Did you know that Sears used to sell houses?  Yep, right out of the catalog.  When I was growing up, our neighbors two doors down lived in a house they had bought from Sears.  It was one of the older houses in the neighborhood, and they had bought it back in the 1930s.  They said it arrived on a truck with all of the parts pre-cut and ready for assembly.  I don’t know how Sears erected houses.  Probably used a local contractor.

By the 1950s houses were no longer in the catalog, but they were selling their own brand of cars.  They were built by Kaiser and carried the Allstate brand, the name of the insurance company Sears owned at the time.

The point is that Sears knew what business they were in.  They knew they were not in the clothing business or the hardware business.  They were not in the department store business or the mail order business.  They were in the merchandise supply business.  The precise mix of offerings might change with the vagaries of the market, but if you wanted it, chances are they had it and would figure out a way to get it to you.

Now The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times are squaring off against each other.  The Journal is going after a share of the up-market New York general audience long dominated by the Times.  It’s a good time for everyone involved to remind themselves what business they’re in.

They are not in the newspaper business or the broadcasting business or the film business.  They are in the business of supplying entertainment and information.  If you want it they should have it or be able to get it for you and get it to you by whatever means suits you best.  I have a feeling that the people at the Journal and the company that owns it know this.  I’m not sure the folks at the Times do.  I have a nagging feeling they still think they are in the newspaper business.

Neither The New York Times nor The Wall Street Journal are simply newspapers.  They’re media brands now.  Any of their execs who don’t get this probably never lived in a Sears house.

Photo Credit: The Arlington, circa 1908-14, Sears Kit House (Model No. 145); (priced from $1,294 to $2,906) Sears Archives

Paul Rule is President of Marquest Media Research.

I used to be a newspaper columnist, penning one and then two essays a week for 25 years in between plowing, planting and harvesting the second half of a 42-year, ink-stained gig in what is now said to be a “dying profession.” Only it ain’t dead yet.

It just needs the right blood transfusion. And the donors are readers, not publishers. Too many of the latter never worked in trenches where reporting means slime, greed, corruption and more official B.S. to wade through than is at the local waste treatment facility. If these corporate thinkers had been in the daily war, maybe they would understand public thirst for information and how to quench it.

While readers have remained thirsty, publishers have refused to fill the glass, instead offering surveys, think tanks and feel-good, chummy retreats that have not saved newspapers but instead have distracted the front office from what readers and reporters and good editors (not enough of those) have always known: Ever since one fella whispered to another, there’s been news. And gossip. And innuendo. And baloney. And facts closest to the truth as truth can be in this world. But you have to dig for them. And that’s news.

If all this sounds Damon Runyon, well, God bless the fact that “journalism,” a fancy word for newspapering that most scribes wouldn’t wear even on Sundays, is really old-fashioned, “Front Page” legwork –

Cultivating sources and jumping into an investigative dig worthy of Sherlock Holmes. If there is also the soul of a self-deprecating street bum, where all the goodness of humankind can reside, the reporter is the better for it. And so is the reader.

Digging and lots of new, not rehashed, reporting gives us news, and news, whether it’s what the first fella said to the second fella, or if it’s about the town or school board meeting, or the Yankees, or the president, well, it’s all information. And people crave information.

The transfusion that is ready for newspapers is the time, the mind, the heart, the soul readers are willing to give those who gather and report the news. People will spurt blood to find out what is happening. They want the dirt, the scandal. They also want the think piece that analyzes matters. They want the essayist who makes the highs and lows of life vibrate, resonating in hearts and minds and bones in ways the columnist can express but the reader cannot.

People – the readers – whether they are looking at a printed tabloid or broadsheet or the Internet or the TV news or Twitter or Facebook, want news. They want  “quality, balanced, well-written pieces (that) refrain from blurring the lines between factual news reporting and opinion/agenda/promotion views,” as one Colorado reader puts it.

Want to save newspapers? Use the blood that readers will give willingly. Go back to digging out the news and then fully reporting that, written by guys and gals who feel newspapering from their toes up, left alone by the front office to do their thing.

If we had had real news from a full, leave-them-alone reporting staff in the past two decades instead of spending the bank balance on surveys and page redesign and trendy fluff pieces, maybe the current economic debacle would have been derailed by investigative stories. Or war. Or G.M.’s troubles. Or dysfunctional government that is bedded by lobbyists.

People want the news, and only those who give it to them, in whatever and every way they want it, will survive. They will thrive, actually.

Arthur H. Gunther III is retired as editorial page editor and columnist of The Journal-News, a daily in Nyack, N.Y. He writes regularly at columnrule.blogspot.com

Saturday’s October 3, 2009 headline “Palin Holds Own In VP Debate” in the BattleCreek Enquirer tells all you need to know about how Alaska’s Sarah Plain when she went mano a mano with Joe Biden on October 3. The article, which Google News featured prominently at 7a, was at the top of the list of “related” Friday articles about Palin’s chances in 2012.

Only problem is that the BattleCreekEnquirer was a year too late.

A closer read of the story shows that it should have been filed with a dateline of October 3, 2008 — not 2009. The error was amplified by Google’s news-bot-algorithm-thingee when this retro story was grouped with recent comments by former McCain campaign manager Steve Schmidt said a 2012 Palin nomination would be catastrophic for the party.

Web publishers use CMS (content management systems) to manage stories, dates, bylines and ad placement. Obviously something snafu-ed in Battle Creek followed by the clueless electronic editor-in-chief-bot at Google (There’s no truth to the rumor that the new Google News slogan is “All The Dated News That’s Fit We Publish.”).

One of the funnier quips about this slip out belongs to GeeWizard, a comment poster on the BattleCreekEnquirer website.

I’m excited to see Palin, a fresh face in politics. I’ll bet she’ll be sad to quit her position as Governor of Alaska once the American people unanimously vote her into the White House. She’s not like other slimy politicians who are only interested in self-promotion and million dollar book deals. She loves her state and would stay with it forever if she could. GO PALIN!!

Wait….what year is this?

Damn computers. Can’t live with em. Can’t sue ‘em when they screw up something stupid, either. But I bet there will be hell to pay at the editor’s desk in Battle Creek come Monday morning.

Sources: Battle Creek Enquirer, October 3, 2009, The Atlantic, CNN VP Debate Transcript

Having given away the store on their websites, newspapers are talking about going back behind a pay wall.  It didn’t work before, so, of course, it will work this time.

Few seem to be discussing the broader picture of how the internet has changed the way people use newspapers.  It’s more than simply substituting electronic delivery for the carrier throwing the paper through your rose bushes.

Except for a handful of news and political junkies, consumers of print newspapers read no more than one or two papers a day.  So far, nearly all pay models seem to assume that internet users follow this same pattern.  They just want their daily New York Times or Washington Post fix, and now they get it for free without paying that annoying subscription fee.  Force them to pony up and they will.  Well some will, but many won’t because of a changed usage pattern.

Henry Ford did more than build lots of cheap cars for people.  He freed them from having to go downtown on the trolley company’s schedule.  The internet frees me from having to rely on one or two newspapers, regardless of how good they may be.  I can read a columnist I like in the L.A. Times, catch an editorial cartoon in another paper and a backgrounder on energy policy in a third. I’ll be happy to pay a reasonable rate for the news and features I read, as long as I can read them from whatever publication strikes my fancy today.  Tomorrow I might want to sample a different one.  News grazing might be a good term for it.

Maybe the club model would work.  Many of us have belonged to gyms or clubs where our membership entitles us to privileges at associated facilities in other cities.  So let’s say I subscribe for internet access to The Boston Globe, paying about what I would pay for a print subscription.  But my subscription also gives me access to the Web content of The New York Times, the Journal-Constitution from Atlanta, the Chicago Tribune and dozens of other papers across the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and other parts of the world who are members of a subscription co-op.

Now that I would pay for.  But I don’t want to be limited to one or two online newspapers just to avoid a hunk of dead tree being thrown through my rose bushes.  C’mon publishers, you can figure out how to do this.  BMI, ASCAP and SESAC collect fees for music rights owners from thousands of radio and TV stations and other venues, and they started long before the invention of modern computer-based accounting systems.  Find a way to shift the money around, and I’ll be happy to pay for my news nibbling.

Paul Rule is President of Marquest Media Research.

See also: Thinking Outside of The Polybag, Cynopsis Weekender, November 2005

The New York Times will receive $45 million in the deal with $33.5 million coming from Univison and $11.5 million from WNYC. Comments on the RadioInsight blog estimate that WNYC’s acquisition price is about 1/4 of what a similar NYC FM radio stations would normally fetch.

In a challenging economic climate for newspapers and commercial radio, Spanish and public radio appear are thriving and expanding. The New York Times described the deal: “Faced with losses brought on by a deep advertising slump, the Times Company has been cutting costs across all of its operations, including the flagship Times newspaper. This year it negotiated union concessions on wages and benefits at The Boston Globe, and closed a wholesale newspaper and magazine distribution subsidiary.”

WNYC says they plan to continue WQXR’s two most listened-to live programs – Saturday Afternoon at the Opera and The Philharmonic This Week.

“[WNYC] has been trending away from the standard presentation of classical music or concert music, ” says the New York City Eye blog. Comments on RadioInsight speculate that WNYC will change to a 24/7 NewsTalk format with music programming moving to WQXR.

The DownWithTyranny blog notes the NYT has owned WQXR since 1943 and that ironically, the dwindling classical music format was once the dominate programming on FM radio. The Times sold WQXR-AM to Disney in 2006.

Sources: RadioInsight, NYT, WNYC, New York City Eye,  DownWithTyranny

This article also appears on the NyackNewsAndViews.com community news site.

Producing a newspaper must be a humbling experience these days.  Struggling to stay afloat while watching your classifieds section dwindle to something thin enough to use as a cheese slicer can’t be fun.  The newspaper business has never been this bad, right?  Wrong, very wrong.

It depends on the point in history you pick to make your comparison.  We like to compare to the decades since WW II, the glory days when the big metro dailies have been licenses to print money and their owners counted the profits by the hundreds of millions of bucks.  Despite first radio, then television and finally the internet having the advantage for breaking news, newspapers still dominated local media markets.

This period of great riches was the exception.  To appreciate what the newspaper business has been for most of its history, warp back a hundred years or so.  Today’s papers look prosperous compared to the publications of the 1890s.  There was no competition yet from electronic media, but most newspapers were pathetic looking beasts.

I found this out while doing some historical research involving early papers in my hometown in Virginia.  Despite having had a population of only about 10,000, library-preserved copies and newspaper directories revealed that during the 1890’s the town had six newspapers – two dailies and four weeklies.  I suspect that none of them were profitable on a steady basis.  By 1900 all six had faded away and been replaced by more aggressive papers that invaded from nearby larger towns.

As to the purists who are shocked that some newspapers are selling ad space on the front page, be aware that many early papers sold all or nearly all of the front in small card ads.  Particularly popular were pitches for patent medicines and miracle healing machines that used magnetic rays to cure everything from fatigue to lumbago (whatever lumbago is.  It sounds like some sort of ballroom dance.)

Newspapers of a century ago had to be scrappy.  Only the most scrappy, ingenious and energetic survived.  Maybe the industry could use some of those publishers, editors and writers now.

Paul Rule is President of Marquest Media Research.

For the first six months of 2008, MonitorPlus commercial expenditures are down 10 perent across all media. The biggest losers by dollars were Spot TV (-7%), Network TV (-10%), and National Magagines (-23%). Network Cable showed a small increase at 5 percent. Spot Radio and Newspapers also took big hits, dropping 23% and 32% respectively.

GM’s Jan-July spending is down six percent with Ford and Chrysler both slashing media expenditures by  22 percent. Honda was up 13 percent and Toyota was flat.

Source: Nielsen MonitorPlus

I’m the first to admit it, my earliest memories of seeing the paparazzi in my hometown of Malibu are paradoxical at best. As a child, I used to play at the Malibu Country Mart playground – located in a central shopping area, it was definitely home to the higher-end equipment as far as local sandboxes and slides went. My dad was working at Hard Copy at the time, and he made it his policy not to accept paparazzi footage shot at that particular playground. And yet, while he was protecting his daughter’s right to play in a place unfettered by the photog’s flashbulbs, it was only because of his job as a producer on a major tabloid television show that we lived in Malibu at all.

Such is the paparazzi paradox. On the one hand, the prolific paps are reviled – and rightfully so – for the invasive and often dangerous tactics they use to get the perfect, profitable picture. On the other hand, most of the entertainment industry depends on tabloid journalism for publicity and profits. And, there is nowhere where the twain take each other on quite like in Malibu.

Just look at last weekend. Most Angelenos were escaping the record heat by hitting whatever body of water was closest. And, for many of us, that meant the beach, and specifically, the big stretch of sand and sea along the Malibu coast. But, while most people were looking to lay out and let off some steam – literally – there were clearly a contingent of paps who were not content to kick back and cool off. Sure, they were combing the sand, but not for seashells.

Instead, they went looking for yet another shot of a shirtless Matthew McConaughey soaking up the sun and surf. And, apparently, they went looking on the private beach known locally as Little Dume – a place so private that even when we used to hold high school parties there, we would still need someone with a key to get to the keg.

There’s plenty of video of what happened next, but basically, a group of local guys got fed up with the photogs, and a confrontation ensued. Footage of the whole incident, along with details of the new ordinance Malibu officials are currently drafting to deal with the increased influx of paps to these parts. You see, the thing is that when it comes to day-to-day life in Malibu, In Touch is honestly rather out of touch.

Malibu is a small suburban city, just 27 miles long, that is more oriented around families than fame. Sure, the population of almost 13,000 has more than its share of screenwriters, producers, directors, composers, musicians, actors, lighting technicians and the like. But, my immediate neighbors also include a retired cop, a number of firefighters, a teacher and a contractor. So, when a group of paparazzi jumped out of the bushes to catch Pam Anderson at her kids’ Saturday afternoon soccer game, they also managed to scare the living daylights out of my poor little brother, who happened to be playing goalie at the time. And, when Britney Spears was spotted getting frozen yogurt at the local Ben & Jerry’s, it was my frizzy, frazzled former co-worker there whose unflattering picture appeared in the background – much to her chagrin.

So, as much as my journalistic background makes me want to fight for the freedom of the press at all possible costs, there is a big part of me that wants to protect the people I love from the frenzy of flashbulbs. Sure, celebs ask for the added notoriety when they commit to their careers, and yes, we in the entertainment industry all depend on the terrible tabloids to make and maintain everyone’s fame and fortune. But, I do believe there is a line to be drawn, and I think it makes sense to draw it around actors, actresses, musicians and maybe even reality stars who are off the clock, off the carpet and (trying to stay) off the camera.

When someone is sunning on the sand, shopping at the supermarket, strolling with their kids or playing at the playground, they should get the benefit of basic human treatment and be taken off the tabloid radar. After all, how many shots of a shirtless McConaughey or a sweats-clad Pam Anderson does the American public really need to see? There must be more interesting or, dare I say it, important news going on in the greater world, right?

Yes, it’s time to draw a line. And, if a group of local guys are willing to let their beer guts be broadcast around the world as a means of literally drawing that line in the sand, then I can’t say I don’t support their intentions – if not necessarily their all-too-aggressive actions.

See also: LA Times

• 5/9, Malibu turns to Ken Starr to help get paparazzi under control
• 6/23 2nd Paparazzi Brawl in Malibu

Most of us spend a lot of time with media – watching TV, eyeballing online videos, going to movies, etc. Plus there’s the audio stuff, tunes from radio, downloads or CDs. Then we have the print delights – newspapers, mags, books. It can total double-digit hours per day for dedicated media addicts.

Yes, I’m one, too. I’m the guy you met at the meeting of MJA (Media Junkies Anonymous), the couch potato who bravely stood up and said, “My name is Paul, and I’m a media addict.”

These thoughts came this week as I noted the 25th anniversary of the release of the film “Valley Girl” and read about a study reporting that high school kids who have TVs in their rooms earn lower school grades, eat more junk food and exercise less.

Okay, class, now what difference do we see between the teens depicted in “Valley Girl” and those camped out in their bedrooms, eyes glued to the screen or with hands clinched firmly to their Wii controllers? Well, mostly, it’s that the Valley girls were out actually doing something like socially interacting with each other in a non-digital environment, even if the setting was as mundane as a suburban shopping mall.

Media content is attractive because it has interesting stories involving interesting characters doing interesting things. This applies whether it’s a movie, a TV reality show, a video game, a news story or the lyrics of a chart-topping song. I’m not aware of anyone who has produced a hit media vehicle that showed nothing but the backs of people’s heads who were watching television. We’re media junkies because media allows us to be mental hitchhikers and vicariously experience situations that would be too threatening or that we’re unable or too lazy to experience for real.

Occasionally there is a bright light. Nickelodeon has a new show called “Dance on Sunset” that actually encourages tweens to get up from their couches and dance.

Plus, there is a lot of worthwhile educational and thought-provoking content. I learn more from the National Geographic, Discovery and History channels than I ever did from most of my school textbooks. I balance this by feeding myself guilty pleasures – searching the on-demand menus for really bad low-budget movies that require no more mental effort than necessary to keep me breathing and digesting my food.

I should spend more time doing things someone might want to make a movie about and less time watching other people do things on TV, but right now I think I’ll check to see if anyone might be running a Clive Barker film festival on the tube this week. I haven’t had a good dose of Pinhead lately. My name is Paul, and I’m a media addict.