EARNINGS UP, CREDIBILITY DOWN: THE NEWSPAPER DILEMMA

Quarter looks good, but ASNE survey makes papers look bad

Across the last fortnight the newspaper business has experienced extreme cases of both highs and lows.

The first 11 first-quarter earnings reports have come in, and they are uniformly good news (as you can see inside; the remainder will be highlighted next time). There are a couple of under-performers in the bunch, but their excuses tend to come from their non-newspaper activities.

But at the same time that publicly traded newspaper businesses were reporting good news, the American Society of Newspaper Editors was reporting bad news. It released the results of a set of surveys it has done, and the verdict is in. The people – our readers, our customers – don't like our product or us.

Inside, you'll find my summary of the ASNE report (as well as a summary of the ASNE annual meeting), and it is revelatory. Essentially, the public ascribes many of our perceived evils as coming from our desire to sell newspapers. I find this perception utterly fascinating, as the vast majority of newspapers depend almost exclusively on home-delivery circulation, which is little affected by story play. Of course, there are some metropolitan papers whose lifeblood is street sales, but they are few and far between. There is also a history of street sales driving newspaper profitability (see Citizen Kane, The Front Page, etc.) that plays to the public's perception.

The public also sees us as inaccurate, disrespectful and biased. Not to mention that we are unwilling to acknowledge our commercial motives, and willing to allow people and institutions to bend what and how we report.

Are these things the public says about other media? Sure. But I can sit here and say, "They got us all wrong," until I'm slightly magenta in the face. No matter how you cut it, the public is not happy with newspapers.

And what are our nation's editors doing about this? Little, if not nothing. Oh, I don't want to denigrate the activities of the eight newspapers running pilot projects to increase their newspapers' credibility in their communities, but let's get real here. There are more than 1500 daily newspapers in these United States and only eight – a little more than half a percent – are doing something (admittedly, there are probably other papers out there "doing something").

The ASNE Journalism Credibility Project should be a call to arms for every newspaper publisher in the United States. The public's perception of newspapers must change and must change quickly.

Interestingly, the course newspapers probably should take was advocated on the convention's last day by Edward Seaton, the out-going president of the ASNE and the publisher of the 10,000-circulation Manhattan (Kansas) Mercury. Seaton suggested to his fellow editors that by simply explaining ourselves – telling readers why we do what we do – we can begin to repair the rift.

Seaton suggests that newspapers abandon the use of anonymous sources – and, if such sources arrive in wire copy, to attribute the information to the wire service itself.

"Anonymity should be limited to fact, not opinion," Seaton told the crowd.

While Seaton advocated creating guidelines – a code of ethics, if you will – on how newspapers should deport themselves, he acknowledged that written standards can be used against newspapers in lawsuits. His concrete proposal is to push for adoption in all 50 states of the Uniform Correction Act, a law that would limit damages to a plaintiff's out-of-pocket costs if a timely correction were provided.

As Seaton said, "Without ethics there is no quality. Without quality there is no credibility. Without credibility there is no future."

And though the newspaper business' financial picture continues to look rosy (note a couple of metros complaining of a downturn in recruitment classifieds – a problem that will soon be on your plate, I'm sure), Seaton is right. We've got to win back the public's trust or we're just going to go out of business.

– David M. Cole

Inside ...

• Lots of records, lots of profits in newspapers' first quarter results
• Editors meet the press of diversity, credibility at ASNE convention
• ASNE survey of readers says that the public trust is lost
• Computer chip maker may be a good example for change
• Persons

From NEWSINC., April 26, 1999, Copyright © 1999, The Cole Group. All Rights Reserved.