"Unfit to Print: A Modern Media Satire" The opening of Chapter One as we move toward publication
With publication on track for October, I am working with the good folks at my longtime publisher, Crossroad Press, on some of the critical aspects of a book post-writing: editing, layout, cover design, audio, e, etc. Herewith a peek at Ch. 1.
CHAPTER ONE: Market valueOnce upon a time, I, Nick Nolan, wrote exclusivelyabout marginalized people who had little or no voice in the mainstream media.Socioeconomic and health disparities, mental health, and intellectual anddevelopmental disabilities were among my topics. My stories prompted change.Some won awards and three were Pulitzer finalists — but, more importantly, Ihelped advance the social-justice agenda as only a crusading journalist can do.
When I left hard news to become a columnist, a move Ibelieved would afford me greater power to prompt change — think Anna Quindlenand Nicholas Kristof — I was merciless when I took aim at corrupt politiciansand judges, self-serving civic leaders, misogynists, unethical corporations,climate deniers, opponents of LGBTQ+ rights, and racists and demagogueswherever they were found.
My column was always on the front page, I was nationallysyndicated, and I hosted a popular TV show. My website, Facebook, Twitter,Instagram, and YouTube accounts had hundreds of thousands of followings. Simon& Schuster published a collection of my columns and in its review, TheNew York Times proclaimed me “brilliant.” The Los Angeles Times wentfurther, calling me “a writer who eloquently frames truths. The world needsmore Nick Nolans.” Promising millions, a Netflix producer had reached out to me,wanting a pitch for a series about the newspaper business.
How long ago this all seemed the morning welearned that our newspaper, the family-owned Boston Daily Tribune, hadbeen sold.
It was August 23, 2021, the second year of the coronaviruspandemic.
By then, my social media activity was tepid.
By then, my column was buried deep inside metro/region.
By then, not even bottom-feeder agents contacted me.
By then, the January 6 insurrectionists had stuck anotherdagger into the heart of democracy — and out-of-town and hedge-fund newspaperchains that paid their executives obscene salaries and bonuses while laying offactual journalists as they ghosted and killed local papers were pushing it indeeper.
By then, my muse had forsaken me.
More correctly, the muse had been slain.
Using GoogleAnalytics, a member of our marketing staff had “proved,” as he phrased it, thatsocial-justice columns did not generate the numbers of online views andengagements needed to justify my job.
Or anyone’s job, this marketer said. What do youthink this is, socialism?
The new reality? Newspaper executives wanted clicks.
Fuck public service, unless somehow there was a Pulitzer init, which would be a marvelous come-on the shrinking sales staff could bring tocertain advertisers. Well-endowed non-profits, for example. But not cardealers, real-estate firms, floor and rug installers, hearing-aidmanufacturers, the Jitterbug cellphone company, and shyster companies promisingcures for erectile dysfunction, which remained among our biggest advertisers.
And me?
Maybe a feel-good piece every now and then that hints ofpublic service, for old times’ sake, this marketing moron said, but that’sit. Maximize your clicks. You’re no dope. You can read the tea leaves. Youstill like a paycheck, right, good buddy?
Good buddy my ass.
But I held my tongue.
As real newspapering continued to die, I knew the inside gameintimately. Not the time to shoot yourself in the foot. Definitely not the timeto proclaim Dana Priest, Seymour Hirsch, and Neil Sheehan as three of yourheroes.
So what was getting the clicks on that August 23, 2021?
Consider a few of the so-called “recommended” headlines andaccompanying stories — all from free-content providers — that were posted onour website that day,
Go Topless Day Draws Hundreds, Even a Few Men
Desperate Housewives Without Makeup, the Shocking Reality
Giant Rabbit Hops Across Wyoming, Arrives Hungry in Idaho
TexasChristian Has Proof She Walked on Water
She HidUnder the Bed to Spy on Her Husband But Instantly Regretted It
SultryCountry Star Steals Rival’s Diamond Necklace, Hides It in Her Cleavage
Man Buries42 School Buses Underground. Look When He Reveals the Inside
TheBaddest Biker Girls in the World
We Can Determine Your Education Level in 25 Questions
Does Your Cat Throw Up Often? Try This One Trick
50 Photos That Show the Wrong Side of Cruise Ships
20 Hair Shapes That Make a Woman Over 60 Look 40
20 Southern Phrases Northerners Don’t Understand
17 People Who Learned the Hard Way
And there was no escaping these abominations.
They populated the home page from top to bottom and ownedits entire right side, and they popped up inside every second or thirdparagraph of every story. Adblocking software couldn’t stop them. Rebooting andclearing the cache couldn’t stop them. Clicking on the “X” next to the dreadAdChoices button in the upper right-hand corner couldn’t stop them.
You get the picture. A pathetic fucking picture. Not what Isigned on for those many years ago, when journalists believed journalism reallycould change the world, not just line the pockets of newspaper executives andowners.
But ordered by management to get theclicks, I had “retooled my toolbox,” as the idiot marketer phrased it.
The result? I was now writing nonsense, three times a week,except for July, when I vacationed on Block Island, where I fantasized I mightlive someday as I wrote novels and screenplays.
Nonsense about socks, for example — 45 numbing inches aboutlosing socks in the washer, finding socks under sofas, socks without mates, theamazing secret life of socks. I contemplated the greater meaning of wintersunsets (OK, not bad), spring robins (also not bad), and Jell-O (shoot me now),and I explored my separation from my wife, a columnist at DigBoston, Boston’sleading website. Cue violins now, please. Or barf, your choice.
I recommend the latter.
Alliteration, adjectives, and shad become my stock in trade, and I killed no darlings (see Faulkner, King, et.al.).
If anyone needed further proof of how pathetic I’d become,it could be found in how often I wrote about the difficulty of writing columns:4.5 times a year, according to the smugly published calculation of mysoon-to-be ex-wife. Her math, sadly, was correct.
I took comfort knowing I wasn’t alone.
Our once-mighty newspaper — defender of truth, champion ofthe common man, Pulitzer Prize winner, published every day since 1823 — throughwars, pandemics, depressions, civil strife, patriotic and idiotic presidents,divided Congresses — was on the ropes, too.
Starting in the 1990s with the advent of the online era, TheTribune’s daily circulation had tanked, from an Audit Bureau-certified410,000 to less than 50,000 and still dropping. We couldn’t even stabilize ourflagship Sunday edition, which once had a circulation north of a million,despite cutting the subscription price, lowering ad rates to peanuts, andsponsoring online crossword contests with $5,000 cash prizes. Not sure if weever paid them, or just dangled that out there and followed up with excuses ormovie passes, but whatever, I digress. I do that a lot.
There were even rumors of moving to five-day-a-weekpublication, or going entirely online — or even, in a worst-case scenario thatincreasingly seemed possible, ending publication altogether, the presses aftertwo centuries silenced for good.
Had we been a two-rag town, by now we surely would havebecome another ghost paper, run by a skeleton crew working remotely from Texasor Indonesia.
But having bought and then folded TheBoston Chronicle, the only other print competition in the metro region, theTrib owned a monopoly, which meant we had a new lease on life, for a spellanyway. It meant we could hold advertisers hostage, to a degree.
It meant we still had some market value, which is why I wasnot shocked by the events of that August morning, when I arrived at work tofind a remote-broadcast trailer with Florida plates in front of our building. Asatellite dish lifted toward the sky.
The Delta variant was ravaging the U.S. that summer, but wewere in Massachusetts, which had one of the highest vaccination rates in thecountry. Nonetheless, fully vaccinated people — and that was all of our staff,to the best of my knowledge — were required to wear masks indoors, and we wereworking hybrid shifts, virtually from home on most days, with a rotatingschedule of only small numbers of us at the paper on select days of the week.
This was the first time we had been summoned to be on siteall together.
“Looks like the rumor was true,” said Destiny Carter, mybest friend. Destiny was one of the Trib’s long-time business writers and anAfrican American, one of only two people of color on our staff. The other wasphotographer Weemployed no one who was of Asian Pacific American or Native American descent.Critics who pointed to The Trib as a pillar of structural racism were right.
“You mean the rumor we were for sale?” I said.
“What else could it be?” Destiny said.
We were standing in the lobby with our good friend, reporterBud Fuller. A film crew was loading tripods and cameras into the elevator tothe fourth-floor auditorium.
“But Gordon vowed we weren’t for sale,” I said.
Just last week, in fact, publisher Randolph E. Gordon IV hadissued a written statement denying persistent rumors of a takeover.
“And two years ago he insisted we weren’t downsizing,” saidBud. “His word means shit.”
Bud was right.
Three days after his written statement, Gordon slashed thestaff by twenty-five percent, albeit through buyouts that left many of theremaining three-fourths jealous. For the record, that was the last of thebuyouts. What came next was good old-fashioned firings: a call to visit HR,where you were told you were terminated, your email and card key would bedeactivated in a half hour, and you had until then to clear your stuff out andbe off premises or security would be called.
“So, who’s the new owner?” I said.
“Must be SuperGoodMedia,” said Destiny. “It’s the only chainbased in Florida.”
My stomach churned.
“They’re worse than McClatchy or Gannett,” I said.
“And you thought downsizing was bad,” Bud said. “We need tosee Gordon.”
“Good luck,” said Destiny...
