Proximity to the News

There was a telling episode in the first episode of the current season of The Wire. The scene is the conference room where the "budget meetings" are held, which determine which stories are going to appear in the following morning's paper. Several of the mid-level staff are staring out the window at a large plume of black smoke. Gus Haynes (Clark Johnson) comes in to ask what's happening; and someone shows him the smoke and says that there is a fire across town. His immediate reaction is, "Who's covering it?," which is met with blank stares.

Proximity to the news used to matter. If a reporter was sitting in his/her office and saw smoke out the window or heard sirens coming from the street, (s)he (or someone else) would run outside to find out what the story was. The very name "The Wall Street Journal" connoted an institution of journalism that would provide the most up-to-date and reliable "word on The Street" because it was "on The Street."

This may not be the case where Rupert Murdoch is concerned. While things have not progressed beyond the rumor stage, Josh Koblin of The New York Observer felt that the following item deserved recognition on his blog, The Media Mob:

News Corp. owner Rupert Murdoch wants to move his recently purchased Wall Street Journal out of Manhattan's financial district by the end of the year.

Mr. Murdoch is proposing that the Journal newsroom move out of its home at the World Financial Center adjacent to the World Trade Center site and into his News Corp. headquarters in the "canyon" on Sixth Avenue, according to newsroom sources.

One senior newsroom source with knowledge of the situation said that the move was "very likely" and it's something that Mr. Murdoch has been "strongly considering" for some time. Another source confirmed it should happen by the end of the year.

Editors and reporters at the paper have been discussing the possible move for some weeks now, but word hasn't gotten out. The source said that under the plan the editorial department would move into the News Corp building, while some business offices and other parts of Dow Jones would remain at the World Financial Center. One hang-up, said another newsroom source, was how News Corp. would reallocate space since News Corp. headquarters at 1211 Avenue of the Americas are already filled to capacity.

Is this an example of life validating an episode of fiction that recently appeared on television? Is it a validation that, in the current business of reporting the news, proximity to the story no longer signifies? One answer would be to hedge on the question, somewhat in the style that Bill Clinton made infamous, and say, "It depends on the semantics of 'proximity;'" but that is probably less of a hedge than we might think, particularly where financial reporting is concerned. Consider that a financial reporter probably has greater proximity to the substance of the news by looking through the window of a Bloomberg terminal than (s)he would have by being physically present on a trading floor. In other words the "action" is not, strictly speaking, "on The Street" anymore; it is flowing through the networks that are now responsible for implementing all major trading transactions around the world. So perhaps proximity really no longer matters for what The Wall Street Journal has to report.

However, this is just another brick in a wall that has been rising for some time. The first brick I personally encountered was last April, when, in the interests of my own cat, I was following the contaminated pet food story very closely. Then I discovered that one story about a recall of Menu Foods products was reported "by Sweta Singh in Bangalore!" Now Menu Foods was in Ontario, importing food products from China and selling them to distributors in the United States (who would, in turn, supply the place where I bought food for my cat in San Francisco). As far as I can tell, the only proximity Bangalore had to this story would have been through call center operations maintained for one or more Bay Area businesses! In other words this was a story composed entirely from looking at the world through a computer monitor. Is this any different from looking at the world of finance through a Bloomberg terminal? Reuters does not seem to think so; and, given how much work is still outsourced to where the labor is cheapest, I suspect that they are far from alone in whatever is left of the world of journalism.

I suppose The Wire is as good a place as any to learn about the world of journalism work these days. After all, in addition to this "parable of the window," we have been tracking the rise of a Stephen Glass in the City Room. We also have an ongoing saga of who is supposed to be covering what as the staff keeps getting cut and admonished to "work smarter." Do I find this more depressing than the "primary narrative" of day-to-day life being eroded away by the drug trade? I suppose I do, because, as more and more newspapers die this slow death of attrition, will anyone be left to tell those stories of day-to-day life that are so important to so many of us?