Bloggers Are Dissed, Get Sad (Filed to Show to My Classes This Fall)

Two pipsqueaks sitting around talking

Tomorrow the Reporting Class Tours the Chronicle

We've been doing this for nearly 20 years, since I came over to the university for all sorts of reasons, one of which was that I had spent six years (three of them full time) getting the darn Ph.D. back in the day, and it chapped me that it had all been a waste.

Other than self development, of course. I really did enjoy reading all those books.

In one way, taking the kids to the Chron was a little like returning to Duke, having the sense that here was something that had existed before me, that did more good than harm, that would go on doing more-good-than-harm long after I had passed.

Oh yes, the hallowed halls -- actually an open-office newsroom -- of the Chronicle. I liked to imagine a student of mine somewhere down the line working at the Chron and finding some relic of my days there, and thinking of the old man suddenly (for the first time in years really) and in some vague way being grateful -- for me, for the paper, for whatever I said that did no permanent harm.

This is not going to happen, or if it happens, it will be in a contracted space and radically altered platform laboring under a different vision and little patience for what we used to do when the Chron was a great mosaic of the good, the bad and the foolish-by-design.

The Chron was a pretty good newspaper, you know, with lots of goofy where everyone else went for stuffy and, in my opinion, all the better for the playfulness.

Then, it got serious and now it's getting steamrolled, which has nothing to do with all the rethinking that went into calming it down, which change was well underway before I left.

I used to miss the Old Chronicle, but now it looks as if I'm going to be missing the Chronicle Period. A man should not outlive his nostalgia. I think that's what I'm saying.

Postscript: Hey, look! An interactive map of newspaper woe.

Oh See the Poor Newspaper Stocks Lying There in the Gutter

Brother Pat Daugherty pulled this out of the San Diego Reader and shared.

Here's how much the market has knocked down newspaper stocks in the last 52 weeks. I picked 10 representative newspaper stocks; half of them are significantly diversified into other media. The list includes the cream from a quality standpoint: Washington Post, NY Times, etc. During the last 52 weeks, the Standard & Poor's 500 has gone down 46.55%. Seven of the ten newspaper stocks have gone down more than 90%. Here they are, with stock performance over the last year: Gannett (the largest chain, whose bonds were downgraded to junk this week) down 92.04%; E.W. Scripps down 99.28%; McClatchy down 95.59%; Lee down 96.9%; Media General down 90.05%; GateHouse Media down 98.61%; AH Belo down 92.92%; News Corp. (Murdoch's company, including Dow Jones) down 63.8%; New York Times down 76.72%, and Washington Post down 52.82%. It could be overkill -- but what will be the societal effects if it isn't?

A Blast from the Past. A Nuclear Blast.

A Vision of Things to Come

This was my morning ritual: Start the coffee, three cups worth; pad out front and get the four newspapers; pour the coffee and sit down on the sofa; start with the San Francisco Chronicle, actually with the sports section since on any given day and on every given day, half the teams win and all the little profiles are tales of triumph or redemption; read whatever section of the Oakland Tribune my wife tosses me with the instruction 'read this'; skim the New York Times, saving some stories for later in the day; read whatever section of the Financial Times my wife tosses me with the instruction 'read this'.

But it's different now. Add to the list the placement of my laptop on the sofa next to me. Finish the list with: go to the laptop and check my news aggregator for breaking news and for interpretation, for nuance.

Now if the rest of the world did as I do, what a happy Christmas it would be for the newspaper industry -- I mean, subscribing to four newspapers for Christ's sake. But when all the world goes directly to the news aggregator, because every morning see all the lovely facts and shit lying on the ground like manna from heaven, suddenly all that aggregated news will become 'news'.

Actually, a good deal of what we get from newspapers is already 'news,' but that's better than "news" by an order of magnitude.

If you get my drift.

Addendum: I'm aggregating away, and I find this story, which illustrates my point about feel-good sports profiles. But do not remain in doubt, my friend: It made me feel good.

Brother, Can You Spare 75 Cents If You Won't Go for a Sunday Subscription?

Shortly after their deaths, I cradled the limp dead bodies of our brother cats Boris and Oliver, and I grieved.

In the case of Boris, that grief was almost 15 years ago when he was run over crossing the street in front of our house, and a neighbor came to tell. That was painful. I won't go into particulars of my regret because I'm afraid all this recent pet-loving is all so bourgeois -- you may be interested to know, by the way, that if you prick a bourgeoisie, do we not bleed? -- but suffice it to say that it's hard to lose a young pet with so much fun still to come for us and for the cat.

You can fill in the blanks, I think. If you've read this far, we are probably in sync.

Did the same thing with little Oliver after he died in our sleep Friday morning, holding him for a while, before he started to get stiff. That death was less painful because he had lived long and well, and we had fought so hard the last six months to keep him alive. Seeing him dead, my mind reset to images of his relative health as short a time as only a year ago, and I saw that his death was a proper end, acceptable to us and a relief to him.

All this I have said is by way of introducing a few thoughts about the delicate state of newspapers today.

(So much introduction and so few thoughts. This is the kind of thing for which I'd grade my reporting students down. Lack of proper proportion between intro and body, I cry!)

Anyway, this morning I flop-stepped outside in my sandals and my pink bathrobe. (Send me a quarter, and I'll explain that bathrobe; I've got to monetize my fan dance.)

So out I flop out to pick up our four morning papers. And I look at them there in driveway and front yard. And I think of Kitty Oliver, as I see them lying there, so thin and limp, pitiful really if you remember their muscular days.

And I think this is just like being in bed Friday morning with Oliver. I'm watching newspapers die. I look. I turn away (metaphorically).

I will turn back and they will be gone.


Addendum: And, yes, this little conceit quickly breaks down, given the fact we'll go to the pound and get a box of kittens, and happiness will reign, and my ruling analogy will curl up in a ball and go to sleep.

Though, actually, when it comes to gathering information both useful and accurate, the internet is a little bit like a box of kittens. For once I don't mean that in a nice way.