April 9, 2013
Twice while visiting the Reno-Carson City area, I’ve been
reminded of the link between “literature” and journalism. The first time I was walking along the main
street in Virginia City when I spotted a faded sign painted on the side of an
old store front referring to the Territorial
Enterprise and its star writer, Mark Twain.
Today, while walking along the main street in another quaint frontier
town, one founded by Mormons who were anticipating life in what they thought
would be part of Utah, I saw another historical sign noting that the Territorial Enterprise newspaper was
founded in this small town, Genoa; the paper moved to Virginia City two years
later. I had just picked up three copies
of community and county papers, The
Record-Courier and the Nevada Appeal,
each for 50 cents, and the free monthly, Nataqua
News. And, checking my email
messages, I found a headline that the Cleveland
Plain Dealer was, as forecast and feared by newspaper lovers, cutting home
delivery to three days a week, leaving us to forage for the paper on the other
four days at corner stores and gas stations.
The PD’s dated management, the Newhouse chain, has decided to follow an
archaic path relying on “clicking” methodology for its economic model rather
than putting the news behind a fire wall and charging what it’s worth as other
newspapers are doing. This way,
apparently, they figure they eventually can fire the reporters and probably use
canned crap and soft features that attract readers, abandoning the paper’s historic
role of serving local residents so they can be informed in a democracy. Clicking methodology rewards the type of “stuff”
that people “share” on Facebook and post on YouTube—“news” stories and
photos/videos featuring the unusual, the bizarre, and generally available
consumer information or celebrity activity. On my visit I’ve read the daily
newspaper of Reno, the Reno Gazette
Journal, in a city with 227,511 residents in a metro area with a population
of 433,843. Cleveland’s city population
is about 400,000 in a metro area with about 2 million residents but the PD
management can’t manage to provide seven-day-a-week delivery. Guess you get what “management” thinks you
deserve, not what you need for citizenship.
The operative word is consumer, not resident, voter, citizen or neighbor.
I seem to be linked to institutions run by arrogant
leadership that has decided it knows what’s best for those it is supposed to
serve, with no need to listen to them or respond to their wishes. Like the Plain
Dealer, Cleveland State University is currently suffering from a president
who has decided to shove down the throats of faculty and students a course
schedule and curriculum plan that will penalize students and do precisely the
opposite of what he claims is his stated goal of making it easier for students
to graduate. And he is being backed by a
group of trustees who are following like little blind mice, with a willful
ignorance of the wishes of students and willingness to believe that faculty are
ignorant or uninformed and, of course, lazy.
Friends and colleagues have told me that I clearly retired at the right
time, avoiding the personal impact this decision would have had on me. But, in addition to the part time teaching
that I continue to do, I also have a strong commitment to the institution to
which I have given more than 35 years of my productive life. I was on the joint interest-based group of
faculty and administrators working cooperatively to see that student interests
were served and students would be left unharmed and “made whole” in the switch
from quarters to semesters. This time
the administration has demonstrated no such cooperation, and even the minor
players in administration---assistant deans, administrative appointees from the
president down to faculty, have poorly served the university and students,
refusing to listen and actively recruiting support for the conclusion they had
already made without consulting the facts.
Meanwhile, visiting with friends, I’ve had a chance to consult
with a fellow traveler in communication whose experiences abroad have been
diverse and productive, leading me to think he would be a good candidate to ask
the impertinent and unexpected question on a paper I’m writing on
“communication in megacities.” Unlike
the Plain Dealer management and CSU’s autocratic administration, I’m
soliciting input that could impact my decisions on this project.
Leo W. Jeffres, Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus of Communication
Cleveland State University
