How much do newspapers spend on research and development?
John McIntyre, AME for the copy desk at The Baltimore Sun, took at look at the Angry Journalist web site and decided to chide us all for whining about what’s happening in the industry.
The Baltimore Sun’s John McIntyre
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After all, McIntyre, writes, the business has been notoriously slow to innovate for years. “What did you expect?,” he writes.
This bit, in particular, caught my eye:
Professor Philip Meyer at Chapel Hill once tried to figure out how much money American newspaper publishing companies spend on research and development. It wasn’t easy, because newspapers hug the data they don’t analyze themselves close to their bosoms, but he was able to piece together enough information from scattered sources to constitute an informed surmise. It was that the amount of money American newspaper publishing companies spent from their budgets annually was equivalent to rounding error.
Expenditures on training of personnel have been equally laughable.
They were, however, willing to engage consultants to conduct readership surveys, subsequently ignoring any results they didn’t care for.
Like that one? How about this one?
Of course your boss is a moron. Don’t you read Dilbert? Look around your workplace and enumerate the number of people who got titles and offices with windows by never telling their bosses anything untoward, while sloughing off all meaningful work on subordinates. (You hear that, undergraduates?) The Sun has more than three dozen editors who report to me, God help them.
Funny stuff. And to think that folks are getting fired all over the place for being too blunt in blogs. Presumably McIntyre’s bosses know what he’s writing, since his blog actually appears on The Sun’s web site.
March 4th, 2008 at 10:52 am
I guess McIntyre has never uttered an ill word about his job. Can somebody clue him in that this is just a site where journalists go to blow off steam before going about their job? Besides, to dismiss complaints about the industry by saying simply, “What did you expect?” is basically justifying all that’s wrong as “that’s just the way it is.” If the peons in the industry take McIntyre’s advice, then they would never expect to be treated with respect by management, never expect to be paid a livable wage, never expect to have the resources to do their job properly. And the industry will never volunteer to provide those things, so it’ll just become a worse and worse field to work in until people all take McIntyre’s last suggestion — look elsewhere. He does make a good point about the lack of money for R&D; that just goes along with newspapers’ general reluctance for re-investment in the product.
March 4th, 2008 at 12:38 pm
“…then they would never expect to be treated with respect by management, never expect to be paid a livable wage, never expect to have the resources to do their job properly. And the industry will never volunteer to provide those things, so it’ll just become a worse and worse field to work in until people all take McIntyre’s last suggestion — look elsewhere.”
Exactly.
Sorry if I’m cynical and jaded, but yeah, I think that’s accurate.
March 4th, 2008 at 3:11 pm
A suggestion to add to the Sun’s most famous bow-tie wearer (he actually ties his own bow ties, by the way — I seen ‘im do it once): Start your own damn publication and do it the right way.
No, it’s not easy. Yes, you will need money, which I realize you don’t have. Do your homework. Find investors. Be aware that it’s risky as hell and you could lose your ass.
April 5th, 2008 at 9:43 pm
If the gentlemen who commented above had read the entire post rather than just the excerpts, they would have been less likely to misrepresent my point.