Interviews with the Invisible: The Newspaper Reporter

Today I interview Cliff McCollum, the former head of the Auburn College Democrats and all around sharp guy who is now a part of the ultimate shrinking, invisible profession: he’s a newspaper reporter. I sat down to talk with him about the state of newspapers, if reality TV’s “Anybody can be a star” mentality has spilled over into the tea party, if there really is a liberal media, and what, if anything, can be done to turn Alabama Democrat again.

1. I haven’t actually seen you since Auburn won the National Championship, thank you for flexing your mob ties to bring Cam Newton to Auburn…I mean…”supporting the team”

Cliff: My associates in New Jersey were more than happy to be of … ahem … assistance during our time of need.

 2. The focus of the interview is going to be the media. What stories would it surprise people to know sell more than others? Obviously, if you put the whispers about Cam Newton’s reputation in the news, people will buy it. And if you put Auburn winning the national championship, people will buy it. Which sells better: negative stories or positive stories? Also, celebrity driven scandals or actual news? I think I already know the answer to that second question

Cliff: Well, I speak for a small weekly community newspaper, so my answers may vary from my brethren and sistren in the rest of the journalism community. At our paper, positive, cheery stories about hometown folks sell well. People like to see their kids and their neighbors in the paper. At the city council meeting every two weeks, I take pictures of the kids saying the Pledge because that’s what our readers want to see, not the council members sitting behind their desk. I don’t work at an average paper, though. We’re kind of the Pollyanna Press.

3. Right. However, the trend has been that major newspapers are in serious trouble, with more local newspapers not seeing that big of a dent in the readership. Is it because the national newspapers do more investigative and serious journalism, while the local newspapers focus more on people they know? Has the navel gazing culture of blogging and reality television invaded even the way we process news?

Cliff: Community newspapers will continue to be strong as long as there is a strong, family-centered community around them. I won’t say it’s the navel-gazing blogging culture that causes that because local papers have done well for a long time. It gives people something to clip out and put in an album or an old cigar box. By telling these sometimes benign family stories, you get to become a de facto part of that family’s history. It’s always a big compliment to have folks come by the office to get extra copies because of an article I wrote about their uncle or child. They’re always so appreciative that we (the paper) took an interest. That’s what kills me. The larger papers (here, the OA News) don’t have the time or the resources to be real community newspapers because the corporate owners want their focus elsewhere. We’re owned by local folks, so we keep our focus solely local. The only way a story on President Obama is going to be in my paper is if he comes to Opelika.

4. You follow pop culture as I do and the largest trend in entertainment is the “anybody can be a star” mentality of reality television and albums from American Idol finalists. Has part of that seeped into news culture where Glenn Beck seems…let’s say unqualified to really be talking about the news for an hour a day. It strikes me that even political candidates have caught this “nobody is somebody” bug in the form of the Tea Party and Sarah Palin, who won’t let not knowing anything stop her from becoming President.

Cliff: Reality TV and its spawn are truly horrifying. I was watching “Network” the other day and the imagined sensational shows they discussed adding to the air would already be part of a primetime lineup now. Some of their suggestions were tame. Paddy Chayefsky is spinning in his grave. As for Palin/Beck …There needs to be a firm line drawn between news and commentary.  No 24-news network, no matter what they say, really has news these days. They may employ a few token journalists, but, y and large, your on-air personalities are personalities and commentators, not true journalists. And I have to take one more ounce of Sarah Palin’s home-spun folksiness, I may Greg Louganis off the top of Haley Center. That woman exists solely to promote Sarah Palin.

5. Does the sensationalism of network news bother you? It seems to me there are two camps on TV: The Nightly News with the big three networks where they almost go out of their way NOT to cover some news that could be deemed off putting to some people, and then the cable news which filled that void by stepping right into controversy at any opportunity.

Cliff: Well, with the Internet becoming a major news source for almost anyone, I think the networks are just trying to stay relevant and have some sort of content on the air. Your evening news broadcasts are for your older citizens, the folks who grew up with Cronkite and Brinkley. As for CNN, Fox, MSNBC … etc. … when you are on the air 24 hours a day, you have to find a way to fill that space, so we get bombarded with an issue and have to sit through endless interpretations and views from people who would barely be considered experts in their own homes much more to a credible reviewing body. News isn’t just news any more. News has to turn a profit, so we have to find some way to sell the news. A little scandal, a little intrigue, makes for more bin sales and subscriptions.

6. That’s a good point to hit on. The network news is now expected to turn a profit where it once wasn’t during the Edward R. Murrow days. Some nights I could swear Brian Williams could be replaced with a cat dancing on YouTube for all the attention he pays to fluff. A lot of that is to attract viewers but also to avoid telling some of the real stories that might damage a sponsor. Can the nightly news really be expected to honestly portray a conversation about healthcare if a health insurance company owns a huge chunk of ad time when they cut to a commercial?
Cliff: Not with corporate media ownership at the rate it is now. These companies are so tied to one another that you can’t fully expect any sort of independence with regards to accurate and unbiased reporting. The parent company can and will step in to protect the bottom line. That’s why our public media companies are so important. We need a strong PBS and NPR to at least have some media out there that is, hopefully, the people’s media. Of course, I get most of my news from the BBC, so … maybe I’m not allowed to argue.

7. [Laughter] One example I can think of is when the media was really playing up Toyota’s troubles last year with faulty brake pads, and in my opinion exaggerating the danger. Then during a commercial break they cut to GM–who were desperately trying to launch a comeback–commercials. The government had given GM a bailout, clearly had a lot riding on GM’s success, and then started congressional investigations into Toyota’s business dealings in a way they don’t with similar company incompetence. Of course, the media didn’t cover that either. They harp on Faux News and MSNBC for being biased, but isn’t omitting stuff another form of bias?

Cliff: Omission is and always will be a sin. And I say that in my capacity as a licensed and ordained minister. With today’s “news” sources, it’s almost better to pay attention to what they aren’t talking about. That’s where the real stories are. Of course, even if you look for these stories, there’s no guarantee they’ll go anywhere, especially if you’re a reporter working for one of those media conglomerates.

8. That’s what is so scary about the downfall of national newspapers. If you really look back newspapers have been the ones breaking most of the stories and doing most of the investigative journalism. Newspapers actually find the company dumping toxic chemicals into your drinking water. TV just talks about it after it’s happened. What will we do without newspapers one day?

Cliff: And the companies realized this, so buying up local TV stations and newspapers became a priority. Case in point, Media General, Media General controls the O-A News and WRBL (the CBS affiliate in Columbus). That’s the major newspaper for this area, and one of the only local TV stations that consistently covers east Alabama well. It isn’t a complete monopoly of the media, but it does make you wonder how much will get reported by those outlets if the parent doesn’t like it. Hell, the OA seldom has non-AP stories on the front. In fact, they get to suggest what they want on their front page and the designers in Hickory, NC, who put their pages together get to decide what stays and goes. Now, how on Earth are folks in Hickory going to decide what the people in Opelika need to know and read? Idiocy.

9. As you mentioned, media conglomerates have been buying up newspapers left and right. If The New York Times (probably the most widely read liberal organ in the country) has any more money troubles, Rupert Murdoch (not exactly Noam Chomsky) has offered to buy it, which would most likely water down the Times to an idiotic level. Murdoch specifically owns more than one tenth of the nation’s media if you count the huge Fox empire which includes Fox, Faux News, Fox Sports, newspapers galore, Twentieth Century Fox the film studio, Fox Searchlight, etc. How dangerous is that for one man to control so much of the worldwide media?

Cliff: If it were one man who was committed to providing excellent, thought-provoking stories, I might be OK with it. Actually, no, I wouldn’t be. Giving that much power and influence to one company, or one person in charge of said company, has been and will always be dangerous. When conglomerates control a majority of the media in almost every market of this country, they can directly affect the election of almost the entire House and every Senator. I think the worst part is that we may come to rely on small locally owned papers to start to try and fight back, but we don’t have the resources they do. And, if we get good enough and start to make a dent, we’ll generally get bought up and broken apart. Money is power, and they’ve got it. Well, and now SCOTUS has said money is speech … we’re all screwed.

10. Absolutely. I hate to keep harping on Faux News (actually, no I don’t) but repeated claims keep surfacing that much of what they’re reporting isn’t factually true and they do little to no background checks on what runs. Their horseshit claim is that pundits aren’t “hard news” guys but the hard news guys seem to get an awful lot wrong as well.

Cliff: Fact-checking is one of those things that seems to have gone the way of the milkman and the evening paper. Let’s rush and get this story to print so we can be the first to get it out there. If it isn’t right, we’ll run a correction. Nevermind that the correction will be buried somewhere where no one will find it. Corrections used to be an indelible mark on a journalist. Now, they’re becoming an almost daily occurrence for a lot of folks. And Fox isn’t news. It’s commentary. Whole different ballgame. As long as your preface a statement with “I believe” or “I think” in commentary, it can be couched as your views and perfectly admissible to run. That’s why I loved opinions writing. You can say whatever you want to say as long as you couch it the right way. Just use those lovely little buzzwords that will keep you from getting sued, and everything is golden.

11. They run like no other television news outfit in history. If a blogger completely fabricates a story about Obama personally raping your grandmother before he forces her to buy socialized medicine, a larger blogger like Matt Drudge will pick it up, Sarah Palin’s twitter feed will run it, Glenn Beck will be talking about it by the end of the week. Faux News will run an apology at 3:45 on a Sunday morning after weather maps, and Rush Limbaugh will denounce the apology and back up the “facts” in the original blog.

Cliff: You have to admire their organization. For all the hemming and hawing about the “liberal media,” I really wonder how much power liberals really have. If we do control the media, it doesn’t seem like we do a good job of it. Maybe we need to hire some conservative news directors and producers, get some of that GOP organizational skill.

12. I have always said that. The Democrats are vastly superior at actually governing and doing their jobs, but Republicans stomp us on campaigning and strategy. The Democrats always hit the same wall: trying to talk rationally to irrationally people. I looked up this facebook group The Coffee Party the other day and it’s description was some sleepy NPR shit about “restoring level headedness and reason to the debate” which made me just think liberals will never get what sells. So right now I’d like to start a “fact based story” that Mitt Romney is funneling money to Mexican drug cartels to help them claim Mexico for Mormonism, you can run it in the newspaper, and then MSNBC…well, they’ll do one fact check and throw it out.

Cliff: Garrison Keillor. He’s the man we need. Somewhere within that midwestern folksy radio man’s head are the skills we need. He just chooses to occupy his thoughts on corny jokes and radio sketches about English majors. Great pity, really. Because the Democratic Party is so inclusive, it’s hard to get all wings of the party to come together on any issue. The Republicans have the battle between the social conservatives and the economic conservatives. There are too many liberal groups to even begin to think of the in-fighting and insanity that accompanies a DNC meeting. Because the Democratic Party tries to encompass any and all, coming to a consensus and having a single, unified voice can prove quite difficult, if not impossible.

13. I agree completely, which brings up how poorly the Democrats did in the 2010 election nationwide, but in Alabama…let’s just say bloodbath is no exaggeration. When so many popular incumbent Democrats get hammered so badly, is there any doubt people are reacting to Obama? He was the ghost on the Alabama ballot when an enormous chunk of voters pulled a straight Republican ticket leaving us with horribly unqualified politicians like Kay Ivey and Young Boozer (I’m not kidding to non-Alabama readers, a novelty candidate is our new state treasurer because he ran as a Republican). And how can we turn it around short of seceding from the union again?

Cliff: We need better candidates, pure and simple. The Obama Effect had a toll, but, by and large, the Democratic bench in Alabama is a fairly unimpressive lot. We have some great Dems here, but the folks who need to run won’t run. I’d love to see Chairman Turnham run, but I don’t think he’d do it again. I split ticket this year myself. We fielded some phenomenally weak candidates, folks I just couldn’t support, so I didn’t, wrote in 3 names for various offices. Spence McCracken, winningest coach in Opelika history, got a vote for Congress. Acutally, he got several. I had a small campaign for him. This was before my promotion to City Reporter, back when I could be Private Citizen Cliff Now, I don’t touch politics in the paper, save an occasional piece on a social issue in my column. I don’t touch politics. Can’t. My biases are well-known in the community. When you get kicked off the Holiday Tree Lighting Committee for being a Dem and they put it on the front page of the paper, folks tend to remember.

14. [Laughter] Lastly, perhaps the reasons we can’t get better candidates is that Democrats do face a sort of discrimination in Alabama. Liberal seems to be a dirty word, and a lot of good people I know are are afraid to “out” themselves. Anything we could do to make them more comfortable?

Cliff: Well, hell, Brody, even I call myself a “left-leaning moderate.” A label that still brands me the “Ted Kennedy of Opelika.” Liberal took on a bad taste here, I think, with civil rights and the anti-war movement. There’s a strong traditionalist bent here in the South, and liberalism and tradition don’t tend to play well together. Liberal became the hippies out in California and uppity New Yorkers who all go to therapists instead of church. Liberal came in and changed what we did and how we did it, and we don’t take kindly to change round these parts. I don’t know that liberal can be brought back down here. We get some mileage with “progressive.” It seems to somewhat work, so we’ll flog it to death. I don’t think moderate should be a bad word. We need to do better at being that big tent party here in the South, courting our faith-based Dems. They may be more socially conservative, but they’ll tend to back the economics. Blue Dogs used to be the heart of the party (well, Yellow Dogs here in Alabama), but now they’re a dying breed. I don’t know who the next generation of Southern Dem leaders is going to be. The good ones have all left. Maybe they’ll come back. But, I certainly don’t blame them for leaving.

End Note: This is a link to Cliff’s blog where you can find more sharp insights http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fthecliffrules.blogspot.com%2F&h=f035bHWGmdF3c2S53xCNkbcEXwg