I agree that the quality of media has declined. But I disagree about the consumer is to blame part here. Print media have gotten worse (and so has TV journalism), but the readership has shrunk at the same time. Supposedly, the PD’s getting set to lay off again tomorrow. Katie Couric may indeed be bad, but no one’s watching her either, by all accounts. I think you can also make the argument that “you make a lousy product, your sales go down.”

Of course they’re capitalist enterprises, but this doesn’t mean they always make wise business decisions. I’m contending that they’ll make more money and give themselves the chance to stay relevant - maybe even thrive - in the future. That is, if they adapt successfully.

Organizations like the PD are literally holding mandatory seminars to teach “old-school” writers how to blog. That’s fine—if the writer is a strong one who simply needs to learn new skills. But they’re going to find more success by actually hiring people from the industries whose territories they’re seeking to poach.

When ESPN hired the best print writers to do television - people like Chris Mortensen; people who were god awful on TV when they started - it was considered risky and potentially revolutionary. Now it’s a standard. Outlets like the PD ought to think pretty hard about taking similar bold steps. Yep, like hiring a blogger. That would be a start.

That 58-year old white guy is right. It’s happening in every newsroom in the country, or at least it ought to be. If you’re not versatile, you’re toast.

I don’t like to see down-sizing; my company laid off 14% of the employees in our building last week, and the majority were in my division. But most of the cuts were justified because too many of us were not contributing on multiple levels. The media’s various products will suffer when employees are asked to do so much that each individual task is in danger of being neglected. Some shops are at that point, certainly. But many shops simply need to push their staff to be versatile and more productive.

Therefore, we shouldn’t be amazed when an entrenched Ohio sports reporter writes something that sounds simple to us. We aren’t his intended audience. His audience is mostly people who cannot name 5 players on the team.

Yeah but would Jay Levin publish the same piece three times in arow? Would he Brick?

“Aren’t newspapers as a rule written at a fourth-grade level?”

That’s probably about right, and I can tell you that we’ve had a lot of conversations in our newsroom recently that go like this:

“Christ, you mean the research indicates people prefer THAT?”

“Sadly, yes.”

“So what do we give them? Do we give them broccoli, knowing they might not eat it, even though we think they need it? Or do we give in and just serve dessert?”

But that’s news. I’m making the argument that if newspapers hired writers who could serve the broccoli more often, readers would actually grow to like the broccoli. It might be a high-minded thought, but sports fans enjoy feeling like they know more about the game. I think there’s more coin to be made from a better, sharper product.

“Having said that, I think the major difference between the local pros and the best team bloggers isn’t quality, it’s that we’re doing fundamentally different jobs.”

That’s true. But I’ll go back to the ESPN analogy. John Clayton (I’m assuming he was in that initial converted group of print writers) is not doing what he was doing when he was only writing. He’s broadcasting; he’s doing radio. However, he also still writes, only he does it for a website.

If a newspaper were to take a bold step and hire a blogger, they could take that hire a variety of directions. But certainly it would make sense to have that blogger continue to blog in at least as similar a fashion as possible. Is that the same? No. Does it change the equation and change the nature of what that blogger is doing? I’m sure it does. But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth the investment for the newspaper. Trial and error is inevitable and important, but pretty much anything trumps what currently exists over there.