A very solid job of reporting. Can we expect the same thoroughness in reporting the cause and aftermath? I hope so, esp. in light of Spokane's history with big downtown building fires. I'm not saying it was arson, but the ones that have been have never been solved. The blame usually gets pinned on "transients."

Zelda, would you pay more for that?
There's a post lower down that discusses what the niche newspapers would do. Seems like this would be right up the alley.

The niche newspaper will be edited to be explanatory and analytical. Readers will come to the newspaper to learn not 'what happened,' but 'why it happened.' Its second-day, in-depth nature will be a complement to the 24/7 nature of the newsroom’s online and mobile operations.

Forgot to add this part, which discusses price.

It may be smaller in size and news hole, and it may even be less frequent than seven days a week. It very likely will be sold for a premium price, almost certainly more than $1 per day.

Yes, I would. That is your "value added". I can get the basic details from TV, but KREM, KXLY and KHQ are never going to dig into a story with the depth and sophistication of a newspaper, er, should I say top-notch "information company." TV news treatment is all about "wow" -- superficial coverage most of the time (once in a while KXLY goes the extra mile, but not often).

The paper really needs to follow up on this story, because there were some seriously fishy things going on between the tenants of that building. I belive dorian had a lawsuit aginst the wells for problems related to the construction of those condos.

but yeah you should really follow this up and maybe do some investigative reporting for once.

Hmmm, that's interesting. As the saying goes, arson is the a**-end of the real estate cycle.

You know, here I am again. And for full disclosure since I seem to be blogging a bit more often, I did used to work at the Spokesman-Review part-time--which means, as needed, no benefits, mutually able to say 'yes' or 'no' to time requested. It was a perfect situation for me at the time, and I didn't require any guarantees and didn't get any.

Okay, back to the blog at hand.

It concerns me when someone immediately when asking for further coverage, the response is, "Would you be willing to pay more money for that?"

It's kind of like, I'll give you a haircut, but if you want me to include your bangs, I'm gonna have to charge you more.

Or ... Yes, you can have a latte but it's going to cost you more if I add milk to that.

Rather than focusing on the $$ amount (and I realize that's what it's all about) why don't you continue to produce quality writing and if the price needs to rise, then do that gradually over time with the realization that everything these days is going up.

But, will I pay more for a longer story? I can't answer that because right now, I get in-depth, quality stories from the Inlander and OTM for free.

Which brings up a question: What is the percentage of managers to other employees at the SR and more specifically what is the percentage of managers/editors in the newsroom to the employees because I think that percentage has remained pretty steady or higher even after cuts. And instead of a bottom up cut, first, perhaps there needs to be a review of management and an overall look at the top down because until you bring back what people want--local stories, good stories, at a reasonable price, circulation is going to go down.

On the street, what I hear, are jokes about Monday's paper like, "Hey, did you read Monday's SR? Yeah, it took me about two minutes. And that was cover to cover."

I'm not trying to be snarky, but the readers know, it's getting thinner and thinner; advertising is getting larger and larger and the quality is going down. Just the other day, someone brought a paper over with all the circled mistakes, typos, etc. And they said, "Why don't you go back to editing?"

I had to explain that it wasn't about editing. There are great copy editors there but those same copy editors are doing the same amount of work with almost half of the people gone. You are going to get lower quality because you don't have enough people to do the job.

In the meantime, you've got, I think, more management, less people actually doing what needs to be done.

So would I pay more for a "niche" paper? I don't know. I think the real question is would I be willing to pay more for quality? I pay more for the NY Times. I pay more for the Seattle Times. But locally I get for free 'niche' papers when I want to learn something about the outdoors or the Northwest.

An information company?

That is so broken I don't even know where to begin. So maybe I won't.

Honestly, information is dead. Even the internet doesn't pretend to be about information.

Has anybody been paying any attention to the fact that the biggest vessel of information in the world (the internet, in case I've lost you) has become more and more about the semantics of that information--about sorting and reflecting and understanding exactly what it is that has been heaped upon it?

Quick. Let's pick up on that buzzword. The Spokesman-Review is really a Semantics Company.

Thanks, by the way, for the self-congratulatory post above. I had no idea there were so many people at the S-R working on the story. I was too busy trying to get the KHQ website to recognize that I already had Windows Media Player correctly installed, so serve up the damn video already.

Meanwhile, what am I expecting the newspaper to do in tomorrow's edition? Offer depth. Semantics, if you will. Something besides audio of a reporter coughing (as I found at one of the TV stations), again and again, cough cough, as if we didn't get it the first time, to show us just how much caustic smoke there was in the air. (Likely the reporter will claim that the cough's were genuine, but if I heard my kids coughing as she did, I'd cry "faker" in a heartbeat... also, you know, get the hell out of there... do I actually need the reporter to be sitting on a firefighters shoulders so they can film a headshot with flames shooting in the background? No I don't. Give the firefighters some space, for cryin' out loud, before you become the story you're trying to cover. Wow, that was a big aside. Sorry about that.)

Meanwhile, here's my two cents on paying more for decent coverage: No.

You aren't getting it. You simply don't understand how "the information age" works, do you?

Somebody will cover the fire well. It's a big story. It's a huge story for Spokane. And I do expect the S-R to cover it. And cover it well. And cover it with some depth. But I don't expect it to cover the story with half the staff.

Here's what I'm talking about:

Reporters and editors are worried about whether we can produce quality journalism simultaneously on the Web, on the air, and in print with fewer people and resources.

We just did.

And I would respond, "oh yeah? I'll be the judge of that. When the paper lands on my doorstep tomorrow, I'll expect to see a lot of coverage. But I'll also expect to see quality coverage elsewhere. People's lives do not all come to a halt because of one big story, and as a story like this one unfolds, the quality of the paper is not to be judged on how it performs on that big story, but how it performs on the stories (or absence thereof) that are not-so-big.

I hope to see that continued coverage of other not-so-big issues in and around Spokane, and I frankly don't know how it can be done, or where the paper will take a hit, but I also fully expect that some of that regular coverage will be slimmer. And I'll be disappointed. Not in the coverage of the fire, but in the coverage of everything else.

I hope I'm wrong. I really hope I am.

And, okay. I get it. I'm a dreamer. I ask for too much. Newspapers are dying. Fine enough. But I get the feeling more and more that newspapers are dying because newspaper editors and owners and, yes, readers lack the imagination to do anything significant about it.

Geez, cut 'em some slack already. It wasn't that long ago that the term "media" was a hot new buzzword. "Information company" is as useful a term as any when you're trying desperately to wrap your mind around the death and reincarnation of an industry that's a couple of centuries old. With all the melding, morphing, transforming and attempts at disambiguation that are going on, I can tolerate some less-than-elegant language. And just so ya’ know, I see typos and evidence of no proofreading in all forms of media. I saw four mistakes in one WSJ article last week. I see it in “Newsweek,” I see it in “Time.” And tonight ABC TV is running a promo for a “Good Morning America” segment called “Left at the Alter.” That’s right – alter. To me it all points to relentless cost-cutting. And the question I keep asking, especially of the newspaper owners, is when are you going to accept that your profit margins aren’t going to be what they used to be? Shed the old infrastructure (presses and paper) and keep the reporters. Ford Motor Co. is re-tooling for the new reality. It’s not too late.

All those resources may make a great story.

But that story still generates as much revenue as the pointless morning weather and traffic report. What, $150 in PPC ads? You'd be lucky if it was that high.

What most people seem to agree on is that quality is the biggest selling point of the newspaper. But people also think the quality, ironically, is missing more and more.

As times get tougher and budgets get tighter, how has the paper responded?

Placing knowledgeable, strong writers on the morning weather and traffic beat. Dedicating a hard news section front to cutesy local vacations. Discovering all new geographic market areas and distributing the "Voices" filled with trivial baloney by half-rate writers.

If you're expecting people to "pay more" for that kind of crap, you're sorely mistaken.

On one hand you want to be a "niche" publication that offers depth and perspective on local stories of significance. On the other, you want to dedicate half the newsroom's resources to a pretty straightforward, once-you-know-it, you-know-it building fire story. How many slideshows and videos does it take before this becomes a revenue generator? You keep adding them, but the bottom line doesn't change.

This era of the Spokesman will probably be historically remembered as the period of time that management spent most of its efforts studying solutions and implementing bizarre attempts to plug the hole. ("Let's make a radio station with a way cool On Air light!" "Let's dedicate a staffer to writing about ourselves -- with Muppet videos to boot! So clever and hip!" "Hey! Ask the 20-somethings what they think about how to organize the employment of 100+ staffers!")

If consumers are as desperate for news and information as is often claimed in your never-ending series of self-analysis, perhaps you should try fulfilling their desire with, you know, actual news. Not this filler in the Voices and stuff.

And not everything out there has to be manufactured controversy like Jack Lynch. There are real good stories about real good people from the ENTIRE Northwest. Get your butts out of the newsroom, stop freaking out about losing your jobs and do the best you possibly can. If there were ever a time, this is it.

We were really impressed with the SR coverage of the fire that consumed the corner of this town where graduations and weddings were the ONLY things going on for many, many years. Such a sobering moment for those of us who had all our kids' pictures taken at Dorian and shopped for every wedding, including our own, at Joel's. We were only beginning to make friends with Churchhill's. The entire piece left us wanting more, although we didn't feel that we were missing any of the the main chunks. Jim Kershner's part was lovely; and keep those Michelle McNally-quality photographs coming! mighty. mighty...

Less really can be more.

My biggest complaint with regards to the Spokesman is the obvious re-printing of news straight out of Reuters or other news agencies with no examination of how it affects us locally. Why should I pay for a paper to read national articles I can read the night before online on a national news site? What is worse, you think readers do not notice. How about reporting more balanced news as opposed the "drama." Can your headlines be any more moronic or sensational? A perfect example is your recent coverage of the real estate crash....how many foreclosures are happening locally? how is the market doing here? Frankly, I don't really care about California, Nevada or Florida. I want to know how the economy locally is doing. But, I suppose the news locally is not bad enough to write about.

Fedup: it's really important to know what goes on in California, Nevada and Florida because failures there will result in higher rates and scarce availability here. And the SR is not a business newspaper--it's community newspaper. The tone of the headlines reflect that.

Here’s a local angle on a national news story that I expected the S-R to cover…and there was nothing. AmericanWest Bank, headquartered in Spokane with 11 branches in Spokane and CDA, yesterday reported its 2nd-quarter results and a $6M loss. The stock fell more than 25% and today is trading at $1.65 a share. A year ago, the stock was nearly $21. In the earnings press release, the CEO said that the bank is mounting “An extensive outreach effort to combat the recent sensationalized media attention focused on the safety and security of the banking industry." So he’s blaming it all on the media. The S-R is off the hook, however, since it has missed the story. The Puget Sound Business Journal says the bank has “retained a financial adviser in an effort to raise additional capital and is ‘evaluating other strategic alternatives,’ in the wake of suspending a previously announced public offering of $34.5 million of its securities.” And officers of the bank also said, ““The company is evaluating alternatives for improving operating performance and capital ratios through the sale of certain loans and sale or consolidation of certain financial centers.” That is news of high local importance, but it’s nowhere to be found in the S-R. Don’t think I’m trying to start a run on the bank or sell it short; I don’t own shares and never have. My point is that this institution has been unraveling for months, so where is the “relentlessly local” news? The Puget Sound Business Journal and The Seattle Times are 300 miles away and they’re covering it.

Yes, great job on the Joel Building fire, but I always have lingering doubts about the S-R stirring the pot on stories that involve powerful business interests and the moneyed class in Spokane.

Zelda: We planned to report those earnings in today's edition, but a copy editor noticed late in the evening that we had wrong numbers in the story. So we pulled it.

We're coming back at it today and will post the earnings online. Plus, we plan to pursue a more comprehensive look at how local banks are faring next week.

Scott Maben, deputy city editor

Thank you, Scott. I just saw the AW Bank story posted to the Web site. And I look forward to reading next week's story about local banks.

I believe "Longtime reader" has made some accurate points, it has been obvious that the SR has been trying to compete with the Inlander for years, rather than focusing on setting the standard and letting the Inlander compete with it.

SR has become a "flow of experimentation," which is fine to a point, but it largely has nothing to do with its readers. It has to do with "new paradyms" and "intellectualizing" all for the benefit of appearing more "hip."

And I too do not even bother to read the national or world news section. Why do I want to read something from the elitist wire services? They have their own agendas and once SR uses them exclusively, they too adopt those agendas and make them their own.

And you are right LTR - I had a very serious laugh when i read that management is going to give up their management duties to the "hipster 20-somethings" for a "new angle". Straight out of Bill Gross and PIMCO; except for one thing, the SR isn't PIMCO.

These are the kinds of managment "styles" that reflect one who has no confidnece in their own management style. When that becomes the situation, then management has failed.

i hate to be so harsh, and I would be the last to say that I know anything about a newspaper - but I do know what i like about papers, and i also know that there is less and less to like about most mid size to large newspapers - and it has nothing to do with the internet.

I believe that media is setting themselves up for failure when they use the internet as their own "bogeyman."

It's about the papers themselves and the way "news" is being selected; the way news stories are being selected and rejected.

"Do we slant the "news" to the youth in the community; do we do more to attract the "hip" readers; do we compromise the truth in order to appease the "gods-of-political-correctness?"

Ford Motor Co. is re-tooling for the new reality. It’s not too late.
Posted by zelda | 24 Jul 10:44 PM

Dreamer. You know you are a dreamer.
Well can you put your hands in your head, oh no!

Well, if we are going to cover the AWB debacle, how do we cover the Sterling dive? The banking industry, from coast to coast, is on its lips. It's no different here--and by the way, is there a moneyed class in Spokane? had no idea!

Breaking... Steve Smith has been "resigned", no replacement, but salary savings from such will pay for four top notch reporters.

Film at 11.

GL,

Only in my dreams am I equivalent to four veteran journalists.

Only in your dreams have I resigned.

steve

Kudos to Bert Caldwell for the story probing into the financial problems that lay beneath the ashes of the Joel Building. One question, though -- why are reporters saying that owners of "the first three" of the 16 condos were taking possession next week? What that says to me is that only 3 of the units had sold. The downtown condo market has hit the skids. More troubling is the fire chief's seeming nonchalance about ever finding a cause. His attitude, at least from what I perceive in the TV interviews, is essentially, Hey, stuff happens and we'll just never know. Could it be that when a business venture doesn’t “pencil out” (a favorite term of developers) it's more cost effective to burn down Spokane's old or "historic" buildings -- the Zukor Bldg., the former District 81 HQ, the Mars Hotel -- than it is to renovate or demolish them? At this point I'm rooting for the insurance investigators to figure this out. They're the ones with skin in the game.

Aw, Zelda. You are so smart and so articulate and then you take a sharp right to a dead end. I don't underestimate FDS and the Fire Marshall one bit in their efforts to uncover the cause of the. It's quite possible that FDS doesn't want to compromise a sensitive investigation by blurting what's really going on on their head over the preceding tumultuous 72 hours. Give 'em a break! You got new construction, you got photo processing, you got commercial cooking and baking equipment. ONE of those is a field day for investigators. Let 'em do their work. Also, maybe the interview was edited in such a manner to lead to a certain assumption by the viewers? Katie Couric is a certain reference on this development in journalism just lately. And I'm gonna assume that you were being just a little bit naughty and didn't really mean to say that FDS has no skin in the Joels' fire, right?

Nope -- didn't mean to disparage the fire department. Just saying that skin in the game is money. The motivation for arson is usually money (I'm not talking about pyromaniacs) and money is a big motivation for insurance investigators to solve what might potentially be a crime. Maybe the fire chief was trying to protect the investigation with his comments, but to me it sounded like "We may never know." I'm not a fire investigator and I don’t have CSI-level expectations, but I'd be interested to know what percentage of arson fires involving major structures are ever prosecuted. No one has been arrested in any of the big blazes in the downtown area over the past 25 years. So I'm wondering -- is arson that easy to commit and the chances of getting caught that low? I have a friend who's the retired CEO of an insurance company and he dealt with fire claims all the time. He told me that an accelerant widely favored by the pros is vodka.

... have a friend who's the retired CEO of an insurance company and he dealt with fire claims all the time. He told me that an accelerant widely favored by the pros is vodka.
Posted by zelda | 26 Jul 12:40 PM

Everclear, 95% alcohol, available for purchase in Montana, might even be better, certainly burn hotter/easier, and perhaps leave even less of a trail.

About 20 years ago, there was a serial arsonist in so cal where I was living, fascinating case, the perp was a City of Glendale Fire Chief, and a renowned arson investigator.

Oh, here it is, from Wiki:
Some arson investigators and an FBI criminal profiler have deemed Orr to be possibly one of the worst American serial arsonists of the 20th century.[21] ATF agent Mike Matassa believes that Orr set nearly 2,000 fires between 1984 and 1991.[22] Furthermore, arson investigators cited that after Orr was arrested, the number of brush fires in the nearby foothill areas decreased by over ninety percent.[23] However, Orr continues to maintain his innocence, and wrote an autobiography stating that he was innocent and betrayed by the legal system[24]

The story of John Orr has been chronicled by bestselling true crime author Joseph Wambaugh in a book entitled Fire Lover.[22] Also, a film entitled Point of Origin starring Ray Liotta as John Orr was released by the HBO network in the year 2002. Furthermore, Orr wrote a novel titled Points of Origin about a serial arsonist that happens to be a fireman. Arson investigators believe that Orr chronicled the arson fires that he set in the novel, and feel that some of the fires in the novel bear many similarities with fires that they believe Orr actually set.[22] Orr states that the novel is a work of fiction and has no relation to any actual events.[11]

I don't know where the responsibility of Fire Department arson investigators ends, and insurance company investigators begins, or how it all must overlap. Obviously, the issue of preserving evidence is important.

I found it interesting that one of the business owners, or was it Ron Wells, was quoted as saying something along the lines of "that's why you have insurance. Good insurance."

But then the owner of the restaurant seemed to be saying he was finished in the business, citing (the loss of) the expensive equipment he had purchased, etc, wouldn't that normally have been insured?

I think you can also buy some sort of business continuity insurance for disasters like this, that provides some funds to keep from going BK until you can get your business re-established.

And Jbelle my friend, no, I am not suggesting we have a fire department employee arsonist here in Spokane.
:)

okay. Stand down. Both of you.

;)

@Terry Bain - I think I know which reporter you were talking about. From behind the scenes, we were all betting he/she was hamming it up.