Light On Dark Water

“End of an Era” Is Such A Cliche

But sometimes it's applicable. As of Monday, there will no longer be a daily newspaper in Mobile. I'll miss it, though it's been in very visible decline for several years, seeming to shrink in size and in depth of coverage almost from one day to the next.

When I moved to Mobile in 1990, the paper came out in slightly different morning and evening versions. And it was a pretty terrible paper. Then sometime around the mid-1990s new management came in, and it went from being the worst major newspaper in Alabama to being the best. The company made a huge investment in a new facility, including a press that cost a jillion dollars, and I think did very well for a while. Then the effects of the Internet began to take their toll. I think at this point the routine of reading a daily newspaper is something that's associated with "older," if not just plain old, people. Like me. 

There are those with knowledge of the industry and of this paper in particular who say the fundamental problem was mismanagement. I don't know about that, but I'm going to miss it. I think almost as much as I'll miss reading it I'll miss the sense of continuity, of participating in something that has been a feature of American life for over a hundred and fifty years. As a person of conservative temperament it saddens me to see traditions like this fade away.

Maclin Horton
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19 responses to ““End of an Era” Is Such A Cliche”

  1. janet

    Really! I don’t even read the paper and I’m not that crazy about the Memphis Commercial Appeal, but this makes me want to subscribe just so it will be there.
    AMDG

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  2. Janet

    You can always tell when I comment from my Kindle because the j in janet is lowercase. It’s kind of like “Louise on the iPhone, but more subtle.
    AMDG

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  3. Mac

    yes, I’ve noticed that, or figured that was it, anyway.
    The problem with subscribing as a good deed is that it’s not cheap, at least ours isn’t. The Press-Register really hasn’t been worth it for several years.

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  4. Grumphy

    My kindle definitely doesn’t talk to the outside world … I don’t think. I hope not, because I put dozens of Euros into ten year old public computers, in Spain.
    The local newspaper seems to define the local community. In Aberdeen, someone told me you belonged there once you were more interested in the Aberdeen Press and Journal than the London papers.

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  5. Janet

    It’s a Kindle Fire. It’s like a little iPad.
    AMDG

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  6. Mac

    Something similar could be said, quite accurately, about Mobile and its paper. Mobile tends to be quite insular. Before it improved in the 1990s, the paper was almost comical in that respect. The section that used to be called the women’s pages and now is usually “lifestyle” or something like that consisted mostly of photos of the local in-crowd socializing with each other. It really was funny sometimes, with the southern names and nicknames generating captions like: “Bootsie Lyons Delchamps and Sissy Delchamps Lyons share a laugh over a glass of punch at the Junior League Fashion Reconnaisance dinner.” Have to get those maiden names in there so you know what prominent family they came from.

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  7. Art Deco

    Syracuse and Harrisburg, cities of similar size to Mobile, will also be losing daily print editions at the end of the year. There will still be thrice weekly distribution.
    I think it is largely technology killing their advertising revenue. Also, other than the Wall Street Journal, they have not figured out a way to make electronic distribution pay.
    I will miss the newspaper, even though I do not respect reporters and editors as a class of people. I wish technological developments could have made CBS News uneconomic before they attacked the Post-Standard or Newsweek.
    I listen to Rod Dreher on the one thing he knows something about: publishing a newspaper. His assessment after his eight year turn at the Dallas Morning News was that his colleagues on the paper compounded the problem in that they were adamantly uninterested in covering or publishing what might interest the newspaper’s actual readers (older, suburban, and Republican, modally). Michael Medved has said much the same about film producers: they pursue psychic income which is not reflected in their financial statements.

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  8. Mac

    The WSJ’s success at getting people to pay is interesting: it proves that people will pay for stuff on the web if they really want it.
    “psychic income” — nice phrase. I read one of Medved’s books on that subject. Pretty convincing.
    I wouldn’t say quite the same about the Mobile Press-Register as Dreher about the DMN. There was that tendency, for sure, but “adamantly uninterested” would be unfair. Editorially it was reasonably balanced.

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  9. janet

    You know, this reminds me of something that has been puzzling me and bugging me for a long time. There has to be a huge market out there for electronic devices that are more user friendly for older people and there doesn’t seem to be anyone willing to supply that market. I know we’re old and boring but we have some disposable income.
    AMDG

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  10. Art Deco

    Dreher was not referring to the editorial line, but to the subject matter, most particularly the sort of feature stories they would run. Reporters were determined to cover hipster events of interest to people who did not read the paper because, well, that’s what interested the reporters. I found this perplexing because there have been multiple competing newspapers in Dallas in recent decades. I would expect that sort of thing where you had a metropolitan monopoly (as you have had in all but the largest cities since around about 1966).
    My own experience in local politics in the Genesee Valley during the period running from about 1984 to about 1990 persuaded me that the farther you go up the media food chain, the stupider (as on things having nothing to do with substantive public policy) and more antagonistic the questions. Michael Kinsley was making the same point about the national press corps at around the same time: comparing the sort of questions ordinary people ask at public meetings to the questions reporters ask at news conferences should be embarrassing to reporters – if they were capable of embarrassment.
    Medved’s contention was that film producers are strongly motivated to seek the respect of their peers, and that often manifests itself in producing and attempting to market genres that are proven (financial) losers.
    The degree to which ‘cultural’ production is responsive to ‘insider’ constituencies is truly strange. I assume there is business faculty literature on this topic, but I have never seen any.

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  11. Paul

    There’s the French sociologist did all that “cultural capital” stuff. The name escapes me.

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  12. Grumphy

    Slightly off the subject, but going from ‘respect of their peers’. I don’t like to have a colleague in the class – it’s fashionable to attend each other’s classes so we can give feedback or something. I don’t even like to have my PHD student GA there. Because, I find it difficult not to teach to the peer or even the GA. I give really low stupid metaphors and I try to make the thing simple and down to earth, and I find it difficult to do that when an equal is present. So I understand what you are saying about the reporters: they would feel embarrassed ‘in front’ of other reporters if they reported on things that interest older middle aged republican suburbanites. And after a few years, the belief that one has a right to be in a job goes all the way down.

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  13. Mac

    Janet, I’ve been seeing ads for this for several years: http://www.greatcall.com/jitterbug/
    The ads were sort of funny: an “older” woman saying something along the lines of “my grandson gave me a phone and I couldn’t make heads or tails of it, but now…”

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  14. Mac

    I meant both editorially and news-ly about the local paper, Art. Of course the wire service stuff is what it always is, but its emphasis has been on local/regional stuff for several years now, with a pretty high level of reporting and reasonable coverage. They were not so stupid as to spend a lot of time sneering at the people to whom they wanted to sell newspapers. But apparently it still wasn’t working economically (but then there’s that charge of bad management). Of late everything in it has gotten sketchier.
    The up-the-food-chain factor probably applies within an organization as well as broadly across the media spectrum. At the highest level (“highest” meaning most visible), coverage of politics seems to be almost entirely a sort of insider’s chat about tactics and polls and so forth. Lots about how they think this or that position will play with this or that constituency, for instance, much less about the actual positions. The recent media frenzy about Romney’s supposed “gaffe” on the Libyan embassy matter was an especially bizarre instance, seeming more important to most of the press than the attack itself.

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  15. Mac

    That’s interesting, Grumphy. I can understand that, and it probably does shed some light on journalistic practice.

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  16. Art Deco

    coverage of politics seems to be almost entirely a sort of insider’s chat about tactics and polls and so forth.
    James Neuchterlein said many years ago that people who were committed partisans were the ones who tended to be were interested in this mess, because they had already made up their mind about issues and candidates. Tells you something about reporters, I think.

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  17. Janet

    Yes, Maclin, I’ve heard that one, but that only irritates me.
    AMDG

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  18. Grumphy

    That is true, AD. There is a really boring journalist on the Telegraph (Matthew D’Ancona) who does nothing but conservative party tea leaf gazing. Your comment makes me see that it is because he is committed, and isn’t interested in the questions, just ‘what might happen next.’ It takes a certain kind of personality to remain interested in the questions and issues, once a commitment has been made.

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  19. Mac

    I never thought about that before, but it does make sense, and it does tell you a lot.

    Reply

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