Knightfall: Knight Ridder and How the Erosion of Newspaper Journalism Is Putting Democracy at Risk [Kindle Edition]

Since I'm the periphery of the print advertising industry, the future of the newspaper industry is asked a lot. Every corporate decision above me has this in mind. Can the newspaper industry be saved? Or will it go become something more like letter writing - a lost art that is rarely used anymore.

This is the story of Knight-Ridder from the editor of a Wichita editor from inside the beast. Davis "Buzz" Merritt believes that the newspaper industry has survived radio, television, and Internet and survived. All these things are supposed to be the death knell of newspapers but they continue to trudge forward. Merritt laments that it's the short-term thinking of profit for shareholders and "suits" that have ruined the quality of journalism.

In the "golden age" of newspapers, there was a wall between advertisers and journalists. Communication was minimized to discourage any tainting of the journalistic endeavors. The jobs of journalists were to find the truth, report it and not worry about how much it cost. Journalists were NOT supposed to write what people wanted ... or newspaper would be all fluff. There was honor in journalism to ask the hard questions.

This book was written by a (somewhat) disgruntled editor that thinks that restoring the wall and giving journalists and editors to research and write (not balance budgets) at the expense of profits will eventually save the industry in the long-term. Though radio, television, 24 hour news channels, direct mail, and Internet did not kill newspapers, they slowly have eroded the readership base. The mini-monopoly of newspapers is losing ground every year.

There is a strong resentment toward Wall Street's insistence that profits and revenues grow every quarter. It makes me wonder what the rest of the story is when profit margins are increased and applauded by Wall Street.

Improving the quality of the newspaper will not save the industry. The newspaper industry will not disappear overnight but there are more than a few grey hairs on its head.

I recommend that you read this book if you read or at one point regularly read a lot of any newspaper.

The theme of this book, written by a former editor of The Wichita Eagle is that over the past few decades, the business of making newspapers has changed from a business unlike any other to a business just like all others, and we are not well served by this change.

I think the most important quote from the book is this:

With a handful of exceptions, American newspapers are being eroded, their traditional values subverted, their journalistic resources stripped away, their dedication to public service and local communities hallowed out, leaving a thin shell of public relations gimmicks that pretend to be public service and entertainment that pretends to be news.

Newspapers are important. They provide the common set of information that we, as a democracy, can use to work through the issues that face us. Although most people now get news from television and Internet sources, the basis for much of this news content is newspapers.

How is newspaper journalism different from journalism that happens to be in a newspaper? The answer is that newspaper journalism is "not shaped by a limiting technology," such as a television broadcast; it values completeness over immediacy, it is lengthier and deeper than other sources of journalism, its goal is relevance rather than entertainment, and opinion and analysis is presented separately from news.

What has changed?

External changes have worked against newspapers. The baby boomer generation has not read newspapers with the same frequency as their parents. The fact that most newspapers are now publicly owned means that Wall Street pushes for ever-increasing profits. Newspapers, Mr. Merritt says, are a long-term investment and don't fare well in today's short-term investment climate. Technology changes, including the Internet, have been difficult for newspapers to adapt to.

Internal changes have occurred, too. The "creeping corporatism" of the national chains such as Knight Ridder has distanced newspapers from their local communities. The rise of Management By Objective (MBO) in the newsroom has caused editors to make journalistically unwise decisions. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the wall that has separated the journalism side from the business side of the newspaper business has all but crumbled.

Is there a solution on the horizon that will bring back the great tradition of newspaper journalism across America? Mr. Merritt presents several possible solutions, but I have the sense that he doesn't place much hope that any will succeed in the near future.

I recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand newspapers and their important role in our country.

Reading this book has helped me understand why our local newspaper is the way it is, which is to say I understand why it so poorly serves our community. It also reinforces my belief that I should spend less time watching television news and spend more time reading the important newspapers of our country: The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and The Christian Science Monitor. All these newspapers place their content on the Internet through their web sites. The Wall Street Journal costs $6.95 monthly, but the other newspapers are free to read, although you may have to register.

On first glance, I was not sure if a review of Knightfall: Knight Ridder and How The Erosion of Newspaper Journalism Is Putting Democracy At Risk, by Davis Merritt (242 pages, American Management Association, 2005) would fit in the context of what I normally write. But as I read the book on Saturday evening, I found that although there was not necessarily a direct correlation on its face, the whole underlying theme of segregation of duties/responsibility resonated with me. Why? Because like in the business environment, the break down of barriers in corporate owned newspapers is significantly eroding journalistic integrity, and according to Merritt, puts the notion of Democracy at risk.

Right up front, Merritt admits his bias. As a former editor with Knight Ridder Newspapers, he was present at the beginning of this conglomerate. The merger between Knight, which focused on journalistic integrity, and Ridder, which focused on the bottom line, provides the backdrop for the perfect case study of what happens when two corporations with totally opposite core values and culture come together, and in this case how the bottom line becomes the driver when key mistakes are made in structuring the corporation.

The book does not flow as easily as others I have recently read and at times Merritt unnecessarily repeats himself. but he does manage to weave a story that starts back in the 19th Century when the two companies were originally formed. He examines what was fundamentally different in the two families, one small, and one large with many sons who needed businesses. The story then evolves into one of corporate positioning and internal culture wars as the two organizations tried to meld. Much like the merger of Lotus Development Corporation and IBM, the culture wars left many casualties and bad feelings as the integration slowly moved through the years.

It was during this time frame that Merritt went from being a journalist and editor focused on journalistic integrity to becoming a bean counter with orders to constantly cut costs. He uses a simple metric to show this decay: the number of Pulitzer Prizes won. What has happened over the past decade is that corporate owned newspapers with only one class of stock, and therefore beholden to Wall Street analysts and short term profit motives, have experienced a sharp decline in the number of Pulitzer Prizes as compared to newspapers such as the New York Times and the Washington Post.

Another disturbing trend Merritt notes is the decline of ethics in journalism, citing not front page stories like Jayson Blair, but other cases he has personally been involved in with his own subordinates. In the examples he gives, stronger business controls would have detected and prevented the transgressions. But this is the rub. Like academia, journalists bristle at any kind of controls as being a violation of their first amendment rights. It also leads to very public embarrassments.

So how does this all put democracy at risk? It happens, according to Merritt, by putting the bottom line above doing responsible, in-depth journalism which o other medium as the time of resources to do well. Blogs, he acknowledges have a place, but still are without traditional journalistic review standards for accuracy. Given limited budgets, newspapers no longer are able to cover issues of importance to the public and uncover important stories such as Watergate. The question is whether this is journalistic arrogance (and Merritt admits he has been called as such in his fight with the corporate world) or a very real truth worth reflecting on.

If you are interested in reading an insider's view of this decay, this book may be worth a read. If you don't have the time to read it, just look at the newspapers produced by Knight-Ridder and decide if it is puff journalism or the real thing. And then ask yourselves if this is what you want from your newspapers, especially when even the worst ones make incredibly large profit margins.

Scorecard: Par on an Average Par 4