How to make a sand castle

In the days before political correctness got its manicured hands around the throat of the newsroom, there was no mercy shown to the rookies.

I was working at a medium-sized southern newspaper with a good ol’ boy culture and a cabal of top editors with thick drawls and a practice of referring to women as "skirts" or worse.

It was a macho, adrenalin-charged kind of place that ran on two parts testosterone to one part caffeine.

I was the rookie.  As green as you would ever find in a newspaper of that size.

So I was relegated to covering all of the stories that no one really cared about: chili cook-offs, sand castle competitions, fundraisers - the sort of light, bright, feel-good stories in which nobody ever gets hurt or threatens to pull their advertising from the paper.

My hard-bitten co-workers did nothing to encourage me.

That was also part of the culture.

When you made a mistake, said something stupid or attracted any kind of attention, the newsroom was a cruel place to be.

When a county lawyer started sending me flowers my colleagues opened the cards before I got to my desk and read them out loud. I was mocked for the way I dressed (too well), for the stories I wrote (too small) and for the fact that I’d taped my press badge into my reporter’s notebook (as if I’d need credentials to get into a chili festival).

Once, I arrived at the office to find that my desk had been pushed to within a few inches of the front door and hung with a sign: "Cub Reporter and Social Climber: Deposit press releases here."

Mostly, I loved it. I learned almost everything I know about reporting in that newsroom: how to stand up to powerful people, how to get someone to talk to you after they’ve hung up on you twice, how to sniff out the real story beneath the self-congratulating bullshit served up in news conferences and press releases.

Also, how to get sand just the right consistency for building. That was considered fluff in those days. What mattered was holding the people who ran the schools and the cities and the courts and the police departments accountable. But first you had to do your time in the fluff.

These days it seems as if it is the newspaper business that is built upon sand. Newsrooms and news pages are shrinking under wave after wave of budget cuts. Serious journalism is pushed aside to make room for features about how to wash your hair.  Or worse. The people that make these decisions like to say they are making them for you.

You want bigger pictures, fewer words, more stories about celebrities, they say. I have never believed this about you. 

But this isn't really a debate anymore. Count the number of reporters covering the state legislature or the school board or the city where you live and you will see what I'm talking about.  They are disappearing. 

I'm not talking about the pack of people who show up with television cameras when something sensational is happening. I'm talking about the people whose job it is - or was - to read all the boring reports, sit through the boring meetings and keep asking questions until all the motives are clear and all the dollar signs have been accounted for. This is the work of newspaper reporters and no amount of googling, blogging or pretty people talking on the television can replace it.

Further reading about what you won't be reading:  

Not exactly Woodward and Bernstein, but the price is right.

Newspaper industry cutting its losses: "Let Them Read People Magazine"

Comments

[Cynthia Barnett]

Ya'll taxpayers wouldn't believe what's in those boring reports and what's said about you suckers -- even in public meetings. I can only imagine what they say when no reporter shows up. BTW SK, how do I get the guy to call me back after he's already hung up 2x?

[Suburban Kamikaze]

Are people really so rude Cynthia? I always assume it is some sort of phone glitch on my end - and I make a point of calling back to apologize for it.

SK

[Robert K]

Well, this post wasn’t funny at all, was it? Just terribly sad and entirely true. When I left the business – and by “the business,” I mean the industry – 15 years ago I was sure I was going to miss it horribly. Turns out it was very shortly after I left that it more or less ceased to exist. {I’m not going to go all post hoc ergo propter hoc and suggest a correlation – I leave, journalism falters. But you can draw your own conclusions.}

As for small dailies as the best training grounds, you are spot on. Nothing prepares you to speak truth to power like being a cub reporter arguing for space on Metro front.

Also, you mentioned testosterone and caffeine but forgot nicotine and alcohol. When I started, the smoke hung from the ceiling of the newsroom like a nimbus cloud. If you were out of tobacco, you could always just push a straw up into the haze. I’m guessing (hoping?) the alcohol thing remains the same, but I fear all of today’s reporters are spending all their money on lattes and I-phones. And smoking is a crime and drinking will get you "counseled" by the HR department -- as, sadly, will calling a female colleague a "skirt."

Oh, and kiddo (we called people kiddo a lot when I started out and I haven't been able to shake it), that is EXACTLY how you get the call through the third time. It is a time honored and effective technique – that always DID work a lot better for skirts.

[Musing]

"You want bigger pictures, fewer words, more stories about celebrities, they say..."

I think I need to write a letter to the editor of our paper, letting him know that is *not* what I want.

[BOSSY]

Oyvey. What a time.

[Suburban Kamikaze]

A letter to the editor is a good start. A campaign like the one over a 30-second advertisement for a pain reliever is probably too much to hope for...

[MomZombie]

Well, this just speaks to me. I left the business two years ago for reasons other than the crappy state of the newspaper business. But now it appears there isn't a business to return to. The last paper I worked at shut down on Nov. 30 due to all the issues you listed and more. We like to say: "Here lies (newspaper name) crushed to death by the 30 percent profit margin."