Too many chiefs, not enough braves

October 2, 2009
By Billy Dennis

Want to know one reason why newspapers are dying? Consider what media commentator Clay Shirky found when he looked at how much real staff-written news could be found in his hometown paper, the Columbia Daily Tribune. Only one sixth of the content was written by the newspaper’s reporters.

Now one can imagine all kinds of reasons why only six of the Tribune’s reporters filed news stories that day — August vacations, slow news day, all the other reporters were working on bigger stories. I guessed at all those reasons and more, and as it turns out, all those reasons were wrong — the most parsimonious explanation is the correct one. Only six reporters filed news stories that day because the Tribune only has six news reporters, out of a staff list of 59. Every one of them appeared in that day’s paper, with three … filing two stories each.

That’s a lot of masthead. How much value are the other 53 people providing to the reader? Editing is important, but people never bought a newspaper because of the editing. Also, it’s a safe bet that a lot of these peoples’ responsibilities are in circulation and printing. Online newsorgs avoid these sorts of expenditures.

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2 Responses to “ Too many chiefs, not enough braves ”

  1. S. Sam on October 5, 2009 at 9:27 pm

    When I was a professor in a town about half the size of Peoria I took its local paper and I would have students occasionally intern there. It was not uncommon for half of the non-sports stories written by the paper to be done by the interns. In the Summer the number of stories actually written by the paper’s staff was always in the single digits.

    The AP is not a force for good for local papers.

  2. Billy Dennis on October 5, 2009 at 9:36 pm

    S. Sam: I would much rather have interns write LOCAL news stories than reply on professional Ap stories about remote locations. Local is GOOD. Now, I am not saying a good newspaper cannot and should not tell us about the outside world. But there is far too much filler crap.