The people you do not see

THE DOCTOR: How come I've never seen you people before?

OKWE: Because we are the people you do not see. We are the ones who drive your cabs. We clean your rooms. And suck your cocks.

-- from Dirty Pretty Things,written by Steven Knight

To begin to answer the important question "What is a newspaper for?" we must also address a related, and also largely ignored, question: Who is a newspaper for?

In comments to the previous post, Dave suggests that the answer to the first question has already been answered: A newspaper exists to sell advertising space. That's, of course, a terribly cynical answer. It's also probably a dismayingly accurate one. And given such an answer to the first question, the answer to the second -- Who is a newspaper for? -- can only be this: For the target audiences that advertisers want to reach.

Exhibit A in support of this cynical thesis is the Pippin Weekly and all the other depressing tabloids targeting younger readers. The purported aim of most of these is to nurture the next generation of newspaper readers. That claim is difficult to swallow once you actually read the wretched things, which seem designed, instead, to prolong the adolescence of their readers and ensure that "35 is the new 15."

But I like to think -- or at least I want to think -- that this cynical answer, while accurate, is not the only answer. I like to think that part of the answer has to do with those idealistic reasons America's founders had in mind when they enshrined the freedom of the press in the First Amendment. I want to believe this because I think the founders were right in believing that a free and vibrant press is necessary for a healthy democracy.

And I want to believe this because, well, I work for a newspaper, and it doesn't pay enough for this to be just a paycheck job.

The paper I work for is owned by the largest chain in the country -- a chain that others have referred to as "the WalMart of newspapers." One of the current buzzwords in our chain is "real news for real people" (which always makes me think of Sarah Purcell and Fred Willard). This might be a not-so-bad idea if there were any indication that the folks steering this effort had any idea who "real people" were. There isn't. This enterprise has the whiff of a bunch of very fortunate people who don't realize they're very fortunate people sitting around a table and brainstorming about the hoi polloi.

More about that later. For now, here's this from Muhammad Yunus, the founder of the Grameen Bank, from this interview in Ode magazine:

Poor people are not the authors of their poverty. Poverty is a creation of a complex system of conceptions, rules and attitudes we have thought up ourselves. Therefore, if you want to eradicate poverty you have to go back to the drawing board, discover where we have planted the seeds of poverty and make changes there.

This is how I figured out that our financial institutions have incorporated an enormously high threshhold -- collateral -- which means that poor people, who so desperately need credit to escape their poverty, never set foot in a bank. They'd be laughed at. We believe that poor people will never repay their loans. We consider it normal that banks -- like other companies -- must turn a profit and that they exclude some 70, 80 percent of the world population. Those assumptions are not up for discussion; this is simply the way it is. In reality, no one has ever tested those ideas. ...

To solve the problem of poverty you have to start thinking differently. You have to treat poor people the way you want to be treated. You have to offer them the same facilities you have access to. Indeed, like everyone else they should be able to go to the bank for a loan because with a loan you can create your own work, you can support yourself and generate income. Credit is one of the barriers we must eliminate so that the poor can clamber out of poverty. But it is not enough.

For example, they must also have access to information technology because knowledge is power -- and they haven't had power. For centuries, the supply of news has been dominated by journalists: an elite, in fact, that decided which information was appropriate to pass on and which was not. You always had to rely on journalists to find out what had happened in the country and the world.  But thanks to the Internet, a whole range of news sources has emerged that I can look to for information -- from independent organizations to private Weblogs around the world. I can weigh opinions against one another. I can form my own opinion based on various sources. That's a tremendous liberation because it ultimately means you can't cheat poor people any longer. ... Or at least you have to make more of an effort to cheat them.

Comments

[Jay Denari]

Hi, Fred,

As a reporter myself, I also sometimes ask myself "what is news?" (stress that three ways). I'm not always sure I know; I know the things I'd want to know more about and try not to take that "fortunate" status for granted, but I'm not sure I always succeed. For example, I find it hard to believe "average" people really care much about which Hollywood folks are dating each other or what they wear, but believe they DO care about the details of what their govt is doing. I don't think they want to hear a ton about the latest murder (unless it's in their neighborhood), but do want to know why their street's closed or what that new building will be.

Today's media focuses way too much on the eye-catching and not enough on the subtle, too much on conflict and not enough on cooperation, too much on "who's getting ahead" individually and how (legally or otherwise) and not enough on collective needs & long-term planning, too much on personality and fluff and not enough on substance....

Or is all of that just what *I* think?

I basically agree w/ Yunus's comment about the Web serving as a resource to help poor people avoid being cheated... but he fails to note that having Web access is itself an elite commodity, b/c it requires money for electricity & a computer or at least society wealthy enough to supply a decent library with those things, the time to do such research and a food source that frees up that time, and enough education to ask good questions of the info thus received to weed out lies from truth and fact from opinion.

I have no problem with banks or other firms turning a profit.... I have a problem with them having that as their sole raison d'etre. It should always be a side effect of treating other people well (as Yunus hints), and should be capped at a reasonable level (either by the owner or by society). That's what corporate and personal taxes on capital gains and income are for, but they've been shanghaied by the relative handful of people who believe money and power is the only thing that matters.

[J. Michael Matkin]

I'll second the comment on how necessary critical thinking skills are now that such a broad scope of information is available to everyone. As for the issue of credit, I think it odd that the same folks who would be denied a loan at 6% are deluged with offers for credit cards that charge rates upwards of 20%. We have a problem, apparently, with granting people constructive credit, but no qualms whatsoever about permitting them consumptive credit.

[Ray]

Speaking as a cynic, the other thing newspapers are for (besides advertising), is to provide egotistic owners with a bully pulpit. Okay, less cynically, you could point to papers like the Irish Times and the (British) Guardian, which are both owned by trusts. Neither of them publish some ideal form of 'the news' because no-one can agree on what that really is, but I think most Slacktivist readers would find their biases less grating. (And the Guardian has open online access)

[cjmr]

I agree wholeheartedly with Jay's first two paragraphs. I wish I could find a newspaper that agreed, as well. I'm a lot more interested in the outcomes of Supreme Court trials than the verdict in the Michael Jackson trial, for instance--but which got more column inches, even in the Washington Post?

[Jimmy Olsen]

>>A newspaper exists to sell advertising space. That's, of course, a terribly cynical answer. It's also probably a dismayingly accurate one.<<

It gets worse. It's getting harder and harder to sell out, even.

Say you have a Big City, A. A is surrounded by suburbs B, C, D, E, F, G and H. If you have enough big advertisers to carry the paper, well and good. The trouble comes with the Mom-and-Pops. A small store in B gets very angry at the thought they're paying to reach C through G when there's small chance anyone's gonna go across town to visit their restaurant/hardware store/tattoo parlor/whatever. So they don't advertise.

Loss of this revenue drives the ad managers of Big City A Daily crazy and they start regional editions for each suburb - even whole papers in some cases. This appeals to B advertisers who like the thought of reaching B and B only. It does not appeal to B readers, though, because the B edition/paper is usually a pretty poor effort. B readers usually go for the A paper, which is usually the only one that can afford real writers.

I don't have a solution for this, but I've been working in newspapers so long I felt the need to vent.

[James E. Powell]

Figuring out what America's founders had in mind when the adopted the free press clause of the first amendment is harder than it seems. Most of the major founders, at one time or another, did their level best to shut down newspapers with whom they disagreed. They threw some in jail, but mostly used economic and political power to destroy them.

Newspaper publishers were the first organizers of what we now call political parties. They were explicitly and intensely partisan. The pose of 'objectivity'and the detached sanctimony came later.

[Ken]

"As for the issue of credit, I think it odd that the same folks who would be denied a loan at 6% are deluged with offers for credit cards that charge rates upwards of 20%. "

That's not odd at all. If you're serving customers that have a 15% chance of not paying back the loan, you'll lose scads of money if you lend it out at 6%, but you'll do okay if you lend it out at 20%. (Of course the rate itself affects the probability that they'll stiff you, but they have people to figure those details out...)

"We consider it normal that banks -- like other companies -- must turn a profit and that they exclude some 70, 80 percent of the world population."

Well, banks that don't turn a profit tend to run out of money and thereafter can't operate at all, while banks that do turn a profit tend to last quite a while loaning people money for decades on end. Surely a profitmaking bank will do more good than a nonexistent bank.

[clew]

Mm, Ken, you do know that Grameen does a great deal of good for people who were, at best, unaffected by banks that only serve the top 30%?

And they no more need to turn a profit than my local, lasting, efficient public utility needs to. They need to pay their bills; all that required is breaking even.