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Several topics of note in this week’s On Media column.

The owner of The Des Moines Register, Gannett, announced this week that it made a profit in the last quarter of 2022. There’s good news and bad news in that. It’s an encouraging turnaround for the company, the largest newspaper chain in the country.  Gannett reported net income in the fourth quarter of $32.8 million, a big improvement over the fourth quarter of 2021 when the company lost $22.4 million. The good news is that newspapers are making money, some of it driven by growing digital subscriptions, which don’t cost the company anything in newsprint or delivery expenses. The bad news is that much of that profit was generated by layoffs that trimmed 600 employees from the payroll. Other cost-cutting moves include suspending 401(k) contributions, mandatory employee furloughs and not filling open positions.

Gannett is a big company with more than 100 newspapers in the U.S., so we don’t know how the Register specifically is doing. I have no stats to back this up, but it feels to me like there’s more local news in the Register the past month or so. Over the holidays, the content was pretty slim. And I like that the company has combined the e-print edition in the same app for iPad and iPhone, rather than having separate apps.  Now if they’d stop forcing users to click out of that darned full-screen pop-up ad asking me to subscribe.  I’ve been a Register subscriber for more than 40 years! You’d think they could design the thing to quit bugging people who already pay them. 

More good news on the print front.  The New York Times reports it added one million digital subscribers last year, taking the paper’s total to nearly nine million digital subscribers. The print side continues to decline, with print subscribers falling from 795,000 to 730,000. Less than 10 percent of readers actually receive a print edition of the gray lady. That’s astonishing, but the company correctly bet that it would die if it didn’t invest in digital and win at digital. I am a huge fan of the Times. I think it’s required reading for informed citizens. The coverage is aggressive, the writing is clear and the editorials make me think. I applaud the business plan that has expanded their offerings to make it more valuable to readers’ lives. In addition to thorough news coverage, my subscription gets me Wordle, the Spelling Bee, the crossword, the cooking app, podcasts and now free access to the sports website The Atlantic, which the Times bought.

Yet another reporter doing his job has been murdered. TV news reporter Dylan Lyons, all of 24 years old, was shot and killed near Orlando while sitting in a news vehicle outside the scene of a murder that had happened five hours earlier. His photographer, Jesse Walden, was critically injured in the shooting, but following surgery, is talking and it appears he’ll survive. 

The gunman from the original murder returned to the scene, fired into the news vehicle, then went into a house and shot two more people, including a 9-year-old girl who died. The shooter is in custody. The shooting follows last year’s murder of an investigative newspaper reporter in Las Vegas, who was shot and killed by the subject of one of his stories.

TV news veterans call the camera an “idiot magnet.” The sight of a TV news camera seems to draw weirdos from blocks around who hope to get on TV. It can also be a lightning rod for emotional people at the scene of a crime or accident, who are upset and why not take out their frustrations on the media? Experienced crews have a sixth sense about trouble coming and usually know how to get themselves out of a dangerous situation. In this case, though, the crew in Orlando was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. They were in an unmarked car. The shooter may not have even known they were journalists. It’s tragically sad. Condolences to their families and the Orlando news team.

It’s hard to believe that in 2023 network anchorman Don Lemon would say that 51-year-old Nikki Haley is not “in her prime” and that everyone knows women are in their prime in their 20s and 30s, maybe 40s. As his shocked female co-anchors pushed back, he stuck to his guns and told them to “look it up.” Lemon has since apologized.  CNN plans to give him some “formal training.” 

I’ve never been a Don Lemon fan. When he was in primetime, he was always verbally or non-verbally communicating his disgust with this politician, or his disbelief in that candidate. Arched eyebrows, fake-serious stares at the camera, off-the-cuff personal comments. I don’t know the man, but I always thought he came off looking rather like a dim bulb. Now he has proved it. 

If you’re on live TV long enough, you’re bound to say some intelligent things and occasionally some dumb things. I get that. I’m living proof!  The only “formal training” Don Lemon needs is to read Mark Twain: “It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.”

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Check out some of the wonderful writers in the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative. This week, I’d specifically point you to Art Cullen’s “The Last Waltz” and Fern Kupfer’s heart-wrenching piece “Before and After Zachariah”.

Laura Belin: Iowa Politics with Laura Belin, Windsor Heights

Doug Burns: The Iowa Mercury, Carroll

Dave Busiek: Dave Busiek on Media, Des Moines

Art Cullen: Art Cullen’s Notebook, Storm Lake

Suzanna de Baca Dispatches from the Heartland, Huxley

Debra Engle: A Whole New World, Madison County

Julie Gammack: Julie Gammack’s Iowa Potluck, Des Moines and Okoboji

Joe Geha: Fern and Joe, Ames

Jody Gifford: Benign Inspiration, West Des Moines

Nik Heftman, The Seven Times, Los Angeles and Iowa

Beth Hoffman: In the Dirt, Lovilla

Dana James: New Black Iowa, Des Moines

Pat Kinney: View from Cedar Valley, Waterloo

Fern Kupfer: Fern and Joe, Ames

Robert Leonard: Deep Midwest: Politics and Culture, Bussey

Tar Macias: Hola Iowa, Iowa

Kurt Meyer, Showing Up, St. Ansgar

Kyle Munson, Kyle Munson’s Main Street, Des Moines

Jane Nguyen, The Asian Iowan, West Des Moines

John Naughton: My Life, in Color, Des Moines

Chuck Offenburger: Iowa Boy Chuck Offenburger, Jefferson and Des Moines

Barry Piatt: Piatt on Politics: Behind the Curtains, Washington, D.C.

Macey Spensley, The Midwest Creative, Davenport and Des Moines

Mary Swander: Mary Swander’s Buggy Land, Kalona

Mary Swander: Mary Swander’s Emerging Voices, Kalona

Cheryl Tevis: Unfinished Business, Boone County

Ed Tibbetts: Along the Mississippi, Davenport

Teresa Zilk: Talking Good, Des Moines

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