Newspapers Kill Themselves

Most of you probably missed a barn burner of a story which ran in the Minneapolis Star Tribune's sports section on Tuesday, and by doing so, you missed a prime example of why newspapers are dying.  Their committing suicide.

The article was a simple fluff piece on high school boys basketball, covering the rematch between Edina and Hopkins.  The article was clearly written from a pro-Edina viewpoint.  Edina is probably the wealthiest town in the state, and where they've dominated in prep ice hockey, they've fallen behind in high school basketball.  The story's main point was how the Edina team would be going for a sweep of Hopkins on Tuesday night, the top ranked team in state.

So far nothing special.  The article talked about how really bad Edina was, having lost to every other ranked team they've played in their conference, but this game Tuesday night was a glimmer of hope on what has been a disappointing Edina season.  Earlier in the season, Edina pulled off the upset at home, knocking off Hopkins, setting up a story line for the game, albeit a incredibly weak one.  For the record, Hopkins manhandled Edina in the rematch on Tuesday night, a score you had a hard time finding in Wednesday's paper.  The Star Tribune, which had featured the game mightily in the previous days paper, didn't even include the score in the prep sports round up, only in the tiny print which listed all the statewide scores.

At this point I can hear you all saying "AND..."  Okay, so let me backtrack a little bit to when I was a kid.

When I was young, the newspapers were far thicker and the content was far richer.  When I was reading the newspaper in high school, it was at the beginning the sales fueled downward trend of quality and integrity, a trend which today has left most papers a hollow shell of their former selves (the ones which are still even printing).  And the 1980's papers were nothing when compared to the newspapers from the decades earlier.  Still the 1980's paper had extensive news, opinion, and information.  These papers still had some guts.

Back then, this fluff story on Edina would've never even been written. The Star Tribune on Tuesday told us the Edina team wasn't very good, unworthy of the column space they gave them, but yet they gave it to them anyway.  The pre-game story warranted a tiny blurb about a revenge game, minus the pro-Edina slant.  The next day, the 80's paper would've published a recap of the #1 team in state winning a game, but in 2019, with Edina being on the losing end, that specific point had to be buried.

Papers today, whether it's the sports, news, opinion, or variety section, filter their writing through a prism.  The goal is to write stories which will make the paper appeal to the wealthy communities, and, in turn, maybe encourage the business owners who live in those wealthy communities to possibly buy ads in the paper.  They write fluff pieces which have little importance to anyone but a handful of people in the specific suburb, making the paper FAR less interesting to the average reader.

The Star Tribune not only created a story out of thin air, they also went the other way.  If the Edina boys would've pulled off the upset, the Star Tribune would've had a major story with good visibility, guaranteed.  Instead, Edina lost, so the final score had to be buried, forcing people interested in the number one team in the state to have to get their magnifying glass out to see the tiny print.

The modern newspaper writes fluff pieces with limited appeal.  They don't write stories with neutrality, instead they focus on a blatant favoritism geared to the specific communities where the ad money lives.  And when the news is negative for those same ad money suburbs, they bury it.

Newspapers can't fix themselves at this point.  They will die because they're circling a smaller and smaller narrow demographic, sacrificing the news, both good and bad, to drive their specific narrative; "please buy ads with us!"  I just don't see how they pull themselves out of their death spiral.  It would take them putting out a newspaper not seen in decades, and I frankly don't think most newsrooms even have the slightest idea how to do that anymore.

Yes I know, it is only a high school basketball game story Matt.  You're right, but sometimes the little stories show you how far our print media has fallen.