Is the Press Release Enough?

I don’t generally like novels about the publishing business, plays about theater, or television shows about producing television shows. There are exceptions. The Dick Van Dyke Show was nominally about making a television show but The Alan Brady Show was just the MacGuffin. The show was really a showcase for the exceptional talents of the cast and about how funny ordinary human experiences can be.

I think that those are the things that writers write about when they don’t have any other ideas. The challenge isn’t in writing them. It’s in making the stories interesting to people who aren’t writers, playwrights, or in the television business. When you’re in the thick of something you may not realize that everybody doesn’t find it as fascinating as you do.

I did find this column from the Washington Post ombudsman interesting, however, for the spotlight it focused on a central problem facing professional journalism.

In the column Patrick Pexton responds to readers’ complaints that the WP didn’t cover the derecho, the line of fast-moving thunderstorms, that struck the area a week ago.

The Washington Post has long had a split personality. On the one hand the paper covers the nation’s capital, stories that have national importance. On the other hand it’s the dominant local paper for people living in Washington, DC and adjacent areas of northern Virginia and southern Maryland. Here’s the nub of the column:

The overall impression I got from readers, and from my own observations as someone who lost power for a relatively manageable 57 hours, is that The Post was okay but not great. Stories had too much officialdom, too little humanity. Coverage was not aggressive enough, and it had too little depth, breadth and creativity. It lacked verve and passion in covering what was, and is, a very big story affecting millions.

I think too few reporters were out in the neighborhoods, in their cars or on two legs, using their eyes, ears and noses to get the news from different perspectives. I didn’t see, for example, a single quote from an electric lineman.

That’s a milder restatement of what WP readers were complaining about. They were complaining that the Post was re-issuing press releases from officials. Ordinary people don’t need the Post for that any more. They can get the official story from the relevant agencies’ web pages, Facebook pages, and Twitter feeds without being filtered through a WP reporter or editor.

I think the problem is that the Post sees its competitive advantage as its official contacts and it values them too much. What is a WP reporter without official contacts? A blogger. However, he or she is a blogger with a press pass that allows him or her into places I wouldn’t be allowed. Whether I should be allowed there (or they shouldn’t) is a different question.

The line the Post should be treading is between being too adversarial and not adversarial enough with their official contacts. I don’t see that conflict playing out and I think I should. Without that tension the Post is just another outlet for official press releases.