Question about newspapers, journalists and columns in the US

Factual Questions
1

Okay, I don’t quite understand what’s the big deal with newspaper columns for journalists in the US *

Cecil Adams, perfect Master, has a newspaper column in a Chicago newspaper answering questions on a weekly basis. He is famous for this.

Art Buchwald used to have a (weekly?) column with (more or less) humoristic short essays about life and the state of the world (I read a collection of these in a book.

Apparently, the famous “mothers” Bloomingdale and Blomfeld also wrote newspaper columns that were then converted into books. These were also humoristic takes on normal life.

Now my questions:

  1. It appears that serious journalists writing about big topics don’t have regular columns, only humorists and question/answer/ life-help types. Is this impression correct? (We don’t have these types of columns in German newspapers. The life-help columns are in the weekly magazines. Serious reporters cover their topics when they have a report finished, or when they get a topic assigned).

  2. If yes, why would a serious reporter want to have a column?

  3. Is a regular column really the only way for a top reporter to become famous and well-known to his readers? Unlike regular feature-length, in-depth reporting about serious, real-news stuff, or lengthy reports?

  4. How many journalists/reporters are known to the average newspaper readers, anyway? Either by name or face? Especially compared to the regularly appearing anchorman on the evening news shows on TV? (I couldn’t name any print journalist offhand, only TV reporters who also wrote books on their area of expertise, or journalists who have been invited to TV for their expertise and opinion on topics.)

  5. How difficult is/was it for a good (!) reporter to get hired by a serious newspaper after working for a “rag”?

*In case you’re wondering, what prompted this question is the old TV series “The incredible Hulk” from the 70s, with Bill Bixby as Banner, and Jack Colvin as the obsessed reporter McGee.
In one episode, McGee tells a (masked) Banner that he wants to catch the Hulk to “get his own column back!”, become famous again, and quit writing for the Register (the show’s equivalent of the National Inquirer). He earlier mentioned that money and fame are important to him as measure of life’s success.
In another episode, a fellow reporter (who uses shady methods to make stories) claims that there are only a handful of journalists who are famous and well-known and earn good money.

2

The answer to #1 is no. Many, many serious political reporters and commentators have columns. Every serious newspaper in the country has what is called an “op-ed” page. Op-ed is the page OPposite the EDitoral page. Originally, the editorial page (what are in Europe called leaders, I believe) was reserved for editorials written by the newspaper’s editorial board and for letters to the editors, while the op-ed page was strictly columns, either by the newspaper’s own columnists or by guests. The New York Times still operates this way. Other papers format the pages differently, and some combine them into single page, but the logic behind them is similar.

The U.S. has a long history of rewarding top reporters with their own columns. James Reston, Walter Lippmann, and others gained both fame and considerable inside power from their columns.

Newspapers lost their cultural force when television moved in and today’s columnists are less powerful and more likely to need to entertain. You still need to make a major distinction between an Art Buchwald or a Dave Barry and a David Broder or Maureen Dowd, to name two reporters who graduated into columns. There are “feature” columnists by the thousands, who normally are not placed on the op-ed pages. They can be humorous columns, advice columns, how-to columns, sports columns, tv and movie and columns on any conceivable subject. The major newspapers have specialty art, architecture, even chess columns.

Columns are valuable because of the gigantic number of newspapers in the country. (About 1500 daily and 6500 weekly, according to 2003 figures I found in a quick search.) Although the absolute cost of buying a column is small per paper per week, those numbers quickly mount up. A columnist who appears in a mere 100 papers is guaranteed a six-figure income over and above the original salary at the originating newspaper. That’s a huge incentive in a low-paying field like journalism.

Only a very few deliberately humorous columns ever appeared on op-ed pages. Art Buchwald for the Washington Post, Russell Baker for the Times, and a few others. Many columnists today can be very funny - Gail Collins in the Times is an example - but she still is supposed to give a more serious analysis of the news than Buchwald was.

Columns are about the only way to gain attention in the modern newspaper world. Reporters were once glamorous figures, but that hasn’t been true for decades. Virtually nobody in the country outside of a select group of news junkies could tell you the name of any reporter, although a few has gotten some recognition because of books they’ve written. To be sure, most columnists don’t have any outside recognition either. The ones that do are recognized because they have radio or television shows and writer books and the column is just an extension of that other work. So columns are now the caboose of journalism rather than the engine.

It’s somewhat easier today for a reporter to get hired from a “rag” than it used to be. The tabloids need to pay fantastically high salaries to lure good journalists into working for them, and newspapers realize that some people will go there just for the money to start. But the tabloids are such a tiny piece of the journalism market that there wouldn’t be much crossover in absolute terms no matter how they were perceived.

3

Exapno,

Thanks for that detailed answer. It explains a lot since I see now it’s completly different from how German newspapers are!

I could never figure out why it was called op-ed! So, the editorials page is with the opinion of the editorial boards - and the op-ed page opposite it with the columns is also opinion? Do I understand that right?

I’m trying to compare it to my own newspaper - we have one page with opinions (Meinungen), and one page (in the SZ, the famous page 3) with one or two in-depth articles (the SZ is an A3 - double legal size - newspaper).

So if columns are limited in length (Cecil often refers to this), who writes the long articles, and where do they appear? Are long articles explaining things in depth not valued as highly as the columns?

Sadly, those names don’t mean anything to me. The only famous reporters I’ve heard about are Woodward and Bernstein for their part in the Watergate scandal.

The last two names don’t ring a bell for me, either. I assume that while the humorous columnists can always collect their best pieces into a book, not many people will be interested in last years political or news column.

Those feature columns, are also fixed lenght? Does nobody find it a problem to compress complex topics down to 600 words or so? We have regular chess, literature etc. categories, too, but those are pages filled with articles of varying length by different authors, except for real special things (Zwiebelfisch is a pseudonym for a guy who writes biographic riddles weekly).

Is that the syndication thing again? It’s mentioned on the Dope FAQ somewhere, which newspapers carry the Dope column. So is it only small-town newspapers who lack staff of their own to cover big issues that buy columns from the bigger newspapers?

By comparision, small newpapers here simply buy the releases from AP, Reuters and other news services if they can’t afford to research themselves. But most major newspapers wouldn’t carry articles from other papers!

Does that mean that all journalists are freelancers, paid by each paper that carries their column, or do they get a fixed income from the paper that employs them, and the syndication fee from other papers is split between the columnist and his own paper?

4

A few answers:

  1. Yes, the Op-Ed page is opinions, some in agreement with the editorial position, some in disagreement.

  2. The political columnists often write books, and use pieces of their columns, but don’t usually just reprint columns. You’re correct about the reasoning: the issue may be too dated. Something about, say, how Ron Paul is getting votes in the Republican primaries may be of little interest when the book comes out. Also, even humorists like Buchwald never reprinted all their columns; their humor often dates. I remember a very funny column by him during the Watergate hearings that quickly stopped making me laugh because the references were no longer fresh.

  3. Many columns are limited as to length. It’s due to the lack of space on the Op-Ed page, or anywhere else. Some newspapers print long analysis pieces elsewhere in order to give in-depth infomation about a particular issue, but these don’t appear every day.

  4. Basically, most regular columns have lenght constraints, especially when syndicated. Newspapers set aside a news slot for the column when planning and want it to be in that length. Columns are different from news stores, which are desiged to be cut easily, but it’s next to impossible to write an opinion piece where you can remove sections.

  5. All newspapers publish some syndicated content. It costs less than to pay salaries. Our local paper really only has one columnist, who covers local events, and that is fairly typical for a small city newspaper – one or two columnists (who also act as reporters) to cover what’s going on in the city. But a big newspaper also uses some syndicated columns, partly because of cost, and partly to bring in opinions from elsewhere.

  6. Small papers always have plenty of news content – they cover the local community, something the AP won’t do unless it’s a disaster or something. Their reporters may also write columns, but they also buy syndicated columns about national events.

  7. Most newspapers have staff reporters who are paid a salary. They might also write a column. In addition, they may use freelancers to cover things their staff can’t get to. A syndicated columist will get a salary from his newspaper and get paid his syndication fees, which will be more money. Some may quit their newspaper job to do the column.

5

Chuck covered most of it, but just a few add-ons.

The U.S. is a big, big country and almost no paper can afford to do a thorough job of covering it, let alone maintain foreign bureaus. There are three national papers - The New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal, with USA Today sometimes in the mix. These papers set the agenda for everybody else, including the television network news outfits. A few other cities have major papers, including the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, and the Boston Globe. After that, things fall off rapidly. (The Tribune just declared bankruptcy and it also owns the LA Times. The Detroit papers just announced they will stop home delivery four days a week. The Denver papers are for sale. The three other major New York city newspapers have been losing money for years. The business is dying.)

Most major newspapers send reporters to Washington and to their state capitol, but do very little else. (Remember that in the U.S. most states have their capitols in small cities, not in the biggest one in the state.) They get almost all their national news from the AP. Most foreign news comes from the AP or maybe Reuters. They will take some articles from the Big Three/Four. (USA Today is owned by the Gannett chain of papers, and they often use it as a source, but I doubt that other chains do.)

All papers will do some investigative journalism, but most of it is on the local (or state) level. It’s sheerly a matter of economics. The sports section is far more important and lucrative than the news section in almost every city. Because of television and the internet, newspapers almost universally are de-emphasizing national and international reporting and concentrating on local news that their readers can’t so easily get elsewhere. The Rochester newspaper (once the flagship of the Gannett chain) had a policy for most of the Bush administration that it only put local news on the front page. You’d see one of the incessant Bush scandals on page 6.

The presidential campaign did change that, because it got people engaged like nothing I’ve seen in decades. We’ll have to see whether it continues and how newspapers respond.

The inside sections of the paper are usually a local section, a business section, an entertainment section, and a sports section. These overwhelmingly use syndicated material, not just columns but everything from recipes, health info, shopping tips, national sports, car stuff, and all the fun, distracting stuff that fills pages. Newspapers have let go most local talent: Why pay a salary when you can pull an article off the wire for $15?

Most news articles are written by employees of either the major papers or the AP. Papers make extra money by selling them to smaller papers to use. Feature articles are more often from freelancers who have put together syndication deals.

Cecil, I should add, is really outside this game. Most cities have what are called “alternative” weeklies, which grew out of the 60s when the counterculture didn’t trust the mainstream media. Some of these papers did real journalism in the old days. Today they don’t have any money, so they mostly are venues for ads and articles on music, art, and entertainment and culture in general. Cecil is Ed Zotti, who like his predecessors, is an employee of the weekly Chicago Reader. They syndicate the column to other alternative papers but it rarely if ever appeared in a mainstream paper. Oddly, I can’t find a list of papers it’s syndicated to currently.

And 600 words is an epic today. Take a look at American magazines: they have moved heavily to pages of pictures with a few tens of words of text. People aren’t illiterate: they just don’t care about reading. If you can’t compress information into a few bullet points, don’t even bother. Nobody will read it. That’s increasingly true for news.

Newspapers have only one function: to print as much advertising as possible and surround it with an article or two to keep people turning pages. As advertising disappears, so do pages. Newspapers are so thin these days they’re practically translucent.