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July 28, 2010 By Erik Deckers

Wither Goest the Newspaperman? Why Blogging is Killing Print Media.

Whither goest the newspaperman, that bastion of bulletins, that purveyor of print?

He is, I’m afraid, about to be swallowed up by the electronic era.

When I was in college, I wanted to be a reporter. I wanted my stories to be delivered with a thwack! on the front porch. To be folded up and carried in a suit pocket. To be clipped and stuck to the fridge. I wanted to use words like “lede” and “slug line.” I wanted to rip my story out of a typewriter, and shout “COPY!” (I used to do this when I wrote for my college newspaper, to great laughs from my editor.)

Sadly, it was not to be. Instead, I work as a professional blogger, and am looked down on by “real” journalists at “real” newspapers. (Full disclosure: I am also a newspaper humor columnist, appearing in 10 weekly print newspapers around the state. So there.)

Last year, 53 weeks ago in fact, I wrote a humor column about Philadelphia Daily News columnist Stu Bykofsky, who wrote his own column sneering at bloggers with:

I DON’T have a blog. If I did blog, this is what it would be like. (To make it seem like a real blog, I’ll include typos and factual errors.)

I would link to Stu’s original column, but it, like most of his fellow newspaper reporters, are no longer available. They have been cast aside, presumably to make room for newer, more up-to-date pieces.

Bykofsky, who is perhaps best known for saying this country “need(s) another 9/11” needs to realize that blogging is not going to go away. Newspapers, on the other hand, are fast disappearing from our landscape. I think reporters would do well to rethink their attitude.

To paraphrase Chicago humorist Rex Huppke (@RexHuppke):

It’s funny when journalists mock (blogging). It’s also funny when people about to be eaten by a bear mock the bear.

Huppke’s quote was originally about Twitter, but mocking a bear is mocking a bear.

So what are the journalists’ complaints about blogging? That we didn’t go to journalism school? They’re teaching electronic media writing in J-school right now. That our pieces aren’t properly fact-checked and vetted by editors? Disgraced plagiarizer fabricator New York Times reporter Jayson Blair could tell you a thing or two about that. Or is it that our stories aren’t printed on dead trees? I found Bykofsky’s original column online.

Citizen journalists — the people who are picking up the slack that the mainstream media are missing — have taken to the web to cover the news and write about the issues that journalists have been missing. If they’re not former journalists who became bloggers, they’re learning how to do proper journalism. The really good citizen journalists are writing stories that are just as good, if not better, than a lot of the mainstream media stories.

These modern day pamphleteers share the news and their opinions via a blog instead of a printing press. And while they are still looked down on, these citizen journalists have uncovered a lot of stories that Byofsky and his ilk have ignored, overlooked, or scorned. We’re breaking the news before The News does.

Griping about bloggers is nothing but pure elitism. Snob journalism at its finest. When children start playing a game, it’s not uncommon for the child on the losing team to pout, whine, and make excuses for why he’s playing poorly. And Bykofsky’s blogging gripes make him sound like he’s taking his ball and going home.

The newspaper industry has been in decline ever since the advent of radio and TV news. It slipped further into decline when Craigslist became popular. And now, blogging is threatening to be the final stake through print journalism’s heart.

We’ve seen significant gutting at our local paper (the Indianapolis Star will now be laid out in Louisville. Sounds about right for Gannett.), and journalists are being thrown overboard left and right.

A friend of mine worked for the Associated Press in Indianapolis, and was let go right before Christmas 2009, after 17 years of service. Why? The AP was losing money because fewer newspapers were licensing their content. So rather than stick with the professional who had the most experience and best judgment, they let him go in favor of someone with a lower salary and less experience. In another state.

So we have younger, less experienced journalists — remotely — running our country’s newsrooms, and it’s bloggers who are being dismissed out of hand as Not Real Journalists?

I’m sad to be watching all of this unravel. I think the decline of the big city American print newspaper is one of the great tragedies of our time. But I also see the future of the industry, and if it’s going to survive, it’s going to be online, not on dead trees.

Journalists need to stop deriding blogging, and embrace it instead. Learn how to do it now, rather than watching it pass by. You can either mock the bear or turn and face it. Otherwise, your next byline will be from the south end of a north-bound bear.

For related reading, check out:

  • Newspaper Death Watch
  • Nieman Journalism Lab’s commentary on the AP’s “Protect, Point, Pay — An Associated Press Plan for Reclaiming News Content Online“
  • Russell Baker’s commentary in the New York Review of Books, “Goodbye to Newspapers?
  • A hilarious infographic on the AP’s “Protect, Point, Pay“
  • Or go here to see the original.

Photo credit:

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  2. Rules for Being a Media Blogger
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  4. Suggested Freelance Writing Rates – Midwest Edition
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Filed Under: Blog Writing, Blogging, Communication, Traditional Media, Writing Tagged With: blog writing, media, newspapers, traditional media

About Erik Deckers

Erik Deckers is the President of Pro Blog Service, a content marketing and social media marketing agency He co-authored four social media books, including No Bullshit Social Media with Jason Falls (2011, Que Biz-Tech), and Branding Yourself with Kyle Lacy (3rd ed., 2017, Que Biz-Tech), and The Owned Media Doctrine (2013, Archway Publishing). Erik has written a weekly newspaper humor column for 10 papers around Indiana since 1995. He was also the Spring 2016 writer-in-residence at the Jack Kerouac House in Orlando, FL.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Erik Deckers says

    August 4, 2010 at 1:04 am

    Hi Scott,

    I still think there is a place for newspapers, at least for the next 15 – 20 years. We still don’t have high-speed Internet or computers in every home. There are still a lot of seniors who have never used a computer. And there are thousands of small towns that have weekly newspapers that are still profitable.

    I also think the next big thing in big city news gathering is going to be someone who figures out a way to aggregate local bloggers and citizen journalists and figures out a new way to make money from it. It’s that figuring out the new way that’s going to be the tricky part.

    Erik

  2. Scott says

    July 28, 2010 at 12:02 pm

    I have very little sympathy for a business model that refuses to evolve. You see it from “legit reporters” hating on bloggers all the way up to Rupert Murdoch ranting about Google “stealing his content.” Like it or not, the Internet is a game-changer for providing the news because it’s a lot quicker to transmit a headline to a reader’s smart phone than it is to print it on a dead tree and deliver it curbside. It’s no longer news tomorrow morning if I already heard about it today.

    I do agree that it’s kind of sad that more in the news industry haven’t chosen to embrace this new technology because I think a lot of jobs could’ve been salvaged and we’d be flooded with great content to read. Instead, we get the same 4 articles reprinted across the country, and they wonder why we’d rather turn to bloggers for our news.

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  1. Why Blogging is Killing Print Media | Read Indianapolis Blogs Here says:
    July 28, 2010 at 9:52 am

    […] now, blogging is threatening to be the final stake through print journalism’s heart. Read more: Wither Goest the Newspaperman? Why Blogging is Killing Print Media. | Professional Blog Service […]

  2. Tweets that mention Wither Goest the Newspaperman? Why Blogging is Killing Print Media. | Professional Blog Service -- Topsy.com says:
    July 28, 2010 at 8:52 am

    […] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Aaron M. Renn, Erik Deckers and problogservice, Jerry Battiste. Jerry Battiste said: RT @edeckers: New post: Whither Goest the Newspaperman? Why Blogging is Killing Print Media. […]

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