From a Bill Moyers interview with David Simon, the man who created The Wire:
DAVID SIMON: Yes, we were doing our job. Making the world safe for democracy. And all of a sudden, terra firma shifted, new technology. Who knew that the Internet was going to overwhelm us? I would buy that if I wasn’t in journalism for the years that immediately preceded the Inernet because I took the third buyout from the Baltimore Sun. I was about reporter number 80 or 90 who left, in 1995. Long before the Internet had had its impact. I left at a time— those buyouts happened when the Baltimore Sun was earning 37 percent profits.You know, we now know this because it’s in bankruptcy and the books are open. 37 percent profits. All that R&D money that was supposed to go in to make newspapers more essential, more viable, more able to explain the complexities of the world. It went to shareholders in the Tribune Company. Or the L.A. Times Mirror Company before that. And ultimately, when the Internet did hit, they had an inferior product— that was not essential enough that they could charge online for it.
I mean, the guys who are running newspapers, over the last 20 or 30 years, have to be singular in the manner in which they destroyed their own industry. It— it’s even more profound than Detroit making Chevy Vegas and Pacers and Gremlins and believing that no self-respecting American would buy a Japanese car in 1973. That— it’s analogous up to a point, except it’s not analogous in that a Nissan is a pretty good car, and a Toyota is a pretty good car. The Internet, while it’s great for commentary and froth doesn’t do very much first generation reporting at all. And it can’t sustain that. The economic model can’t sustain that kind of reporting. And to lose to that, because you didn’t— they had contempt for their own product, these people. I mean, how do—
BILL MOYERS: The publishers. The owners.
DAVID SIMON: Yes, how do you give it away for free? You know, but for 20 years, they looked upon the copy as being the stuff that went around the ads. The ads were the God. And then all of a sudden the ads were not there, and the copy, they had had contempt for. And they had—they had actually marginalized themselves.
Free speech is not contemptible.
Posted by: Mahakal on April 21, 2009 8:45 PMSounds to me like he's saying the publishers had contempt for the news part of the business. Considering that 37% profit margin, they probably saw news as the loss leader, unfortunate but necessary.
As fans of Ben Bagdikian's famous book The Media Monopoly are all too aware, the increasing concentration of ownership of major media in the hands of a half-dozen huge corporations is a direct threat to democracy. Corporations not only have no interest in the distribution of information, their interests actually oppose free information flow. They need to create artificial wants and lacks, and cover for real omissions and dangers in their products, so full information is something they very much do not want to be spread.
So the corporations that own the publishers that run the newspapers certainly don't want a free Jeffersonian-style press. They've been working overtime for decades to shut down the simulacrum of it we used to have, and they've very nearly succeeded. What they didn't foresee, not being particularly foresighted or even decently aware, was the internet. Unstoppable, undestroyable, unregulatable. So they bring on every threat they can think of to control it: child porn, instructions for making bombs, and so on. And they keep getting shot down.
Over the last thirty years the top one or two percent of the economic ladder has managed another huge theft (even if you don't, like Prudhomme, consider property itself theft). But one thing they've been unable to hoard or control is information. The internet, we've been saying for decades, will change everything. And I think the evidence is now all around us.
Finally, I just want to point out that blogs are producing a bit more original content than they generally get credit for. Glenn Greenwald has recently given kudos to Marcy Wheeler, AKA emptywheel, for her reporting on the torture memos. You know that 266 waterboards figure that's being tossed around? She's the one who found it, and the New York Times credited her (so Glenn kudos the paper for that as well).
Posted by: Chuck Dupree on April 21, 2009 11:58 PMProudhon's pamphlet slogan, "property is theft", is simplistic and embarrassing; the concept he explicates is not. And, my nitpicking finished, I think it's relevant to this.
The newspaper owners had (and have) no real concept of ownership. They do have a sense of entitlement. They believe they have a sovereign right to extract whatever value they can from labor and fixed capital and the sovereign right to ignore the consequences of this. A friendly judge looking over their charters of incorporation would agree, within the limits of whatever laws can't be stretched too far. Thus the state gives its blessing; the de facto and de jure sovereign right to be a puerile, destructive shithead and the sovereign right to be sheltered from the full consequences of that.
Simon hits the nail right on the head when points at the profits. There was no way to achieve that return without practicing constant slash and burn; first by loosening the laws designed to save them from the fate of monopolies; second by pruning everything that couldn't be immediately defended as essential to profits; third by organizing to crush any competition. In Proudhon's terms, this process is theft from start to finish.
I don't know this Simon guy, but George Pelecanos has been writing for this show, and for that reason, one of these days I'll buy the set and spend a weekend watching.
Posted by: Joyful Alternative on April 22, 2009 5:01 PMRichard Price also writes for the show. Both of them were recruited by Simon, who was a police reporter for the Baltimore Sun for years, and wrote a terrific book on it called "Homicide." This led to the series.
Posted by: Jerry Doolittle on April 22, 2009 6:18 PMNo concept of ownership? On the contrary, publishers consider themselves very much the owners of businesses that make and sell a product. Their problem is they don't view the production work as skilled labor. If they can generate printed words more cheaply they will. "Higher quality writing" makes as much sense to them as "higher quality electricity."
Posted by: Martha Bridegam on April 22, 2009 7:58 PMThanks, Jim, for correcting my faulty spelling! I blame the wine. Personally I have a lot of sympathy with Proudhon's concept, and you make an excellent point applying his concept to the situation. As you say, the slogan is simplistic, but I think it's provocative, which can be good or bad. Clear analysis like yours is always good.
Joyful, you probably know you can see all the Bill Moyers shows at http://www.pbs.org/moyers/ .
Posted by: Chuck Dupree on April 22, 2009 8:55 PM