A Word on Words; 1036; James D. Squires

beyond words the programs offers this week james these choirs talks about and read all about your roast or overdone words mr johnson chairman of the freedom form first amendment center at vanderbilt university once again welcome your homework saving an old friend jim squires a journalist an editor now an author welcome to our world second job read all about it the corporate takeover of america's newspapers that's the book and games cause who was a a reporter and editor who knows the business inside out as some stinging tough minded things to say about what's happening to the press in america the corporate takeover you say is this killing the traditional values the press and could rob was a first amendment rights jon

auer i am concerned that the incorporation of the press is damaging to craft that has always been the heart love of the free press and that is journalist mean when this this is a very personal views you know it is and not one that sheared but everyone in our business and it's not a book that i enjoyed doing it is it was is most looks you know you have these awesome john in a bookstore celebrations a wonderful expression of some very difficult experience for me because this is an ambivalent story you know book publishers don't like stories that are that are ambivalent and mar the sow and the story as complex as two sides and i decided that they would the way to tell it was what battelle the way i felt about what happens to this business since i got into it to see if i could start an argument about the national argument about whether or not what happened the personalized

thirty years is a different climate change then i went through the first two hundred and fifty that we hear them and oppressive hundred years or another country and in chains all of natural of changes but they're more basic substantive changes the nature of kano a very gradual and sort of evolutionary what you're suggesting here though is a revolutionary change the fact that giant media conglomerates and song non media conglomerate are taking all the news media you say that poses a serious threat to the integrity of the institution and you suggest that ultimately it will and perhaps you'd think already it will adversely affect the role of journalists so if you would jack think that if i had this book that the fire you or to write

a book or you do something a little different and one of the things i wish i had done and been more explicit and elaborated on more about was that what i am complaining about here's what i think is going to happen in five years or ten more years there's that that the press is at a place now where a large portion of the spill managed and run by journalists with journalists for science journalist minds and journalists below no minute but that that might be the last generation to do that the new general the next generation of people who make the decisions about the press are gonna be so different from these others and have such a different mindset different peer review that the most important elements of the institution of the press that have served the democracy all these years are likely to disappear and be damaged iran into an old friend of ours the car would last week in

washington until he had written a column about your book which i have not written before he in effect said i think there is a great deal with rod omar but then he said do i think he is an era is that i find these giant media corporations in the hands of people who are committed to journalistic write any mention jim bouton for knight ridder john curley from jeanette and bill murray from scripts hour and i think that what you say is if that's the way he wrote it on an era but he hasn't seen the next generation is that what he said well i think that that mrs saying that the process is already process has taken hold and it has control out of a large number of newspapers particularly small newspapers in small towns where that is really the only press that serves

that time the larger ones the more visible ones that many of the most important ones still hale at the helm people who are now able to have influence of boards of directors and a selection of poetry and who go to wall street and speak to the owners and the press america now and the world finds someone has to talk about explain to the owners what it is they own now that internet have john curley have jim bouton we have a peter conn had to forfeit the dell jobs these people know everything you and i know they felt every painted that we have failed just as important as theirs those people are the two i think the more important people in journalism young don graham and arthur sulzberger jr and i wrote this book for them as a as a reminder of where they came from and what they're about and hopes that they will talk to wall street and their boards of directors and say look at what we have here now but on the best things happen

about this book is that both don graham and arthur sulzberger board this book for their board then sent that so you can read about what the press and it thinks it is as opposed to what it is because delay can read all about torture or what would you say to a publisher who said to me having read the book this ah i think jim wright's too much into what we're recognizing as dangerous decline in reissue and in circulation and in what is with the publishers called penetration say we have read that decline and as a result we have dramatically changed base intact or by news that i said to him what jim understands that mean he tried to do that i would have been when he was editor the chicago

tribune he radically changed yolanda simple when he was the editor in orlando and it put his own imprimatur on and he took steps to reverse that trend the spouses well beyond that what's happening has been exacerbated by three use of recession boring on russian news industry a bird by that and i think gm is looking at a short term problem that is going to correct itself react to that well and i heard that same response would have occurred group of poachers or epr burgess my before lets down an arizona and here's the way i feel about it when we started to feel just the claw i mean that's that the decline of penetration decline in circulation the decline in reading a newspaper really occurred about the time the television began to permeate american life and take it we can't separate those two things

when that happens when the newspaper industry did recognize it needed to change and we began to change into waste we began to look for an alternative delivery system to see if there is not another way to deliver the news and we began to broaden the definition of new i believe in both of those pursuits and i'll broaden the definition of news as quickly and easily as amir peretz and i thought that's the thing to do that is changing the basic paradigm of business model of the way newspapers were what we wouldn't do and what i am complaining about is that we didn't go after the economic model where we were really threatened and the fact is our advertising as overpriced and we get bit too little response from and we were in the process of shifting from a mass me into a niche me but the other thing it happened to us is that we as we started this we hid happening in the seventies to think to want the benefit of becoming a monopoly business analysts market coupled with the first

technological revolution in the history of our business really where suddenly we benefited from huge cost savings and from being the only business impact those machines in many ways in place for people and look at us becoming a monopoly that gave the newspaper industry that best record of profit making of any industry in america bernie i mean we worry him at the time we're worried about the business even surviving in the most profitable business in the country it's legal and we got addicted to the end showed wall street but we're basically a cash cow that can continue to produce profits double digit careful to fifteen percent average in in the country and the addiction to that and on our inability to get away from that i think has prevented us from making that kind of investment into our products that might survive you know many of them great pieces of research

into what the new definition a new zogby haven't been implemented in any of these companies have cost him let me ask about the nfl the your specific concerns about the decline in value but it seems to me that the sum of what you talk about fear is based on privilege for its song is based just on a reader's eu summits based on professionals inside what should the reader picking up the newspaper look for today that is different than what the reader so when you came to work at the tennessean us and we were old friends old widow political ability but how long ago as a beautiful and

i think that that if you are a average reader and an average small city today you would see a bigger change and a bigger difference than you are if you're a reader of the washington post or the new york times of the tribunal any the great flagship newspaper and you will find that your newspaper that generally speaking is skimpy year well you can throw it up in the air and read it before it hits the ground the process than the newsprint just the basic cost and that there are fewer pages there's a lesson in and more often the news that is going to be something you have heard somewhere else rather than some and creative innovative and that particular to you and i think on balance you would find the truth they were much less likely to raise hell in your community to take a firm stand to be an aggressive churning force for change and progress i think the goals are the byproducts of corporatization of the newspaper but that at the heart of all of those things as a basic shift and what journalism

is when i started to visit the martin looked and looked and looked for a definition of journalism that i thought everyone would bar and the best one that i found was that forty six kitchens commission which basically says that journalism as it's been practiced an american free press for two hundred and fifty years is an attempt to chronicle the day's events and give you an accurate picture of reality within an intelligence perspective i think that for the most part whether they were good or bay of compton or incompetent well intentioned or bad intentions the newspapers and characters that poachers got up every day trying to do that that was the goal of the day i think in the last thirty years we now have decided that journalism is whatever we design it the we can engineer a lesson in the last twenty years to go out and attract the morning it's in the same way that primetime television programming is designed to attract nod to

find out wages a veteran has been going on for twenty years at well at least twenty years and one of the attractive things about the book is that you don't talk yourself involved in that process of doing you are self critical critical of the chicago tribune where you were great pulitzer prize winning actor we also critically yourself as part of a process that afternoon well it'd be headed to a trickle of credibility you cue couldn't possibly and write the story without confessing your own sit ins in atlanta and that's one of the things i think is wrong with that with journalism that you know the old the older that there some poachers whether i'll get accused of love and the pesto i don't really worshipped but i don't think it was a golden age of journalism if there are if there was it was probably a small fifteen year period and there during the transition and certainly we got excesses on on both sides but i think that the

old publisher and older voters were afraid of criticism you know they do in the streets they wanted to fight they didn't mind not being low corporate america needs to be like them glow and have a good reputation in the community and be respected ominous for the pro corporate journalism when dean patterson and st pete got arrested for dui he put it on the front page you know he said hey that's what i got to do that from my own credibility for the credibility of the arab rich corporate executive would not say put me on the front page for doing this they would say for god sake don't put this in the paper and see if you can get the other gas in town that put him a little bit let's talk about so this is a new store opens up on that period when you first came into journalism and a syrian named corey evans was the publisher and that was a time

with overtime of a blow for unity soon as i read it and as i remember when you talk about some things that made in effect a class act for you and then you draw some analyses with other papers another times that i'm not going to call for a present the dark side of beer which are not easy route so not only about injecting yourself personally in the book as you write he clearly had made for accuracy of credibility but beyond that this that whole changes you've seen now is is it possible that some of that real essence is most of it is at low level that that's the question businesses are really our interview for us right because people are at tennessee and in the days when i broke and don't look at it as a very special place

and end obviously it produced an extraordinary number of committed journalists who were more to do with the parish says soaps or perhaps if there is a day of joy and has to view here is that i started in a very special place at a very special time and it and its evolution so certainly now i realize that some of what i was writing about and the beginning of this book would be the exuberance of wide eyed youth and and romanticism but if that is true the dark subject which you know and i know when and it really represented the dark sides of the old press are many tributes tennessee this is the early part of my experience as an example of the best of the end of the shining set of journalism and with that one of the main character a veteran rock goes on every show up and my view was one where i worked in the independent press which was totally free to do whatever it wanted to do it even if

it was doing or being accessible and then i worked in the press that i think there's a lot of freedom munich they say lost its free and its corporate management lost its freedom to a culture lost a special place that it used to have in the american democratic system i mean we used to not be corporate america we used to say the press is not the to a corporate america and it's not the two ago it is something else it's there to let these people talk to each other to have it was a special commitment to the furthering democracy and i think we know we might as well join them and to have joined our daily as i think that many young journalist convinced today have wide eyes who founded the challenges and talented you did many many different challenge the ground maybe different cultural invasion made it be different if you look at but as they see it they're still

working every day to expose wrongdoing to be wrong occasionally and they are as idealistic i think that as a viewer as young journalist as i was younger as decarlo what was really about i think one of the benefits of this book and one of the reasons that i wrote was to get good at that chapter of reality to the journalism education the country when i read this book really grew out of my effort to teach a course about the the intersection between the press and government at harvard after i left the tribune and when i tried to find a book that he came anywhere close to reflecting the reality of the american press didn't i couldn't find one and let's look at the fires liebling nine nineteen forty nine and then ben bagdikian wrote a book which basically said that that being a group is bed n n would castrate ownership of bed for the simple reason minnesota

when going to result an eccentric ship of audiences today limiting of the freedom that they don't believe that's true i think television and the great technological advances mr neff commercial world has made that not a threat so as a result of a banned book was beaten up then and undermine and many places so this was an attempt to do a modern text to journalism school so you can see how the history of the business and the greatest traditions are constantly and conflict with the modern competitive necessities of of living in this world you see at their violence here if i were still doing what i was doing i would still have to be doing at the well was arkansas i minute fiction when you say they're then overland i mean i'd i would be and my guess is that there is a news executive chicago and madigan thinks he's been made a villain in this piece and

the two of you were as you say competitors for him they cry news executive position he came from a corporate world you came from the newsroom you got the job you left a millionaire but but talk a little bit about what's happened to that paper to the extent that every errand is they don't only choke up but to the extent that that experience is as you see almost universal in the industry well it and that's the difficult part of this whole story for me that when i wrote the first version of this book and for a different publisher and john madden was not even in it and neither was my departure from trib income and this publisher and i think rightly so said if you're going to talk about this business this way you need to explain to people why you left publishers

times were granted and and then so i had to put into this book why it was that a tribute and only in that sense there's this bridge a more perfect personality conflicts come into being and basically i think that trivial was is the message of this book but at the same time they argued and i accepted the argument that it that the conflict between john madden myself did in fact servers a perfect example of a culture clash that i am writing about here so it'd actually the tribune and the washington post and the new york times and in the los angeles times don't fit into this book in the sense that they have been damaged their resources have been dried up they lost their freedom and i don't know that i suspect my miami successors and for the tribune has almost as

much freedom to do anything everything is that it is not the same amount packed act or doma which have driven chance i'll laughter what what the whole purpose of that being in the book was to show the difference in the kinds of people who used to run the press and the kinds of people who are running now in terms of their values or what they believe and what nestor space her and john allen master entirely different masters there is a recession in the book and which you take a needle and stick it very neatly into year old editor john samples i don't know felton evil i was a very brief segment i disagree with the conclusion and i said oh no wish i had a chest doctor for this and i'll tell you i'm not sure many really want to talk to

or that before with others but i think that what you said about credibility is going to me i think whatever you think about your friends and your limits is your side and i i took no offense while i'm i've disagreed with the conclusion as it related usa today some of what you said about it perhaps the reason i've chosen to lead role and to give some credibility that it i hope that's true i would've thought well if i can re evaluate that reviewed those editorials him understand why i'm not asking for a response about that is why did not fit for our audiences although the global network tried this and that we are you know that they had one conversation which i said i'm going to write this book and talk about your story and what we're talking about here is basically a suggestion in this book that if you are interested primarily in marketing

your paper now you don't necessarily jump in and get the toughest most controversial outspoken editorial page editor to be in europe the key and that i said in this book that john sinnott those tennessee and had been the epitome of the appropriate what they're supposed to be so when you went to work and took their job and usa today and usaid they came out with a totally different car and it is a market brought up in india and it is the essence of rock that's right that that i did not think cash to do not think i don't think you could've talked me out of my initial impressions your mirror and i wrote this book in it eighty nine and nine that that that usa today's great strength was its fierce boat tours bales and i would alan light i'll try and i would've said it was well we'll do believe it that impacts but let me ask you

both where you go from here i don't mean in your career i mean you on now i'm in his book of them were viewed there been people taken shots and you've taken the shot i expected it you got some have axes to gran of those surveyed think he ran next summit on a script but there has been overwhelming support among working journalists also on america's and many critics journalism true scholars who were about what's happening to the media that's a story is until it's thinner than where agent was also not going well idea hatched this book really grew out of a of an effort for me to examine the intersection between the press and the government owning real story about this is if the press changes hands of that the monks and that's probably the next chapter of this book we have a whole new electronic commonwealth khan a concept that you have to deal with now press did not play the

role that it wants to have the definition of pressure much differently now than the media which i suspect is the most important influence on politics not press the media so there is that i am pro talking about writing their books on time if the milo is fiction last ones left you know that you got me started reading books and writing words for a living so you know were martyrs i yeah i have done a one followed novel that completed and wicked witch huge it's not a first novel which you go on social for his novel i didn't think in either good though some of my friends that our tragedy nonfiction and fiction that same time the day bouncing back and forth it's not that good people not succeed at them and this is the only real nonfiction book about wanted to get out so i might try to write good stories about the politics and people and the country in the last thirty years i don't want to botch program do not know what about the southwest and i want to do one about the

story in national political political political moment where your roots are right james de waal about it has been our guest on a word on where is your host has been on this program was produced at the studios of wbez n no no