What is wrong with this picture?
The photographs of racehorses’ heads still haunt me even to this day. Then I remember what they did when the Internet arrived, and it all made sense.
Long before the Internet, newspapers sometimes published in the sports pages a row of black and white photographs of the heads of racehorses with the horse’s names underneath the photo.
My family subscribed to the now-closed El Paso Herald-Post for decades, and when I went to work at the Herald Post as a columnist in 1982, the newspaper was still running the heads of racehorses but now they were adding color to the photos.
There were a lot of horse races every day at the Sunland Park Racetrack in New Mexico, which is near El Paso. So the sports department ran rows of racehorses heads. I swear I couldn’t tell the difference between Secretariat and Break a Leg or whatever.
I often wondered whether anyone ever complained if we screwed up the names. Perhaps, some disheveled racetrack character in a cheap suit with a marked up racing form and a two-day stubble who looked like he had leaped out of a Damon Runyon novel detected errors.
“You degenerate morons misidentified the horses again. You have the wrong photographs for the faces of Epics Warrior and Reality Check,” he’d say. “Get it right!”
Call me crazy but I never understood the purpose for publishing the head of horse running at Sunland Park or anywhere else in the country.
Then it all became clear one day after the Internet came down the tracks like a bullet while the newspaper editors and corporate heads stood on the train station platform with jaws nearly touching the floor as the train zoomed by and passengers waved.
The global communication network monster ate their lunch — newspaper circulation and ad revenue is down, according to the Pew Research Institute.
The Internet brought down newspapers, some argued.
More than a decade later, the billion-dollar price tags that some newspapers once commanded when they were bought and sold were now been relegated to bargain basement sales. Some newspapers the Press-Enterprise and the Orange County Register in California were recently bought from Freedom Communications at bankruptcy sales, basically auctions.
Digital First Media, which owns the Los Angeles Daily News and eight other Southern California papers, bid $52.3 million for the two newspapers.
I worked at the Press-Enterprise in Riverside County in 1998 when the A.H. Belo, which owns the Dallas Morning News, purchased the newspaper for an undisclosed price. Rumor was that it paid close to a billion dollars. Belo sold the Press Enterprise for $27.2 million to Freedom Communications.
Many blame the decline of newspaper circulation to the Internet. That was part of it but much of it had to do with poor management and incompetence of corporation honchos.
When the Corporate Brain Trust that gave readers racehorse heads finally woke up from its corporate slumber, newspapers were starting to drown in red ink as ad revenue was on the decline, newsrooms permanently closed and tens of thousands of jobs were lost.
The damage seems permanent and irreversible. But I believe it can be fixed.
Lunch at the Lobster
The subject of the decline of newspapers and racehorse heads came up at the Red Lobster earlier this year.
I had lunch with my former newsroom boss Tim Gallagher and a former newspaper sports reporter Derry Eads. Both are friends and I worked with them at the Herald-Post, which closed in 1997, and then, at the Ventura County Star in California.
We have been getting together for lunch every year for the last decade or so. It’s not to talk about newspapers 
or lament their demise . It’s because Tim, Derry and I have an ongoing sports bet that’s stretched for nearly two decades: The person whose football team had the worst season buys lunch, and so we meet once a year to have lunch.
Tim roots for the N.Y. Jets, Derry is an Oakland Raiders fan and I bleed Dallas Cowboy blue.
So through the years, most of the time, I have enjoyed a free lunch courtesy of Tim and Derry.
Derry’s credit card is black and blue from the beating its taken through the years. We are merciless, however. Tim and I make sure to pour salt on the wounds by teasing him, saying that Oakland is where football careers go to die.
Or, “Eads, when are you going to root for a professional football team?”
When the waitress takes our order Tim and I ask to see the wine list or ask whether the Maine lobster is at market rate or ask if they have prime ribs. We watch Derry’s face turn pale, then red and hear him grumble. (But we keep our menu choices reasonable no matter who buys.)
This year, the Cowboys choked so I picked up the tab. I chose the Red Lobster because I got a $25 Christmas gift certificate for Red Lobster. I wanted to minimize the damages. But I told Derry and Tim that I liked seafood and believed Red Lobster had the best choice in seafood..
They didn’t believe a word.
We always have a good time at lunch. A lot of laughs, teasing, catching up, more laughs, a lot of nostalgia and this year, again, the sorry state of newspapers came up.
While we were talking about the Gannett Corporation buying the Milwaukee Sentinel along with other 12 other newspapers including the Ventura County Star, I said I was convinced that at the Sports Department at the Herald Post ran the same batch of black and white photographs of the horses’ head.
The Herald-Post Sports Department was always suspect in my mind. With the exception of Derry, many were old school, loved the downtown bars, were always broke and took a lot of shortcuts.
“What would have happened if a reader had called and said that we got the names of the horses wrong?” I asked and laughed. “I mean some racehorse aficionado who rented and lived in a stable at Sunland Park.”
Tim, who was the city editor at the Herald-Post, joked and said the newspaper’s Sports Department would have probably run a correction that we misidentified the horse and add the following note.
“We regret the error and sincerely apologize to the family of Epic’s Warrior for any problems it might have caused.”
Laughs.
Tim said he was curious one day when he found out that the Sports Department was going to run the heads of racehorses running in one Kentucky Derby race. He said he asked sports reporter/editor Bruce Williams about it.
“I remember asking him what he was thinking when he ran the mugshots of the horses. He seemed a little defensive but he said he just thought it would be a good idea because people liked to look at the horses. I didn’t make a big deal about it but I don’t think he ever did it again. I actually did not think it was horrible. I thought it was kinda funny,” he said.
Newspaper Ad Revenues Are on the Decline
Tim, who owns the 20/20 Network, a PR company in Ventura, was a newspaper heavyweight.
After the Herald-Post, he became editor of the Albuquerque Journal in the 1980s. While he was there, the newspaper won the Pulitzer Prize. He was the editor and publisher at the Ventura County Star and occasionally, he writes columns for Editor and Publisher.
He recently offered some excellent solutions about how to fix newspapers.
“I realize this column talks about another decade gone by, but it’s about the greatness that could be. No one wants to hear how it used to be. They want to talk about how it can be,” Tim wrote in part.
And, “Allow for the possibility that you might be wrong and take a chance on someone else’s ideas, even when they run counter to your own.”
To Read Tim’s Entire Editor and Publisher Column Click Here: Business of News
But then Tim wrote another column last week titled: “How Publishers Can Meet Millennials on Their Turf.”
After reading Tim’s column, he sounded like AMC Theaters entertainment CEO Adam Aron who said he would consider allowing theatergoers to send text messages so that it can boost millennial attendance.
“In a bid to attract younger, smartphone savvy consumers,” Aron said he was open to making some theaters texting and mobile device-friendly.
Aron who had been on the job less than four months immediately back-tracked this dumb and ridiculous idea to accommodate millennials to text during a movie after the Internet lit up with angry theatergoers.
Tim wrote in his column: “Imagine that the children you raised in your home—fed, sheltered, educated—have grown up and are now talking a different language than the one they learned in your home. You don’t know where they learned this language, but you don’t speak it.”
Adding, “You have two choices as editors and publishers: forget about them and hasten the death of our industry, or learn the language. And don’t despair. Millennials want news.”
Click Here to Read Tim’s Entire Column: Editor and Publisher
Imagine Raising the Bar, My friend.
Seriously, Tim, imagine requiring young people to properly write and correctly use the language of the economy – English – so they can succeed in life. Imagine requiring schools and parents to hold children accountable to high academic standards so they can learn to read newspapers and books. So they can be enriched in the process and be able to have intelligent conversations with other adults.
Newspapers catering to millennials’ “Tweeter Mindset” to sell papers by limiting stories to 140 words or packaging each story with interactive and unnecessary bells and whistles so millennials can be stimulated while reading a newspaper is equivalent to allowing them to text messages during a movie at the expense of other theatergoers to sell more tickets.
I believe many millennials are very intelligent and it is insulting to them to suggest that newspapers be dumbed-down to cater to them. I watched comedian and Host of Real Time Bill Maher make some very interesting observations about today’s kids. Maher can sometimes be a pompous ass but he made a lot of interesting points in this segment of the show
Click here to watch the Maher video: “The Self-Esteem Movement”
Should we change the language in the printed word or add trinkets and mind bling to cater to a certain age group or population?
What would happen if somebody suggested that newspaper use Ebonics to write stories about entertainment to appeal to the black community? Outrage and anger, and rightfully so.
I kept a copy an Editor and Publisher magazine dated Sept. 5, 1998 because of a column written by Jennifer R. Humphrey titled “Stop Pandering to Reader Whims.” It was written at a time when newspaper were having community “focus groups” and went through one reader survey after another to gauge readers’ “concerns” and “wants” and “feelings.”
Humphrey wrote in her column: “The industry fad of constantly, anxiously, ingratiatingly asking readers what they want to see in the news fosters readers’ self-righteous cavalcade of complaints. It’s like timidly asking children over every possible morsel what they will deign to consume at dinner. Being too solicitous breeds willful dissatisfaction.”
Adding, “But responsible parents give their children what is good for them, whether the youngsters ask for it or not, and journalists should do likewise with the news.”
I loved the column at that time, and now, it speaks volumes about one of the things the newspaper industry failures and that is to constantly wanting to be loved and embraced by those they cover.
This Might Help Newspapers
I’m offering these ideas that might jump start newspaper websites and increase circulation. They might work.
Linkup with high school journalism departments and generously offer them space on a newspaper’s website to publish edited stories from their high school journalism departments. These stories would attract young readers to newspaper websites. In turn, businesses like Nike, the Gap or Forever 21 would buy ads to sell their merchandise to these young people.
In exchange, newspapers can offer high school journalism departments writing workshops, trophies for the best journalism of the year, student discounts on subscriptions and some scholarships.
The attraction: Young people want to know what is going on in their school along with other high schools in the area. This would be great for fostering social media and reviving spirited rivalries which means more users and activity on the website.
Badly needed and new ad revenue would be used to keep experienced journalists, run well-oiled newsrooms and help keep a newspaper financially healthy.
Also cleanup the reader comments sections of newspapers websites.
Many comment sections are harbors for racists, losers and spineless Key-Board Commandos to anonymously spew garbage, hatred and stupidity.
Make everyone who comments on a story use their real names when they post. Offer a $150 gift certificate every month for the comment that gets the most thumbs up with the stipulation that the same commentator can’t win two months in a row. Offer those that repeatedly submit the best comments a blog that would be posted on the newspaper website.
Some of the best ideas and political, social and economic insights and commentary come from readers.
The attraction: This would fuel some great comments driving up readership and a gift certificate would attract quality submissions.
Also lower subscription rates to allow more people to subscribe.
Newspapers are a Public Trust
“A newspaper is a public trust, and we will suffer as a society without them. It is not the Internet that has killed them. It is their own greed, it is their own stupidity, and it is capitalism that has taken our daily newspapers from us.” —.Michael Moore
After more than 30 years as a journalist, that about sums it up.
Newspapers have through the years lost credibility with the public because they have lost sight of their responsibility to give readers three things: accuracy, fairness and balance.
Most reporters are no longer community bulldogs who milk sources and ask the tough questions and hold public officials and others accountable or ask how the taxpayers’ money is being spent.
Nobody in his right mind should rejoice when a newspaper closes its doors or is taken over by some corporation during a buyout or merger and afterwards, the newsroom staff is gutted to maximize profits.
When this happens, the community loses.
I love nailing scoundrels who abuse their power, victimize the elderly, steal from taxpayers, take advantage of the less educated or con people out of their hard-earned money.
I relish using the pen to click on the light just to watch these kitchen cockroaches run for their lives.
From Russia With Love
My new Google Analytics Counter states that there have been 40,183 users on American Justice Notebook Website in the past year and nearly 100 percent were new users. But the most interesting thing is this: There were 27,807 users from the United States and what was surprising is the country with the second most users was Russia with 1,857 users.
The Russian people rock! Thank you.
Also England had 1,054 users followed by Canada with a close 1,035 and Germany with 937.
And, get this: There were 123,949 page views in the past year with a 12.67 percent bounce rate and an average of three pages per session.