If The American Society Of Newspaper Editors Are So Proud Of Their Profession Then How Come They Want To Drop The Word “Newspaper” From Their Title – What Kind Of Message Does That Send To The Public?

Philip M. Stone April 4, 2007

The American Society of Newspaper Editors held their annual conference in Washington last week. But you wouldn’t necessarily have known that because they’ve changed their logo to read “ASNE – Leading America’s Newsrooms” and they seem now to be ashamed of the word “Newspaper”, even considering switching to the word “media” instead. Shame on them for even thinking of giving up the best generic brand in journalism!

If the senior news executives that produce newspapers are no longer proud of their calling, or understand how basic the newspaper brand is to everything else that they do, then how do they expect their readers to remain loyal? Oh, the spin is that newspapers are far more than print publications these days. They are web sites, and mobile phone services and the like so the term “newspaper” no longer applies and the new world order dictates that newspaper people have now become “media” people.

That spin, of course, is absolute nonsense. In fact we should use the very same stronger word used by David Zeeck the outgoing ASNE president, who blasted newspaper critics, describing their themes that newspapers are elitist, are only interested in bad news, that they tear down people just to sell newspapers, and that newspapers have a political agenda and are unpatriotic as “Bullshit”.

Well, let’s toss that word back to describe a newspaper editors’ organization that is thinking of removing the word “newspaper” from its title. Editors should be proud of being newspaper editors, the generic brand “newspaper” is one to be revered, not thrown away!

Sure its true that newspapers are entering a multiplatform business. Sure, much of the breaking news now finds its way onto the newspaper web site and print is  switching to more analytical reporting; sure, newspapers are getting into mobile phone news services and all the rest, but do these editors not understand that the public floods to those sites because they are sites prepared by, dare I say it, newspapers.

There’s hardly a professional newspaper organization out there that doesn’t claim that if you take the readership of a print newspaper and its web site that the newspaper’s readership is higher than it has ever been. And why do those editors think that people are in ever increasing numbers reading newspaper web sites? Because they are provided information by a news source that the public trusts, doesn’t always agree with, but it does basically trust.

It is because it is the newspaper’s web site that people flock to that Internet property. It is because it is the “newspaper’s” news that people will accept it on their mobile phone and other platforms.  Newspapers as a generic brand have everything going for them as long as everyone understands that newspapers can no longer be just one-platform print publications.

So when ASNE says it is thinking of switching the word “newspaper” for “media” – c’mon! Do these editors not understand that it is their newspaper that is becoming multiplatform and getting involved in multimedia – their journalists are learning how to shoot video – it’s difficult to use video in print – but people flock to that newspaper web site where that video is playing because it is the newspaper’s web site.

Now, more than ever, is the time to be not only proud of having the word “newspaper” in one’s title, but getting the marketing folk really involved is absolutely essential in making the best use of that generic brand within our New Media world. ASNE would be spending its money much better if it quit messing with the logo, and instead concentrated on promoting to the world the services that newspapers perform.

But for all of that ASNE President Zeeck also gave a very impassioned speech to his members that tells that in his heart he knows newspapers are where the action is. “Let’s look at three strengths that we still possess, strengths we can carry forward as we invent a new digital journalism,” he told the attendees as they struggle to make newspapers even more important in the lives of their readers

“One, our dominance in every local market –- in print and online -- means we’re still the source of most news in this country. We’ll keep that dominance for a long time. We have the advantage, as Tom Rosenstiel says, of more boots on the ground…. Another newspaper strength we must carry into the future is our investigative and enterprise reporting. I prefer Len Downie and Bob Kaiser’s phrase, ‘accountability reporting,’ because it recalls our constitutional mandate to hold the powerful to account. Whatever you call it, newspapers are still the source of almost all serious accountability reporting in the nation….

“The third strength of newspapers, and the most important, is you, the editors in this room. Maybe some of you are here by mistake, but my guess is that most of you got your jobs and keep them because you chose to lead, and you’re good at it. You already know this about yourselves, and your staffs know it. It’s your passion and your skills that, working with the people you’ve chosen, make the first two strengths come alive in your newsrooms. A passion for local news, a commitment to ground-breaking investigative reporting -– that’s what makes newspapers such difficult competitors for others to equal, much less conquer.”

Hopefully he and the rest of the editors in that room will remember all of that when the time comes to discuss whether they should drop the name “newspaper” from their title. But it does make one wonder that if American editors are rethinking the word “newspaper” then what about publishers around the world? Whom better to ask that question than Timothy Balding, president of the World Association of Newspapers (WAN)? Is WAN about to become WAM (World Association of Media) ftm inquired?

“WAN regularly reviews the name question but hasn’t yet felt the need to change,” Balding said in an email response. “One of the reasons is that this is a very English (language) question: the word ‘paper’ doesn’t figure in the name WAN when translated into any of our other official languages or any others, for that matter, that we can think of.”

But then came his kicker. “That newspapers exist online or distribute their information through a multitude of digital platforms isn’t, for me at least, good enough reason to change a name that has done us very well for 400 years.”

Amen!

ftm Follow Up & Comments