News that the Houston Chronicle has decided to leave their offices downtown in favor of the old Houston Post building at the 59/610 interchange has led to some pretty funny material from chron.commenters. Sure there are a lot of quips about "adding a state-of-the-art journalism department" and possibly changing the leadership and rightfully so. Today's Chron.com more closely resembles a teen-entertainment site than one dedicated to hard news. On the rare occasion they do involve themselves in journalism their reporting is more secretarial, rather than investigative, in nature.
Leaving their Downtown offices feels a bit like two things: 1. This is the Chronicle officially announcing that they are no longer willing to act as the hub of Houston media and 2. That their calls for higher property taxes in Houston have started to bite in the manner of the law of unintended consequences.
It's been noticed, for some time now, that Chron.com is more interested in publishing click-bait than they are publishing actual news Houstonians can use and, on the rare occasion they do publish something interesting, it's hidden behind a pay-wall suggesting that they wish to limit the number of people who view it. This is odd behavior for a publication that claims to be a "news reporting" organization. Not so odd for a publication that is actually a "news gathering" organization with very little old-fashioned journalism taking place.
The thing is, there are still a handful of competent, professional reporters hanging around the Chronicle offices but they're typically buried under an avalanche of self-obsessed columnists with a naive view of local issues a host of unquestioning secretarial reporters who do little more than regurgitate information fed to them by institutional sources and a lot of slide-shows frequently compiled by a web-staff who appear to have very little real-world experience. Think this is bad enough? There's still the editorial board who have never met a tax-increase on others they didn't like nor a chance to advocate for regulatory overreach that they didn't take and an editorial cartoon writer who is forced to label all of his drawings so people can figure out what he's on about. Clearly, at the Chronicle offices, the ship be sinking.
Now we have empirical evidence of this, as the Chronicle all but admits that they cannot continue to be profitable given the increased property tax burden their Downtown address is placing on them. To their credit, they're making a responsible business decision and not crying out to the city for some property tax break for which they've argued against (for others) for quite some time. It is to their credit that they didn't ask for a break on some silly grounds of "the public good" or some such that hasn't been factually accurate, in regards to the media, for just about ever.
While I respect the traditional role the media has and agree that they should never, ever be muzzled by the government at any level, there is the reality that today's media is either a for-profit enterprise or a non-profit with strong partisan designs. The traditional media role, especially in television media, has been flipped on its head as "reporting the news" has been replaced with sensationalist, shock journalism which leads to reporters viewing it as "their duty" to track down grieving members of some victim's family and get the tear-filled interview money shot.
For newspapers the problem has been two-fold. First, they've lost the trust of almost everyone. Republicans think the newspapers have a Democratic bias while Democrats constantly refer to the "corporate media" who are hell-bent on destroying the rights of the common man. There is no truth to either of these charges, as the reality is much more nuanced.
In truth, most newspapers do have a liberal bias on social issues. It's hard to find a newspaper who's not going to refer to tea-party, pro-life or anti-LBGT groups in an even manner. This can be argued against, but not successfully if you look at the historical record of stories.
On other political issues the results are a mixed bag. Most newspapers have an institutional bias, choosing to try and protect their access over reporting truth to power at the expense of being excluded from the party. Today's journalists are modern-day courtiers, trying desperately to get a moment's mention from the royals who view them as useful tools for propaganda but little else.
Ironically, it's the media's inability to acknowledge these issues that has led to America's distrust in them, and which has led publications such as the Chronicle down the road to financial difficulty.
The slow-spiraling downfall of the Chronicle is (in part) of their own making. With the rise of the Internet newspapers never discovered a way to keep the revenue train rolling, nor did they learn what it was that differentiated them from entertainment media outlets. Instead of trying to focus on hyper-local, watchdog reporting the Chronicle tried, in vain, to become an infotainment outlet. Never realizing that this is already being done, better, at other outlets.
Are we watching the final throes of a company near the end of it's life-cycle? Time will tell. But if the only change they're undergoing is a change of address and they don't fundamentally change their business direction there's no evidence to suggest that things will turn around.
