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James Ledbetter and Katharine Mieszkowski

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Media Morbidity Report

By Katharine Mieszkowski
Posted Monday, Aug. 9, 1999, at 1:50 PM ET

Hi Jim:

RSS

I will graciously forgive your East Coast obsessions if you will indulge me in the San Francisco media sport du jour--writing your own obituary.

You see: things have been a little morbid over the weekend in the San Francisco dailies, since Friday, when Hearst announced the purchase of the San Francisco Chronicle and put a "for sale" sign on the San Francisco Examiner. By most accounts putting the Examiner on the block is just a cynical move to assuage the concerns of the Justice Department before Hearst closes the afternoon paper and turns the city into one more one-daily town.

The Good Housekeeping et al. takeover of the Chronicle and the presumed sickness-unto-death of the Examiner has touched off an orgy of retrospectives in both papers, complete with fond remembrances of the way things were in the good old days. (Rest in peace, Herb Caen, sniff.)

In the case of the Examiner, it's weirdly uncomfortable to read its coverage, sort of like listening to an elderly relative talk obsessively about his own imminent death.

(Incidentally, Nixon is relegated to Page A2 in today's San Francisco Chronicle, while a story about "pruneburgers"--those would be your basic hamburgers with prunes on top--being tried out in California high school cafeterias gets Page 1 treatment. It's complete with quotes from a California prune-industry trade group exalting, "In our taste test, the students really liked them." You don't say? This is the other not-on-the-Web pleasure of reading the papers in the dead-tree format: seeing just how strongly the editors feel that fibrous school lunch menu innovations, as promoted by local industry, clearly rank above the 25^th anniversary of the resignation of the president among their readers' concerns.)

All this grim navel-gazing here in San Francisco (not to mention all that fiber) is enough to make a West Coast reader reach first for the New York Times on Monday morning only to discover that her own profession is in decline. Jim, I regret to inform you that magazines ain't what they use to be, according to Alex Kuczynski's "At Magazines, the Art of Stirring Debates Seems Lost." The Internet is predictably trotted out as one of the myriad of causes of the glossies' decline. Ironic for the two of us, since as magazine writers, we both cover the Web.

Overall, it's a nicely argued and sourced piece, but it makes me wonder: Is it worse to be a magazine writer if magazines have lost clout or a newspaper reporter who writes about magazines if magazines have lost clout?

It's enough to make you want to write your own obituary and go back to bed.

Navel-gazingly yours,
Katharine

P.S.: Just so you know who you're dealing with, I'll admit right now: I never read the Washington Post, although I am a fan of Media Grok.