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Who’s Watching Big Brother?
When media companies merge, says SCSU's Dunklee, local audiences are the losers
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Business New Haven
5/13/2002
By: BNH
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Jerry Dunklee has spent 37 years in the media business, including 20 years in broadcasting as a radio news director and talk-show host. For the past 17 years he has taught in the journalism department at Southern Connecticut State University. He is immediate past president and a director of the state chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ), where he is also a member of the National Ethics Committee.
What does it mean that virtually all our local media are owned by large out-of-state conglomerates?
The public might not know it, but they are getting less news serving their local community. When you are a local publisher or a local general manager at a television station, you have connections to the community. The people who don't like a particular newscast that you do, or a talk show, or a column in your paper, can call you. Your sales staff is on the street and they're talking with people in the community, business and political leaders who have strong feelings about the way the coverage is going. That acts as a wonderful feedback tool for journalists. When the owners are elsewhere - in New Jersey or Texas - or when it's owned by a major public company with stockholders with no interest in the quality of the news being produced locally, there is a disconnect in journalism in the local community.
What created this change?
There are different forces in print and broadcast media. There were a whole series of deregulatory decisions, starting with the Reagan administration in the 1980s, that have had a tremendous impact on broadcasting. There used to be a requirement in broadcast licenses that broadcasters provide some level of local news and public affairs. That was eliminated in the early 1980s. We lost over 6,000 radio news jobs nationally in the first six years of the deregulation. There are many radio stations in the country that have no news departments at all. Some have one reporter. An example would be here in New Haven at WELI [960 AM]. They used to have eight full-time reporters plus several part-time reporters. They now have one or two. They actually produce their news out of what's called 'a hub' in Providence. There is not much real, local news being covered any more. There aren't reporters on the scene at accidents and fires, and crime and politics like the Board of Aldermen simply aren't covered. That's a big loss for local communities.
How about in print?
In newspapers there is a different problem that's not related to deregulation: That is the belief in short-term profits over long-term stability. If you have a larger corporation that owns a lot of newspapers in Connecticut - weeklies or dailies - one of your reporters can do one story and share it with all of your papers. The coverage of city and state governments, not only in Connecticut but around the country, has dropped significantly. That means that the watchdog is not barking when it comes to government.
But the media business is more profitable than ever.
When I started in the business in the '60s, the average newspaper was proud of a 12- or 13-percent bottom line and many fortunes were made at that [profit] level. Now newspapers are running in the 22- to 25-percent bottom line [range]. The Journal Register Co., which owns many papers in Connecticut including the New Haven Register, reported a bottom line about 30 percent last year. Profit margins have doubled. In broadcasting they have gone from an average of 20 to 25 percent in the late '70s and early '80s to an average of 40 or 50 percent. Several years ago Channel 8 [WTNH-TV in New Haven] made 58-percent bottom line profit. I would like to suggest to other business people who might not be aware of this, whether they would like a business where they could be guaranteed a 40- to 50-percent bottom line.
Why aren't listeners staging demonstrations at local radio stations to demand more local news?
I hear a lot of complaints. I've had several wealthy people in the community ask me what it would take to buy a radio station in town and start doing local news again. When I tell them how much it would cost them, they back off the idea. People are completely saturated with all kinds of broadcasting and cable, and we also work longer hours than we did 20 years ago. People work more hours now than they did 20 years ago. We're a busy society that doesn't have much time for complaining about things until they're really desperate. People have become less engaged in politics, less informed, less concerned about what's happening around them. I'm hoping that September 11 will have some impact on that. In fact, newspaper sales are up since September 11 and the ratings of the cable news television networks are up since September 11. That's good.
Getting back to broadcast, even since the Telecom Act of 1996, isn't it still the FCC's job to make sure that the public airways are used at least in part to benefit the public interest?
Since 1934, the law has said that broadcasters should operate in the public interest, convenience and necessity.
Why doesn't that happen?
Because the FCC does not enforce its rules. Starting with the Reagan administration, they have adopted this belief in laissez faire, free-market economics, which is silly when you're talking about local news and local radio and television. It's just so stupid, that this would work in a marketplace like for local radio and television, as if we were competing nationally for a local news audience. But it's been the argument for all these years including many members of Congress who buy this argument. Of course they buy it with substantial contributions from the National Association of Broadcasters, which is one of the most effective, least public lobbies in Washington.
Are the effects of consolidation felt more deeply in smaller communities?
I think that's probably true, but I think the impact on New Haven has been significant. Whether we loved or hated the Jacksons who owned the New Haven Register for many years, at least they were a local publisher. They had a news staff of 180 or so people. Since the Ingersoll Co. and later the JRC [Trenton, N.J.-based Journal Register Co.] bought the Register, the staff has been cut dramatically and it's now at about 100 editors and reporters and photographers. That means fewer stories are getting covered and fewer are getting in the paper. That affects neighborhoods in New Haven, East Haven, Branford, etc. Towns like Wallingford are still being served by a daily like the Meriden Record Journal or the Register to some degree. In the smaller towns, there is a reduction of local news coverage. Because of cutbacks at the weeklies, there is often just one reporter who is also the chief editor who is trying to report and write all the stories for the week. These people work 60 or 70 hours a week. They're responsible for producing all the stories, doing the layout, making sure all deadlines are met. It's a huge job and it's paid very low wages. One person can simply not do all of that well. That certainly impacts the local communities.
What does it mean when local governments, especially in smaller towns, don't get scrutinized carefully, or at all, by the media?
It means no one is acting in the way the founding fathers meant the Fourth Estate to act. The press is supposed to be the watchdog of government. Particularly in local communities, there has been very little watchdog barking in the last few years. The watchdogs are under-paid and under-loved. So the local community is not served very well when their local government is not being watched. There will eventually be more corruption, more chicanery, more ability to try to get away with things, more secrecy. All of that stuff can happen when the press is not [watching].
Isn't one of the promises of technology that it would reduce economic barriers to media entry by making it affordable to lots of people to become publishers or webcasters?
There are thousands of Web sites oriented toward covering local news. There are thousands of online radio stations. The problem is that there are so many of them that nobody listens to them and reads them in significant numbers. There has been some research on this recently that there were all these predictions that people would get their news online. There are a few people doing that, but a study I read recently says the average person does not go to the Internet for local news because it's simply not available on any kind of basis other than some dead fly's opinion about what happened rather than a fair and balanced piece of journalism covering a particular event. So people are still trying to rely on their own local news media. The Internet could provide it, but it doesn't and people don't use it.
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