramifications of taking on the obvious “elephants” (plural) in any room by name. Arthur, by his own admission, has been gone from the U-T for more than a year. He surely has more insight, I’d presume, as a former U-T insider — hence could provide more grist than what he little he provides above other than a sarcastic bit of cleverness that to me, feels too self-aware.

** If I were a columnist at SDNN, I’d name the elephants in the room — while reaffirming that I am solely responsible for my own words. Taking shots at David Copley — who yes, has always been disinterested — and Helen Copley, who is dead — is way TOO easy. His column is glaring by what it omits — namely some big names that are more relevant to present-day readers.

** And I have to wonder, as a third-party reader who’s never been on the Copley payroll — who’s also trying to determine if the SDNN is a legitimate news enterprise that supremely deserves my attention over the Transcript or the Voice of San Diego — or whether it’s just an “insider’s club” made up of many ex-U-T alumni (and almost no one else) — griping about the Mission Valley offices at lunch, at gatherings or on the phone — while simultaneously engaging in a bit of Schadenfreude, e.g., a bit of wallowing with a grin about the miseries of their former employers.

** I don’t know Karin Winner — but I’m willing to give her the benefit of the doubt only because as a reader — everyone is so OBVIOUSLY avoiding her except in the form of proffering leading questions without answers. Hence the following are my words, and my words only; they are NOT facts: I’ve heard from friends of friends that she embraces cronyism, protects her less productive friends, will do anything to survive, pays lips service to teamwork when she’s not engaged with most of the newsroom staff; I’ve heard she continues to embrace a Berlin Wall mentality toward the website which runs under the same ownership umbrella. She has, it has been alleged, neither the cranial firepower or the style of leadership that editors and writers prefer at major metropolitan dailies like the U-T.

** But you know what? All of the above remains bull***/hearsay — and I will always consider it such — because no one will put that opinion in writing and sign their name. Hence again, I give Karin the benefit of the doubt because I don’t know her — you all apparently do — and by any journalistic standard that I try to embrace — I will not give allegations any merit beyond being subjective “rumors” from nameless people who won’t go on the record while they simultaneously complain about news sources in other fields who incessantly demand anonymity. An egregious double-standard for sure, though in fairness — I understand why people are silent and I don’t blame them because they are, in my view, acting under the umbrella of future and present-day preservation, because we never know if what goes around, will come around some day to bite us. So for now, when I look at the big picture, Karin is not the problem. She’s just someone some of you don’t like for perhaps good reasons, but because those reasons come from friends of friends, and she has not had her day in court, they remain just hearsay under the cloak of anonymity, which is not what I expect from writers/journalists/columnists from competing news organizations. It’s not the way things are run on the blogs at papers competing in New York, that’s for sure.

** Finally, ever notice that if you look at Lexus-Nexus or any other research site — you’ll find scant evidence of a journalistic profile written about Karin — as you’d find in magazines published in OTHER major cities about THEIR own hometown papers. The only one I could find was an innocuous Q&A written 10 years ago by ASNE, a TRADE publication, not mainstream. It’s a bit odd when you consider she still runs, however denuded, a metropolitan daily in the eighth largest city in the U.S. This strikes me odd. Karin isn’t Eva Braun. She’s a public figure yet most of us who consider ourselves among the “unwashed masses” know so little about her. Why?

** I still have great sympathy and affection for “most” of the people in the lower ranks, specifically the U-T writers and reporters who survived the latest round of “cuts.” If I were a betting man, despite the certainty of more cuts in the future — I predict the majority of those who are at the U-T today — will survive over the long haul AT the new U-T — so long as they embrace the new age of electronically-based journalism, for good or for ill. Fix whatever incompatibilities that make less efficient the process of writing, editing and transmitting the web version of the U-T — and make them as vital as some of the PAID content that REMAINS archived for subscribers — at the phoenix-like WSJ. Again, I know a few editors and reporters at the U-T personally that I admire. And their survivability is as important to me at the U-T — as the survivability of those pals who left, now making pennies to the dollar but have accepted the new age and in some cases, are happier.

** You say a national paper like the WSJ has resources/economies of scale that renders their application to smaller papers disseminating content irrelevant? By focusing disproportionately on personalities vs. economics — you risk being part of the problem instead of the solution. Pompously yours, a news-junkie who’s trying to detach himself from what’s being discussed — vs. what should be discussed.

Comment by: Greg Duch Posted: May 11, 2009, 1:29 pm

When you have a monopoly in any business, there is little motivation for the monopolist to produce quality merchandise.

There is no better example of this rule of the marketplace than the U-T, and its depressed level of quality.

Many decry newspaper chains, as being out of touch with local concerns.

But, newspaper chains are primarily concerned with turning a profit. Usually that means giving local readers what “they want”, IN order to keep up high numbers of readers.

Also, contrary to myth, newspaper chains don’t go out of their way to hire staff from Mongolia, when there is an ample pool of local staff to employ.

Newspaper chains are more likely to be sensitive to the needs and wants of their various papers, because they have greater profit motivation, AND greater capital to hire the best local talent.

They are also less likely to be dogmatic idealogues, when it comes to editorial policy.

Family-owned papers rarely change their political stripes, no matter the cost,– especially when they are the only paper in town.

MAY SAN DIEGO BECOME HOME TO MANY VOICES; NOT JUST ONE FAMILY’S

Comment by: Julia Posted: May 12, 2009, 7:42 am

You have posted many comments criticizing the U/T but you removed my post (no profanity used) that rebukes your own news organization for similar problems. What kind of “journalism” are you espousing?