But this Garnett story, and how it was (and wasn't) covered, reminds me of "The Wire," which laid out a blueprint in Season 5 for the death of newspapers without us fully realizing it. The season revolved around the Baltimore Sun and its inability (because of budget cuts and an inexperienced staff) to cover the city's decaying infrastructure. The lesson was inherent: We need to start caring about the decline of newspapers, because, really, all hell is going to break loose if we don't have reporters breaking stories, sniffing out corruption, seeing through smoke and mirrors and everything else. That was how Season 5 played out, and that's why "Wire" creator David Simon is a genius. He saw everything coming before anyone else did.
Simon saw that before the rest of us? The decline of newspapers has been documented in rather excruciating detail for several years, and the consequences of that decline --fewer reporters uncovering crime and corruption-- were obvious to anyone who'd read a newspaper once or twice. Look: here's an article from 2005 about John Carroll's departure from the LA Times, which focuses a great deal on his struggles to cut costs and news staff. Here's the New York Times cutting 500 jobs in 2005. Here's the LA Times cutting 160 jobs in 2004. From 2005 to 2008, the Chicago Tribune cut 14 percent of its newsroom positions. Knight-Ridder disappeared in 2006 after years of decreasing profits. The following appeared in Media Daily News in 2005:
It's official: 2005 will be the newspaper industry's worst year since the last ad industry recession. And things aren't looking much better for next year either, according to a top Wall Street firm's report on newspaper publishing.[Break]
Even so, this good news is scant relief for an industry besieged by flat ad revenues, falling stocks, and fleeing subscribers. Last week, Rishad Tobaccowala, chief innovation officer for Publicis Groupe, told a newspaper--the Chicago Tribune--"newspapers are at a tipping point," in which online media will start to take more readership and more ad dollars. He added that newspapers are in the worst situation of all news media for growth as "the least visually engaging and least youth oriented" medium.
The newspaper industry slipped into a full-blown tailspin shortly after Season 5 aired, but that's not because Simon saw what we missed; it's because of the economic crisis.
Furthermore, Simon's Manichean take on what is essentially a dollars-and-cents issue seemed to be more about vengeance than insight. He made the decline of the Baltimore Sun a simple moral struggle between the noble managing editor and his greedy boss. Sure there are villainous bosses (read: Sam Zell) involved in the industry's decline, but they aren't the fundamental cause of it: it's us, the consumers of media, who would prefer to read something for free on the internet. For the record, I was as blown away by The Wire as anyone, but Season 5 was its least artful, least illuminating, most ham-fisted season.
Lastly, the "lesson was inherent"? That sounds like one of the malapropisms from the Sopranos. Am I the only one scratching my head at that?
2 comments:
I think he meant "implicit." But as much as I truly do love Bill Simmons, his takes on the world outside sports and pop culture can safely be ignored. Right after the election he had a podcast with his GOP friend JackO where they discussed how the stage was set for Obama to come into the White House and quickly become some sort of conquering superhero (and they meant on policy terms, not just image). It was a very revealing view into the mid-November political mindset of sports-first thirtysomething white dudes, but as political analysis, not so much.
I imagine your right, and as long as his columns are, some minor stuff like will inevitably slip through. I just wish Simmons would write more, even if that does mean we have to put up with a certain quantity of non-sports, not very compelling commentary. I know he's pretty into podcasts as medium, but I just don't think he's nearly as good at them as he is in printed material. Other than the Mike Lombardi NFL podcasts, those were usually good.
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