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December 1997, Vol. 8, No. 12
Tithing
Voluntarily funding research & development, training and education
RESTON, Va. -- It began innocently enough.
I was sitting in the Knight Conference Room of the American Press Institute in late October, listening to a roundtable discussion about the state of the newspaper industry at the Media Center’s Founder’s Conference.
Someone mentioned the poor quality of beginning reporters. A journalism professor commented that his department had "adjusted" its program to accommodate the fact that the incoming students didn't have the writing skills that their predecessors of just a few years back had.
A few minutes later, someone else was talking about the lack of industry commitment to training -- and then someone started talking about research and development.
I could hold my tongue no longer. Like a fourth-grader with the right answer, I waved my hand around, trying to get the attention of Media Center Director Chris Feola.
R&D? You want to talk about R&D? Nobody in this business does R&D, I said. Publishers are too cheap. They can blithely watch their suppliers go out of business from lack of industry support and then ask innocently, "Where are the new products?"
What this business needs, I said, was a tithing program: Everybody ponies up some money for research and development.
Hell, let’s throw in training and education -- both secondary and post-secondary support -- and get the industry to donate some big chunk of money.
When I finished, the group looked at me and promptly went on to another topic. Despite the ennui of the group, I later learned that this tithing idea was not only not new -- it had the blessing of one of the country’s most respected economists.
This was a real idea.
Inside, you'll find my thoughts on the concept of the newspaper business tithing itself to promote research and development, training and education. I'm proposing that newspapers voluntarily donate one percent of annual net revenues, split evenly among the three areas. This will be an investment of about $150 million in each area -- annually.
And investment it is. There’s no question that with the crisis we are now seeing -- a lack of innovation in systems, a troubling lack of understanding on the part of our co-workers on how systems operate, and ill-prepared entry-level workers (those interested in newspapers are becoming more scarce) -- there needs to be a method for saving ourselves.
One percent is all I ask.
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Also inside is our take on the overall Media Center Founder’s Conference.
Correspondent Marion J. Love was both a journalist and a participant (there was a large Cole Group contingent present, including Love, Correspondent L. Carol Christopher, Consultant Garrett Queen and myself -- not to mention Feola), and gives us a thorough look at the two-day session.
That’s followed by Senior Editor Pete Wetmore’s update on the Year 2000 problem. Wetmore finds that more and more newspapers are becoming focused on the issues of making certain that all their computers will work on Jan. 1, 2000.
We wrap up with my look at the debate between off-the-shelf and proprietary pagination systems. Though there are strong opinions for either direction, newspapers on the cusp of making such decisions will find enlightening the thoughts of those I interviewed.
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Holiday cheer desk: It’s been a good year for The Cole Group -- we acquired the newsletter NewsInc., and moved our HQ to more spacious digs.
We hope you've had a good year, too.
We like to remind people just about now that we started The Cole Papers around this time in 1989. It seems like just eight years ago, but who’s counting?
Thank you for doing business with us. Here’s to a great ’98.
-- David M. Cole
See also Hellbox.
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