Life parodies The Wire: Baltimore Sun replaces crime reporters with blogger

The Baltimore Sun Media Group launched a free daily tabloid and website this week:

The tabloid newspaper and Web site will focus on news, sports and entertainment news and blogs and listings geared to readers in the 18- to 34-year-old range. It plans to rely on reader-generated material for about a third of its content. The rest will come from its staff of about 20 and The Sun and other Tribune Co.-owned newspapers and entertainment listings from the company's metromix.com site as well as Metromix sites in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. The tabloid also has struck content-sharing agreements with local radio stations WTMD-FM and WNST-AM. [Sun]

Like the apocryphal residents of the desert island who eked out a living taking in each other's laundry....

"So the Tribune has laid off reporters and replaced them with hired bloggers to comment on the remaining reporters’ inadequacies. That is one pomo business model," writes commenter mjb in response to an April 14 post by staff blogger Lori Barrett, wherein Barrett complains that an uplifting anecdote about an foiled armed robbery story got more ink in the local press than a rape/home invasion.

Another commenter, Sun Crime Reporter, gently reminds Ms. Barrett of the facts on the ground: "Um, maybe the fact that YOU ARE SITTING where our Baltimore County crime reporter used to sit has something to do with the newspaper’s “inadequate” coverage."

I feel bad for Ms. Barrett, who has been hired to keep of a steady stream of pithy commentary on what she reads in the paper. No doubt, it's cheaper to hire Barrett to keep up a chirpy running commentary than it would be to cover those beats.

She just started, and already readers are clamoring for her to get out and do her own reporting. The readers don't understand that Barrett's job was created to avoid paying reporters. It would defeat management's purpose if she were to abandon her post on the assembly line long enough to learn new facts, or conduct in-depth research.

Doing more! With Less!

[HT: Baltimore Crime Blog]

Comments

[Bruce]

Wow - I missed this one. Been too distracted by major personal business to engage my own (semi-)local blogosphere of late. But of course you nailed it.

The story is illustrative of the fact that most bloggers do not usually conduct investigative reporting or produce original product. You do, of course, and a few others do. Some academic bloggers do. I certainly don't, even within my tiny fields, unless you count my few softball cookie-cutter interviews with a few Maryland pols, which I don't count. Most blogging is derivative of other sources, taking advantage of the linking technology.

Reporting is also hard, which is why a lot of reporters try not to do it, let alone non-reporters.

[Tim Windsor]

You write:

The readers don't understand that Barrett's job was created to avoid paying reporters. It would defeat management's purpose if she were to abandon her post on the assembly line long enough to learn new facts, or conduct in-depth research.

--

That's not true at all. Lori was hired to do what good bloggers do - find interesting stories, point readers to them, and get the conversation started. In no way is a replacement for any reporter.

But I suppose it's easier to just copy and paste a gripe from the comments than to pick up the phone or fire off an email and ask. That would be reporting.

Ultimately, all the reporters and editors at b will also be contributing to bthesite.com. For launch, Lori's largely holding down the fort online (and, through the reprints of the best of her blog posts, contributing a page a day to the paper as well), but once the b staff gets the rhythm of daily production down pat, they'll be more evident on the site.

[Tim Windsor]

I could use a copy editor.

That should read:

In no way is she a replacement for any reporter.

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

Give me a break, Tim. The Baltimore Sun has been offering buyouts like reporting is going out of style. You guys cut at least forty-one newsroom jobs in 2007 alone--with the prospect of layoffs to follow. How many reporters and editors has the Sun cut in 2008?

Now, the Baltimore Sun Media Group is pouring money into a fancy new orange tabloid and website, staffed with a number of bloggers and filled with a good chunk of user-generated content. Your stated goal is to recapture the interest of a younger demographic that's less likely to read newspapers.

In the interest of reportage, how many reporting jobs has your new venture created? How much does a blogger cost you, compared to a cub reporter?

One of a blogger's jobs is to write opinion pieces. I happen to share the opinion of many of the commenters on the April 14 thread. You are cutting back on reporting and hiring bloggers.

[Tim Windsor]

I'm not in the print newsroom, so I'm not qualified to speak to their staff changes over the years. But the fact is that fewer people are reading traditional newspapers with each passing year and that will have an effect.

Does that mean we ditch The Sun? Of course not. But it means that we've also got to try new things, to grow readership and to help advertisers reach audiences. One of those new things is b, both in print and online.

Experiments like b are, to my thinking, a net gain. As of this week, Baltimore readers now have one more option for the news. True, it's not The Sun, but then it's not supposed to be.

[Pesto]

Maybe it's not my place to butt in here (and I'm sure you can do a great job pressing Tim on this set of decisions, Lindsay), but to the extent that b is "one more option for the news," isn't it being funded by cutting actual reporting by actual reporters in the actual Sun? And doesn't offering the opportunity to read b then come at the expense of depriving Baltimoreans of the opportunity to read actual reporting?

Maybe I have that wrong. Or maybe I have it right, and b is still a "net gain," as you say, Tim. But I'd need a more detailed explanation than I've read here so far to believe either justification .

[Tim Windsor]

From the interactive side of the house, b has incremental resources. We did not cut any positions elsewhere in the organization to cover the new expenses. We're covering them through increased revenue.

I don't have enough specific knowledge to address the print staffing.

I really didn't come here to pick a fight over the future of journalism. I saw a statement that was inaccurate and spoke up to correct it.

As to whether news organizations should diversify their products or stick to the old models, we can talk about that forever, or we can actually try some new approaches and see how well they work. That's what we're doing with the launch of b.

Thanks for the opportunity to talk about this.

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

Tim, that's merely semantic distinction. I don't doubt that the startup money for B came from somewhere other than the newspaper budget.

But the Baltimore Sun Media Group is still the same company with the same bottom line and the same set of problems: ad revenue, circulation, and an aging readership. The overall corporate response to these pressures has been to cut back expenditures on reporting while investing in some other kind of non-fiction prose product that the young people may enjoy. These are two sides of the same coin.

B isn't an independent startup company. It's a venture backed by the BSMG. At some point, the company switched from Strategy A (newspaper with many reporters and editors) to Strategy B (newspaper with fewer journalists and a orange tabloid and a website). Did Strategy B replace Strategy A? If Strategy B is executed largely by new people with different job descriptions, are those people replacing the people who used to do A? Describe the situation however you like, it doesn't change the facts on the ground.

[voxy]

It also doesn't change the fact that this is being done purposefully. FIRST the FCC wedded the media outlets (tv and print and radio) over a HUGE PUBLIC OUTCRY. THEN, they 'claimed' they were losing revenue. I don't believe it.
The bigger picture is the final touches on the 'propaganda machine'.
Not every blogger (of course) would be trusted to present something like an unbiased view or some actual facts. Without the protections afforded newspaper reporters the most bloggers can't even DO any actual reporting. (with notable exceptions) The newspapers (most of them) are following along with the plan.

I noticed a nod from a neocon when I said that blogs could NEVER replace newspapers as though he knew that this is exactly where it was headed.

Isn't it just AMAZING how the known neocons and fake lefties supported the FCC "conglomeration", (read monopolization) couching it as 'better able to provide expansive coverage'??

I mean what would THEY have invested in a 'propaganda machine'?

Fucking idiots !! As fast as they take it down we'll put it back together. the The United States Democracy cannot survive without a FREE PRESS.

Which is being purposefully dismantled. I, for one, am not fooled. Sorry to interrupt the very excellent discussion. You go, Lindsay.

I loathe disingenuousness in every form, Mr. Windsor.

For the record, while this whole FCC discussion was going on in Tampa and some bloggers were claiming they could replace the newspapers?? IS where many MANY fake lefties outed themselves.

Carry on.

[aeroman]

It is pretty neat for Tim Windsor to engage on this in this manner.

[Lesley]

This is shameful. The Baltimore Sun should convert itself to the Baltimore Blog and slap up some Google advertising. That would be more honest.

Although I never completely rely on the media, I do depend on the resources various media have to report events and trends. Bloggers, for the most part, offer opinion. God damn, can it get any worse than this?

[Lesley]

P.S. What makes this even more ironic is the fact that Baltimore has one of the highest crime rates in the US. I recall reading Simon's book "Homicide" and him reporting close to an average of a murder a day in that city some years ago (most of it related to the drug trade). If this is still the case, wouldn't you make retention of crime reporters (the best ones) a priority?

[David Grenier]

This statement is telling: "But it means that we've also got to try new things, to grow readership and to help advertisers reach audiences."

Notice, doing better reporting is not even on their radar, nevermind the top of their priority list. It's all about getting the advertisements in front of the coveted demographic. News is just the filler between ads.

Not that we didn't already know that, but its nice to see it confirmed so neatly.

[voxy]

exactly, david grenier. Thanks for that.

[Crime Reporter]

Wait, are you saying the parody isn't that the Baltimore Sun "newspaper" is suggesting that it has reporters but rather that those "reporters" are being replaced by "bloggers".

Frankly I though that the real crime news has been that the Baltimore Newspaper "crime news" reporters were being passed off as "crime news" reporters.