The young & the restless

  Today I took part in a panel discussion, as I do every year, at the Southeast Regional Press Institute gathering at Savannah State University. It’s basically a confab for aspiring young journalists to gain some insight into the profession from working professionals, and an opportunity for people like me to speak frankly about what we’ve learned.

Dr. Novella Holmes at SSU kindly invites me every year, and it’s something I’m always happy to do. The interaction with the young whippersnappers never fails to inspire me that there’s some hope for America in general and the media profession in particular.

It’s become something of a cliche in this business for media types to get together and worry publicly about “what’s going wrong.” The daily newspaper people wonder why less and less people are reading their papers. The TV people wonder why the more time they devote to “news” the less “news” they actually broadcast.

Generally at these things I’m the only weekly editor, so I can kind of sit back and take free shots at everything. Callin’ like I see it, etc. My contention today — which judging by the reactions from the college students attending the discussion might have some accuracy — was that the media is willing to endlessly analyze every aspect of their business except for one:

What if the product just plain sucks?

This is something younger people respond to. They nod enthusiastically when I mention that perhaps the reason why young people don’t read dailies is not because young people are a) uneducated; b) illiterate; or c) too busy playing video games, but maybe because the dailies just aren’t printing anything they’re interested in.

Paul Johnson, longtime shooter for WTOC, was on the panel. Paul is always a delight, both in person and professionally, and as usual, he had some salient comments — chief of which was his rejection of the idea that the younger generation has an atrophied attention span.

Paul’s take — and I paraphrase here — is that if you feed people a steady diet of bad food, it’s only natural that they will turn away from the source of said bad food. If you assume people only want blood, dumbed-down infomercials and tabloid sensationalism, and tailor your media outlet to deliver as much blood, dumbed-down infomercials and tabloid sensationalism as possible, perhaps that — and not some mythical tragic flaw on the part of your audience — is the reason your target audience is turning elsewhere.

I have always been amazed at the breadth of our readership at Connect Savannah. Yes, it’s true that a lot of SCAD students read our paper — more than read SCAD’s own publications, as college officials will admit anonymously. But it’s also true that plenty of older folks read our paper, too. And yes, contrary to certain opinions, a lot of conservatives read our paper as well. (I was going to say “read our paper religiously,” but that would send a politically charged message that I didn’t intend.)

Prof. John English moderated the panel. I took a magazine class from him in Athens back in the day, some 19-odd years ago. He’s aged quite well, I must say. Anyway, he says that studies show that only 13 percent of today’s readers actually read an entire article all the way through from beginning to end.

Me, I think that number has always been about 13 percent. In my experience, there are two types of people in the world: Those who like to read and those who don’t.

Notice I didn’t say “liberals who like to read and conservatives who don’t.” A love of reading crosses all partisan, gender, age and race divisions.

Bottom line: I’m just after people who like to read. I will go where they are.

See, I’ve learned a few things over the years. I’ve learned that the type of people who complain about a newspaper being “too liberal” pretty much think all newspapers are too liberal. That’s the thing. Once you realize that, the rest becomes clear.

If you spend all your time worrying about pleasing those types — who in almost every case are non-readers anyway — you’re on the slippery slope to nowhere. You will water down your product so thoroughly that it becomes a thin, weak gruel.

The kind of food people turn away from after one swallow.

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