Unfi t to Print
MURCHISON, WILLIAM
Unfi t to Print The self-infl icted wounds of a newspaper enterprise. BY WILLIAM MURCHISON Edna Ferber made a handsome career spinning dynastic tales (Giant, Showboat, Cimarron, etc.)...
...The paper didn’t like “the sixties” very much, though it refused to straitjacket the bona-fi de characters it employed: e.g., Texas columnist-historian-“ chili head” Frank X. Tolbert and sportswriters Bud Shrake and Gary Cartwright...
...In any case, the new family team that began running the News in the 1980s brought in new submanagers who, over time, eradicated any reputation the paper might have had for personality, spirit, and fl avor...
...What I mean is, Belo will be a case study some day, but not quite yet...
...You’re in the entertainment/information business...
...The formula for staying alive in the new media age has, I would think, as much to do with content as with method and means...
...BY WILLIAM MURCHISON Edna Ferber made a handsome career spinning dynastic tales (Giant, Showboat, Cimarron, etc...
...Segura buys into the tale of “angry, mean-spirited rants” that poisoned the political tone of Dallas...
...centered on the ages-old theme roughly summarized as gosh-youneverknow-how-life-will-work-out...
...of Dallas, owner of the Dallas Morning News, the Providence Journal, and various TV stations, an empire seemingly on the wane after a burst of muscle-fl exing in the 1980s and ’90s...
...So entertain...
...A case study in modern media transition and transformation is the Belo Corp...
...the News’s stumble was more precipitous...
...The old Dallas News was, indeed, a “conservative” enterprise, in the sense that it backed conservatives for public offi ce and moved not-too-briskly— though not-too-slowly, either—to acknowledgment of profound societal changes...
...A generational leadership change that began in the 1970s and achieved consummation in the ’80s brought the paper triumphantly through an old-style newspaper war with the crosstown Dallas Times Herald (which expired in 1991...
...I myself labored for 28 years in the vineyards of the Dallas News before commencing a stint in academia, and Segura’s perspective and my own do not, shall we say, overlap at every point...
...Inform...
...An award-winning religion section disappeared...
...A round of layoffs in 2004 preceded buyouts that sheared from the paper its architecture critic, its lead movie critic, and a widely-quoted TV critic, among many others...
...Robust editorial viewpoints receded toward the middle...
...The mean-spiritedness of the old News editorial page is an urban myth of the same dimensions and longevity as alligatorsinthe-sewer...
...To what purpose...
...Segura leaves the question dangling delicately, and no wonder...
...If the idea was to increase circulation, that inspiration fell short...
...A whole lot of ex-subscribers quit because, as they explained, the new News bored them, never saying much that was worth hearing, never causing the blood to surge, the tear to well, or the corners of the mouth to crinkle in amusement...
...Justifi able pride in family traditions of ownership and public service gives way to fi nancial reality...
...For the six-month period that ended in March 2008 circulation in Dallas fell 10.6 percent...
...William Murchison is the Radford distinguished professor of journalism at Baylor.s...
...Their individuality and, sometimes, quirks (Tolbert liked to bellow like a steer as he roamed the halls) gave the News fl avor and personality...
...A newspaper once renowned in the Southwest for its careful attention to literature lacks a book critic...
...No more conservative “ranting,” that’s for sure...
...As did the immensely popular columnist Paul Crume, a droll, unpoliticized master of style and subtle narrative...
...I hope, all the same, to do justice to her account, which is of a staid, generally self-satisfi ed family company energized in the 1980s by younger members of the dynasty, and now— Now, what...
...To which I am obliged to reply: balderdash, lady...
...As with cattle ranches, so with communications empires—which, in the turbulence of the Internet age, have been looking far less imperial than formerly: sagging circulation, the fl ight of advertising, that sort of thing...
...Don’t take for granted the kind of reader loyalty the sahibs of the old Dallas News enjoyed for so long...
...Judith Garrett Segura’s account of Belo’s stormy passage through modernity trails off uncertainly: nothing resolved, plenty of issues still hanging around, such as what does it mean in the 21st century to inform, guide, and befriend a large city and metropolitan area...
...It doesn’t exist...
...In the fi rst quarter of 2008 the newspaper (as opposed to the TV) side of the corporation lost $8.7 million...
...Segura, a former archivist for the paper, cheerleads for the new management structure and for its enterprises and missions, which she sees as leading the News away from preEnlightenment obsessions such as tight control by a small family clique (the company went public years ago), avoidance of red ink on the business side, and, perhaps, worse: devotion to conservative causes and candidates...
...Management poured money into the news operation, beefed up the newsroom, acquired a handful of smaller newspapers, and generally looked fi t for the future...
...You have to compete for that: Fight for it, yell and punch for it...
...It was the biggest such hit any of the country’s 20 largest newspapers took in the period...
...Other American newspapers (the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Los Angeles Times) have suffered similar affronts to pride and sense of duty...
...And then leave something worth taking away, to be chewed on thoughtfully by those who trusted you to instruct them...
...The goal might be described as unclear...
Vol. 14 • December 2008 • No. 13
