Brendan R. Watson

In some ways Paul Farhi’s essay isn’t even worth responding to. He says, “Newspapers are in trouble for reasons that have almost nothing to do with newspaper journalism, and everything to do with the newspaper business.” I find that position completely incomprehensible and indefensible.

True, the newspaper business model is in a state of crisis, but study after study shows that journalism is, as well. Surely, your local newspaper — and even the Washington Post — is not filled with the high-minded analysis and investigative work with with Farhi likes to associate himself with.

Rather, journalists — not business executives — are pursuing an extremely self-destructive editorial strategy. Thomas E. Patterson explains in his 2000 research paper that the journalism decisions newspapers are making are “shrinking the news audience and weakening democracy.” This is not a business-side problem, but reflects poor editorial judgement, which is only being accelerated by a misguided short-term strategy to pursue online page views at any cost, driven as much by editorial as business executives.

There’s lots of research out there — Patterson’s is a good start — that can help one understand the role of (bad) editorial decision-making in this crisis. This is if you want to do something about the crisis rather than just wash your hands of it.

Jeff Jarvis also tackles this subject in his own overstated, pundit-like manner.