Danny Bloom’s newspaper obit song: Praise from Carl Bernstein and at least 1/2 an Ear
In the newspaper love department, I’m a piker compared to Danny Bloom, an American journalist living in Taiwan.
Check out a YouTube of a song he wrote, I Just Can’t Live (Without My Snailpaper). I linked to it earlier from my semi-traitorous post telling how my old factory town newspaper in Ohio could use the Internet more effectively.
Now I hear that Danny’s song has two new fans from the old Washington Star, for which he was a freelance cartoonist. “Delightful,” says Carl Bernstein, mentioned in the song, which in effect is an obit for the paper editions that the Web is imperiling.
The other fan is Diana McLellan—half of The Ear, the memorably impish gossip column at the Star. The Ear was a partial inspiration for The Elephant in The Solomon Scandals. Louise Lague was the other half.
“I bet you’re the only writer of a musical obit for newspapers in the world,” Ms. McLellan tells Danny, shown at right. “What energy! What rhythm! Long may you wave.”
So far, All Things Considered has not acted on Danny suggestion to play Snailpaper. That’s a mistake. Perhaps Danny can score at On the Media. Ideally, too, he can hear from someone else in his song, Ben Bradlee, editor of the Washington Post in the Watergate days.
Related: Ning site for Washington Star alumni (where I found the newsroom photo) and a Facebook group and blog called “Overheard in the Newsroom.” Also see how Chris Meadows of the TeleRead e-book site reacted to Danny’s song.
Washington Post iPhone app panned by gutsy WaPo technology writer: Symptom of worse woes?
Seymour Solomon, the real estate magnate in my D.C. newspaper novel, is among the Washington Telegram’s biggest advertisers and pals around with both the publisher and the top editor.
But that doesn’t stop Jon Stone, the reporter in The Solomon Scandals, from investigating Sy’s Kong-sized political donations and federal office leases.
At the real-life Washington Post—not to be confused with my imaginary daily—who’s the equivalent of the intrepid Stone?
I nominate Rob Pegoraro (photo), the Faster Forward tech columnist. On consumer issues, Rob never seems to flinch, and yesterday he panned the Post’s new app for reading the paper on the iPhone, iPod Touch and the iPad. Even with the app selling for just $1.99 for a year of use, he is telling his Post readers to “save your money for now.”
Rob—I met him a few years ago when he was checking out an early version of the One Laptop Per Child computer—is once again right. In overall aesthetics and usability, the New York Times reader for the iPhone shreds the Post app, which is just one more example of the L Street’s online woes. If the Post is still into “Creative Tension,” why not take it beyond the traditional newsroom? As a rule I prefer a gentle, friendly, nurturing management in the Theory Y style. But on presentation issues, the Post’s Net operation is really that bad. Time for some firings, even?
‘What Would Google Do’ with my old steeltown newspaper in Lorain, Ohio? Here’s what I’D do.
Related: Media critic James Fallows and Google News’ Josh Cohen will discuss digital-era journalism tomorrow, Wednesday, at 6:30 p.m., in D.C.
What if reporters didn’t take over from newspaper publishers, the tease I posted earlier? Suppose someone else did, Google. One old newspaper alum, Jeff Jarvis, has even written a book called What Would Google Do?
Guess which newspaper conglomerate has just bought copies of WWGD for “all publishers, editors and sales directors.” None other than the Journal Register Company, once singled out by a disgruntled ex-peon as “the most evil newspaper company on the planet.” It owns The Morning Journal, in Lorain, Ohio, fictionalized as “Marseilles” in The Solomon Scandals, my Washington newspaper novel. Eons ago, when the Journal thudded against doorsteps in the afternoons and lacked the M word in its name, I worked the poverty and public housing beats and wrote front-page features quaintly known as “blockbusters.” It was a time of black ink in the ledger, not just in the Lorain Journal’s news columns.
Well, good-bye to all that. In the early ‘70s when I was in Lorain and the Journal Register takeover was years off, daily circulation might have been around 35,000 and Sunday readership was heading toward 45,000. A quick, er, Googling showed the daily figure at 25,334 and the Sunday one at 27,248 for a six-month period ending in March 31, 2008. Thirty miles west of Cleveland and the hometown of Toni Morrison, Lorain is a classic Rust Belt city whose population has shrunk to around 70,000 from a peak of maybe 100,000. U.S. Steel’s pipe mill remains, but Ford has retreated to an existing plant in near-by Avon Lake. During the 2000 census, when the U.S. economy was healthier than today, 17 percent of Lorain’s people lived below the poverty line, compared to 12 percent for individuals in America at large. Just earlier this year, Barack Obama visited nearby Elyria and spoke on jobs and the Great Recession.
How to run a newspaper in a plucky but rundown town like Lorain and use Google-style strategies to stay solvent? In fact, the Journal Register Company, currently the owner of 19 dailies and more than 150 other publications, did enter Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The company is out of of bankruptcy now, and in his blog, John Paton, the CEO since February 1, not only talks up the Jarvis book but also says the company has bought Flip video cameras for all reporters. The first Flips are already in use, with some spectacular results. Paton also promises an advisory board “to bring the outside to the Journal Register Company,” a stellar idea.
As part of the “outside,” then—and as a very small Google shareholder who has stuck with the company through the stock’s ups and downs—let me share my own thoughts.
‘White House Girlz of DC’? ‘Sorority putsch’ against Social Secretary Desiree Rodgers?
The Georgetown Dish has the details about the women of 3303 Water St., N.W. Once again Life catches up with Scandals, which the item in fact mentions.
Shown is an example of the “minimalist aesthetic” amid which a plot might have unfolded against the White House social secretary.
Reporters vs. publishers and editors: On IQs, faulty edits, a Knopf editor and an unnamed columnist
The Solomon Scandals is a reporter’s novel, with editors and the publisher in the way of truth and decency.
If nothing else, an ideological chasm gapes in the newspaper business between editorial coolies and publishers. Reporters tend to be far, far more liberal at many dailies than are the publishers. So what to make of a new study saying that liberals as a group are smarter? Time for reporters to take over and rescue the industry? Should publisher Katharine Weymouth (photo) at the Washington Post bring back Nicholas “Left at the Post” von Hoffman as her replacement?
Outside the newspaper business, I’ll note a Gawker writer’s assault on Knopf or at least one of the editors there who failed to edit her own copy. Exactly. Didn’t I tell you? Writers are smarter.
Confession: Underneath I do have a soft spot for editors and publishers, or at least those at my old newspaper who tolerated me. I sold my Web site partly because I lacked the resources for the copy editors I wanted to hire, and I wouldn’t mind some here. The right editor speaking up could have saved a certain Washington columnist—I’ve mentioned her name enough for the moment—from lots of pain, a point I’ve made here before. I was pleased to learn of similar sentiments held by the Post’s Gene Weingarten.
