Madison Taylor

A riddle with no clear answer, yet 

When is a newspaper not a newspaper anymore? This was a question posed by John Harwood in a weekend e-mail. Mr. Harwood was questioning our decision to file a lawsuit against the city of Burlington concerning street solicitation — a law that will move our newspaper hawkers to the sidewalks — if we can find suitable or safe places to do. By twist of fate, our newspaper sales program started at sidewalks but the Times-News agreed to move them for safety reasons.

But Mr. Harwood also touched on issues I and many in the newspaper industry have written about over the past year — namely the future of newspapers as we all get smaller. He was also noting some editor’s notes and columns recently written by me concerning what, if any, features we might remove from the newspaper. At this writing, I still hope that none will need to be removed.

Here’s the note I got on Saturday from Mr. Harwood.

Dear Madison,

My wife and I were very relieved when the City Council made the decision to ban all solicitations.  I doubt you were in Burlington when they descended on the city from out of state in car and bus loads soliciting for non existent churches or religious organizations because they knew Burlington citizens were kind hearted and a soft touch.  They obstructed our view at busy intersections, they endangered themselves by walking in the road, they approached us in confrontational attitude, in a few rare instances they threatened some women of our city.  Restrictions were increased by the Council, still the police were unable to be everywhere and abuses continued.  I appreciate your concern for the loss of jobs of the few persons you employ from the Allied Churches Ministries.  I myself work on a monthly basis in the food kitchen of that ministry.  Still I think that If you were truly concerned with the loss of job of these needy persons you would help them find and obtain other employment, while at the same time respecting the welfare of the larger community.  I confess that this appears too much like the typical media arrogance displayed in attempting to construe the First Amendment freedom to mean freedom not to be challenged or inconvenienced.

 I find the timing of this interesting.  I enjoy taking my paper with a cup of coffee into my chair and reading it from cover to cover.  Sitting in front of a computer monitor does not provide the same tactile experience.  I believe a newspaper should provide me an overview of culture, that means having a variety of sections on a variety of areas.  Because of the economic plight of newspapers, you have been forced to reduce size, and now content of your paper, until I have begun to wonder when a newspaper is no longer a newspaper.  I suspect the impact of your decision to challenge the Council will be on your existence since circulation will most likely decrease.  I say this since it will influence our personal decision as to whether your shrinking paper is any longer worth the cost. Until recently we have been satisfied with your publication, especially your community interest.

John Harwood

This is what I wrote to Mr. Harwood in return.

Mr. Harwood,

    Thanks for writing. I agree with you on several points. The decision to pursue this further as you suspect is as much about preserving the newspaper as anything else. Ultimately we’re not just talking about the eight homeless people who hawk our product but likely full-time positions within our building that will likely go away when we lose 800 Sunday papers. Losing 800 Sunday papers — just based on advertising insert revenues alone — represents a loss of $50,000 or more annually.

     It saddens me what’s happened to newspapers — and it’s not only ours. Greensboro and Winston-Salem are only shells of their former selves and the Charlotte Observer looks a lot like the Times-News these days. The N&O has lost nearly 200 people in the past two months and is tumbling fast.

     We’re going to hold on as long as we can. The page size reduction didn’t hurt us much — in fact we even made a couple of improvements. Then our corporate bosses said we had to cut our page counts by 10 percent.

     I’m fighting to keep all we can in the paper. That’s why I ask for feedback from readers so I know what they want to see stay or go. Hearing from people like you really helps.

     We will continue to advance the cause of community news.

Thanks

Madison

This was his reply.

Madison, thank you for taking the time, from what must be a frantic, trying day, to respond, and respond in a courteous, straight forward way.  It helps me better appreciate  issue  and what you are up against.  I only wish you had the option to seek relief in some other way than federal lawsuit. As I indicated I fear that such legal action may backfire on you.  I would not like to lose the Times News, but when it becomes a non-paper or succumbs to financial pressure, I shall have no choice, shall I?  Sadly, in my opinion, if the newspaper disappears, yours included, we shall all be losers.

I agree with Mr. Harwood for reasons that go well beyond self-preservation. An active newspaper is a sign of a healthy and engaged community – something true of all media by the way. This is why it’s also a strong First Amendment issue.

Still, as I told Mr. Harwood, we hope to continue to produce lots of news of community interest with an increased emphasis on investigating the actions of those in leadership roles. We’ll continue to give our readers a print forum to sound off about local issues and we also hope to provide services those same readers expect.

Net gain or loss?

Doing so while we also continue to wrestle with a Web site is a whole other issue. I got this note on Sunday from Al Coates in reference to my column. Mr. Coates writes to me often and really detests the newspaper. That’s OK. But I don’t think he has a firm knowledge of how things work in our industry either.

Here’s what he wrote.

I read with interest your column this morning. How many hits on the hard copy do you think you get if you could put it in relative terms. The hard paper is it for your industry and if you keep messing with the net more than you mess with the hard copy you will surely loose. The paper is spending too much energy on what the so called worms look at and not enough time on the people who pay the subscriptions. Give people a quality paper and they will support it. As it is you have a cookie cutter that just does not do the job.

Oddly enough, our paper is hardly a cookie cutter as Mr. Coates suggests but our web site definitely is.

This what I wrote back.

  Mr. Coates. I wish I could agree with you. Papers all over the nation are losing subscriptions by the thousands and in fact ours is doing better than most. But lost subscriptions have more to do with changing times than quality of publication. As far as the Times-News goes, it’s a far better product today than it was when I got here a year ago in terms of local news production and coverage. This is even with our budget being cut to the bone. Tight budgets, not lack of attention by writers, editors and photographers, are also hurting newspapers.

 The thing you don’t understand is that the print edition is still our primary objective. The web actually comes second. The sad thing is we could add staff, pour more money in the product and spend no time online and the paper would improve only slightly but subscriptions wouldn’t go up one bit.

   Times are changing Mr. Coates and we’ll both be saddened by the future. Newspapers won’t last much longer but neither will local radio stations or perhaps even local TV stations. Lots of people these days get their music and talk via satellite radio. Many people watch their favorite TV shows online rather than on cable or network TV.

   The thing that will help all local outlets survive the longest will be attention to local subjects and issues. We’re getting better at this but still have a way to go. WBAG’s talk programming provides an excellent community service but none of the local stations in Burlington provide much in the way of news gathered by the stations themselves.

   Reporting, talk and chat at home are the keys to survival for local media. How long that will work, however, is anybody’s guess. If you check how few people actually vote for city council and county commission it’s revealing.

      Thanks for writing Mr. Coates. It’s always good to hear from you.

Madison

What is the meaning of this? 

  On to other subjects. Got this note from Melissa Moorehead of Swepsonville about our weekly opinion page feature Ups and Downs.

Dear editor,

Since you continue to run an editorial feature called ups and downs, I can no longer restrain my curiosity.  What, exactly, is an up, and why would a thumb have one?  Or a down, for that matter?  I am embarrassed every time I share a snippet from that feature and am unable to answer the inevitable first question that the reader asks.

Thank you for your help!

I called and left a message for Ms. Moorehead. The derivation of Ups and Downs relates to the symbolic thumb up pointing to the sky to note something positive or good while the thumb pointing downward marks something unwanted or bad. The gestures date to the ancient Romans who used the symbol as a signal to determine whether someone lived or died during competitions. Over time it evolved into several meanings ranging from “all systems go” to “full speed ahead.” In our case it simply means “nicely done” or “stick a sock in it.”

Bottom feeding carp resurface

Got this a couple of weeks ago regarding our online commenting system. I’ll admit it’s not the best – but it does allow more comment than the old one did.

Here’s the note.

Looks like to me from all of your “carping” about freedom of the press (and by extension, freedom of expression) on street noosepaper sales that we have a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black, since we are now all Plucked together in an Orwellian blog that for the purpose of public discourse on issues is about as useless as tits on a porcupine. That little bit about “potential liability for libel” is about the most transparent and disingenuous red herring that I’ve seen come down the pike in quite a while.

Bottom Feeding Carp I

I can’t take any credit for the note warning about libel but I would tell those who post there that should they go out of bounds they could face legal trouble from those they write about. I’ll also say that our newest commenting system allows more freedom than the other — but I wouldn’t brag about either.

Part of the job … but that’s don’t help none

And in another online matter I got this note a couple of weeks back.

I am a wife of a man who has been charged with a crime. I have been devastated and humiliated by my husband, the sheriff’s department and now your news paper.

My heart is broken by my husband, for the mistake he made. I have no idea if my marriage will make it though this. I am not sure he can recover from this.

My quiet little home was invaded by the sheriff’s department.  Try coming home early from work only to find 3 police cars in your driveway.  It eventually grew to 6 cars in MY driveway. Not my husbands driveway, but mine.

And in disgust, today I see “Breaking News” on your website. Why? I ask. You don’t know our situation. You don’t know if he is guilty. You think nothing of his family and wife and children? We would have been alright.  We would have been able to ignore the neighbors’ questions.  We could have answered the questions of those whom we are close. But do you really think we will be able to ignore everything and everyone? What about the people we work with? Guess you’ve never had to ignore evil gossip at work.  The malicious rumors that are ten times worse than reality?  But let’s forget the husband who has only been charged, NOT CONVICTED.  How does the wife or mother or children live with everyone knowing our pain and humiliation? 

I understand that families are upset by what we print in the paper and online. Our only hope is that we can provide accurate information that will hopefully keep rumors at bay. We also strive to report when people are found not guilty the same way we report things when they’re arrested.

But our system isn’t perfect. And so folks know, many of us do think of the families – but our readers expect us to report news. It’s what we’re paid to produce.