OPINION: I still read a lot of newspapers. They generally depress me. I assuage this by convincing myself that if I am to continue as a media commentator, I have to consume all manner of media.
There are a number of reasons why I have an inclination to throw myself under a bus every time I finish reading a newspaper which, by the way, takes a lot less time now than it did before the interweb intruded on my time.
The standard of newspaper journalism today is generally poor and heading downward. This is not the fault of journalists but of newspaper managements that somehow believe in the fallacy that their titles will only become sustainable if they cut costs drastically, starting with the number of journalists they employ and the amount of training given to the remaining few.
I also get the feeling that some newspapers have done away entirely with sub-editors and leave checking things like facts, spelling and punctuation to someone called ‘chance’.
A look at the latest ABC figures shows quite clearly that those few newspapers getting it right are co-incidentally those that try hardest to provide relevant and quality content to readers.
Newspapers editors, I reckon, should do time on radio and TV stations and more importantly digital news platforms, to get an idea of how quickly news is delivered and even more importantly, how quickly news becomes stale.
It does not take rocket science to come to this pretty obvious conclusion.
But one of the biggest problems, I suspect, is that editors are not given any opportunity to get to grips with what is and what is not relevant. Of what their role is. Of what the role of their newspaper is. This is not the fault of editors but the fault of management.
The thing is that far too many newspaper editors are still doing their jobs they way newspaper editors used to do their jobs before the advent of the digital platform.
Newspaper editors continue to be drawn from the newsroom and far too many of them blindly follow the processes with which they grew up.
They continue to believe that the news they process right now will be the news their readers will get excited about in 12 hours time, if not tomorrow.
Just a cursory glance at pretty much any daily newspaper will show innumerable items of news that had been carried long before on radio, TV and even before that on the multitude of freely accessible news websites.
Newspaper relevance and sustainability, I believe, lies not only with management investing in those elements that contribute directly to the quality if their product – such as properly trained and skilled journalists, but also by ensuring that their editors get exposed to the real world of instant media.
Newspapers editors, I reckon, should do time on radio and TV stations and more importantly digital news platforms, to get an idea of how quickly news is delivered and even more importantly, how quickly news becomes stale.
I am convinced that with just a month or so of this sort of experience, newspaper editors will realise that the role of a newspaper is no longer to publish news.
Another mistake newspaper management tends to make is to appoint digital editors from newspaper newsrooms. What happens then is that digital platforms end up being run like newspapers.
It is sad to see newspaper editors and journalists continually being abused by their bosses who persist in seeing editorial staff as liabilities to the bottom line.
This is, I believe, the reason why most newspaper titles are losing sales, losing advertising and generally losing the plot.
Follow Chris Moerdyk on Twitter @chrismoerdyk.
