Dispatch Editor Marrison Misses the Point: There’s No Newspaper Supremacy

The Dispatch building, in downtown Columbus. (Image from Wikipedia.)

Today’s Sunday column from Columbus Dispatch editor Ben Marrison falls flat because of its premise: All newspapers and all newspaper stories always advance the public good — and all other methods of gathering and disseminating information are somehow, well, less.  Until Marrison reaches an understanding that nothing is so black and white — that there is no “newspaper supremacy” clause in the First Amendment — he will fail at finding a way for his newspaper to respond to changes in the news industry.

Marrison, with back-up support from the former editor of USA Today, props up the importance of community newspapers.  He writes:

“A community won’t know how valuable a newspaper is until it no longer has one,” said Kenneth A. Paulson, former editor of USA Today and chief executive officer of the Newseum, a museum dedicated to the First Amendment. “Daily newspapers do more than report events in the neighborhood. They’re voices for progress and a unifying element in an increasingly diverse society. Newspapers remind us of how much we share and tend to offset the polarizing impact of contemporary politics.”

Voices for progress.  I want any Ohioan who believes the Dispatch, Plain Dealer and Cincy Enquirer are Ohio’s strongest “voices for progress” today to raise your hand.  Clearly, there are other, stronger voices of progress today in each of those cities.  What’s more, the last sentence seems, in practice, actually to contradict the sentence that precedes it.  I’ve found that newspapers like the Dispatch might “offset the polarizing impact of contemporary politics” at times, but they often do so at the cost of being a voice for progress.  They do so by adhering to and propping up the status quo.  And everyone knows of stories about newspapers “on a mission” to oppose or support a politician, which often results in an increase in that “polarizing impact of contemporary politics.”

Some newspapers at some times might be voices for progress, but so are some blogs.  Some newspapers are retrograde and oppose progress, but so do some blogs.  Some newspapers offset polarization, but so do some blogs.  Some newspapers polarize, and, yes, so do some blogs.  There simply is no newspaper supremacy.  I don’t even understand how someone can pretend otherwise.

More from Paulson, via Marrison’s column:

“Go back and look at the history of newspapers in towns big and small, and newspapers were always the voices pushing for better schools, more-accountable government and important civic projects. A good newspaper has always been a constructive nag for progress, and that cannot be replaced by any number of tweets or Facebook postings.”

Honestly?  Way to set up a straw man and knock it down.  The complete absence of blogs is so strange, as if ignoring a “problem area” of his argument to focus on a “lesser” form of information-sharing will somehow make the more difficult discussion disappear.  Marrison, however, concludes from this:

What frustrates newspaper people is that some readers expect to get news free. Certainly, some news is available free. But you get what you pay for.

Is that so?  Marrison goes on: “Good journalism takes time and money.”

Yes, there are some areas of news coverage that take more money than others, and, yes, at some point someone needs to pay some money to someone to get high-quality news coverage.  But Marrison’s “newspaper supremacy” theory — that supporting newspapers is the only way to keep good news coverage alive — takes several logical leaps that are not necessarily supported in today’s world.

For one example, look at the coverage, analysis and commentary in the Dispatch on this week’s execution of Jason Getsy in Ohio.  There is not a single story in the Dispatch that did not come directly from the Associated Press.  I can’t believe those aggregators, like the Dispatch!  There was no independent work that went into them; the Dispatch pulled the stories from the wire service and put them on their Web site and in their paper.

At Law Dork, on the other hand, I noted the governor’s denial of clemency on Friday, citing two Plain Dealer stories and one Dayton Daily News story for different information.  What I mean by that is that, unlike the Dispatch, I did consult multiple stories to present a more clear picture about the happenings than would be achieved by relying wholly on one source.  I then, on Monday, provided extensive and original analysis of Ohio Attorney General Rich Cordray’s unusual interjection into the death penalty process, clued in on the matter by blogger Doug Berman, who had found the coverage in the Tribune Chronicle.  I was the only person to provide Cordray’s memo to the public.  Then, on Tuesday, Marc Kovac, a statehouse reporter, covered the execution process on Twitter, providing me with my Tuesday post regarding the time of death.

Newspapers do play an important role in the process of information-gathering and information-sharing, as do wire services, but so do blogs and those on Twitter and elsewhere.  Anything can be a source of information; anyone can share information.  Finding a way to support good reporting of important issues is a challenge that we must confront.  It is not, however, the case that a newspaper, by virtue of being a newspaper, has better coverage of a topic.  And Marrison is ignoring reality — at his and his newspaper’s own peril — if he believes so.

[H/t: Matt Naugle]

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