Your post was great — I’m a journalist who left a newspaper a few months ago after 14 years to work for an online-only nonprofit news operation, and I was thinking just the other day how liberating it was not to be required to do the usual we-must-do-this stories on holiday mall traffic tips, holiday travel outlooks, rounding up panels of undecided voters to respond to the presidential debates, etc. Year after year after year, it’s the same story. (Does the average person really read that stuff, and if they do, do they get anything out of it that’s different than what they’ve gotten every year for the past five years? Does anyone not know by now that the malls are crowded on the day after Thanksgiving?)

But Angela and Lucas have very good points. Small papers have space to fill, and sometimes they don’t have the resources/experience/training/leadership to do “Big J Journalism.” And Lucas (who, unfortunately, I don’t think I ever got introduced-to in all my years in Nashville, but I certainly recognize his byline) is dead on when he says that, due to all the cutbacks and general penny-pinching, there’s not time to do Big J Journalism. If you’ve got an editor standing over you (and 3 editors behind them), making you crank out at least one “enterprise” story a week and 2 or 3 dailies to boot, you’re not going to have time to solve the world’s problems. Keeping the dry-erase planning calendar filled with centerpieces for 1a and 1b for the next two weeks is what you’re being paid to do and what you’ll be evaluated on, not solving the world’s problems.

Newspapers may be going away in some big cities, but not in the smaller ones. For them, the question is, how do they innovate with what they have and still put out the newspaper?

Jennifer Peebles
Deputy Editor
Texas Watchdog
http://www.texaswatchdog.org

Like most of the major conceptual or structural changes that newsrooms still have to make, figuring out an alternative to filler won’t work if it’s done in a one-off fashion. It has to be a holistic re-assessment.

That kind of discussion would cover things like: Why do they run filler in the first place? What might they do differently (either not cover certain things at all or cover them in a different way)? What is their view of what news is? What are the protocols for anyone involved in the story to say at any time in the story process, “Hey, maybe we shouldn’t do this”? How can a reporter be judged more on the quality of work than on the quantity of it? (This is needed to address John Z.’s important point about performance metrics).

Once a newsroom answers those kinds of questions, finding alternatives to filler becomes less about flailing when a story is spiked on deadline — because much of the “spiking” will come in the form of stopping stories earlier in the process, or not starting them in the first place. And the larger discussion would ideally also lead to ideas about new sources and story approaches that could help the newsroom quickly come up with non-filler replacements when a story is spiked on deadline.

As we say in dead-tree land…you can tell the quality of a newspaper by what gets left on the spike.

Agree that they may be hard to get rid of. Maybe there is a silver lining to present crisis, though. Papers that survive, will have (had) to scale down no. of pages. Since they also have a website, they can concentrate on only writing good stuff. If ads demand space, it will still be published on the web. If ads shrink, take your fillers from the website.

I agree with this post, but the question remains: How do we get there? As Angela said in comment No. 5, how do you fill a newshole when you spike a story? We can talk about the idea of “filling” a newshole being antiquated, but the fact is that if your reporters started spiking stories tomorrow because they feel it’s not worth writing, then you’ll end up with blanks in your newspaper, or you’ll end up filling it with some other crap that you won’t have otherwise put in your paper. Of course, then there is the whole issue of quotas and performance metrics based on how much you write, not how much you didn’t write because it wasn’t worth writing.

I think if newspapers successfully make the transition to web-only operations, then this issue will more or less take care of itself. With no set newshole to fill, there will be no more need to write “filler”. Also, that change in the dynamics of a web-only news operation will necessitate changes in performance metrics. So, it still comes back to being able to establish a financially viable on-line business model. It’s like a row of dominoes.

So arguing against bogus trend stories can sometimes mean arguing against giving readers what they want. And yeah — in these times of chasing every link and eyeball you can find, who wants to do that?

But I would say that it’s one thing to give readers what they want; I have no problem with papers printing celebrity news and other assorted fluff, as long as it’s part of a mix of news and info. It’s another thing to give readers something that’s interesting but, well, bogus.

The problem with celebrity news (if you think it’s a problem) is that it’s unimportant. The problem with bogus trend stories is that they’re intellectually lazy and, on some level, dishonest.

All of which is to say, I agree that the attention these stories get will make it particularly hard to snuff them out.

I think if newspapers successfully make the transition to web-only operations, then this issue will more or less take care of itself. With no set newshole to fill, there will be no more need to write “filler”. Also, that change in the dynamics of a web-only news operation will necessitate changes in performance metrics. So, it still comes back to being able to establish a financially viable on-line business model. It’s like a row of dominoes.

Problem is, in this era of limited resources, filler journalism is all they *can* produce.

When MEs and AEs are more concerned with how much time people spend actually sitting at their desks than what they produce (not to mention that the guy sitting next to you just got laid off last week), there’s no avenue or impetus for making the kind of stand Daniel Victor did.

Don’t get me wrong: he looked at the situation and determined, correctly, that the story assigned was not news. *That’s* what’s really missing today…the gatekeeping function of news organizations.

Just because something happens doesn’t make it news, no matter how much the (how I hate this word) blogosphere wishes that were true.

The web has changed that relationship, virtually overnight. And we are coming very close to eliminating the advertiser – the middleman – entirely, to get to our readers.

Publishers have been freed to focus on quality over quantity. But is it a gift or a burden?

Any discussion of the death of print, the migration to crowdsourcing, the citizen-reporter, must acknowledge its economic impetus.

Let’s not pretend that any of these concepts were introduced with the desire to improve the quality of content, or the work-habits of journalists, in mind.

JOsh’s definition of “what isn’t news” is dangerous and is everything that is wrong with journalism today. According to this person, it’s not a story if other websites won’t link to it. HOW STUPID IS THAT. It doesn’t take into account the biases and agendas of the wild wild west that is the internet, and Josh obviously can’t see that because he’s insulated into his community of self-important bloggers.

The original Watergate story (two idiots breaking into a small campaign headquarters) would never have been “linked” to death or popular. It was buried near back of the paper. Two real reporters with ethics simply did their due diligence and followed what they believed was a news story (not necessarily important) and the rest is history.

This article is too clever by half and it should be more about ethics and real fairness (in conglomerate news and the net), not a bunch of dirty 18 year olds in their underwear typing away on a laptop in mommy’s basement determining what news is… and getting off on telling news organizations what it is. But then again…. an article on ethics wouldn’t get linked to death, right Josh?

As for whether papers can self-correct, my belief has been that they can — it’s just going to take a lot of self-criticism (which newsrooms aren’t so great at) and peeling back layers of accumulated bad habits. But my worry lately is that some papers won’t have the chance.

Right after publishing this post yesterday, I posted on Twitter: “I must say, it feels profoundly weird writing about the nuts/bolts of journalism when things like http://tinyurl.com/5eo2es are happening.” Because yeah, I believe it when I say things like “one of the foundational changes [newsrooms] must make is to listen to Daniel Victor. Sometimes there’s just no story.”

But at the same time, it’s like — another of the foundational changes newsrooms must make is to not go bankrupt and vanish next week.

Pat — Thanks. Though i don’t think the main problem is laziness so much as decades of accumulated practices, traditions, and habits combined with an institutional lack of self-reflection/self-criticism. (Of course the result is the same whatever the reason.) But yeah, you’re totally right that “Too many papers put traffic fatalities on their front pages every day. Those are not front page stories. Stories about traffic fatalities trends are, however.”

Helge — Also thanks. Those three responses to the thin excuses are perfect.

Angela — I think “filling the news hole” will probably be the most persistent sticking point. It’ll just be a matter of having enough ideas like yours as an alternative. My ideal solution would involve lots of content sharing — including web material — so papers would never lack for interesting stories in the event of filler-induced empty spaces.

Among journalist friends, my shorthand for the embodiment of traditional media outlets failing to capitalize on our new media paradigm is “the useless 15-inch weather story.” How many reporters are still made to write about the next big cold front, the number of inches of rain it brought to the city, and quotes from people about yesterday’s weather? Won’t a quickly riffed cutline suffice now, with links to a page of data on a site? Isn’t it time to welcome good reader photos on the weather and let photographers continue work on bigger ideas? In the face of bankruptcies, isn’t anyone willing to try?

Hurricanes, locust plagues and other cataclysms don’t apply here. But do people think that papers have the ability to start self-correcting, or are many doomed because they refuse to move beyond functioning as creatures of habit?

I am really glad to tap into this vibrant dialogue about what we can do to save our important profession. Thank you for providing it.

One of the problems, however, that small daily papers have to overcome is how, when you have a very small news staff, do you fill (yep, there’s the word) that news hole when you spike a story.

I think the solutions are in being creative about what content you put in that dinosaur that’s left (why aren’t more papers printing reader galleries, printing good, vetted reader blog posts, etc.?), strengthening connections with people in your community to entice them to share that content, and just giving up some of the print (and somehow magically not driving off what advertisers you have left.)

- The opposition might run a story: All the better, so we don’t.
- Some might miss it: No, they won’t, unless they don’t google.
- We might look uninformed. No, we will look smarter.

Lots of time will be saved for deeper and bettter written, original material. Very important as papers are scaling down. Reporters will be happier, ad space more valuable if not surrounded by fillers, the public will be better informed.

Unfortunately, in small language markets (like Norway), enough traffic (70-90 per cent for major news sites) is still front page url driven to entice editors and staff to spin other outlets’ stories and nauseam. But this will pass, I hope and think.

Great post.

The worst part of this whole situation is that many journalists defend this kind of journalism because they say only they know what journalism is, and if people don’t find what they write to be interesting or worthwhile, it’s because people are only interested in Britney Spears stories. No, the real issue is that many journalists are just lazy, and they think everything they produce is Big J journalism that must be produced whether or not people read it.

False. Big J journalism is political corruption. It’s not every traffic accident that happens. It’s not every police blotter item or press release from city hall. The problem is that the written word has been the dominate way news has been produced over the years, and it’s a poor medium for most journalism. Every traffic accident should be put into a searchable and sortable database that allows users to create custom charts on the fly.

Too many papers put traffic fatalities on their front pages every day. Those are not front page stories. Stories about traffic fatalities trends are, however. That’s why putting information into databases is so important. Every day users could get traffic accident trend data customized to their location if news organization just put this information into a database.

ChicagoCrime.Org proved that police blotter stories were obsolete. Yet, almost every publication still writes up blurbs and stories for each incident, instead of just throwing all that data in a database.

It’s amazing that news organizations continue to produce filler journalism in this era of limited resources.

Everything old is new again. When I was a kid — the 80s — when I or a group I was part of did something scrapbook worthy, my mom would type up a little announcement about it and bring it to the local twice weekly. Next edition, there it was, almost unchanged. Scrapbooking would ensue. Far from an experiment in crowdsourcing, this is the way it’s done in small towns across the country. The only experiment is how to scale it from a community of 6,000 to 60,000 to 600,000.