This explains a lot in the issues I've been seeing with the Buffalo News. There are several long-standing issues. The 'news' sections are peppered with opinion pieces masquerading as 'analysis'. The important local news is generally confined to B5, while the majority of the A section is regurgitations from the New York Times.
And more and more we are finding stories that appear to be half written. The story will mention that one person or group says something happened; no indication is made that there was any investigation into whether it actually happened as they said, or what the other group's perspective is on it. Then there are the "This group says this about this plan" without any indication as to whether that group has any expertise/influence/competence, etc. And while B5 may contain the only place around here that seems to report on most of the murders, half the time there is not even a victim's name, and there is never any follow-up. Those people deserve better.
We still get the Wall Street Journal in print, due to their high quality reporting and strict segregation of news and opinion sections. We cancelled the Buffalo News print when they started charge $1k per year for paper, but kept the digital partly for your excellent reporting. Now that we can get more of your reporting on this for cheaper, and the other news parts are clearly not getting any less useless, I doubt we will keep the digital much longer.
Your observations line up with mine of the decline in the print product. That's partly because of hurried editing windows that force overworked copy editors to cut fast. In ye olden days of the Buffalo News copy desk, which I joined as an intern in 1987, Night Copy Editor Milt Joffe dished out stories via Coyote, the dedicated text terminals of the time. Eight skilled editors arranged around a horseshoe-shaped desk (the "rim"), ready to catch stories, which they headlined, compacted to order when necessary, and relayed back to Joffe ("slot"). Copy editors confirmed addresses, called phone numbers before they were published, and independently verified unusual names. That was for the local stories. Everything else had its own crew, eventually funneled through the night desk for a final second read. Today's Buffalo News has three or four people at a time responsible for the entire situation. Yelling at News employees for what's happened makes as much sense as dressing down the Amtrak conductor for the train to Albany stopping for no discernable reason.
On the one hand, I want to continue subscribing to the News to support the few people trying to make it work. I can even sympathize somewhat with those in charge. Newspapers cost a lot of money, and people are nearly always the biggest expense in any organization. With so many young people completely unwilling to pay for news and instead getting it from TickTock, the financial numbers have to be nightmarish.
At the same time, to build upon the Amtrak analogy, if Amtrak stops being reliable we just stop using Amtrak; our time and resources are limited, and are not to be spent on the ineffective.
I hope this substack is successful enough to show that there are people in Buffalo willing to pay for quality reporting. That example might inspire someone else to do something similar with other news local reporting.
As a side note, your story about how things used to run is absolutely fascinating. I would love to read more about the practical aspects of putting together a newspaper. If someone wrote that, I would definitely read it.
That’s interesting. I’ve shied away from tales about How Things Used to Be in News because it seemed a bit too woe-is-me. However, if it could help people understand what’s going on in the news industry, that could be reason enough. What questions do you have that I could address?
What I would love to read is layman's guide of how the reporters get stories - how do they hear about them/ how do they know what to pursue. Is there a central control that sends them out, are they randomly canvassing, are they relying on contacts built up over years, or is it a combination?
For one outside the news business, the very idea of being able to take a large geographic area and figure out what's going on seems daunting. It feels like a person could write a book on the subject. It wouldn't surprise me if someone already has. If not, someone should.
As far as The Buffalo News goes, the running of an antisemetic cartoon was the last straw for us. We cancelled our subscription and won't return for anything short of complete editorial staff termination and a serious reinvestment in news staff. I don't see that happening.
What you're doing here is a shining beacon of what reporting can and should be. Let others take note.
So excited for this new evolution of your work!!
Congratulations my friend.... wishing you delicious adventures!
So much more you can say here now
So excited for you and this new journey!
This explains a lot in the issues I've been seeing with the Buffalo News. There are several long-standing issues. The 'news' sections are peppered with opinion pieces masquerading as 'analysis'. The important local news is generally confined to B5, while the majority of the A section is regurgitations from the New York Times.
And more and more we are finding stories that appear to be half written. The story will mention that one person or group says something happened; no indication is made that there was any investigation into whether it actually happened as they said, or what the other group's perspective is on it. Then there are the "This group says this about this plan" without any indication as to whether that group has any expertise/influence/competence, etc. And while B5 may contain the only place around here that seems to report on most of the murders, half the time there is not even a victim's name, and there is never any follow-up. Those people deserve better.
We still get the Wall Street Journal in print, due to their high quality reporting and strict segregation of news and opinion sections. We cancelled the Buffalo News print when they started charge $1k per year for paper, but kept the digital partly for your excellent reporting. Now that we can get more of your reporting on this for cheaper, and the other news parts are clearly not getting any less useless, I doubt we will keep the digital much longer.
Your observations line up with mine of the decline in the print product. That's partly because of hurried editing windows that force overworked copy editors to cut fast. In ye olden days of the Buffalo News copy desk, which I joined as an intern in 1987, Night Copy Editor Milt Joffe dished out stories via Coyote, the dedicated text terminals of the time. Eight skilled editors arranged around a horseshoe-shaped desk (the "rim"), ready to catch stories, which they headlined, compacted to order when necessary, and relayed back to Joffe ("slot"). Copy editors confirmed addresses, called phone numbers before they were published, and independently verified unusual names. That was for the local stories. Everything else had its own crew, eventually funneled through the night desk for a final second read. Today's Buffalo News has three or four people at a time responsible for the entire situation. Yelling at News employees for what's happened makes as much sense as dressing down the Amtrak conductor for the train to Albany stopping for no discernable reason.
Hence the conundrum.
On the one hand, I want to continue subscribing to the News to support the few people trying to make it work. I can even sympathize somewhat with those in charge. Newspapers cost a lot of money, and people are nearly always the biggest expense in any organization. With so many young people completely unwilling to pay for news and instead getting it from TickTock, the financial numbers have to be nightmarish.
At the same time, to build upon the Amtrak analogy, if Amtrak stops being reliable we just stop using Amtrak; our time and resources are limited, and are not to be spent on the ineffective.
I hope this substack is successful enough to show that there are people in Buffalo willing to pay for quality reporting. That example might inspire someone else to do something similar with other news local reporting.
As a side note, your story about how things used to run is absolutely fascinating. I would love to read more about the practical aspects of putting together a newspaper. If someone wrote that, I would definitely read it.
That’s interesting. I’ve shied away from tales about How Things Used to Be in News because it seemed a bit too woe-is-me. However, if it could help people understand what’s going on in the news industry, that could be reason enough. What questions do you have that I could address?
What I would love to read is layman's guide of how the reporters get stories - how do they hear about them/ how do they know what to pursue. Is there a central control that sends them out, are they randomly canvassing, are they relying on contacts built up over years, or is it a combination?
For one outside the news business, the very idea of being able to take a large geographic area and figure out what's going on seems daunting. It feels like a person could write a book on the subject. It wouldn't surprise me if someone already has. If not, someone should.
As far as The Buffalo News goes, the running of an antisemetic cartoon was the last straw for us. We cancelled our subscription and won't return for anything short of complete editorial staff termination and a serious reinvestment in news staff. I don't see that happening.
What you're doing here is a shining beacon of what reporting can and should be. Let others take note.