July 11th, 2009

Its the journalism stupid

A lot of things have been said after the closure of ET 2 weeks ago. Some say its the internet, some say its the politics, some even say it was the design!!!!!!!

What everybody is missing is that it was not the internet, nor the politics and for sure it was not the design.

It was bad journalism.

Period.

And other newspapers will follow. At least those who continue to work with the editorial model that exists today in the majority of the newspapers, not only in Greece but globally.

Graydon Carter, the editor in chief of Vanity Fair magazine, in a recent "editors letter" devoted his column to the "Death of the Newspapers"

"My suggestion to newspapers everywhere is to give the public a reason to read them again. So here’s an idea: get on a big story with widespread public appeal, devote your best resources to it, say a quiet prayer, and swing for the fences."

for the Daily Telegraph hit series he mentions

"And although the paper broke the stories on its Web site, then fed them into the next morning’s print edition, sales of the actual paper exploded. On the Friday the story broke in print, theTelegraph sold out. Since then, the paper has sold an extra 600,000 copies. According to the paper, it was the biggest sales uptick for a non-conflict-related story since World War II. More letters poured in from readers than at any other time in theTelegraph’s history. The story was so compelling that competing papers were grudgingly forced to illustrate their reports on the affair with shots of the Telegraph’s banner headlines. There is now talk of a knighthood for Lewis for his part in uncovering the scandal.

And they say newspapers are dead."

That said, I can understand that when you are faced with unemployment you try to find the explanation that suits you. So 2 days ago I heard that the former workers of ET (who have made a blog) said that design was killing journalism. I will only say to them that for the past 1 1/2 - 2 years the Sunday edition was redesigned to fit their needs since they believed that there was not enough text to make good journalism. The new ET on Sunday (ETK) was 120 pages of average 1000 words per page but dropped in sales from 120.000 to 56.000. Oh, and it won the Worlds Best Designed. So the sooner every one understands the lesson that we are taught the sooner we will think in the right direction and eventually save our jobs and our professions.

Now for those who don't want to learn the lesson, the only thing I can say is that I feel sorry for them.