By Michael Miner
I’d called for his reaction to an anguished memo someone had posted in the Sun-Times newsroom. Something about the ceaseless coming and going of jet planes must encourage melancholic introspection, for what I got was half an hour on the state of contemporary journalism.
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“Of course we realize we’re paid to work, not to joke, gossip or be particularly friendly,” she continued. “But those qualities are part of any creative product, and when they’re missing for long periods, readers are smart enough to pick up on the joyless stories that are one result.”
Maples said she’d taken a “straw poll,” asking her colleagues to name one thing they’d like to change about their working conditions or one thing they “absolutely can’t stand” about their jobs.
A Sun-Times reporter I know who endorses everything in the memo says Maples, who had no wish to discuss it with me, is out there by her lonesome–the fear of retribution is simply too great for sympathizers to step forward. Reinforcing everyone’s apprehensions, night-side reporter David Southwell, a popular figure in the newsroom for both his writing gift and his goofily assertive personality, was called in on his day off last Sunday and fired by managing editor Joycelyn Winnecke. The same reporter I’d spoken to said it was more natural for the paper to build a case for canning Southwell than to look for a way to make the most of his talents.
Jimenez never expected to leave newspapers, and he doesn’t think he would have if the business had stayed what it was. “The fact is, journalism is not a business,” he said. “Publishing is a business. Journalism is not about profit and loss. It’s not about demographics. Its heart and soul is news, information, and a happy story once in a while. Publishing, on the other hand, is about how many pages, it’s about advertising contracts. Journalism has become lost inside this publishing machine. News has become a commodity, and we’re just commodity brokers, pretty fungible among ourselves.”
John White would, I replied.
