Folks here in the Madison area probably know about the redesign of the Wisconsin State Journal. (Comments on the new look courtesy of The Daily Page forons can be found here.) To her credit, WSJ editor Ellen Foley has been asking for feedback and responding to what she gets. For instance, take a look at her blog post entitled "Are you out there 30-somethings? (And tell the Isthmus I am ok!)".
Three days after she made that post I was up in Portage to attend the 40th wedding anniversary of my friend Pete's parents. Saturday was a hoot and on Sunday I headed over to their home for breakfast and conversation. Oh, and to fix Pete's mom's computer as well. We sat around eating, chatting, and reading the WSJ. It wasn't the Sunday paper and, although I cannot recall, I do believe it was the edition from the previous day, 19th. I read through the front page and was surprised to find that it was completely bereft of any news on Iraq. Admittedly, I was out on the over hang but I perused the main section as best I could but found nothing about the war in which people are dying everyday and which is costing us – the U.S. taxpayer – billions and billions of dollars. With the stakes so high, I thought that at least acknowledging the war was appropriate.
When I left, Pete's dad thanked me for having fixed the computer. He hates those "contraptions" and I relieved him of having to hear any complaints about it not functioning. These comments got me thinking about something Foley had written at her blog post linked above. Here it is:
"I ask again (as I have in recent posts), do you really want 24-hour-old news that you can get on the web yesterday in your newspaper the next morning?"
The comment was directed at 30-somethings like me. But what about people like Pete's father who doesn't go on the Internet? Foley said she had heard from several folks of retirement age but, from my experience, the AARP crowd is not particularly Internet savvy. While some certainly are, my experiences owning a computer repair company lead me to believe that the vast majority of older folks aren't Internet savvy, don't get on the Net, or don't even care to do so. There were countless times I was hired to help a senior citizen with a new-fangled computer that they got from or at the behest of one of their children or grandkids. Pointing and clicking were difficult for some of these folks; often times they were scared of clicking on the "wrong thing" and ruining their investment.
My tales here are, admittedly, mere anecdotes and I say none of this with statistics in hand. But Pete's dad cannot be alone. How many people shun the Net? I honestly don't know. How many people cannot afford Internet access? I don't know. Still, there are people in the communities served by the WSJ who are perfectly happy to have 24-hour-old news that was available on the web yesterday because they couldn't get on the web yesterday nor any day before that nor will they any day in the foreseeable future.
And so Foley is courting we 30-somethings. Presumably we have disposable income that the WSJ advertisers want and we were around during the tail end of, shall I say, the newspaper era, i.e. – before the web attracted such a large audience for news – so we don't dismiss newspapers out of hand and, presumably, will continue to be readers for decades to come. I wonder if Foley is gently telling the poor, the old, and those who don't want to get on the Net that the WSJ is no longer interested in serving their needs as it once was. It sounds like at least some of the content of the WSJ is being determined by what was available on the web the previous day instead of by "importance" or "relevance". Vetting the news in this manner plus a greater emphasis on local issues combines to send a message to various readers: Get on the Internet and, when you do, go somewhere else for national and international news. The WSJ seems to be turning into just another organization going after a niche market.
I'm not trying to vilify Ellen Foley – she's not some Bond villain sitting in her office stroking a cat. But what about those people that politicians are so proud of – those folks that work multiple jobs? Is the WSJ turning its back on the Luddites, the poor, and the people who just have work multiple jobs to make ends meet? Not everyone here in the Madison area is in their 30s with disposable income, is connected to the Internet constantly, or has the time to surf. But we all need news.
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