The Seattle PostGlobe’s Jake Ellison, a former “online producer” at the Seattle P-I, writes:
During my last year at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, in its last year as a newspaper, I published online thousands of pictures of half-starved, mostly naked women — celebrities and fashion models.
I even became so deranged as to argue vehemently in the newsroom that those photos were necessary because we were a dying industry and people wanted to look at those women, so get on board.
Now I am unemployed, living off my wife and the state, applying for jobs I don’t want because they are not the job I had, before it became so trashy. I get up early still, help my wife off to work and my kid off to school, do a round of dishes and tell myself it’ll be all right. But, it is hard not to panic when you are unemployed.
Maybe I should have taken the pay cut and joined the online-only P-I, made more galleries of women. Maybe I sold them short and was too Pollyannaish about my future. Maybe I got too high-minded, and maybe writing novels isn’t any better.
As a kind of exorcism, I write this confession: I was in love with journalism, and it was an extremely complicated and torturous love affair that ended with tawdry efforts to please eclipsing the desire to do good. …
I, like most bloggers and formerly employed journalists, am now writing for free, and that is not a sustainable social model for finding, investigating and sharing information about the powerful, the greedy and the downtrodden.
Unless local users conscientiously seek and support local substantive journalism with money, real local news will continue to be spotty at best, barely afloat in a sea of nearly-naked celebs.
Ellison’s prognosis seems right on to me. Why, in a media landscape where there are more news options and diverse perspectives than ever before, would I want to read an online paper where “Seattle Views” are represented by the likes of Greg Nickels, Tayloe Washburn, Dave Reichert, Jim McDermott, Norm Stamper, and a parade of male CEOs and politicians… and women, with a couple of exceptions, are represented by this?:
Why would I want to read a paper where “Seattle Views” are represented by the likes you, a dishonest thief?
How again did you keep your job after getting caught stealing wine from QFC?
Why do you ask this when Wonderwall on MSN shows the same images?
And has way more people checking it out?
Look, fighting the good fight is all well and good, but you work in MEDIA. Deal with it.
Isn’t the rather dramatic decline of newspapers over the last few years proof that the public wants to see real journalism and not endless galleries of half-naked celebrities? This isn’t a confession, it’s a bitter ex-journalist blaming consumers for the loss of his job. Allow me to send a message to the Jake Ellisons of the world: You were supposed to be reporting but you put out useless fluff instead; people didn’t buy it and you lost your job, it’s your fault.
@3, the industry also chose the easy route of mixing hard journalism with tabloid journalism. They were trying to serve two masters. In the end, tabloid won out. This result was predictable because the lowest common denominator sells more (see McDonalds). Give the people what they want, right? That philosophy has consequences.
Instead, they should have chosen to keep hard journalism distinct from tabloid. Of course there would be fewer customers, but the customers they had would remain. People WILL PAY FOR QUALITY.
Now, you may have to run a tight ship and forgo some potential profit, but in the long run, it will not only be sustainable but also a societal benefit.
The newspapers were too greedy. Now we have very little real journalism but plenty of tabloid/blogosphere reporting.
Note to media – STOP GIVING AWAY YOUR PRODUCT! Doing real journalism is expensive. Online display ads produces little revenue. The P-I, the Times – no one seems to understand that posting your expensive content for free on the internet without developing a real business model is a very bad idea. If I were in their shoes, I would hold out for a fair price for either subscriptions or ads. I buy the Times in print, but I have no idea why – I never read it. I always read it online, which I COULD DO FOR FREE.
As a consumer, I’d like to be able to say – “Oh well, the market will provide,” except it won’t. There’s no substitute for real journalism emerging in the online world – just tons of unlicensed hacks spewing their opinions in blogs.
Not that print is a panacea. Lawsuits, legal rulings (Valerie Plame), pressure to turn a profit, etc. have all undermined the provision of reporting in the public interest.
So Ellison is right in a way. Most people want the half-naked celebs. *sigh*
“Why… would I want to read an online paper where “Seattle Views” are represented by … a parade of male CEOs and politicians”
Erica, are you saying you won’t read these guys because they have a penis? Because that would make you a man-hating sexist.
You should just unleash sometime and write a long post called “I really hate men and here’s why”. It would be a better read than most of your stuff.
Given the choice between looking at those pictures and the ones one of you guys posted from a recent drinking/bbq party, there’s no contest.
I want to see that FHM gallery. Is that the chick from Mad Men?
I’m leaving now to visit the PI site, something I had no intention of doing before I saw that picture and something I’ve not done in two weeks. So yeah, worked on me.
@6 haha, and she probably reads those male views the same that you read her writing. But come on, did you really find her post that offensive? The onslaught of crap that is considered news worthy these days really is unfortunate. I know where I can go to see the titts and ass and the fluffy bunny stories, but where can I go to see the news?
Meanwhile the Stranger’s print edition is heavily underwritten by the escort industry.
@ 5: The “giving it away for free” line is a canard. Ellison also is wrong when he puts it on “the users” to support journalism.
Newspaper content has always been *basically* free. Circulation revenue was never a profit center. It doesn’t even begin to pay for the cost of printing and delivering a paper. And you won’t get people to pay more money for a less premium experience (viewing it on a screen) as Savage has said here before.
The solution is innovative advertising. @5 you’re right that the market won’t just “provide” out of thin air.
It used to, when newspapers had a complete publishing monopoly. But the monopoly is gone. Now, they have to WORK for their dough. So they should get working.
@10 Those ads make great gift wrap!
I never understood why the PI devotes so much prime real estate to those stupid galleries. And, I agree with the commenter who suggested that the media needs to stop berating consumers for their choice not to buy that stuff.
LaQuinta will always take you back, Jake…
Now, if you want us to buy your print editions, start giving us more comics.
Period.
I miss the PI – their comments section was a dickhead magnet. Now they’re all over here.
Erica, you “write” for The Stranger and Slog and have the gall to critique ANY other outlet on the planet?
You are a clueless stupid piece of work.
I welcome this apparent change of heart Erica, from over the last few months, when you have criticized as “out of touch” those who care about good journalism and are worried about the sustainability of blogging and writing for free. A number of people over the months have questioned whether the current online journalism model (as is, w/o a means for support of journalists) can replicate “finding, investigating and sharing information about the powerful, the greedy and the downtrodden.”
Why? Corporate web filters that’s why. No one’s gonna snag you for checking out star babes on the Seattle PI.
Hey, I was reading the stock quotes…and stuff.
So, let’s see . . . if I’ve got it right, your point is that men are taken seriously and women aren’t.
And it took you how long to figure this out?
Clown Fish is right.
Erica, no one was ever under the misimpression that you were the target audience for a mainstream newspaper. Hell, no one was ever under the misimpression that you were the target audience for anything other than Andrea Dworkin essays.
David Wright, you blustering dinosaur. Erica is not a militant, Dworkin-style feminist, which you would know if you weren’t lodged in some kind of 1970s-style time warp. She’s an educated woman, and her views are pretty similar to those of most other educated women out there. They are very, very different from Dworkin’s. Your understanding of gender issues is so dated it’s embarrassing.
@23:
Umm, Erica has a long and proud history of posting strident, self righteous, sex-negative, male bashing articles that you obviously haven’t read. Much of her writing is lifted straight from Women’s Studies circa 1993, which in my experience was completely and uncritically under Dworkin’s spell. I encourage you to read Erica’s musings on sexy Halloween costumes or the falsely accused “rapists” from the Duke Lacrosse team.
P.S. The idea that Erica is just like most educated women is an insult to both women and our educational system.
@24, Dworkin attempted to argue that all heterosexual sex was a form of rape. This is why guys like @22 know her name. Evoking her to criticize Erica’s perfectly reasonable objection to this cheap trash disguised as “news” is clumsy and unconvincing.
Can we stay on point with Erica’s posts instead of engaging in an ad hominem pile-on? For once? It is so, so tiresome and transparent.
I’d be curious to know where the fault line lies between Andrea Dworkin and Erica Barnett.