By Luke Warm
Professor of Mendacity
University of Munchausen
My lecture today was inspired by a brilliant memo circulated within the Detroit Free Press, a publication with a well-honed sense of what a newspaper’s duty is, and is not.
Now, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with the widespread notion that newspapers ought to print news, and raise hell.
Nothing wrong with the idea, per se, of comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable.
Noble, noble illusions.
It is well that a newspaper maintain this myth about its role in society, for the simple reason that such a fantasy can do no harm and may sell a paper or two.
But to invest a nickel of shareholder value in such quixotic schemes as upholding the public good — well, that would would be sheer folly.
It is the duty of a newspaper to make money, period.
And it is clear that this principle is well-known at the Detroit Free Press, even though it is not being put into practice — making money, I mean.
Having said that, though, the newspaper manager is faced with the difficult but uncontrovertible fact that many journalists actually believe this swill about righting wrongs and upholding justice.
Much time and print can be wasted by reporters too eagerly seeking after the common weal.
How to controvert controversy?
Simple: Create phony windmills for reporters to tilt at.
At the same time, confuse matters by encouraging journalists to spin their wheels on do-nothing errands.
With appropriate positive reinforcement, wonders can be accomplished at no financial outlay.
The only cost is a few pixels consumed with paeans of praise for the gullible journalist who is wont to succomb to small scents of attaboys.
I call it the doctrine of the carrot and the carrot.
Forget about sticks for the moment.
It’s just too easy to bribe journalists with silly, meaningless praise.
Now for a case study.
At the Detroit Free Press for some time under the brilliant management of the Gannett chain, journalists have been instructed to write, in essence, two different stories about any particular event. Geniuses at Gannett have divined that more papers will be sold if readers are presented with short morsels of news on the outer cover of the newspaper, aka Page One. Inside, and I know this sounds like stupid redundancy, they repeat the story at greater length, but attempt to dress it in somewhat different garb.
The assumption is that John Q Public is too dumb and his/her attention span too short to bother with following a story inside the paper. Give them the farm in five or six quick paragraphs and then, somehow, defying the managers’ own logic, the reader with the nonexistent attention span will drop coins in the box and purchase the newspaper so he/she can open it and peruse a second, superficially different version of the same story with slightly modified trappings.
The logic is full of non sequiturs, obviously, but remember, this is the newspaper world we’re discussing, and reality is not a commodity that is common among the people who manage these institutions. Nor is great intelligence in huge supply.
Rather, it is most important to control and dupe and bully into intellectual submission the peons whose drudge-work produces the “copy,” namely the reporters/writers who churn out the pap that readers, in theory, will want to buy.
These short Page One pieces are called “containables.” The inside longer pieces that are allegedly “different” are called “mains.” It is necessary to know this jargon in order to parse a modicum of sense out of the following memo, which is a gem of the cheerleading/demeaning genre: It is a missive that at once chides evil-doers on the staff for falling short of perfection (defined arbitrarily by a non-reporter), then doles out examples of staffers-to-be-admired whose writings — at the moment — conform to managers’ criteria.
Bear in mind that this is a newspaper where reality is constantly in flux and values can be shifted instantly. What is good now can be verboten when you take your next breath.
Today’s star of Page One could be tomorrow’s bum of the briefs page.
The beauty and wonder of such a memo is that it exists within the institution solely. It could not stand on the outside. It would vaporize in public view, because anyone familiar with the situation of large American newspapers in general and the Detroit Free Press in particular knows that if anything, these highly-ballyhooed “containables” are helping to sink the ship.
Otherwise, how explain that, despite the vaunted “containable,” circulation is in a downward spiral and the Free Press and its sister Detroit News have lose 10 percent circulation in the past year?
The point, though, is that newspaper managers don’t give a damn about the real world. The following memo has its own purpose and its own utility: It enforces internal company discipline by stroking a few individuals selected as momentary goody-two-shoes while implying that the remainder of the staff are a congress of morons.
Kudos to the chosen few, insults to the rest. Meaningless phrases like “focused globally,” or “flushes out a little more detail” or “looking forward or getting into the impact of the news” are vacuous tools for giving “quick guidance for now” that stands for nothing and has zero meaning.
Standing for nothing and having zero meaning will be twin desiderata of the modern newspaper until it sinks to nonexistence, freighted by its own intellectual numbing.
Most importantly, by focusing reporters and writers on crafting idiotically duplicate articles, the writers’ minds, hearts and energies will be squandered so that they don’t imagine any quaint activities such as printing the news and raising hell or afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted.
For the true containables are not chunks of text, but the writers themselves.
As I said, it is the duty of a newspaper not to print news, but money.
Or not.
Here, then, is this wonderful Free Press memo, a classic of the duplicitous art:
Advice about containables
Published on: December 8, 2010 02:23 PM
One topic that’s come up as we have our department meetings are questions related to containables:
(1) How can we do them better? No question, there;s too much repetition too often in the containables and the main (if there is one) inside. (2) Should we modify the containable policy and if so, how?
We’re going to pull together a cross-departmental group of about a half-dozen folks to come up with recommendations on our policy. If you’d like to volunteer, please message Jeff.
Regardless of where we land on the policy, we’re going to give regular feedback on containables — a short series of nooners has been suggested. But to kick off the feedback, let’s start now, with three good examples of how to handle containables and mains from today’ paper — the holiday parties piece, the possible smoking ban in Detroit public housing, and the potential national tax deal.
Example No. 1
Front-page headline — HOLIDAY BASHES COMING BACK/Companies partying more than in 2009
Inside headline — Party planners, caterers ready to celebrate, too
What’s good about this:
(1) First, the headlines complement and build on each other. They’re not repetitious. Anyone reading the headline and story on the front page would know immediately there is a different angle included in the main story inside.
(2) The stories themselves build on each other, with some repetition but only enough to set the context for each story. The 1A containable focused globally on the number of parties increasing, with a good quote and some numbers that substantiated the trend. The main inside story developed a new theme — it focused on specific caterers and how their businesses are up and why, and did not repeat the global numbers in the 1A containable.
Kudos to reporter Zlati Meyer and headline writer Sherita Bryant.
Example No. 2
Front-page headline — City public housing may go smoke-free
Inside headline — Smokers decry ban in public housing
What’s good about this:
(1) Again, the headlines complement each other. One lays out the news, the other focuses on the reaction to it.
(2) The containable and main story are on the same topic — and the main story flushes out a little more detail — BUT the stories lead with different angles. The main story gets right to voices on either side of the debate.
Kudos to reporter Robin Erb and headline writer Dan Austin.
Example No. 3
Front-page headline — Obama: Tax deal means more money for everyone
Inside headline — Questions of cost cloud tax deal
What’s good about this:
(1) Headlines build on one another.
(2) The stories do a pretty good job of attacking the topic from different standpoints — the 1A piece quoted Obama, the inside piece did not. Both quoted Granholm, but the main story inside quoted her low in the story and more deeply explored the reaction to and analysis of the plan.
Kudos to reporter Todd Spangler and headline collaborators Randy Essex, Nan Laughlin and Elizabeth Vanden Boom.
Overall Points
(1) The 1A containable should not be a shorter version of the same story inside. (This misconception surfaced in our department meetings.) The stories can have some overlap for context, but the key is to frame the containable and the main differently.
(2) It can be tricky trying to decide which angle to use for the front-page and the inside story. Best rule of thumb — write the story that will make for the most compelling headline for 1A. Sometimes, that will be the overall developments in a big story. Other times, it might be primarily focus on the most compelling one aspect of the developments. Or, if the story has been out there for awhile, it might be looking forward or getting into the impact of the news
That’s just some quick guidance for now — we’ll continue to get deeper into this.
Thanks, Paul and Jeff
