By Joel Thurtell
Let’s say you’re a pinko, left-wing think tank.
Or, hey, maybe you’re a bunch of fascists on the right.
For the sake of this lecture in Joel’s J School, it doesn’t matter how you’re aligned on the political spectrum.
There are certain Immutable Laws of Journalism which, like Laws of Physics, apply to everyone regardless of creed, gender or politics.
But there are also people who think they can set aside those Laws. They are the Managers of the nonprofit think tanks I mentioned. They will not really dodge the Eternal Verities, of course. They will only try to make the rest of us believe they’ve dodged them.
So you’re a left- or right-wing think tank. Why not the center? Because Moderates are easy-going and don’t think the system needs changing. Whereas, people on the left or right think things are screwed up and need radical improvement.
Okay, again, you’re a Liberal or Conservative think tank and you’re appalled at the way media cover just about everything from art to real estate to government. Why, in some states, you realize, almost all newspapers are controlled by one or two companies. If you’re looking at things from the right, you realize that the monopolistic media pump out a left-liberal stream of biases. If you’re looking from the left, the media run with the thoughts and prejudices of the capitalists who dominate all business and control government.
Something must be Done. Citizens must be armed with Better, Higher Truths. Aha! The solution is to have your own newspaper. This way, the masses can be informed of Eternal Truths as a counterweight to the mainstream media.
But here we run against one of those Immutable Laws of Journalism: It costs money to own a newspaper. Real money. Why, you need printing presses to reproduce your counter-capitalistic or counter-leftist ideas. You need trucks to deliver your papers to vending machines, newstands, coffee shops and residential driveways. And most expensive of all, you need human beings to help you work the presses, drive the trucks, and find and write the left- or right-wing blather you want to reveal to the People.
Immutable Law Number Two for the upstart newspaper publisher: You do not want to spend lots of money. Not necessarily because you don’t have lots of money. But upstart publishers operate according to the same rules that govern conventional publishers.
All publishers follow Immutable Law of Journalism Number Three: They are cheap.
But today it doesn’t matter. We live in an Enlightened Age with lots of New Technology. It is possible to publish a newspaper today without printing presses or trucks. We don’t need to buy all the equipment. We don’t need to hire all those people to run the equipment. All we need is a server and access to the Internet.
Oh yes, come to think of it, we do need some human beings. They will be the reporters and writers and editors who create the material we publish on our virtual newspaper. And, of course, there will be some Bosses.
Question: Do we have to pay the writers and editors?
Go back to Immutable Law of Journalism Number Three, silly. Of course, you don’t have to pay your writers.
But wait a minute — we’re LIBERALS here.
Or no, we’re CONSERVATIVES.
Either way, it’s one thing to be cheap. But we wouldn’t want people to THINK we’re cheap, would we? Liberals are, well, Liberal. Conservatives are Compassionate.
So we care. We will deviate from Law Number Three and pay our employees.
But we don’t care that much, so we will not pay them much. We will not pay them enough to live on, because the fact is that although we are LIBERALS or CONSERVATIVES, we still are human beings and despite what we may tell you, we think like grubby old-style newspaper owners.
Now, how do we get Journalists to write for nothing or at best starvation wages?
That’s where the New Journalism Checklist comes in handy.
We will have to train our New Journalists to think they can work for little or no pay. It is called Subjugation of the Newsroom, and it is made oh so much easier given that our reporters will not see each other and thus will not bond socially or psychologically with one another.
First, we convince our employees — oops, our writers and editors — that they are taking part in a radical experiment that could change forever the way Journalism is practiced. They are part of a New Elite. We will call the experiment New Journalism. If anybody asks how the New Journalism differs from the old, we will tell them it’s because the Old Journalism is controlled by greedy newspaper publishers, whereas we are Independent from the lucre-based business culture. Why, we don’t even sell advertising. We are financed by our Donors, rich people and institutions whose Hearts are in the Right Place and who are dedicated to creating a New Journalism.
If someone notices that this is a tautology, that we have defined New Journalism as New Journalism, we can just laugh them off. We know that in truth there is no New Journalism other than meaningless words we have put on pixels. Besides, say what they want, we don’t need to publish anyone’s errant criticisms. Fuck them. We are Independent.
That is crucial. We are Independent because we are the publishers. Our writers are not Independent, but it is our job to entice them to believe they are.
But if we lure writers to work for zilch, they must be convinced we are Different from mainstream media. They must believe they are part of a Movement towards Purity in Journalism. If they believe they are New Journalists, they will take the next step and think they are superior to Old Journalists. That is important, because if we are going to pay nothing or next to nothing, our writers must be dedicated to us. Otherwise, they might be tempted to work for a mainstream newspaper where they pay actual salaries.
Having established a broad sense of superiority over other media and media personnel, we must find ways of gluing our poorly-paid workers to our masthead. Employee loyalty is what we are talking about, but we must not call our writers and editors “employees.” Old Journalism institutions have employees. We will have something else. Oh yes, let’s call them Fellows!
Fellows will not receive pay. They are mailed instead monthly stipends. “Fellows” implies that they are learning. From us. They are our apprentices. We speak and they listen. We will call ourselves Mentors. They will learn from us. It follows that they obey. Our New Journalism organization has something to offer them: We will teach them the ways of the wily Internet even though we don’t understand them ourselves. The Fellows won’t know that. Besides, we will provide the Fellows with Resources — Copy Editors who are not Fellows but who are paid the same wages, oops, stipend.
Something else is needed to inspire our writers. To keep them loyal and true to us, we need for them to have a sense of comradeship. The best way to achieve this is to spark rivalry and competition among our stable of Fellows. Rivalry will also help with another problem based on Immutable Law of Journalism Number Four: Thou must fill the paper unceasingly. We need many, many, many stories.
Here the checklist provides us with the Star System: We will treat writers unequally. We will bestow praise on writers who achieve certain goals, while withholding praise from those who don’t do as we say.
The goals will be numbers. How many “hits” does a story incite? Do not worry if the story is well-researched or well-written. Concern for Quality is very Old Journalism. The New Journalism is computer-driver and computers are all about counting.
Always, of course, we must stress our Independence from Old Journalistic ways of thought.
With the Star System, we will elevate the wages of one person so that he or she is paid slightly (not a lot because remember, we are cheap) more than her or his peers.
Now, we must not seem to purposefully let other Fellows know they are getting the short end of the stick, but nonetheless, it helps to promote rivalry and factionalism if we somehow leak the information that we have created a one-person elite, a Super-Fellow. Believe it or not, rivalry and factionalism actually promote company, er, institutional loyalty among employees — I mean Fellows.
If necessary, we may enhance the stratification — also known as Pecking Order — by creating two or more tiers of writers. There will be the Fellows, who will be promised a relatively long period of work-for-pay, er, Stipend (say, three months at most). And there will be some lower order who will be promised a short try-out period (maybe 30 days?) and receive none of the Training and Resources we offer our Fellows. We will call this lower order String Contractor, and we will pointedly not invite String Contractors to any of our professional-social gatherings. Thus, though the Fellows who are not Stars may feel inferior to the one or two Super-Fellows, everyone can at least laugh up their sleeves at the lowly String Contractor. Because the word “Contractor” has a venal connotation, the person who bears that title will take on a sordid identity compared to others in the Virtual Newsroom who will never meet this person anyway or otherwise give a rip about him or her.
While we are hiring inexperienced and poorly-trained Journalists as Fellows, we recommend reserving the String Contractor spot for someone who is actually a veteran news person with real savvy. Thus pilloried, the Oldster will never be able to put on airs of superiority, even if he or she is manifestly more qualified than our Fellows. The Oldster is a potential threat, because he or she will have real Knowledge that could damage the system if it were imparted to Fellows. But if Fellows believe the String Contractor is a superannuated no-account, he or she will get no traction.
Once again, loyalty and rivalry are strengthened through enlightened Liberal or Conservative policy.
Awards are another gambit on the checklist. Our New Journalism virtual publication will not actually hand out its own Awards, because that could be a drain on resources of the financial kind. But we will assure our Fellows that we will help them garner Awards doled out by other Journalistic and quasi-Journalistic groups. We are aware ourselves that Awards are really empty vessels that rarely recognize real Quality in Journalism, but Journalists New and Old rarely discover this fact because they become obsessed with winning more Awards than their fellow Fellows.
Again, the handing out of Awards promotes a sense of inequality, which keeps writers striving to best each other. Divide and Conquer is important in New Journalism, because we certainly, despite the fact that we are LIBERAL or CONSERVATIVE, would not want our Fellows to get any ideas of starting a UNION.
All of these measures — Stars, Awards, Rivalry, Pecking Order — work towards accomplishment of a primary goal linked to Law Number Four which has to do with filling our publication interminably with written material of never mind the Quality.
Here were are talking about Story Quotas. The actual number of stories we will require of our Fellows is not crucial. Perhaps 4-7 per week will work, though the number may be elevated if the need becomes greater. It is important, though, to give the impression that because the salary, er, Stipend, is based on part-time work, the stories can be very, very short and still count. Once a Fellow is acclimated to the pay structure, he or she may be requested to work longer hours than the Stipend’s puny amount would suggest is fair, and Fellows may be obliged to travel without remuneration for expenses. While this may not sit well with some of the more surly of Fellows, and likely will offend the String Contractor, the Star System and Award Promise will help offset any disloyal ideas.
It may be mentioned by some cynical writer that a Story Quota places Quantity over Quality of writing. To which the proper response would be, So what? Since when did Journalism New or Old stress Excellence over meeting the demands of Immutable Law Number Four which demands that the paper be filled, filled, filled?
If some smart-ass comes back at us with the observation that Star Systems, Rivalry, Story Quotas and Awards are all tried and true motivational techniques used by mainstream Old Journalism, the proper response would be simply a loud, raucous laugh followed by a “You don’t say!” If that doesn’t quell dissent, simply state that as New Journalists, we are Independent and thus not controlled by the kind of sordid managers who make rules for the Old Way.
We are New and Different, utterly Independent, even if we borrow the managerial tricks of our avowed enemies in Old Journalism.
So here you have a Checklist for New Journalism that should instill Discipline and Pride among our Fellows:
Stars
Awards
Quotas
Rivalry
Pecking Order
Most importantly: If our Fellows busy themselves with one-upping and down-putting their colleagues, they’ll never have the unity and solidarity Old Journalists would generate to organize and demand we up their piss-poor pay.
Drop me a line at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com
