I was reading a story on the Internet this weekend about the demise of newspapers when I caught a quote about how some newspapers were instituting “story quotas,” in that there are measurements as to how many stories reporters have to have to produce per quarter, etc. I’d never read much about the topic or given it much thought, so just for curiosity’s sake I did a search on what guidelines reporters allegedly have for our state’s largest newspaper – the Sioux Falls Argus Leader, via being a Gannett owned property. Here’s a little bit of what I found:
As noted by the Gannett owned Asbury Park Press, there appears to be hard quotas set for reporters of how much content they’re required to produce:
The goals are pretty straightforward. Each metro reporter is expected to produce a minimum of one A1 story a month, one watchdog story a week, one iPhone video a week, and tweet 4-5 times a day on stories of interest to their Tier I and II towns. If you exceed the goals, and we want everyone to go beyond the minimum, you will get a higher performance rating.
and…
Also, let your bureau chief know about iPhone videos you have uploaded. He or she will keep track of your videos for the dashboard. If you see a mistake on the dash, let me know and we will fix it.
And, to bury the lead, we will start a monthly rewards program next month. We will recognize outstanding work with Amazon and Target gift cards.
And take note in that quota how much of it is social media based – because social media may not be optional – social media may be mandatory:
The newspapers that mandate participation on social media emphasize a newsroom-wide approach to traffic growth. The Gannett-owned Jackson Clarion-Ledger, for instance, requires its writers to maintain Facebook and Twitter profiles and everyone on staff helps draw attention to the site, Executive Editor and Director of Audience Engagement Brian Tolley wrote in an email.
Editors and social media managers play a bigger role in audience-building than other staffers, though, Tolley said.
Multiple sources cite that Gannett apparently has a mandatory minority/ethnic viewpoint requirement in news stories, and owned newspapers are rated on how well they implement this:
Some in the newsroom objected, saying sources should be quoted because they were the most credible on a topic or the most articulate, not because they fit an ethnic profile. They said they feared the day they might have to delete an insightful quote from a majority source in favor of a less useful quote from someone who would help the newspaper meet corporate goals.
Paul Anger, editor and vice president of the Free Press since its acquisition by Gannett, defended the policy, saying the paper was “absolutely committed to this.”
Third sign? A requirement that every story include at least one minority quote—even if the story had nothing even remotely to do with race, class, diversity. Profile of a country singer? Need a minority quote. News from a Republican meeting? Minority quote. Silly, stupid, paint-by-numbers journalism.
Fourth sign? Relating to No. 3—no real interest in issues of diversity. Talking a good game, but doing shit about it.
Courtney Shives was being interviewed by a reporter from his local paper, The Greenville News, two and a half years ago for an article about his recovery from a terrifying accident. It was the kind of human interest story that is the staple of many newspapers. Shives explained how a car had slammed into him as he was biking, crippling his left leg so badly it had to be amputated above the knee. Reporter Deb Richardson-Moore asked all the predictable questions: How long did your recuperation take? How did you cope with it emotionally? How have you dealt with the pain?
But the reporter had one more query: “Was there anybody involved in your rehabilitation who is a minority?”
and…
The Greenville News has made it quickly to the top of the Gannett class, scoring 9 out of a possible 10 in the 1998 All-American Contest, as the mainstreaming competition is known. “Three other newspapers also received 9.0s, but no one had a higher score,” executive editor John Pittman wrote in an e-mail congratulating the staff. How has the paper done so well? By taking Gannett’s philosophy to an extreme, reporters say. “If Gannett had a Bible,” says former staff writer Melinda Young, “The Greenville News would be the fundamentalist version.”
and…
“I’ve had some really embarrassing moments with the mainstreaming,” says staff writer Tilly Lavenás. She describes once having to search for a minority source for a story about food for Hanukkah. Because religious minorities don’t qualify, Lavenás tried to find someone who was both Jewish and a racial minority — no mean feat in Greenville. “I could not find any Ethiopian Jews,” she says. “I called the synagogue and asked if they had any African Jews. They said no.” (An editor, recognizing the futility of the quest, let Lavenás off the hook.)
Last fall Lavenás, who is Hispanic, found herself devoting an entire day to hunting for a nonwhite to quote in a story on gourmet dog biscuits. She started with the 50 members of her Hispanic women’s group, but “not one of them had dogs,” Lavenás says. “Finally, I remembered this Indian woman I’d interviewed, and remembered she had a German shepherd.” Bingo. “She was very good-natured,” Lavenás recalls. “I call her for all kinds of things.”
Read that here. (BTW, this story is often quoted in books, university studies and stories about media).
Why did we read so many *@$%@ bicycle stories in recent years? Gannett newspapers will push “passion topics,” at the expense of legitimate news stories:
The latest effort, being pushed in Gannett papers this year, involves figuring out readers’ “passion topics”—a basic news-sense skill that was a given and a requirement in pre-Gannettization newsrooms.
These “passion topics” will supposedly help Gannett’s papers and websites start to better cover stories readers really care about.
Critics are skeptical and see the new effort as a too-little-too-late attempt to find more ways to use fewer reporters and editors to turn out products while ignoring important reporting that readers cannot know they would be passionate about without getting the information.
And in a case the horse chasing the cart, it has been said that in some cases, the lede is written before the story to provide a teaser. And some think that the story ends up chasing the lede, no matter what the facts are:
Likewise, several practices at Gannett are counter to what most idealistic journalism students learn in college—from its often-bizarre overuse of the passive voice to framing stories before reporting them.
Gannett reporters and editors sometimes write the “lede”—the first paragraph of a news story—before they talk to a source or attend an event. The idea is to focus on what’s important, but the reality is editors commit to proving the lede is true rather than discovering what is true and then writing the lede.
What are your thoughts? Does this help promote good journalism, or is it the opposite?
Anyone else aware of any other trends in news for the owner of the Sioux Falls Argus Leader being talked about on the Internets? Send me a link to the source.
This type of strategy does not help the Argus. I did hear of another trend…raising their monthly rates.
It creates sloppy reporting. Just read Dana Fergeson twitterings and stories. Nearly every one of them has a huge error because there is no fact checking, just a rush to get the blogging out there on the internet.
Even before the internet and social media, news content was being driven by race, gender, and diversity aspects that were not part of the story. I worked for both Gannett and Knight Ridder, and they were obsessed with such coverage even back in the 1980s and 1990s. By the same token, Forum Communications out of Fargo and the World Herald in Omaha — again, I worked for newspapers that were owned by them — were old school and didn’t base news on silly peripherals.
But it’s not just media. Most larger corporations’ personnel and public relations waste a lot of energy worried about skin color, sex partner preferences, and what’s between our legs, rather than what’s between our ears. Oh well.
Take this post with a grain of salt. A lot of the sources that are being linked to are five to 11 years old. Not exactly current stories. Newspaper policies do change. Not saying they have changed, but using these ANCIENT stories as proof of current practice is malpractice as a writer and proof positive of a bizarre anti-Argus bias from this blog. I can’t figure out why, each of the advertisers on this site would much rather have coverage in the Argus than here.
Nice try at deflection. 2014 is hardly “ancient.”
To quote the president: Wrong.
Agree with the first commenter – what’s the point of all this? You do realize all these articles/posts are literally years old? 2014 might as well be 2004 as far as how much the business and media landscape has changed since then. Gannett papers used some of these methods at point in time but not now – passion topics and mainstreaming are seriously old ways of doing business.
It’s about clicks and numbers over quality and unbiased reporting, and the subscription news sources in a shrinking market have to compete with all the free sources. We tend to consume what confirms, so they’re giving the public what they think it wants or drives the numbers, not what it needs. CNN being exposed should eliminate any doubt.