Trading excellence for profits
The Los Angeles Times is the Lazarus of elite American newspapers. In 1999, a paper that had risen from a Republican rag to an elite newspaper saw its publisher, Mark Willes, broker a deal with the opening of the then-new Staples Center that destroyed the wall between an independent newsroom and the advertising department.
Only after 300 journalists signed a petition questioning their newspaper’s integrity did management agree to a meeting. Even though top management apologized, it was learned later it was false promise not to compromise the newsroom again. Morale sunk and the photocopiers hummed as top reporters looked for a new post.
Then enter the venerable Chicago institution, the mighty Chicago Tribune, as it buys Times Mirror (the parent of the L.A. Times) for several billion dollars.
That brought only cautious optimism, because the staff new full-well the Tribune’s new business model, while wonderfully profitable, had seen its reputation drop from the top 10 newspapers list of Time magazine.
The core of that business model is synergy. The Tribune owns the famous WGN-AM-FM-TV empire, two local cable channels, Chicago magazine, and the Chicago Cubs. It calls all news “information” (think computers) and makes its reporters file stories for radio, TV, cable, and the newspaper itself.
Save on staff though it may, and make much larger profits overall, quality and diversity have slipped. So, it was a wonderful moment when the champagne corks flew across the newsrooms and corporate suites when the Los Angeles Times won five Pulitzer Prizes, the second highest number in the 87-year history of the most prestigious award in journalism and the arts.
It took the honors in breaking news, national reporting, editorial writing, criticism, and feature photography. Since 1942, it’s won 35 awards.
For a moment, just take two categories: breaking news and national reporting.
The Times put 90 reporters, dozens of editors, photographers and artists to produce more than 100 stories in the first week of coverage of the largest wildfire in California history. At the end of the coverage, 750,000 acres were engulfed, 26 people were dead, 3,600 homes were ashes, and the total damage totaled $2 billion.
In national reporting, it took on Wal-Mart. Great stories or series begin with a question, almost always. What is the national and global impact of Wal-Mart? Business reporters Abigail Goldman, Nancy Cleeland, and Evelyn Iritani, along with foreign correspondent Tyler Marshall, wrote a three-part series, “The Wal-Mart Effect.” Its summary: the Arkansas five-and-dime now changed lives and communities, for better and worse, in the United States and abroad.
Journalism is an art, a craft, a haven for all of us who always wanted to write just one really good book, who wanted to see history unfold, and who, most of all, believed in a quality of journalism enunciated by Joseph Pulitzer.
I would ask you to think, again, of those foreign correspondents, for such newspapers as the Los Angeles Times, who tell us of the death, the fear, the struggles, and even the betrayals of us in Iraq. The Los Angeles Times now matches the hugely intelligent John Burns for the New York Times, and we are better informed for their work.
These papers care, about democracy, truth, and yes, the bottom line, too. But it should not be missed that when the Chicago Tribune focused solely on a new business model for profit, it lost both its margins of excellence and its soul.
Ed Kimbrell is a professor in MTSU’s School of Journalism.