![]() When I went home for Christmas break that year, I told my father that I wasn’t going to be a lawyer and that I was looking around at my options. I knew I could write, so I figured on a degree in English, a subject I had dominated throughout high school and even in college. My freshman year of college, my life-long goal of becoming a lawyer was crushed after one bad Poli Sci course, so I went hunting for another major. YOU’RE NOT PAYING FOR WHAT YOU THINK YOU’RE PAYING FOR: People often assume that becoming a journalist has been a life-long ambition for anyone who entered the field after seeing “All The President’s Men” or “The Paper.” Truth be told, I never wanted to be a journalist or a journalism professor growing up. You need to pay for it if you want or need it. We don’t have a special set of tools that leave you in awe or a product that you can show other people to say, “Check out what I bought!” In addition, the reason it’s easier to short journalists is because it never seems like we are saving you from a disaster like the tow-truck driver who gets your broken car off the freeway or the tree surgeon who pulls the giant oak that fell during a storm off your house. Now you’re being asked to pay full price for the cost of journalism and it suddenly looks exorbitant. (How and why it didn’t could take up a dozen books, but it’s not Craigslist’s fault, despite what publishers and hedge-fund managers who own newspaper stocks will tell you.) The higher the circulation, the more newspapers could charge for ads. The one benefit the audience had to the newspaper was in its sum total of eyeballs. ![]() The ad money covered the big costs of doing journalism while your subscription or copy price was simply a token of good will. The money flowed freely, as newspapers could deliver eyeballs to the advertisers and thus demonstrate value to them. Newspapers and magazines were chock full of large advertisements for everything from clothing stores to car dealerships. It’s when your insurance is gone that you notice, “Holy crap! That’s some expensive stuff!”įor years, advertisers accounted for most of the costs of the work. It’s like picking up a prescription when you have insurance: You pay your $10 or $20 that is your part of the deal and the insurance company picks up the rest of the tab. Truth be told, journalism ALWAYS cost money, but the readers didn’t notice because they weren’t footing the bill. The person did work, and you’re going to pay for it. I’m going on Facebook right now and putting a “like” on you today! Goodbye!” When that guy or gal comes over and fixes the problem, you wouldn’t think to just say, “Thank you. ![]() When your dishwasher decides to start flooding the house on a random Tuesday night, you call a plumber and beg someone to come over and stop the hydro-destructive force in your kitchen. WORK COSTS MONEY: As dumb as that statement sounds, it seems necessary to make it up front. However, in defense of the field itself, I’ll simply give you three reasons why complaining about having to spend your hard-earned couch-cushion cash on news is just plain dumb: ![]() It would also take way too long to debate the merits of various profitability models that could return news organizations to prominence. It’s stupid to pay for stuff like this because the internet is free!įollowing the trail of breadcrumbs that led newspapers from being important local sources of information to disemboweled corporate shells would take far too long for a post like this.In response, several people broke out the traditional diatribes against such larceny: When venerable journalist Crocker Stephenson, who used to work for the Journal-Sentinel, posted the piece to his Facebook wall, a number of people groused about their inability to access Stingl’s work. I’ve linked to the article here, but most of you won’t be able to see it because it’s only accessible to the paper’s subscribers. The piece ran in the wake of a car wreck that killed an off-duty Milwaukee police officer, and was the kind of thing more papers would have done back in the days when staffs were robust and smoking was allowed in the newsroom. ![]() Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel columnist Jim Stingl wrote a nice local column that took a look at how people consistently run red lights the corner of 60th and Capitol. ![]()
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