Stalking the Wild Readers

Daily newspaper op-ed page editors gather to ponder a bleak future.

by Bruce Schimmel

I served recently on a panel at the annual convention of the Association of Opinion Page Editors. (You see, there is a club for everyone.)

Never have I spoken to so many sad-looking people. Maybe it was the tweeds, the frayed corduroys. Maybe it was what they ate. Or what they had to swallow at work.

Why so grumpy? Here were folks with the best gigs in journalism. Op-ed editors of daily papers are parked at the very crossroads of their institutions—in ivory towers with long views of readers, reporters, editors and management. With great power to shift public opinion, it's a great job accorded great respect. In the much-vaunted "marketplace of ideas," op-ed editors control the very currency of thought.

They have the time and space to step back. Freed from the journalist's pledge of objectivity, it's the job of an op-ed editor to scream at lies and shake a fist when something stinks.

And this afternoon, the very air felt rank—and I hadn't even delivered the unhappy news on the topic at hand.

John Timpane—the trim, attentive and sincere-looking Inky op-ed editor—asked our panel to answer a question on the minds of the nation's opinion-page editors. "How can we get younger/more diverse?" they wanted to know. I was on this panel, quite frankly, because they wanted readers more like those attracted by City Paper.

As Timpane put it, "The main problem facing op-ed pages everywhere is that our average reader is a white man in his mid-40s. Which is fine, but we want more readers than that. So how do we attract younger readers, female readers, readers who are all sorts of colors and backgrounds?"

Joining me on the panel was Phyllis Kaniss of the Annenberg School, Tim Whitaker of Philadelphia Weekly and the Inquirer's semi-official young turk, Dawn Fallik.

Gazing out at this audience of mostly white, middle-aged and male editors, my first thought was to suggest hormone therapy, followed by vows of poverty. But since I, myself, am white, male, middle-aged and well-to-do, the task of finding a diverse readership seemed less an issue of personnel than of institutional policy. Here's how.

It's been said that The New York Times is the newspaper that Macy's built. Daily newspapers in all cities prospered as their largest clients, department stores, expanded in the mid-20th century. Later, as department stores declined and chased consumers to the 'burbs, city newspapers likewise attempted to lengthen their reach, trying to reach readers far outside the city.

The irony is that the dailies got the readers they wanted. Indeed, after our panel spoke, a raft of Inquirer editors addressed the editors on their newspaper's "suburban strategy."

But in stalking suburban readers, daily newspapers abandoned their city audience. The money was in the 'burbs, and just as Wanamakers and Lits starved their urban stores, daily newspapers likewise trimmed coverage of the city.

And today, just as boutique retail shops in the city have snatched consumers from department stores, so have boutique publications like City Paper taken many of the city's politically and culturally active readers from the dailies.

Now the dailies want them back—which is as likely as John Wanamaker himself rising to play the organ for Christmas.

Faced with competition from boutiques and the Internet, the department stores themselves are struggling. And yet the dailies continue to follow the marketing pattern set by department stores: adding new sections targeted at various consumer markets. Hence you have home, lifestyle, electronic, design, food—sections for every imaginable sort of consumer.

Problem is, the economies of scale that once worked in the daily newspaper's favor no longer apply. Think, for a moment, how little of a Sunday or daily paper you actually look at, much less read. How much paper, ink, gas and talent is wasted.

Further, when dailies try to do young and savvy with their suburban outlook, they look about as hip as an old, fat woman in a miniskirt. It's unseemly. The twin burdens of being a "family-friendly" paper of record makes it tough for big dailies to sound real.

So, Timpane asks the panel, "Do we have to talk about nothing but sex, drugs and movies? Do we have to cuss? Seriously, what should we be thinking about?"

Well, fuck it, yeah, John. If you want a lively audience, you might start thinking about sex, drugs, movies and music seriously.