Jon Margolis is VTDigger.org’s political analyst.
TO: FreePressMedia (aka Burlington Free Press) president/publisher Jim Fogler (to be shared with underlings at his discretion).
FROM: The Syndicate Board (You know who we are).
RE:The Transition (or, in your words, “A new era dawns”).
1 — Ambiguous judgments on that “A new era dawns in one week” headline. Catchy, but might have implied to some readers that, say, Sunni and Shia, Israelis and Palestinians, Indians and Pakistanis, Tea Partiers and Occupiers had all agreed to dwell together in unity, heralding an epoch of global harmony. Gotta watch these unintended implications.
2 – Notice the start of the previous sentence, influenced by your sentence beginning, “Not sure where time is going.” Colloquial, everyday speech structure is fine for memos. Maybe Page One columns should stick to standard English.
2(a) In which, by the way, “rebuild” is a verb, meaning to restructure, remodel or restore. There is no such thing as a or the rebuild.
3—No matter, because surveys have demonstrated that readership of your several columns updating subscribers on the progress of the transition is effectively zero. This in turn reflects a reality long suspected by the Syndicate Board: When it comes to the intricacies of a news organization’s business plan, nobody cares.
3(a) – “Nobody” here is an obvious overstatement. No doubt the company’s employees care. So, perhaps, do some present and potential advertisers. But that’s a tiny percentage of the population of the state, or indeed of the Burlington metropolitan area. By and large, it isn’t just that Mr. and Mrs. Average Chittenden-Countian are not reading these columns – prominently placed though they be – neither are (again, excepting company employees) journalists.
So designating the post-transition newspaper/website as “compact smart” could divert attention from the fact that “compact smart” is another way of saying “smaller,” just as referring to news, analysis and opinion as “content” helps obscure the likelihood that there will be less of all of the above.
3(b) – What might account for this lack of interest among journalists is the near total absence in the columns of anything concerning journalism. Lots about the mechanics of printing presses, the freshness of the business model, the subscription system, but hardly a mention of actual … you know … news.
4 – But this is good. What has been most productive about the columns is their ambiguity. In this case, a more direct approach, not, for instance, calling a spade an earth disturbance device, might cause more trouble. So designating the post-transition newspaper/website as “compact smart” could divert attention from the fact that “compact smart” is another way of saying “smaller,” just as referring to news, analysis and opinion as “content” helps obscure the likelihood that there will be less of all of the above.
4(a) – In this context, we also note – approvingly — that the columns have all but ignored the one characteristic of the present newspaper which in the old paradigm would have been considered its strong point: its staff of capable, dedicated reporters. That is so 20th century.
4 (b) – Similarly, the Syndicate Board notes approvingly changing the basic name of the enterprise from “Burlington Free Press” to “FreePressMedia.” The old name was too concrete. “Burlington” “Free” and “Press” are all actual words, two nouns and an adjective with specific meanings. “FreePressMedia” is far more contemporary, with the now required absence of spaces. The Syndicate Board especially liked putting part of the new name in boldface, then switching to the standard font at the end.
4(c) – The Syndicate Board does wonder how much you paid the consultant who came up with the new name, and should you decided to rename again could we get a piece of the action?
5 – Speaking as we were above of “opinion,” the Syndicate Board also wants to applaud the company for the near total lack of it in its editorials. Even the editorials calling for more transparency, which earned Pulitzer Prize consideration, met the recommended modern goal of maximum feasible blandness. After all, nobody opposes – or more accurately, nobody admits to opposing – transparency.
5(a) –The Syndicate Board especially commends the May 19 editorial insisting that “All sides must be heard in the F-35 debate” which managed to avoid expressing any opinion on the basic issue. Under the old paradigm, a critic might say something like, “Hey, this is a major controversy in your town. Take a side.” Happily, FreePressMedia will have none of that. Clearly the editorial writer has gotten the message: Say nothing to offend anyone.
5(b) – Friday’s editorial endorsing the federal court rejection of the Defense of Marriage Act, while uncharacteristically blunt, only touched the periphery of danger here. In Vermont, supporting gay rights offends precious few.
6 – Finally, The Syndicate Board considers the wisdom of allotting so much Page One space to the writings of a bad writer – or, more gently, a not-at-all-good writer. The advantage here is that, as mentioned above, very few people will read these columns carefully. It is likely, for instance, that those readers who got as far as the end of the second paragraph, got no farther than the phrase “full access mode,” which has the advantage of meaning nothing at all. The danger is that readers will associate the front page with not-at-all-good writing, a disincentive to reading the product either in print or online. Actually discouraging readers is probably not the best policy.
6(a) – Understand, however, that being a not-at-all-good writer is not a character flaw. After all, being a good writer does not render one honorable or admirable. Hemingway, for instance, was often neither. The Hemingway in question, of course, is Ernest, not Sam. Sam is a fine fellow and not a bad writer at all. Him you could put on Page One.
Sincerely,
The Syndicate Board (you know who we are)
CORRECTION: We originally misspelled James Fogler’s name as Folger. We apologize for the error.
