White House Chronicle

News Analysis With a Sense of Humor

The Struggle To Save the Printed Word and the Challenge at The Washington Post

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The printed word is to be treasured.

Two decades ago, I would have written newspapers are to be treasured. But the morning newspaper of old — manufactured in a factory in the middle of the night, shoved onto a truck and trusted to a child for delivery — is largely over. It follows the demise of its predecessor, the afternoon newspaper. These fell to competition from television in the 1960s and 1970s.

The word nowadays is largely carried digitally, even though it might have the imprimatur of a print publication. All the really big names in print now have more virtual readers than traditional ones. These readers may never have the tactile enjoyment, the feel of “the paper” they read, but they read. Increasingly, I am one of those. 

I plow through The Washington Post, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. I dip into The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph and the Financial Times. 

I also read — and this is an interesting development — a number of magazines which are de facto dailies. These include The Economist, The New Yorker and The Spectator.

The Economist is the only publication to which I have a digital and a paper subscription.

Much as I have loved newspapers down through the years, I am resigned to the fact there will be fewer going forward, and a generation of young people will find them more a curiosity than anything else.

But the importance of the written word hasn’t diminished. I make the point about the written word — and I distinguish it purposely from the broadcast word — because it has staying power.

I have spent my entire career working on newspapers and making television programs. It is words that are written on paper or online that last, that are referenced down through time.

Overnight television has an impact, but it fades quickly; the advertising industry has scads of data on this. The printed word — using that term to embrace words on paper and online — has staying power.

People often remind me of something I wrote decades ago. Few remember something I said on television years ago. Or months ago. But people remember your face.

My regard for the printed word brings me to The Washington Post, where the news staff is aligned against the owner, Jeff Bezos.

There are two issues here.

The staff feels that Bezos has sold them out to President Donald Trump and the forces of MAGA.

Bezos bought the paper without any interest in being a newspaperman, in enjoying the pleasures and pain of news ownership. He didn’t understand that you don’t own a newspaper like you own a yacht. 

A newspaper is a live, active, rambunctious and roiling thing. You have to enjoy the fray to own one. Hearst did, Pulitzer did, Murdoch did. You don’t retail words the way Amazon sells pizza crusts.

Not only must the newspaper proprietor deal with the news and its inherent controversies, but he or she also must deal with journalists, a breed apart, disinclined to any discipline besides deadlines. By nature and practice, they are opponents of authority.

The Post has been mostly untouched by Bezos, except for his decision to spike an editorial endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris. The staff took it hard. 

Bezos was undeterred and took what had become the billionaire’s pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago to become, to staff fears, Trump’s liegeman, or at least to reassure Trump. Then Bezos got a seat at the inaugural.

Readers of The Post also took it hard and unsubscribed en masse. Thirty percent of those were among the critical digital subscriber ranks, indicating how political its readership is and just how difficult it is for the paper to please all the constituencies it must serve.

I was an assistant editor at The Post in the glory days of editor Ben Bradlee and the ownership of the pressure-resistant Graham family, under matriarch Katherine Graham. When I was at the paper, I was president of the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild. The Guild negotiated what turned out to be the largest wage increase for journalists in any Guild contract. As I remember, it was 67 percent over three years.

Even so, the membership complained. The Post editors and writers are good at complaining with a high sense of self-regard. Len Downie, who was to rise to the executive editorship of the paper, declared, “King has sold us out.” 

It was a contract that benefitted both the management of The Post and journalism in general.

It was a loud reminder of how poorly journalists are compensated and how this affects the flow of talent into the trade. 

The driving force behind the contract from the union side was its professional head, the remarkably gifted Brian Flores and the equally gifted Guild chairman at The Post, John Reistrup.

Under Bezos, The Post first looked as though it would become a great force in the digital world, while the printed paper survived unspectacularly. Bezos clearly saw the digital potential.

But things unraveled and The Post started losing money. It lost $100 million last year.

It is still a good and maybe a great paper. But it needs to get its sense of mission back. That sense of mission can’t be at war with its owner.

The Post clearly would benefit from a new owner, but who has pockets deep enough and skin thick enough? It is a question Bezos and the querulous staff both need to ask themselves as the fate of the paper is uncertain.

My Newspaper Days (Television, too)

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On Dec. 13, I will receive an award and give a dinner talk at the National Press Club in Washington, recognizing my 68 years as a journalist and my 58 years as a member of the club.

This recognition is from a club subsection, known as the Owls. Silver Owls are those who have roosted at the club for 25 years or longer; Golden Owls, 50 years or more; and Platinum Owls, 60 years or longer.

You may think the hot type days in newspapers are long past, along with black-and-white television. They may be, but the denizens of that time live on — or some of us do. 

We will crowd the storied National Press Club ballroom to raise a glass to the time when headlines had to fit to an exact letter count, when wire services moved the news over teleprinters at 64 words a minute: It could be the biggest story in the world, but it would be moved slower than the speed of reading. 

The trick was to break the news into very short takes and move it on several printers. The principal teleprinter of the news services, UPI, AP and Reuters, was equipped with a “bulletin” bell which rang when the biggest news, like an assassination, broke.

In the composing room, where “metal” (you dared not call it lead, even though it was predominantly lead with some tin and antimony) was cast into type and into “furniture,” the rules and the spacing bars that went between the lines of type, craftsmanship ruled.

At one side of that great hive were the Linotype machines, operated by skilled people who could change fonts and type sizes by levering up or down the brass boxes that contained the dies of the type. They were the kings and queens of that art, secure and unflappable. Each Linotype machine contained a thousand parts, according to the Museum of Printing in Haverhill, Massachusetts.

In a rush the printers (note to laymen: printers set and handled the type), the people who ran the presses were pressmen, could assemble a whole page in minutes. If news had broken or, heaven forfend, a page had been “pied” (dropped, type all over the floor) then everything had to be reset and assembled.

Television — when I first worked in it in London, in the days of black-and-white — had its own foibles and culture, and the love of a glass of something.

The equivalent of the printers were the film editors, craftsmen and women all. One of the most skilled, who had had a long career in movies, would entertain us at the in-house bar in the BBC news studios in North London, by swinging a full pint mug of beer over his head without spilling any.

With the same dedication, he would slice and link the celluloid on deadline. He was the man who would save the day, especially if film came in late. Tape was in its infancy.

In the newsrooms on newspapers, tactically just one floor above the composing room, there were the journalists — that irregular army of misfits and egotists who made up a subculture unique to themselves. In Britain, they were referred to somewhere as “the shabby people who smell of drink.” That was true of journalists all over the world in those days. I can attest, bear witness. I was there.

Among the journalists, writers, editors, cartoonists, columnists, photographers, designers, secretaries and librarians were a cast of characters that was almost always the same in every newsroom, print or television. There was the Beau Brummell, the lover, the agony aunt, the gossip, the budding author, and the drunk (who wrote better than anyone else and was tolerated because of that). Then sadly, the gambler.

It seemed to me the drinkers had camaraderie and laughter, the gamblers just losses.

That began to change about 1970, when I was at The Washington Post. There were still drinkers who did the deed at the New York Lounge, a hole in the wall next to the more famous but less used by us Post Pub. But the drinking was definitely down. Among the younger members of the staff, pot was the recreational drug. The older ones still favored a drink.

In London, the big newspapers and the BBC maintained bars in their offices. It made it easy to find people when they were needed.

At the venerable New York Herald Tribune after the first edition closed at 7:30 p.m., the entire editorial staff, it seemed, went downstairs and around the block to the Artist (cq) and Writers, also called Bleaks. It wasn’t known for the quality of its carbonated water, unless that was mixed with something brown.

At the Baltimore News-American, there was a secret route through the mechanical departments, enabling thirsty scribblers to reach the nearest bar undetected. 

At the Washington Daily News, which belonged to the Scripps Howard chain of newspapers, the editor was known to favor the nearest bar, an Irish establishment called Matt Kane’s.

At the National Press Club celebration, we will raise one to the days of wine and roses, great stories and wordsmithing, and the fabulous adventure of it — the bad food, terrible hours, poor pay, long stakeouts, days far from home, and always, as my late first wife and great journalist, Doreen King, said, “the inner core of panic” about getting things right. We do care, more than our readers and viewers know. 

There is, for all of its tribulations, no greater, more exciting place to be than in a newsroom as big news is breaking.

You are there, inside history.

The Left Should Stop Whining and Start Influencing Trump

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Through the nation and across the world the liberals, the centrists, the traditionalists and the orthodox are in shock: Donald J. Trump is America’s 45th president and they don’t like that one bit, or like him at all.

I have some advice for those who are beating their breasts and crying, “The sky is falling!”: Get over it, and get to work.

Trump is the man. Those who fear his changes ought to start using the man’s own tool: leverage.

According to The Washington Post’s Robert Costa, who covered Trump’s presidential campaign, and interviewed him again last week, the president has no particular ideology. But he gets ideas from Steve Bannon, his senior counselor and chief White House strategist.

The forces opposed to Trump would do better to focus their fire on Bannon. Criticize him, even ridicule and revile him, but endeavor to get the message straight to Trump.

How can one direct invective at those around Trump, but speak to him directly?
The tool for reaching Trump is television.

Television is a medium associated with mass communication, but now it has a chance of being a medium of singular communication: the way to whisper in the president’s ear in plain sight.

Trump told Chuck Todd, host of “Meet the Press,” that he gets his information from “the shows like yours.” Trump’s early Cabinet appointments show the veracity of this: What he knows, how he thinks and how he’ll act is influenced by what he sees on television much more than by learned discourse in the press.

Trump tweets because what he has to say fits in the written equivalent of a sound bite.

Trump is a creature of television, and it’s a two-way street for him: He loves being on it and gets his information from it. That’s why he appoints people whom he has seen on television. He appointed Monica Crowley as senior director of strategic communications at the National Security Council, but she has relinquished the post amid a plagiarism scandal. Reportedly he was considering Laura Ingraham for White House press secretary. Both are television chirpers.

If you want money to build a new nuclear reactor, more funding for the National Institutes of Health to do research on a certain disease, or if you want to change the fortunes of a small country, take your message to television.

This means the political communications machine needs retooling.

You cannot persuade Trump with dense arguments in journals of opinion. Instead, you must persuade him with easily grasped ideas that will make their way onto television — especially onto the Sunday morning talk shows.

Fox has the edge with Trump, which makes the sale of some ideas more difficult. But he’s open to a catchy concept; something that he can rework into a slogan of his own, while his administration incorporates it into policy.

The other route to Trump are his daughter, Ivanka, and her husband, Jared Kushner. Liberals should stop whining about their having a role in the White House. Let them have it. It’s a good thing — and an excellent thing for these times.

Even though they’ve been shielded by wealth from many of the realities of life, they can’t be totally immune to what their generation thinks and says. They are in their middle 30s; Trump is 70. That’s important. It wouldn’t be so if they didn’t get a hearing from Trump. But he relies on them, uses them as sounding board. They could be of value in balancing what Trump hears from Bannon and national security adviser Michael Flynn.

Only a child can say to a parent, a parent who dotes on that child, “You’re full of it.”

That’s what everyone needs to hear sometimes, and Trump especially. Bring them on!

PBS Hasn’t Kept Up

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Things are tough in the world of public television.

State budgets for local stations are being slashed or eliminated, as in Rhode Island where Gov. Lincoln D. Chafee has proposed to fund Channel 36 through Dec. 31 and then eliminate state funding.

Five states have eliminated funding and others have cut contributions.

In Washington the federal contribution, through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, is under constant attack from Republicans who believe that PBS is biased and that it shouldn't receive any public money whatsoever.

Mitt Romney says no to federal money.

But a larger problem for PBS and its stations is one of mission.

When the service was created in 1970, the mission was apparent: Create quality programming that couldn't be found elsewhere. As PBS was cobbled together from a collection of educational stations, children's programming was always an important element and remains so; also books, cooking, political talk, business, interviews, documentaries, music and drama.

Over time, the television landscape has changed out of recognition.

Competing broadcasters, to say nothing of the Internet, have eroded the once solid franchises that were the backbone of PBS broadcasting.

Books have been largely ceded to C-SPAN and the ever-creative Brian Lamb. Cooking, far from the glory days when the only place you could find out how to make a roux was from Julia Child, is now the theme of two cable cooking channels that are creating new stars.

Political talk, which in its modern incarnation was born on PBS with "The McLaughlin Group" and "Firing Line," is now a staple of commercial television. Likewise, cable has pushed ahead of PBS in developing business (Remember "Wall Street Week"?), interview, history and arts channels. Other PBS innovations like "Motor Week" and "This Old House" are also under attack on cable.

Running down the list of what PBS does that no one else is doing brings one to the last franchise that PBS still dominates, and that might be called the "British bonanza." PBS has been mining effectively the output of both the BBC and the commercial British television channels with great effect since the days of "Upstairs Downstairs" (commercial in Britain).

Today, in its struggle for audience, another British import, "Downton Abbey," is the brightest star in PBS's dimming firmament.

If PBS is to again command the community loyalty it once enjoyed, if it is to answer its political foes, if it is to be a decisive force in television and perhaps on the Web, it needs to stop whining about money – now part of its demeanor – and to ask itself, "Is it new?" Is it bringing in and developing young talent? Is it doing something, anything, that will be imitated around the world? Is it creating programs that will bring in dollars in syndication and entice sponsors to be associated with the excitement?

In the 1960s the BBC, which had become a national treasure during World War II, had lost its way. Commercial television was eroding its audience and pirate broadcasters were attacking its radio franchise. The BBC got off the couch and joined the creative fray, especially the satirical revolution. Bam! It was back.

Of course, the BBC with its private tax, called a licensing fee, had a lot of money to spend. But it wasn't money that saved the BBC from ignoble decline – it was unleashing creative forces in post-Empire Britain.

Particularly, the BBC encouraged young writers and producers. It worked.

PBS should think of itself as an incubator, not as a roost for the old, the tired and the timid. Had PBS, or rather one of its bigger stations, been offered "The Daily Show" or its stable mate "The Colbert Report," it's hard to imagine that they would've been welcomed.

Yes, PBS, those retread English comedies and Lawrence Welk won't cut it going forward. –For the Hearst-New York Times syndicate