Words Dept.: entry

Apologies for not getting back to you. I’m here now, it’s OK.

I’ve been thinking a lot about newspapers recently. About how I never buy one anymore except when I’m going on a long train journey, about the supposed closure of the Observer (which isn’t now happening), about what I can’t help thinking is gross mismanagement of certain newspapers somewhere along the line, and about how it must be possible to produce a local newspaper that isn’t based entirely on “soft news” and advertorials.

There are clearly some complex reasons for the demise of the newspaper, which is why the simplicity of a recent statement by Michael Moore stood out. In an apparently off-the-cuff outburst at a promotional event for his latest film, he said:

“Anytime you say that the people who read your newspaper are secondary to the business community, you’ve lost.”

This led to a further summary by media commentator Philip Stone:

“If you take care of the reader as your primary function then everything else will eventually fall into place.”

All this came to my attention via Roy Greenslade.

It’s kind of obvious, really. If you cut the journalistic budget, the quality of the journalism falls, people stop buying the paper, advertising revenues slump and what Greenslade calls the “death spiral” kicks in. I’m not saying this is especially original, either. But amid the hand-wringing and expert analysis, the neatness of Moore’s summary appeals.