You ratzle-fratzel kids get off my damned lawn!
March 20th, 2012I just read an essay by Harper’s Magazine Editor John MacArthur in which, among other things, he lauds newspaper headline writers.
The headline on his essay is: “Internet con men ravage publishing.” I wrote newspaper headlines for many, many years, so I appreciate the shout out, but I also think I have a more appropriate headline for his piece: “YOU RATZLE-FRATZLE KIDS GET OFF MY DAMNED LAWN!!!!”
My quibble is not with MacArthur’s point about headline writers; it’s with just about every other word of the essay. He’s still fighting the battles of 20 years ago, when print publishers first began to realize their business model was doomed by a fledgling industry called the internet, which seemed to be run entirely by Pepsi-guzzling college-age kids in baggy sweatshirts. Like nearly all of his colleagues back then, MacArthur haughtily dismissed these dreamers as “ideologues.” Sadly, perhaps pathetically, like many of his colleagues, he still does.
Sorry, Mr. MacArthur, but you are the ideologue in this debate, and you’re clinging to ideals that died years ago. Specifically, he clings to the belief that there is no possible business model to be built from free content on the web. To make his point, he has to gloss over the fact that since the advent of radio and television, most news has been delivered free to the consumer. Of course, the free model existed in print even before then and continues to this day; most free alternative weeklies and neighborhood shoppers aren’t hurting appreciably worse than their paid-circulation cousins.
But the threat of television was child’s play compared to the threat posed by the internet. For all of its advantages, TV was a clear loser to print in both spatial and temporal reach. The newspaper was more portable and permanent than the flickering airwaves from broadcast towers in faraway cities, but the internet solved both of those problems, plus an even greater challenge: The ability to filter through vast amounts of data, which meant newspapers now had to compete head-to-head with other sources of information, including the original sources of much of what they print. It also blew newspapers’ biggest cash cow, classified advertising, off the map.
He addresses the television challenge in passing, quickly dismissing the effect it had on newspapers. While he is correct that newspapers survived that challenge, he misses the fact that they didn’t escape unscathed. By the time of TV’s ubiquity in our culture, the newspaper industry’s proudest statistic, household penetration, was in steep decline. As Baby Boomers swelled the ranks of adults, our sheer numbers helped mask the grave threat this decline posed. Circulation kept rising, but at a rate far slower than the population of adults.
The ideologue in Mr. MacAuthur flails wildy at the challenges to his certitude, causing him to, among other things, sing the praises of junk mail. Yes, even junk mail is preferable to any online journalism in his fanatical mind.
Sadly, the essay is from a speech he gave to graduate journalism students. I guess he thinks he’s helping to shape impressionable young minds. Kind of like your grumpy old neighbor, stooping to pick up his newspaper while screaming at the kids to stay off his lawn.
Addendum: I agree with MacArthur’s point about paying journalists, but I don’t agree that feeding the increasingly monolithic corporate publishing machine is the only (or best) way to do so.

