The Printer’s Devil

A.J. Liebling, the legendary critic of newspapers, one wrote that if a rich guy truly wanted to use his money to benefit the public good, he shouldn’t use it to endow an opera house, symphony or museum.

Instead, Liebling said the greatest act of philanthrophy was to start a newspaper to challenge the existing paper.

After watching the newspaper industry over the years and the consequences of shoddy CorpsNews journalism, I’m inclined to believe he’s right,

And there is evidence that people are doing that. Oddly, the competition — at least in Kansas where I write this — appears to be happening in rural areas with downtowns that, in CorpsNews thinking, are unpromising as cash cows.

For those who might be thinking of starting your own newspapers, here’s a bit of free advice.

A few years ago, I wrote a story about two competing weeklies in a nearby county.

I called another paper in a county across the state. The publisher of that weekly had successfully challenged an established newspaper in a small county and the new paper survived.

I had asked the publisher what he had done to be a success.

“Put lots of photos in the paper,” he said.

I put that comment in my story. Perhaps it was coincidence but in later weeks, I noticed that the new weekly I had done the story on was suddenly putting in lots of photos.

And even now, several years later, the paper is still using lots of photos. You see its staffers everywhere, taking photos of everything or running photos that people bring in.

And, the original paper seems to be including more photos as well.

I have frequently grumbled on this site about the importance of the written word to the modern American newspaper. But in this case, I bow to the experience of others.