RE: ADVICE TO THE DMN

(Okay, okay, I know the FB Nation is bored to tears. But I promised I would post it.) A News-working FrontBurnervian critiques my critique:

I assume you will soon be announcing that you are turning over the reins to someone younger and cheaper. After all, experience and expertise are irrelevant. Who needs sophistication, thoughtfulness, knowledge, and those other frills?

And those stories about your own city? If they can’t be done in a day or two, who needs ‘em? Never mind that good investigative stories — the kinds that identify and prove corruption, confirm tips to be true or demonstrate that they’re wrong — take time. Blogs get it all first. Who cares that most blogs — Frontburner included — do almost no vetting or reporting and that sometimes it’s hard to find the pony under the pile of horsecrap? Let the readers sort it out. And as for readers who don’t spend their workdays sneaking time to read blogs? Let ‘em eat cake.

Yes, I’m engaging in hyperbole. But with all due respect, your prescription for the DMN would be bad for the paper, bad for Dallas and bad for the civic health of the US.

You are clearly not all wrong. All local dailies — and by those I exclude the NYTimes, WSJ, USAToday, Washington Post for national news, LATimes for entertainment news — are experiencing what the DMN is going through. We are struggling to find what we can give our readers that they can’t — or more to the point, what they want, but won’t — get elsewhere. I agree that we need to be smarter about using oft-told wire filler. And I will be the last to defend all the decisions made by the DMN’s High Sheriffs.

But suggesting that quick hits by green, underpaid reporters, edited by green and underpaid editors, is the primary way to survive seems dumber that anything my bosses have tried. Yeah, I’m a middle-aged specialty reporter, so my ox is being gored. But I suggest that I bring a lot more to a story then a less-experienced scribe.I provide context and understanding — rather than a breathless recitation of salacious facts — that is harder to find in blogland.

As is usual in these arguments, truth is found someplace in the middle. Yes, we need to refocus on the local mission. And yes, young and hungry reporters are, as has always been true, the most energetic in finding the run-and-gun news that are a vital part of the mix. But “local” is more than geography. “Local” means, “I care about it.” That’s not just a matter of whether there’s a news peg in my zip code. And sometimes I don’t know that I care about it until a good reporter explains it to me.

A paper (or content provider service or whatever we morph into) in a city like Dallas that delivers the news equivalent of hot wings without also providing enough salad, steak, and the occasional cordon bleu is surely destined to fail.

You are a booster of the sophisticated social amenities. Do you really think that a sophisticated and complete newspaper is less important to the city than a concert hall or a fancy bridge?

No, I don’t. The question is how to get from here to there. My prescription is to uproot the culture of the newsroom, which seems to me lazy, complacent, and in some areas, incompetent. Of course, experience is necessary and vital. But experience put to no good use is no good to anybody.