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It’s no news flash that local journalism is on the ropes. Newspapers are shrinking and audiences are seeking information elsewhere, typically in video form.
So it was more than a little attention-getting when Gannett, parent of USA Today, recently announced it was hiring reporters to cover pop icons Taylor Swift and Beyonce on a full-time basis.
The publisher said it received close to 1,000 applications for the gigs, which, if nothing else, shows how desperate some journalists are for steady work.
Gannett says covering Tay-Tay and Queen Bey on a regular basis may sound like a gimmick, but it’s actually representative of the company’s efforts to rethink its journalistic mission.
“This is how we save local journalism,” Gannett’s chief content officer, Kristin Roberts, told the Wall Street Journal. “This is what we need to do.”
It really isn’t.
While hitching your wagon to two of the planet’s biggest stars may get people buzzing, it has little if nothing to do with salvaging local journalism, which has been defenestrated by staff cuts, industry consolidation and dwindling audiences.
Moreover, Gannett gets no milk and cookies for being an industry savior. Last year alone, the company laid off about 600 reporters.
While newspapers are gradually fading from relevance, their mission is as vitally important as ever.
We seem to be on a trajectory where big national stories will be covered by only a handful of news entities. Once all papers are digital-only, that means they’ll be competing for subscribers with the New York Times and Wall Street Journal.
Good luck with that.
Local news, meanwhile, will keep falling through the cracks.
How do we remedy that? We give people what they want.
When I worked for the Los Angeles Times, and before that the San Francisco Chronicle, we heard repeatedly from our marketing people that readers were desperate to see more community news, more school sports, more local activities.
But those things are labor-intensive and don’t generate much in the way of ad revenue.
Want money? Start a food section. Advertisers love those.
My modest proposal is for wealthy benefactors in various communities to create nonprofit organizations that can run websites focusing on the meat-and-potatoes local coverage that people desire.
Those websites probably won’t make money. More than likely, they’ll be money losers.
But they’ll perform the essential service of letting people know what the local city council or school board is up to, and how the local high school did on the field, and what cultural events might be happening.
Ideally, the sites can generate revenue by partnering with local groups (and hopefully merchants) seeking connections with local residents.
This isn’t a radical idea. It’s how small local papers have operated for decades.
When I got my start in journalism, it was with a tiny weekly paper in Northern California. There were two editors and me. I covered the local city council and school board, and wrote features about local doings.
Want to save local journalism? That’s how.
Leave Taylor Swift to TMZ.
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