Jobs’ Liver and Local Journalism

Coincidentally, I was in Memphis with a bunch of current and former journalists when the Wall Street Journal’s iLiver story broke. John Gruber quickly started digging at the questionable nature of the story, WSJ’s sources and the editorial policy that allows this story to even run. Meanwhile the home town paper, The Commercial Appeal, finally ran what basically amounts to a write-thru* on Sunday. The writer, Sara Patterson is listed as a Reporting Intern at the paper.

In short, the local paper missed or passed on this story and when it decided to do something, they assigned it to an intern. The primary source cited in their story— The Wall Street Journal.

Mother fucker**.

I like to think that some cigar-chomping, Commercial Appeal editor is one vein throb away from a stroke out of sheer anger and embarrassment over getting scooped in her own back yard. Sadly, they probably didn’t know. If the paper did know and passed because of sourcing, this means they couldn’t find a source at the hospital or real-estate company or airport or city/county tax assessor— ANYONE in the city they cover to go on or OFF the record.

I don’t know the behind-the-scene story here but it smells of experienced, deep-sourced reporters taking a buy-out, overworked and under-staffed editors simply missing the story or Oldsters who couldn’t give a shit about that Apple guy.

It’s more like a combination of the above factors. It isn’t at all about Apple or the quality of the fine editors and reporters at the Commercial Appeal—it’s happening everywhere. It’s that long-time, respected, well sourced fucking journalists are now plying their trade in PR firms, classrooms and anything else BUT journalism.

More and more I don’t care if newspapers survive but it is coming at the cost of local journalism. Hope you shareholders are satisfied***.

Edit: Mssr. fancywabs makes a damn good point.

*A write-thru is newsroom lingo for the process of using material from multiple news agencies and/or writers and smashing it together for one master narrative.

**As in “Wow. You’ve got to be kidding.”

***SSP 5-year chart. The E.W. Scripps Company owns The Commercial Appeal.