« What's Come Before in The Unbroken Circle | Main | Statistic »
June 08, 2008
Batesville Installment Five
Andrew Nillson’s been working for the Kansas City Journal for nearly his entire professional life in one function or another. As a kid he delivered papers with his grandfather, listening every morning as grandpa would talk about how important the Journal was to Kansas City and its Kansas Citians. “People need to know what’s going on, Andy,” he would tell him. Those early memories were what led Andrew to J School at Missouri’s state university, the leading journalism program in the nation. Andrew excelled in nearly all of his classes and had a job offer right out of school at the Journal as a beat writer. He worked his way up into editorial and slowly rose in the ranks, bringing credibility and high ethics with him as he went, having an indelible effect on everyone who was fortunate enough to call him ‘Chief’, finally now being the news editor for the prestigious paper.
Andrew believes in what the Kansas City Journal represents, but he doesn’t have much faith in his new publisher and the carpetbagging douchebag owners the publisher represents, though. So far Andrew has very little faith in any of the ‘forward-thinking initiatives’ that his new boss Jack Woodford has put in place, but he feels lucky that no such wrong-headed ideas have been put in for the newsroom. Well, felt lucky. Now Andrew is sitting in Woodford’s overly-decorated giant office, which happens to not even be located in the Journal’s complex of buildings, hearing how Jack is going to plain fuck up Andrew’s livelihood.
“Newspapers are a business, Andrew,” points out Woodford. Andrew hates this office, hates the golf memorabilia strewn around, especially the little putting green in the corner, hates the yachting pictures, hates the pictures of Woodford’s expensive cars, powerful friends, and beautiful family, but mostly hates that this office costs more than the monthly budget for his department. Every time that Andrew’s going to have to beg for a new monitor or computer or to get the copier fixed or to bring on more freelancers, he’s going to think of this office and hate it just a little bit more than he does right now.
“Yeah, among other things.”
“Forget the other things. We’re here to make money, and to make lots of it. We’re here to sell subscriptions, and to sell advertising, and to pump up the advertorial sections. What we need is content that’s going to sell those things.” God damn it, here it comes. Andrew knows that the Pulitzer’s going to be brought up, knows it already. We need to pander to committees instead of doing actual journalism. “We need more awards, more Pulitzers. We need…” We need more shocking headlines. We don’t give a rat’s ass about the quality of the story, we just want people to pick it up. I mean, come on, Americans don’t read anyway. “We need headlines that suck the people in. Our paper is boring,” We need to bring in younger readers, even though they’re not the ones with actual money. We could use the website more effectively to do that, but come on, the printed paper is where it’s at. “We need that younger demographic to come in, Andrew. We need to drive them to the paper and away from the news websites. We need to drive more attention to our subscription services online, too.” Because people are notorious for spending money online, don’cha know. Absolutely no one wants stuff for free, and it would be impossible to make the website ad revenue-based. “But mostly, I need you to focus more with your people on style,” not substance, “On getting the kind of stories that people want to read about in the aisles at the grocery store,” Say, did you know our mayor is gay? “Maybe focus in on local government some more, you know, get people interested in Kansas City politics. Are you with me, Andrew?”
Are you with me? Are you ready to sell your soul so that my corporate overlords and I can make a quick buck and then sell your shit paper off as soon as we can and go back to taking our trophy wives to Europe or the beach or anywhere that isn’t this godforsaken town? Are you ready to take all of the blame once this blows up in our faces, get fired, and find yourself overqualified for any job in your profession and unable to find work? Are you ready to be labeled as an antique because we were the ones too dumbassed to let you move the paper into the next generation, especially since we all know that print’s going to be dead in under a decade? Are you with me, Andrew? “Yeah Jack, I totally see where you’re coming from.”
Posted by Schamberger at June 8, 2008 03:07 PM