Check

from time to time, but I am concerned. Deeply. The N&O just lost newsroom folks, and so did Char-O. I know we're missing important coverage already, but I'm not sure what we're missing, because it's not there.

James,

I do tend to agree with you on this. Here in Chapel Hill and Carrboro, we at least benefit from our J-school students, who are providing us with interesting news.

I've found three sources of local news:

• The Daily Tarheel. I just learned that they receive no money from the university. In fact, their building is off campus. http://www.dailytarheel.com/
• Reese news, which seems to be an experiment of some sort but filled with energy: http://reesenews.org/
• The Carrboro Commons, which is very well written and has the advantage of appearing even when the students are out of town: http://www.carrborocommons.org/

And thanks for explaining your past involvement with the N&O - it makes your attitude (sense of dissappointment) in recent years much more understandable to me.

I picked up part 1 of Lisa Sorg's 2 part article in the Independent on fracking. It's well done in great depth (no puns here, move along)

The weekly papers in the Triangle and Triad could be a model for a new kind of intellectual material distributed freely, depending on the free market advertising for income, but with truth and justice as the guiding principle.

*see Jim Neal's excellent comment there as well

Asheville Citizen-Times is losing 12 from its newsroom:

Employees at North Carolina's Asheville Citizen-Times were told yesterday that 12 of 47 newsroom jobs are being eliminated, according to a reader, who says certain staffers will be required to apply for some of the remaining positions. A Corporate representative is expected to help supervise these re-application interviews during meetings next Tuesday and Wednesday

If that means what I think it does (hope not), more than 12 of the (current) newsroom staff will be leaving, after being bumped by others with more seniority.

No offense to your marketing background, this is not an indictment of that vocation, but I believe we can trace the decline of newspapers to the influence of marketing on newsrooms that ramped up in the early 1980s and consumed newsrooms by the 1990s. It wasn't the only reason, but when afternoon papers and family papers started closing and selling out to the mega corporations, the mission of newspapers began to change because marketing wonks were allowed to have an influence on news decisions.

Newspapers became just another revenue stream when before they were structured and driven as if they were a public service.

Same with TV news (national, not local. Local has always been a joke). TV news on a national level used to operate as a cost center not a profit line -- it was a cost that they were willing to bear in order to provide a valuable PUBLIC service. It was assumed that news was not there to make a profit.

But then you see marketing influence on news decisions. They began focusing on what readers "wanted" rather than what readers "needed." And it snowballed from there. When news holes got smaller and smaller, and ad revenue found other placse to go, they were shocked when people stopped reading -- because, as you pointed out, when you're trying not to offend anyone and have no point of view, it becomes less and less interesting in general.

And let's not give j-schools a pass either. Though they could have, journalism schools didn't help. They were satisfied to basically be stenographer factories by the 1980s and 90s. They operated as if the only thing that matters was to teach that journalists could not admit their own POV and had to absolutely give "the appearance" of impartiality, even though everyone would freely admit that no one comes without bias -- nor should they. You can still be as professional even though you have your own views.

That part of journalism education only helped to exacerbate the problem with the definition of NEWS, and it all evolved into what I like to call: "green cheese" journalism -- it doesn't matter how ridiculous or far from the truth something a politician or business leader would say, as long as you present a quote that appears to be the opposite view, you've done your job.

In other words, if Politician A says the Moon is made of green cheese, rather than ridiculing that politician for making shit up and pointing out to the reader that the moon is not made of gree cheese, the newspaper would simply print: Politician A says "The Moon is made of Green Cheese" and then just quote an opponent saying: "No it's not."

No context. No point of view. Just stenography.

And then of course, neither journalism schools nor newspapers prepared for the coming of the digital revolution. While publishers were living like kings and newspapers were pulling in 20-30% profit margins, they did NOTHING to prepare for the loss of display and classified advertising and the coming digital media until it was too late. Because newsrooms had become just another revenue stream to corporations with lots of revenue streams and in order to continually feed the Wall Street beast, profits had to continue to go up no matter what. To do that, publishers decided that the newsroom, which was the product as well as the workforce, was where they would cut -- as opposed to taking 1-2% less profit and investing that in new technologies and better investigative work. So they cut the very people who made the product worth reading and and since it wasn't worth reading, circulation fell and the cycle of self destruction continues to go round and round and round.

I don't have much sympathy for newspapers now. We all tried to warn them that praying at the altar of Wall Street and making decisions based on marketing surveys was going to weaken the foundation, but rather than cut into their gigantic profit margins or focus on what's good for people and our country, they whistled while Rome burned.

And now we all are paying the price because our democracy has no one left to point out the morons.

Commenters on this article argue that the N&O is ultra liberal. Wow.

I guess I would say that IF the newspaper were indeed ultra-liberal, the management should embrace that fact and take it all the way to full-throated advocacy and activism. But that's a pretty big "if". Until N&O reporters dismantle the Pope/Eschelman/Koch/Berger/Stam/Tillis cabal in the same way they dismantled Mike Easley, the paper's liberal credentials will continue to be suspect.