Printed Matters

Editor’s Weblog has published an interesting interview with Nick Davies, author of the book Flat Earth News. He makes what I think is an absolutely crucial point: reporters are hamstrung by time constraints.

The big change in the business over the last ten years is precisely the reduction of time available for almost all reporters to do their work.

There’s been a lot of talk lately about the curmudgeons – you know, the old school, old-media reporters who are more or less anti-Web. They see the Web as a piss-pot of useless blogs passing off drivel as reporting. They see their jobs dwindling away, and blame the Web’s free content model. But I think Davies has put his finger on exactly what the problem is.

It’s not that old-school journalists are against the web per se. Most reporters I’ve talked to genuinely enjoy doing stuff for the web. Reporters at community weeklies, for example, like the fact that they can get out a scoop without having to wait for the print cycle. They (mostly) don’t mind having to go shoot video, because, hey, it’s different, you get to learn a new skill, and you get to tell your stories in a new way, and video is cool.

What they do mind is that they are having to work harder – produce more in less time – without, in most cases, a change in their compensation, and at the expense of their core competency: reporting.

It’s natural, and it would happen in any industry, that employees get upset when they have had to learn new skills and produce more work without a corresponding increase in pay. This was the big issue in last year’s labour unrest at the Toronto Star:

The company would diminish specialists and promote generalists – while paying less… We didn’t come to Canada’s No. 1 daily to be part of this.

This, I think, is the crux of the problem. It’s not that reporters hate the Web, or producing material for the web. It’s that news companies are cutting staff, expecting more work from those that are left, and throwing new skills into the mix, while at the same time cutting pay and benefits. I’d be a curmudgeon too!

This is why I’ve said before, newspapers should focus on their core competencies. And video isn’t one of them. Leverage what you do. Jeff Jarvis has said it too (although I disagree with his particulars).

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