Sad, bad times

The kids ask, Do you ever remember it being this bad? Hell no, we reply. Rob and I came of age in 1973, which was a bad economic downturn, what with the first energy crisis. There were lines to get gas and inflation was insane. But we were both really young and people will always hire kids because they don't cost much.

We made it all the way through the crappy 70s. Anyone remember WIN buttons? Whip Inflation Now. We remember mortgage rates of 14-plus percent, and thought we'd never be able to buy a house, and we weren't for quite a while.

Conservatives like to point to what they call, through their distorted lens, the Golden Reagan era. Lately Rush the Magic Idiot has been saying that Reagan cut taxes to stimulate the economy. First, at the end taxes were higher under Reagan than at the beginning of his term, which started with huge inflation/stagnation and ended with the savings and loan crisis and the great market crash of 1988.

But now there's the Great Meltdown, and the ground has the solidity of quicksand. Today it was announced that the Rocky Mountain News was going to cease publication. We all find this so sad, even though it will probably help out at the Star because Scripps won't be hemorrhaging money and a money-making vehicle like the Star had to subsidize the Rocky Mountain News for a long time in its losing battle against Dean Singleton and Media News, another member of the conservative cabal.

But I used to live in Colorado and know some of the people at the Rocky from back then. I also know some kids who went out there because it was the biggest paper in the Scripps chain and a great step up.

I guess what I'm failing to understand is how newspapers can be folding and cutting back when the need for news has grown exponentially. Here we have all kinds of gadgets to keep us updated 27/7 with information and at the rate we're going there will be no one to supply it.

When I first started at newspapers one of my favorite parts of the job was access to the AP wires. I could see what tomorrow's news was going to be today. It was almost a living thing, constantly morphing and updating as events unfolded and the reporters kept pace. Now everyone can get the news immediately, without the need for a physical newspaper, which is an anachronism.

But the news business is too entrenched and lacking in vision, having been effectively cowed by, as Hillary put it, a vast right-wing conspiracy that screams and moans about any news coverage that didn't fit into their rigid, narrow, bigoted agenda.

Newspaper editors went from booze-guzzling bombasts, who lived and died to get the best, most accurate story out to readers to corporate lackeys who were promoted precisely for their unthreatening mediocrity. So when it came time for creativity and real original thinking, they all stood around a table peering down at a computer screen, bellies hanging over their belts, arms crossed, one hand to the mouth, with a disapproving look, never offering suggestions, insight or ideas, just peering intently and vacantly as their world crumbled around them.

Now the news business in in a tatters because newspaper executives can't seem to get their minds around how to give people what they actually want in this Brave New World of News.

People want a discussion. They're tired of some middle-aged white guy telling them what "good news judgment" is. People want to decide what they want to learn about things. They want to have a say in what is reported, rather than the pedantic model newspapers now use and can't get away from.

Newspaper people need to take a page from our new president, who always found that he made his best decisions when he was able to get out and listen to people, real working people, as they gathered and spoke about their lives.

As journalists, we need to get out and find out what people want us to write about. Not what they SAY they want us to write about -- because people aren't going to SAY they want to see more stories about Paris Hilton, even as they read the latest about her at TMZ. Newspapers need to use Yahoo and Google for models of how to package news online. They need more reporters gathering more and more news and they need to charge advertisers -- not right now -- but on a sliding scale for being on their web sites.

Right now, it appears newspapers are in a death spiral and there's nothing left to do but wait for the inevitable crash. Until they embrace real change in their business model and the way they approach the packaging and preparation of the news, they're just not going to be able to survive.

I'm not sure where we're all going to end up after the smoke has cleared. We're hanging on by our fingernails, as most everyone is these day. It's a Brave New World out there and it's time to embrace it and use the disruption to create something new and better, kind of what our new president is trying to do.