Newspapers, Tycoons, The Future.

The investment newsletter the Motley Fool has an insightful posting on what promises to be a major theme of 2007: big investors speculating and bidding on newspapers. The Fool speculates that many of these big investors are driven by vanity. They are old, goes the argument, they read newspapers, so they assume everyone else does too.

The Motley Fool makes the point that the peak of newspaper readership was in 1950, that the number of newspapers in the U.S.A. has fallen by 50 percent int he last 100 years, and that the actual decline began in the Kennedy era. It talks of ‘cohorts’ or age-groups of people who read newspapers. The cohort who reads newspapers, the fool has concluded, settles at about age 56.

At the same time, Ganesha’s Scribe stumbled across a great website on the media transformation by Tim Porter, a former journalist and editor, called ‘First Draft.’ It includes a quality manifesto with useful, life and job saving ideas.

Elsewhere, veteran Blogger Rebecca Blood has written a blogger’s handbook included a section on what might seem to be an oxymoron: Blogger’s ethics.

Destroyer of Worlds: Bhagavad Gita and Hangovers

It’s moving quickly. Since Ganesha’s Scribe has been offline shopping for a new computer, there have been more layoffs, more media blogs popping up and more punditry. MediaShift is a good one. In the latest posting, the host discusses if editors still have a place in the era of ‘citizen journalism.’ He concludes they do.

Ganesha’s Scribe is nursing a hangover, having destroyed precious braincells forever last night. It’s all there in the Bhagavad Gita, on traditional print media, Blogs and brain cells; all that arises passes away. As for my relationship with my headache, I think it’s best summed up by the conversation between Krishna and Arjuna, ‘Time I am; destroyer of the worlds.

Trib Sale Could Fall Flat

One emerging pattern in 2006 wa an increasing shift in ownership structures in the U.S. print media. There seems to be an increasing trend of transition from public to private ownership, or boosted equity stakes held by large, individual shareholders. We saw this with the McClatchy Group sale last year and the speculation over the purchase of the LA Times.

The latest twist along these lines is the possible sale of the Tribune Co. in the U.S. Some analysts think the bids are unlikely to be appealing. An outcome of no accepted bids will be an interesting comment on the state of investor’s expectations on the future of the newspaper industry.

Ganesha’s Gripes is expecting more sales and a greater shift from multi-shareholder to large single equity shareholder in 2007. This shift – if it goes ahead – will have both positive and negative implications for journalists. On one hand, it will buy time. The presure of quarterly earnings reports and pleasing Wall Street will be lifted. On the other, some investors will be pursuing a buy-and-flip strategy. Buy now, flip in five – or even one – year’s time.

Which one will the Trib sale be ? Maybe neither. Maybe nothing.

A New Frontier, A New Blog.

This is the inaugural, de-virginising posting for Ganesha’s Gripes, a journal tracking the transformation of print media, mainly newspapers and magazines.

Ganesha’s Gripes also includes random thoughts on style, usage, the writing process, and politics in Southeast Asia, where Ganesha’s Scripe lives in the real world.

The Blog is named after Ganesha, a Hindu god of the intellect and learning, depicted by a humanoid, pot-bellied elephant.  Images will follow shortly.  Ganeshas are everywhere in Southeast Asia, following the same path that Hinduism, Sanskrit and Buddhism followed.

Ganesha is not usually one given to griping.  But the passing of newspapers and magazines –  a key hypothesis of this Blog – I don’t think would please him.

We’re seeing a seismic and historic shift in the print media, of a size unseen since the advent of the Gutenberg printing press some 500 years ago.  It’ll be fun to watch it.

Your thoughts and comments are welcome on Ganesha’s Gripes.

Ganesha’s Scribe.

The Art And Craft of Feature Writing, Chapter 2: Shaping Ideas

Chapter 2: Shaping Ideas

The reporter who doesn’t have half a dozen story ideas up his sleeve is only doing half a job. There needs to be a constant flow of concepts.

Some common errors and countermeasures include:

Range

Reporters can think too small.

Many people however, think too big: they try to embrace the circus fat lady and find that there’s too much of her and not enough of us.

Solution=> subject the story’s concept to cause-and-effect reasoning. It helps identify action elements in the story:

– moves
– countermoves

This needs to consider time, distance, and constituencies

Theme

Need a main theme statement early on in the piece.

Profile Approach: similarities or differences to the main themes.
Roundup Approach:

William Blundell: The Art And Craft of Feature Writing

Welcome to the feature lab. In this series of installments, I’ll be quoting from William Blundel’s classic “The Art and Craft of Feature Writing.”

First I’ll summarise chapters, then discuss key points.

Chapter 1: Raw Materials

* Reporters need an organised system of files to systematize ideas and keep a steady flow of ideas on the production line. This should include specialised reading off-the-beaten track: that’s reporter’s job, shedding light on what’s new.

* Sources: high, low, middle. The middle sources ie the rising manager in the organization are often the best sources. The CEO is too high, the janitor is too low, (often).

Extrapolation

1. What is the main cause of this development ?
2. What is the common driving force likely to create similar effects in other places on people and organizations ?

Synthesis

The reporter adept at synthesis sees and exploits the thread unifying several developments that to others appear unrelated. He assembles a junkpile of spare parts to create promising story ideas.

* Stays alert to threads of commonality.

This could mean:

– Common location
– Common cause
– Common class of people.

Localization

Some people think too big going for the ‘big picture’ canvas – the ‘view from 10,000 feet’. Often its better to go for the small picture.

The small vignette that tells the bigger story. Think the Babushka queing up to buy bread after the economic reforms in Russia. Ok, maybe not the Babushka.

Projection

Maybe the most useful of story development tools:

1. Central Development: main event, something begins to happen
2. Impacts: it begins to affect, things, people, places, institutions.
3. Countermoves: people struggle to contain the impact of whatever it is.

Need to bear in mind between juvenile and the mature story.

Viewpoint Switching

Think of a story with varying topography, landscape. Viewpoint switching means running from the mountain top to the trenches.

What Readers Like

Ideas with action in them.

1. Dogs
2. People/Actors
3. Facts.
4. People/Observers.