Newspaper Future, Courtroom Past

For reasons I don't understand I was invited to a dinner at Stanford last night with Bill Keller, executive editor of the NY Times, Gary Pruitt, CEO of the McClatchy newspaper chain, Harry Chandler of the Chandlers who used to own the LA Times, Marissa Mayer, VP at Google, and Joel Brinkley, former NY Timesman and now Lokey VIsiting Professor at Stanford.  Spent some time schmoozing with members of the McClatchy family, John Markoff of the Times, like me an ex-staffer on Jordan Junior High's Dolphin Diary, and Jonathan Rabinovitz, director of media relations at Stanford.  (Old friends Mark, Lisa, Steve, and Chris were as surprised to be invited as I was.)  The after-dinner panel discussion, entitled "Pressing Times: Can Newspapers Survive in the New World of Journalism?", moderated by Brinkley, was interesting enough, but not much new, not much controversy.  The panelists all answered the title question "yes," more or less.  Pruitt spoke of the business advantages of owning the only newspaper in town; he didn't advocate one-paper towns, just said they were a reality.  Keller reveled in working for a paper controlled by a family willing to sacrifice current returns for high quality journalism.  Mayer said Google consisted of "computer scientists, not reporters" and wanted to work with papers to help them make more money from their websites.  Chandler showed some bitterness at his family having sold the LA Times and said, somewhat tongue in cheek, that maybe the secret to the future of big city papers was finding "benevolent billionaires" to own them.  The mothers of the panelists would have been pleased.  They were all excruciatingly polite.  None of the hissing and scratching I would have liked to see.  We already knew that the newspaper business was in peril.  I wanted to ask about the disappearing book review sections in daily papers, but didn't get the chance.

From l-r, Bill Keller, Gary Pruitt, Joel Brinkley, Marissa Mayer

When I got home, I read for a little while and then watched a Perry Mason I'd Tivo-ed.  In this one (circa 1962) Perry was MIA and his place in the courtroom was taken by -- of all people -- Bette Davis.  It was surprisingly with it in grappling with the issue of discrimination against women lawyers.  By the end Los Angeles DA Hamilton Burger was begging for mercy.

The one and only Bette Davis

Comments

[Steve_San_Carlos]

So are these folks living in complete denial, or were they simply not showing their cards...making the point of this gathering somewhat moot? I'll assume the latter. For example, AM radio isn't "dead," but once you move beyond the top three stations in the top 10 markets, it does a pretty good imitation. All I know is, every Sunday I pick up my SF Chronicle and wonder, "How long can this go on?"

[Keith Raffel]

Steve, maybe my recap wasn't complete. They were well aware of the challenges facing newspapers. Being upbeat is somewhat contrarian these days. All thought the job of professional reporters could not go away because people want that kind of news reporting. Pruitt said, if you include people who use newspaper websites, more people are reading what newspapers put out than ever before. They all understood that a cellulose and ink version of papers could not be the only alternative. They believe in their workproduct and all recognized the monetization problem.