Let's Get Off the Quilt Track for a Moment and Talk Newspapers

Warning: A rant is about to occur. Please hold your ears, turn the page, cursor on if you have any issues reading a rant.

Besides being a phenomenal, accomplished and humble quilt addict, I am also a working print journalist. That means that I earn a significant portion of my annual income writing for newspapers and magazines. About five years ago, with the authoring of my first quilt book, Fast, Fun & Easy Book Cover Art, I officially blended my two loves (writing and quilting) into one income-producing prospect. But, I still regularly write for my area newspaper (which I adore still), covering mostly local features, news and on-the-spot reporting.

It is from my consistent vantage point as a newspaper observer that I offer the divine solution to the mess the newspaper industry has found itself in of late.

For those of you living under a rock, the news biz has been declining faster than President Obama's popularity rating over healthcare reform. Weekly, once-solid and dependable news outlets are laying off throngs of journalists and shuttering papers. For those in the biz, it's a frightening show of "What do we do now?"

For months, I've scanned the blogs and op-ed pages, looking for solutions to stop the bleeding newsprint. Over and over I read excuse after excuse about how advertisers have defected to the Internet, how classifieds are all on craigslist, how readers aren't savvy enough anymore to know the importance of a daily newspaper and how young people don't like paper anymore. There are chats, twitters and panels overflowing with debates on charging for news content on the Web. And through it all, these editors and publishers, albeit some of the finest analytical minds our country boasts, are missing a big part of the answer under that small rock in the vast forest of our news culture, and they have been missing it for years.

In a nutshell: If newspapers returned to the content that earns the notice and dependence of their readers, we'd probably have fewer journos on the unemployment lines. Newspapers MUST return to concentrating on two avenues: local news and in-depth reporting.

TV and cable news offers tons of opinion and some exposure on national nuggets. They do it in 10-to 60-second soundbites, and they do it adequately, sometimes. The small screen is NOT where newshounds go for the whole story. It's where they go for the quick and dirty; the highlights and lowlights that can lead them into a bigger picture. With some important exceptions, like 9-11 and Katrina coverage, election results and celebrity deaths, broadcast news is just not going to answer the thirst for local coverage or getting-to-the-meat of the issue reporting. It's not designed to.

News magazines, which generally excel at the in-depth end of the news spectrum, are limited by their weekly publication dates. And, they answer again the national call for news, not the local.

Radio, in a similar scenario as tv/cable, also can't answer the in-depth question (NPR being one exception-but still national) nor most of the local stuff. Even those local audiocasts work in soundbites, throwing the sexiest, most ironic or disgusting bits into the air for those listeners to snap at like seals facing a sardine dinner.

This is where newspapers SHOULD step in and fill the void of local and in-depth issue reporting. But, in the last 10 years, newspapers have been slowly and deliberately spinning itself dizzy in the constant effort to be politically correct to its readers and to face-off against the broadcast giants and they haven't done their primary job.

If I were the Editor of the World (God forbid) my first change would be to staff my local papers, of any size, with the reporters needed to adequately cover the school district, city councils, water boards, chambers of commerce, youth sports leagues, churches and temples, service clubs, small-town theaters, the grocery store down at the corner. These are the places that generate the news that affects our readers EVERY SINGLE DAY. Yeah, we all want to know what the political rank-and-file in DC are up to. Their bad behavior is always good for a spot of outrage. But, let's face it: When it comes time for my daughter to start school next week, I want to know if my school has changed their nutrition guidelines yet again and if my classroom will see more students because of budget cuts? This is what I need to care about in my day-to-day life and it's becoming increasingly difficult to find the answers from the one place I always trusted to tell me: my local newspaper.

What I see that has happened is in the attempt to balance the newsroom budgets, management has taken out those reporters, photographers and editors who are low guys/gals on their totem pole. They retain the experienced staffers, which, on the surface makes sense. But what you don't always know is that the experienced staffers are those who cover the bigger picture: The state budget, the national beats, the county seat. These are not the staffers who would be required to cover the school district meeting every two weeks in my town, unless of course we know ahead of time that a shooting will happen. So, with the absence of the lower-rung reporters and photographers comes the absence of down-home news coverage. And I, as a reader, either turn to other sources for the down-home news meal (such as the freebie weekly newspaper that's dropped on my doorstep) or, even worse, much, much worse, I stop caring about what's happening with my city council and local shopping center.

It's akin to craving macaroni and cheese and only ever being fed hot dogs. And it sucks.

So the argument comes that the advertisers aren't there for the local. Hogwash. The LOCAL advertisers will pay to place their ads where they are convinced their LOCAL customers will see them. Since they know that their local consumer base has lost faith in area newspapers, they don't want to waste their ad dollars on those newspapers. You have to prove to them that you are commited to the local reader.

The other part of my taking-over-the-news-world solution is the in-depth coverage. Again, similar to the local angle, readers want to be offered a complete picture of an issue. They may or may not choose to absorb it all, but they want to know that it's given to them and that it's fair and balanced. You cannot consistently provide short news pieces and expect that content to answer all the of the relevant directions a story will take. As journalists, we have an obligation to offer the whole picture wherever possible. But we cut our content short to save paper and space and leave a reader with a partial understanding of how their lives may be affected.

Part of this happens because management can't afford to have a reporter spend too much time following one story if that reporter is instead needed to provide content for seven other stories weekly. Following a hard news story with many legs takes time, patience and skill, and it's hard to concentrate on an in-depth story when you're trying to cover all of the other things happening.

The other part in the lack of in-depth reporting comes from what I believe is a serious absence of knowledge on the reporter's part, and it's allowed to slide past the editors. Too many times, I've seen young journos come into the newsroom who don't have a clue about the basic facts of modern life: taxes, medical insurance, real estate, family issues, local politics and more. If you don't understand how utilities are run, how can you report on the back room arrangements being a local politico and the utility head and how that will affect my electric bill? A smart reporter will ask the questions they need to learn on the spot, but not all reporters are that smart, or motivated and they instead rely upon others (spokespeople, public relations, staffers) to offer the explanations for the issue. This is proven to me time and again when I read the real estate section of my area papers. I can tell when the reporter has listened too easily and with relief to the local Realtor who insists her business has never been better when all other indications are that she is barely eating. Her quote stands as God's word to the RE industry, even though it's obviously rediculous.

So it's my deep hope that newspapers will take a step away from themselves for a spell and really look at the smaller picture and what makes them special to us, the readers. Give us the local, tell us about what our neighbors next door are doing, not what the guy seven states over is doing. Tell me why this is important to my life. Show some outrage. And leave the bigger picture to the news wires and national media outlets. They have the resources to cover those stories. Let them.

I want my newspapers to survive and thrive. I want to read what they should cover more of. It affects me every day, and it's important. But they need to know all of this too.

Just my humble opinion here, folks, but it's a rant that's been demanding air time for a while now.