Karl Klockars

It’s interesting that the Oscars and the Chicago Journalism Town Hall were on the same day, yesterday afternoon and evening.  Not just because I had to book ass home and start making the Ben Button Gumbo before I could meet Rob Feder, but because it’s a curious confluence of polar opposites.  It’s all the glamour and high-paid gloss, vs. the ink-stained ne’er-do-wells wondering where their next paycheck is coming from.

Between the comparatively small group of journo-powers and the 600 pound gorilla that is the Oscars, you’ve got the trolls under the bridge and the fairy princesses traipsing across the top.  Both of the mediums in question here are being sucked apart by the Internets, but one medium decided it’d be easier to use text rather than moving pictures, and this made all the difference.

However, one group could learn a little something from the other.  I’m not saying it’s a Silver Bullet to save all of us who slave away over sweaty keyboards every day, but it’s probably worth noting that not many of us are really that great about celebrating ourselves.  While both profession are out in front of people just about every day of the year, only one group took the time last night to tell the world just how unbelievably awesome they were last night.  A guy once told me, “There are plenty of undiscovered geniuses out there, but no undiscovered marketing gurus.”

For those of you playing along at home, Sunday afternoon seemed like a good time to pack about 400 journalists, writers, bloggers, PR people, and other people who care about words into a hotel room.  There we spent 3 hours talking about how much it sucked to be at a newspaper right now, and how online writers are ripping shit off left and right.  Then, every sentence following an online-media-bashing basically consisted of: “So, how can we better use the internet to save our asses?”

And back and forth it went.  The expected us vs. them erupted here and there, and the established journalistic warhorses cried “theft” to the young bearded citizen journalist, and the edgy internet pro’s berated those inside the pillars of journalism for wondering why they were all going broke when Pitchfork is wiping their collective asses with $20 bills.

It was great.

Then we all went home, our stomachs filled with food service cookies and glasses of water and our heads a-spinnin’ with thoughts of dead newspapers swimming in our heads.  Then I’m sure we all turned on the TV and live-blogged to ourselves about dresses and limos and Best Supporting Everything and bad dance numbers.  But was it lost on anyone that the Oscars are nothing but a collective high-five to the movie industry?  A group hug to say hey, y’all, aren’t we awesome?  And couldn’t journalism learn something from that?

Of all the things that got covered in yesterday’s forum, nobody really brought up the fact that someone needs to tell people that newspapers are really, really important.  We can give away the Red Eye for free and pack their heads with ads for John Deere Night at the local Meat Market (wear your trucker hat for $5 Deere-tinis!) but can’t we have a banner at the top of every page that says “BUY MORE NEWSPAPERS”?

I understand that newspapers certainly don’t have the glamour that a Hollywood red carpet does.  As hot as J-school geeks like myself might consider a Carol Marin, it’s doubtful that people are photoshopping her face onto more naked bodies than say, a Britney Spears or a Hayden Panietterre Panieterre that one plastic girl from “Heroes.”

But at least we should learn that what we do is something to be celebrated and promoted.  As necessary as newspaper writing and investigative reporting and that whole “truth to power” thing can be, it can also be taken a bit too seriously sometimes.  We treat papers like churches and we find out that maybe the hardcore evangelicals among us aren’t enough to keep the organ tuned.

I don’t know what it’s going to take to get people to realize what would happen if our papers died out.  Someone did mention an advocacy group yesterday, but I believe it was more along the lines of talking to the newspapers themselves about things that will save them.  Newspapers need an advocacy group, but to tell people exactly why they need to have these things in front of them.

Also, they need to have the TV and Radio people tell them exactly why they should call the subscription offices of their local rag and sign up for at least a weekend service.  Because as much as print people love to sneer at bloggers and internet-only publications for “stealing” their content, there’s a hell of a lot that each 10pm newscast owes to the newspapers as well.

The Channel 5 news team can put the chopper over the Tristate and tell you how bad it is, or tell you that the hotels are dirty with their black lights, but they take all their real cues from the newspapers.  Radio just rewrites everything, makes it faster, and reads it for people in their cars.  (And I say that as someone who works – kinda – in a radio newsroom.)

As much as I dislike Ayn Rand, I have to think about Atlas Shrugged.  What do you think would happen if every newspaper writer disappeared from the city of Chicago?  How much news content would disappear from the TV, the radio, and the blogs?  How much would City Hall immediately try to steal?  The 4th-estate minds of the city on strike?  It’d be terrifying.

But then – who would come up and rebuild those papers?  Who’s kicking at the front door of the Tribune Tower, screaming to be let in except for the complete lack of jobs inside there?  (Me, for one.  I doubt I speak for myself when I say that a lot of us internet writers just want to be columnists and reporters for the paper – just look at the sub-title of this whole site.)  They’re out there, and it’d most certainly come back.  It’d just take a while.

The audience is out there.  The eyeballs are on the words.  It’s just a matter of getting them to pay for it, as we talked about all afternoon yesterday.  And part of that is telling them exactly what it’s worth.  I don’t know if many people think about that part of it – but newspapers sure as hell aren’t telling them.