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t.- 1 __
Perspectives
editor-in-chief
Sarah Kickler
EDITORIAL EDITOR
Mike Schmierbach
NIGHT EDITORS
Doug Irving
Eric Collins
Creswell could suffer in corporate bonds
AN EMERALD EDITORIA
As fewer companies buy more
newspapers, small communities
stand to suffer from inadequate
coverage
According to Register-Guard writer
Don Bishoffs Monday column, “A
newspaper war is about to break out
— in Creswell, of all places.”
Bishoff is right to be writing about the situa
tion soon to occur in the town of Creswell, but
he chose the wrong noun to describe it. What’s
about to break out is a slaughter, not a war.
It seems the Creswell Chronicle, a small
weekly that serves the community, is about to
face some competition. Ordinarily, there’s
nothing wrong with competition in the news
paper business or anywhere else; too many ma
jor cities are served by only one newspaper.
In this case, however, the competition threat
ens to destroy the useful role the Chronicle
plays in its community. The competition
comes from the Cottage Grove Sentinel, which
is about to start publishing a weekly of its own
to serve the Creswell community.
No problem, right? The Cottage Grove Sen
tinel hardly seems like a massive corporate be
hemoth about to run a community company
out of business. This isn’t Wal-Mart versus the
corner store, after all.
Except that behind the Sentinel lurks a con
glomeration of newspapers, all owned by Lee
Enterprises, which recently bought the paper
and several others in Oregon for $185 million,
according to Bishoff. Looking to recoup its loss
es, Lee is setting out to make money off the in
vestment. Apparently, taking control of the me
dia market in Creswell is part of the strategy.
Lee will almost certainly win. With the capi
tal of corporate ownership behind it, the Sen
tinel’s new Creswell addition will feature full
color — the Chronicle can only afford black
and white — and will be mailed free to 3,500
people each week. Creswell’s current paper
charges $18 a year and has a circulation of
roughly 1,000, Bishoff wrote.
Of course, the theory is that the readers will
choose the paper they prefer, thereby boosting
readership and keeping the better journalism
company in business. So, all the Chronicle has
to do is continue to serve the interests of its
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community, and everyone will be happy. _l
In the real world, everyone is never happy,
least of all when corporate money comes into
play. The larger, newer, full-color newspaper can claim a
larger circulation simply because it is mailed for free —
whether people read it isn’t important, as long as they re
ceive it. Accordingly, the new paper can solicit advertising
more easily. Worse, because the paper can afford to lose
money for the time being due to the capital backing it, the
Sentinel's new edition can probably charge less for adver
tising while selling more readers to advertisers.
The truth of the media business is that the quality of the
product matters little. If the best-written paper in the world
has to charge advertisers more while delivering fewer (or
even as many) readers, it will go out of business. Without
advertising dollars, publications in today’s marketplace spi
ral painfully into the ground.
Even magazines with massive circulations like Life and
The Saturday Evening Post went out of business simply be
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CHRIS HUTCHINSON/Emerald
cause they couldn’t secure advertising dollars. They could
provide readers, but not an optimal set of consumers for
companies obsessed with market shares and demographics.
Frankly, the same thing is likely to happen to the Creswell
Chronicle. We hope the better, more community-oriented
paper will win, but we suspect the prize will go to corpo
rate dollars.
It is also possible that the Sentinel’s new edition will do a
good job of meeting Creswell’s needs. The history of corpo
rate ownership, however, indicates the opposite. According
to Ben Bagdikian’s Media Monopoly, the percentage of
“hard news” contained within newspapers shrank from 13
percent to 7.5 percent between 1940 and 1980, the same pe
riod when corporate ownership began to mushroom.
This is despite the fact that, according to Bagdikian, read
ers prefer newspapers that contain more investigative re
/
porting and more hard news, rather than the
oute graphics and food sections newspapers
have been shoving down our throats for years.
Some of this can be attributed to the general
influence of advertisers, who are becoming in
creasingly picky about the content of the publi
cations in which they pitch their projects. Ac
cording to an article in the September-October
Columbia Journalism Review, advertisers are
demanding more from the magazines and
newspapers they advertise in.
Some advertisers ask that their spots not be
run close to potentially offensive or controver
sial copy. The industry has long been in the
habit of pulling ads from “objectionable” tele
vision programs, even though those programs
often grab huge ratings. Other companies have
gone so far as to request a copy of controversial
stories before they are run, according to CJR.
This influence can take place in small papers
just as easily as in large, corporate-owned
chains. However, there are unique harms that
come only from corporate ownership.
Perhaps most significant is the makeup of
the people who own a large percentage of
newspapers these days. According to
Bagdikian, the number of companies that con
trol the bulk of the national daily circulation
was 11 in 1992, down from 20 in 1983. The to
tal number of corporations accounting for the
vast majority of media revenue was just 20 in
1992.
Bagdikian and others argue, correctly, that
such control has a price. Because massive cor
porations own the media — and many of those
corporations also have other business interests
— the media tend not to report news that
makes corporations look bad.
In addition, as more and more papers are
owned by fewer and fewer companies, most
publications start to look the same. Many read
ers might not know it, but most Oregon papers
are owned by outside companies. The Oregon
ian is controlled by Newhouse, while Salem’s
Statesman-Journal is controlled by Gannett,
owners of the powerful and vapid USA Today.
When publications are owned by corpora
tions with deep pockets, they are able to fight
libel suits and send reporters to cover impor
tant stories. Unfortunately, they also lose touch
wun tne community they cover.
If history is any indication, Creswell can look
forward to a weekly that begins to cut local cov
erage and does less reporting as time passe's.
The new paper will find its owners demanding
a high return on their initial, market-seizing in
vestment. In order to turn a profit, advertiser-friendly con
tent will be added and local news will suffer.
Worse, the paper will begin to reflect the political inter
ests of its owners, covering up corporate greed and social
and environmental concerns.
Of course, history might not be any indication. There are
well run corporate newspapers. The New York Times is part
of a chain, and while it falls victim to the same content prob
lems other papers do, it still publishes a superior product.
Nevertheless, the Creswell “war” is one more instance
where corporate dollars threaten to interfere with the health
of a community and the needs of the citizens who live there.
This editorial represents the opinion of the Emerald editorial
hoard. Responses may be sent to ode@oregon.uoregon.edu
Frohnmayer wants quick fix
According to Thursday’s article in the Emerald,
University President Dave Frohnmayer is pushing
the state government to allow Oregon state col
leges to keep their tuition fees instead of deposit
ing them in the state fund from which all Oregon
state colleges draw. His reasoning is that the tu
ition money is disproportionately redistributed
among the colleges and the University of Oregon
is getting less than its fair share. I would urge the
president to be careful in making such a move and
to consider the effects it may have on other Ore
gon colleges.
I ask this because the current problem with Ore
gon higher education funding is not routed in how
tuition money is apportioned to each school, but
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
in the simple fact that there is not enough money
devoted to the entire Oregon public school system
to run its school as wished. In short, reapportion
ing tuition money is only a quick and feudal fix to
a much larger issue that demands attention if we
wish to continue quality educational institutions
in the state of Oregon.
Oregonians have consistently proven that they
do not want to pay for better schools. It began with
Measure 5 in which Oregonians were promised
lower taxes at the cost of less money for our
schools. Oregonians were promised that we
would take care of the schools in another way. A
few years later Oregonians were asked to vote on a
sales tax to help support our schools — it was de
nied. Last year, the state passed Measure 47 which
again dealt a serious blow to both schools and oth
er public institutions. However, through the gen
erosity of the people of Oregon, we do get money
from the state’s gambling institution, the Oregon
State Lottery. I thank each and every gambling ad
dict out there.
No matter how we reapportion current state
money we will not be able to pay for the quality of
education that the people of Oregon demand with
out compromising other important government
institutions such as law enforcement or roads. We
must pay for what we want. If we want better
schools, we must pay for them — there is no wav
out. J
Brent Saxton
Communication Disorders and Sciences
CORRECTION
The people in the
photo on Page 1 of
Thursday's Emerald
should have been iden
tified as Allison Jones
(right) and Ryan Hud
son (left).
LETTERS POLICY
The Oregon Daily
Emerald will attempt to
print all letters contain
ing comments on top
ics of interest to the
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serves the right to edit
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