Former Los Angeles Times Editor John Carroll urged editors this week to guard against what he called a “milking” of the industry and increased corporate ownership whose only purpose is to make money, according to Editor and Publisher magazine.

Carroll said the economic rules that govern the newspaper business have changed, partly due to the Internet revolution. But he said there is a “more subtle problem - a crisis of the soul.” The goal of current newspaper owners is “money,” he said. “That’s it.”

“There were times when owners were actually identifiable human beings,” he said. “Unfortunately, the old owners are gone. If they did return, they’d be amazed at what has happened to the very idea of newspapers.”

Carroll talked about editors being afraid to upset readers and give them what they need, instead of what they want.

“A newspaper ought to be willing to offend even its most loyal readers,” he said. “That’s fine if you are making toasters. But a newspaper that gets no complaints is a dead newspaper.”

He said while the average newspaper profit margin remains 19.5 percent, “Gone is the notion that a newspaper must serve and lead, that it has an obligation to its community.”

We would add that newspaper and TV news Web sites are so slow and clunky because of the profit motive, which is another reason readers are turning to independent news sites that load much faster. They are also turning to online producers who track down alternative sources of information and refuse to run corporate and administration PR without at least bringing some skepticism to the coverage.

Old fashioned news folks do not understand blogs, so they mostly bash them. So we bash back.

We would love nothing more than to see newspapers all agree to drop their demands for such a high return on investment and get back to their Constitutional mission of watchdogging government. If they did that, they would see high praise come from the blogosphere.

Newspapers were granted special rights under the First Amendment for a reason. If they abandon that mission, they no longer deserve special rights - and this includes their online versions as well as the print edition.

Tags: Media Notes

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