The truth of one newspaper

While I was trolling through Web sites reading about The Dallas Morning News’ latest round of layoffs, I came across another gem from fall 2008.

The article, from the Dallas Observer, dealt with the latest figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulations, which released from stats last October. The DMN, like most papers, saw a drop from the previous year of nearly 10 percent. This puts it circulation for Monday to Friday at about 339,000.

Then the story turns into one of the saddest, most pathetic – and anger-inducing – ones I have seen.

From a Belo exec comes this quote:

“The overall declines in circulation can be attributed to planned business initiatives specifically aimed at improving audience quality."

"Our continuing strategy is to concentrate on delivering high-quality, engaged consumers to our advertisers and provide them with the strongest possible return on their investment. We are pleased with the efforts we have made to date."

In other words, we are pandering to our advertisers, so if our circulations drops, it’s OK as long as it’s getting rid of the poorer readers in a crappy parts of town who don’t shop much. And by the way, we used to be a newspaper but now we’re really more of a Green Sheet with some text tossed in for good measure.

I’m sure I don’t even need to point out that this isn’t the purpose of a newspaper. And it tells me all I need to know about the DMN and why no one is reading it. And hey, I live in a GOOD part of town. I’m in the same zip code as the former prez.

Disgusting.

I’m not alone in this thought, based on some comments under the story.
From Jamal: so they're weeding out all the shitty readers? awesome strategy.

From Mellon: Once I realized I wasn't of the audience quality deserving of the daily temple proclamations, I contained my shame as best I could, gathered up the mocking remnants of my quarterly altar offerings, and slunk away voluntarily into my nothingness. Now I wander lost in the wilderness, without knowledge or moral direction. Some day, when my shattered self-esteem finally heals, I hope to gain employment as a night soil gatherer.

I hate to point out the obvious, but once again, newspapers can be rightly accused of underestimating the intelligence of their (former) audience.
And this is one of those times when, though I know that democracy depends on a watchdog press, a publication bending over backwards to please it’s advertisers while ignoring God-knows-what kind of news in lower-rent neighborhoods makes it hard to feel bad if it goes under. It’s obviously not doing its job anyway.