I don’t know about you, but my life seems to get busier with each passing day.
I just finished publishing my second book in a month, began work on a major project to help raise money for a press association, conducted more webinars than I can remember during the past few weeks, and summer convention season kicks in tomorrow, even though summer is still a few weeks away.
My email is filled with messages each day from publishers and other newspaper colleagues who want advice about something going on at their papers. The questions come from the tiniest papers with just one or two folks, including the publisher, on staff, to folks running large regional and national groups.
If you think it sounds a little overwhelming, you’re right. I recently read a biography of George Washington and learned, not surprisingly, he often felt as if he was in over his head. I know the feeling, George. I’m sure many of us share the same emotion.
Like a lot of people in our business, I sometimes want to throw my hands in the air and ask, “Am I really making any difference at all?”
Then someone like Joey Young, comes along. You’ve probably heard of Joey, the “whiz kid” from Kansas who keeps creating successful community newspapers in defiance of the choruses of “You can’t do that.” Joey has a habit of reminding me how well things are going in Kansas.
Then there are the publishers, editors and ad managers lining up at conventions to tell me how well their papers are doing, while everyone seems to be telling them they should be dying.
I remember hearing from the CEO of Adobe Software several years ago. He wrote to thank me for the work I had done to make Acrobat a viable product. He told me, “What you did may have saved our company.”
I was looking for an email yesterday and was surprised to find a five-year-old message from a business leader in New Orleans who was excited about a plan I had created, at his group’s request, to lure a new daily
newspaper to the city after its long-standing daily newspaper moved to a digital-first format, abandoning their traditional daily model.
I felt a rush of adrenaline as I read the words he wrote five years ago: “I love it!”
Those of you who know me well know that one of my degrees is in theology, and I love keeping up with what various groups believe. I often say I have a little Quaker in me, even though I’m not Quaker, because I love the Quaker belief that a single individual, even when standing alone against great opposition, has a significant chance of being right.
When I was being told no one would ever print a newspaper ad or page from a PDF file, by the very people I thought would be most excited about the possibility, those voices didn’t sway me. That’s one of the things the head of Adobe thanked me for all those years ago.
When I read, as we all do, that newspapers are dying, it doesn’t slow me down, because I know the truth.
Two months ago, a friend told me he attended a civic club meeting and the guest speaker was the daily
newspaper editor from his town. My friend told me he was shocked when the editor told the group that
newspapers were near death and they would be better off to find alternative sources, primarily online news sites, to get their information.
My friend was surprised that I wasn’t surprised. It’s enough to get a guy down, but not me. At least not for long.
I just think about Roger Holmes and those papers in Western Canada and his work to move them back into local hands. And I think about Victor Parkins in Tennessee, whom I just got off the phone with, and his papers. He told me they are doing really well, increasingly better each year.
I think about some of the biggest names in the business who contact me to let me know they read my columns and agree with my thoughts that local management of newspapers is the only way to keep them successful.
Last night, I was on the phone with legendary newspaper consultant Ed Henninger. We talk almost every day. The conversation moved toward the topic of newspapers, as it always does, and our concern for groups that continually press the “newspaper is dying” message.
Then Ed told me about one of the national newspaper groups he works with as a consultant.
He said, “You know what the difference is with them, and why I like working with their group?”
Obviously I asked.
“The difference is, they leave the management of their papers in the hands of the publishers and staffs, and they have good newspapers because they do.”
I know I’m preaching to the choir, but sometimes the choir needs to be reminded that they sound good.
The printed word isn’t dying. You can find the books I publish in bookstores and all the usual online retailers.
The printed versions outsell the digital versions by a long shot. Most of the studies I find show a 4 percent drop in digital book sales during the past year.
Why have some of our brethren fallen for the “print is dead” line? Well, that’s another column for another day. My 800 words were used up 90 words ago.
I don’t know about you, but my life seems to get busier with each passing day.
I just finished publishing my second book in a month, began work on a major project to help raise money for a press association, conducted more webinars than I can remember during the past few weeks, and summer convention season kicks in tomorrow, even though summer is still a few weeks away.
My email is filled with messages each day from publishers and other newspaper colleagues who want advice about something going on at their papers. The questions come from the tiniest papers with just one or two folks, including the publisher, on staff, to folks running large regional and national groups.
If you think it sounds a little overwhelming, you’re right. I recently read a biography of George Washington and learned, not surprisingly, he often felt as if he was in over his head. I know the feeling, George. I’m sure many of us share the same emotion.
Like a lot of people in our business, I sometimes want to throw my hands in the air and ask, “Am I really making any difference at all?”
Then someone like Joey Young, comes along. You’ve probably heard of Joey, the “whiz kid” from Kansas who keeps creating successful community newspapers in defiance of the choruses of “You can’t do that.” Joey has a habit of reminding me how well things are going in Kansas.
Then there are the publishers, editors and ad managers lining up at conventions to tell me how well their papers are doing, while everyone seems to be telling them they should be dying.
I remember hearing from the CEO of Adobe Software several years ago. He wrote to thank me for the work I had done to make Acrobat a viable product. He told me, “What you did may have saved our company.”
I was looking for an email yesterday and was surprised to find a five-year-old message from a business leader in New Orleans who was excited about a plan I had created, at his group’s request, to lure a new daily
newspaper to the city after its long-standing daily newspaper moved to a digital-first format, abandoning their traditional daily model.
I felt a rush of adrenaline as I read the words he wrote five years ago: “I love it!”
Those of you who know me well know that one of my degrees is in theology, and I love keeping up with what various groups believe. I often say I have a little Quaker in me, even though I’m not Quaker, because I love the Quaker belief that a single individual, even when standing alone against great opposition, has a significant chance of being right.
When I was being told no one would ever print a newspaper ad or page from a PDF file, by the very people I thought would be most excited about the possibility, those voices didn’t sway me. That’s one of the things the head of Adobe thanked me for all those years ago.
When I read, as we all do, that newspapers are dying, it doesn’t slow me down, because I know the truth.
Two months ago, a friend told me he attended a civic club meeting and the guest speaker was the daily
newspaper editor from his town. My friend told me he was shocked when the editor told the group that
newspapers were near death and they would be better off to find alternative sources, primarily online news sites, to get their information.
My friend was surprised that I wasn’t surprised. It’s enough to get a guy down, but not me. At least not for long.
I just think about Roger Holmes and those papers in Western Canada and his work to move them back into local hands. And I think about Victor Parkins in Tennessee, whom I just got off the phone with, and his papers. He told me they are doing really well, increasingly better each year.
I think about some of the biggest names in the business who contact me to let me know they read my columns and agree with my thoughts that local management of newspapers is the only way to keep them successful.
Last night, I was on the phone with legendary newspaper consultant Ed Henninger. We talk almost every day. The conversation moved toward the topic of newspapers, as it always does, and our concern for groups that continually press the “newspaper is dying” message.
Then Ed told me about one of the national newspaper groups he works with as a consultant.
He said, “You know what the difference is with them, and why I like working with their group?”
Obviously I asked.
“The difference is, they leave the management of their papers in the hands of the publishers and staffs, and they have good newspapers because they do.”
I know I’m preaching to the choir, but sometimes the choir needs to be reminded that they sound good.
The printed word isn’t dying. You can find the books I publish in bookstores and all the usual online retailers.
The printed versions outsell the digital versions by a long shot. Most of the studies I find show a 4 percent drop in digital book sales during the past year.
Why have some of our brethren fallen for the “print is dead” line? Well, that’s another column for another day. My 800 words were used up 90 words ago.
What is the key to creating an award-winning piece of journalism?
Montana millionaire charged with journalist assault – and headed for Congress?
Gene Policinski
Inside the First Amendment
Gene Policinski is chief operating officer of the Newseum Institute and senior vice president of the Institute’s First Amendment Center. He can be reached at gpolicinski@newseum.org.
Follow him on Twitter:
@genefac
Sadly, shamefully, disgustingly, it has come to this: A Montana candidate for Congress was charged recently with assaulting a reporter who was asking him a question about the American Health Care Act.
The Bozeman Daily Chronicle reported that U.S. House candidate Greg Gianforte, a Republican, was charged with misdemeanor assault for what witnesses and the reporter involved said was an unwarranted attack.
Ben Jacobs of The Guardian, who has reported for weeks on the state’s close race for its only House seat, tweeted that “Greg Gianforte just body slammed me and broke my glasses.”
Gianforte’s campaign issued its own statement, claiming Jacobs had entered an office where a TV taping was being set up, “aggressively shoved a recorder in Greg’s face, and began asking badgering questions.” The statement claimed that both men fell to the floor in a struggle over Jacob’s cellphone, and that “this aggressive behavior from a liberal journalist created this scene.”
Too bad for that set of “alternative facts” that several witnesses — including a Fox News television crew — were on hand to dispute them.
A Fox News reporter wrote that “Gianforte grabbed Jacobs by the neck with both hands and slammed him into the ground behind him … I watched in disbelief as Gianforte then began punching the man, as he moved on top of the reporter and began yelling something to the effect of ‘I’m sick and tired of this!’”
Three of Montana’s major newspapers, The Billings Gazette, The Missoulian and The Helena Independent Record, quickly got “sick and tired” of Gianforte: By the morning after the incident, on the day of the state’s special congressional election, all three rescinded their endorsements of the GOP candidate.
We all should be “sick and tired” of attacks on journalists in recent weeks, from this Montana mess to a “manhandling” of a reporter by security guards after an FCC hearing, to the arrest of a public radio reporter in the West Virginia statehouse.
The incidents have much in common: The journalists were asking questions of public officials or candidates for office, outside the staged, controlled environments of news conferences. In each case, the journalists were labeled aggressors by those they were attempting to question.
Many defenders of a free press see all three incidents flowing from the stridently anti-press tone set by President Trump, both in office and on the campaign trail. He has called journalists “enemies of the people,” and on occasion verbally abused specific reporters at rallies and news conferences. The Gianforte account took pains to label Jacobs as a “liberal journalist,” continuing the candidate’s anti-press stance through a campaign that has drawn comparisons to Trump’s. In an effort to give Gianforte a boost in Montana’s close congressional race, Trump recorded a robocall in which he calls Gianforte “my good friend.”
For those who are more inclined to view politics as an opportunity for mud-slinging and chest-beating, rather than a spirited exchange of ideas, the Montana attack no doubt will produce appreciative chuckles and nods of endorsement.
Do not be fooled. It’s democracy that got “body slammed” in the Montana incident. It’s respect for the rule of law that was dealt a blow. It’s the First Amendment that was insulted by Gianforte’s attempt to justify what he did: attacking a reporter for asking a reasonable question, on a matter of great public interest, to a political candidate on the eve of an important election.
This recent spate of attacks is not the first time journalists have been hassled by thugs and bully-boys, or by security forces. Multiple attacks and beatings occurred as reporters and television correspondents covered the civil rights movement in the 1950s and ’60s. Reporters covering the “Occupy” movement in recent years were hustled aside or held by police looking to prevent news coverage of protesters being forcibly removed from parks in New York City and elsewhere.
At national political conventions, journalist arrests have become so common that national press organizations regularly set up phone banks and offices to help individual reporters who have been taken into custody without cause.
Dangers to a free press have deep roots in this country. Just seven years after the 1791 ratification of the Bill of Rights, Congress passed the Sedition Act, allowing for the arrest and jailing of journalists for publishing political criticism. About 20 editors were thrown into jail.
In the Newseum in Washington, D.C., where I work, there is the starkly tragic exhibit of a lone Datsun sedan — notable because the floorboards at the driver’s seat are peeled up, the result of an explosion that fatally injured Phoenix newspaper reporter Don Bolles in 1976. A remotely detonated bomb had been planted by mobsters seeking to stop Bolles from reporting on organized crime in Arizona. The attack had the opposite effect, as reporters nationwide flocked to Phoenix to complete Bolles’ work, proclaiming that “you can kill a journalist but not journalism.”
The fear is now real that — as we saw after fake reports of a child sex ring in a Washington, D.C., restaurant prompted an armed man to appear on the premises — some disturbed person will decide to counter reporters with more than a “body slam.”
Let’s say again, for the sake of the nonpartisan, nonpolitical 45 words of the First Amendment, that this pattern of verbal abuse and physical attacks on journalists is an attack on all Americans, and that that these attacks must stop.