Newspapers, Management and Old Dogs

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.   

Some old dogs can still learn and be flexible.   

Leo W. Jeffres, Ph.D.

Professor Emeritus of Communication

Cleveland State University