On June 2, 1947, I completed my move from the humble Daily Cardinal office to the imposing Milwaukee Journal newsroom on Journal Square. I felt comfortable in my new surroundings. The Journal was a lot like the Cardinal, just bigger. Little did I suspect that six months later, something would happen that would end an era of complacency for newspapers in Wisconsin.
On Dec. 3, 1947 the first television station in our state and one of the first in the nation, WTMJ-TV, went on the air. Few homes or businesses had TV sets then and this event didn't attract much attention. One of the top Journal Company executives looked at a small, black-and-white screen and said he doubted that TV would amount to much. He scoffed at the suggestion that TV might be a major source of news.
The Journal newspaper was keeping Milwaukee informed. Who would want to change that? People wanted to read the news like he did, he said, or possibly listen to the radio, but not watch pictures.
Who could have guessed that this was the start of an electronic revolution that would rock the whole world of mass communication?
The way we were doing things seemed to be working well. At both the Cardinal and the Journal we had reporters, editors and the same basic system:
The reporter gathered information for a story. He (probably) or she (not so likely) would return to the office and write. At the Journal, the reporter turned the story over to a copy editor, who would edit it before giving it to the news editor for evaluation. From the news editor, the story typed on paper would go to a Linotype operator who would type the story again, using molten lead to produce it in metal. A proofreader would go through the story once more before the type was placed in a page form to make a fabric mat from which a very heavy cylindrical cast of each page was made and then placed on an elevator that transported it down several stories to the presses in the basement.
Complicated? Redundant? Of course.
Electronic developments were destined to reduce the task to writing on a screen, not paper, transferring the story to another screen for editing and then giving the signal to print photo type that could be pasted on a cardboard form.
The composing room, almost a full city block wide and once filled with rows of hot lead machines, became empty and was used as a place for employees to exercise at noon. People in the newsroom adjusted to the new system remarkably well. Reporters and editors parted with their typewriters and learned to operate computers.
While this production change was occurring, something even more significant for print journalism was taking place: TV news was catching on. Surveys showed that an increasing number of readers were indeed becoming watchers. The number of newspapers was declining, leaving most metropolitan cities with just one daily newspaper. Afternoon papers faded away or switched to morning distribution as evening reading time became TV time. Some advertisers reduced their print budgets and spent the money on TV commercials.
\Beat the opposition newspaper!"" had been the driving commandment behind newspaper operations for more than a century. Now, all of a sudden, there was no opposition newspaper left to beat in most metropolitan cities.
Life in the newsroom changed dramatically for papers that made the change from afternoon to morning. The pace at an afternoon paper usually bordered on frantic as the staff rushed to get fresh news in the morning just hours before the deadline around noon. A morning newspaper has lots of time. It has the first crack at news events in the afternoon and evening, and it has all night to put out the paper.
When the Journal switched to the morning, the rush to deadline slowed. And the top executive who had scoffed at the future of news on a screen must have been spinning in his grave when papers like the Journal went online with their own Web sites.
Were all these changes for the better? Certainly, there was not much choice. Production had to adjust to the computer age. The shift to morning papers was in recognition of TV's entertainment audience in the evening. The reduction in number of papers was inevitable when circulation and advertising declined.
But what about the editorial product?
In some respects, daily newspapers became more vulnerable. Loss of competition was a major factor. Competition had brought out the best in newspaper staffs. Reporters trying to beat reporters from other papers had to strive to be first with a story and do it better than the opposition newspaper. Television news is now the opposition and it is primarily a visual medium not designed to handle a large volume of news or details.
In addition, many daily newspapers have made staff reductions that make it difficult to maintain the level of coverage that existed a few years ago.
To test this yourself, ask a local government official whether he sees a local newspaper reporter more or less often than five or ten years ago. I did this in my classes at Marquette University. The answer was always less, which meant that government news sources were not getting the attention they once received'and covering government should be a newspaper's highest priority.
Let us take that last point a step farther. Are newspapers today trying to compete with TV by giving entertainment and sports increasing emphasis while reducing space for serious news of important matters? Some editors will admit that this is happening but say it is what the public is demanding. Will the citizens' participation in our democracy be impaired by more stories about Britney Spears and fewer about the county board considering pensions for government officials? We will see.
My personal opinion is that newspapers today have tremendous advantages in the production developments of recent years but face their greatest challenge ever in maintaining their full responsibility to be the essential link between government and the citizens in our democracy.
That is important for tomorrow.
