Rare, Collectible, & Otherwise

Tag: Tulsa World

Wow. World. End of the locals.

Newspapers are in trouble everywhere, and I knew there had been changes at the Tulsa paper, but – Wow… a sale of the Tulsa World surprised me. According to the Associated Press:

Billionaire Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway said Monday that it is buying the Tulsa World, bringing its newspaper unit to 28 small- or medium-sized dailies.
The privately held Tulsa newspaper has a daily circulation of 95,000. The sale was reported Monday by the Tulsa World and Berkshire’s Omaha World-Herald, whose executives oversee the company’s newspapers.
Terms of the deal, which is expected to close in March, weren’t disclosed.
Terry Kroeger, who runs Berkshire’s newspapers, said the Tulsa paper will be a great fit. “The Tulsa World is a special newspaper in an outstanding market and we are honored to have the opportunity to own it,” Kroeger said in a statement.

It doesn’t mean the end of the newspaper, just the locally-owned part of it. I guess I admired the media holdouts who were still running their own shows.

The end of an era.

Hark! What News of the World?

There are some of us who still like to hold the newspaper in our hands and hear the rattling of the paper while turning the pages. We call ourselves dinosaurs and laugh about it, but it is painful, too.

It is hard for us to understand how others can get by without the experience.

Coffee drinkers savor their cup in the morning, holding it in the palms of both hands while inhaling the wafting aroma. “Best part of waking up,” said Maxwell Coffee, a notable expert.

Where once was respect for the bean beverage, there is now a reverence. It has not yet become passé to linger over the new offerings at the cup o’ Joe diners like Starbucks. Presumably, there is still a morning thrill to order and swoon over a double-latte frappe mocha half-caf.

Newspapers have lost that drifting, dreamy morning scent. Here’s what happened.

First, consider the content: Once the bible of the non-theological literate and filled with news and opinion from around the world, the newspaper became – at some point – a vehicle for the delivery of household hints and ads. Gilbert’s Audiology & Hearing Aid Center Inc. has an advertisement positioned on the front page of Monday’s Tulsa World.

The front page was once the heralded glory-spot for journalistic pride. Landing a story on the front page was at the heart of every black and white movie with even the slightest connection to newspapers. And there used to be a lot of those.

I opened the paper this morning to the headline, “Rabbit rescuers,” and thought, Is this what it has come to? On closer examination, it was the headline for the ‘Scene’ section of the paper.

My first real job was with the McAlester Democrat, an upstart newspaper that went daily to challenge the tenured New-Capital. It was a morning paper, and those of us who made our way to work on bicycles were required to clock-in early to arrange the sections of the day’s edition. There were always at least a couple of separate pieces, classifieds and sports and such, which we inserted inside the front page section. We called it ‘inserting.’ (For a language-based enterprise, we were not that enterprising as to job descriptions.)

The idea of having the section of the paper carrying the banner headline “Rabbit rescuers” as the outside, front page, would have been laughed from the building. Nothing against rabbits or rescuers, it’s just not front-page news. That’s how my paper arrived.

Alas, the pride is gone. The newspaper plops down on the porch with some pieces upside down and backwards. The front page isn’t in front anymore. The world has turned upside down.

The Tulsa World, too.

Weather it is Important or not…

Everyone who has come in the shop today has commented on tomorrow’s weather. We called that “Top of Mind” back when I was in radio, a phrase to indicate the populist thinking of the moment, that thing that should be the primary focus of our programming.

The Tulsa World buried the weather story in this morning’s edition. Page 10. Even there, the headline doesn’t read “Winter Storm Due,” or “Snowy Weather Ahead.” They pin it directly on the originators of the forecast: “Forecasters Warn of Snow.” You see, the SNOW isn’t the news in the opinion of the World, only that some have issued a warning.

It is another example of the disrespect the local newspaper has for the electronic media in general. The sports page is the most obvious daily reminder of the bias. The local sportswriters seem to search for opportunities to take stabs at announcers and their employers, although the most vicious of the attacks are done anonymously (The Picker).

Not every newspaper takes such a position. Some have regular media columns that treat the broadcast medium as entertainment, (rightly or not) to be reviewed – thumbs up or thumbs down – like a movie. Others offer schedules of events to be broadcast, of a local nature. If the Tulsa World touches on such coverage, it is so infrequent as to be invisible.

The argument that they are reporting only the news, and not prognostications, will not hold water. In the arenas of politics and the economy, stories are published all too often that report trends, surveys, and other gossip – as a prediction of an outcome. It’s simply political weather forecasting, and pans out just as often as not.

What is it that is crippling the newspapers of the United States? Why are they increasingly cutting staff, reducing local content, and – in the most dramatic cases – going out of business completely?

My own guess (they never call and ask my opinion…) is that the old school journalistic paradigm of telling people “what they need to know,” is no longer valid. It is a business model synonymous with classroom teaching. In an age of diverse educational and entertainment opportunities, some prefer a delicatessen approach to information. We can select the items most palatable to our tastes and pass on the rest.

In the Tulsa World deli, cheeseburgers and fries are at the back of the store, hidden behind the brussels sprouts and broccoli. Even though the burgers and fries outsell the vegetables, we’re expected to first chew through what is good for us to get at the stuff on everyone’s mind.