Announcer: The views and opinions expressed in to the point are those of the hosted, the program and its guests.

They do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of WG public media.

Doni: A major influence on the way we think about things.

The way we think about each other can be traced to the information that we get from journalists.

But is the business of journalism changing with the talk of fake news and news sources that are obviously biased?

What role do journalists really have in our lives, and has their work become impossible to do?

I'm talking to Kurt Franck, president and executive director of the Toledo Blade, about this very important and confusing topic.

Stay with us for this conversation.

This is to the point.

Connect with us on our social media pages or you may email me at doni _miller@wgte.org, for this episode and other additional extras.

Please go to wgte.org to the point I am so excited to have this morning, this evening with me, Kurt Franck.

Kurt is the President, General manager and executive editor at the Pulitzer Prize winning Toledo Blade.

Thank you for.

Joining.

Kurt: My pleasure.

I'm glad to be here.

Doni: You know, when I thought about this topic, I immediately thought about you because you've had a long and storied career in journalism and book editor.

Great ideas.

Kurt: I'll tell you, I've been doing this business now for more than 40 some years.

I started in in the late seventies and I've seen industry change.

Some for the good, some for the bad.

But our industry is not what it was when I first got into it.

It's totally different.

Doni: That is such a great way to start this conversation.

I was thinking as I was preparing for this show that you and I remember, Walter Cronkite.

Of course, David Brinkley.

Kurt: Could not get through the night without.

Doni: Absolutely.

And everything that they said was golden.

Yeah, everything that they said, we aren't there.

You know, We're not.

Kurt: We're not.

We're we sometimes we just because of the Internet, because of fast paced journalism and everybody wants things instantly.

They want on their phone.

They want on their tablets.

We have a generation that if they don't get the information right away, they're not happy and they don't care where they get the information.

So that's somewhat change.

You mentioned Walter Cronkite every evening when I was growing up.

I lived by it.

I worked for United Press International years ago.

And that's where he started.

And what he said was gospel.

And we lived with that.

That has now changed our industry.

It's changed.

Doni: So what is that?

What's the cost of the industry changing?

One of the one of the first things I saw over and over and over again when I was researching this show was that people don't trust you guys.

Kurt: Well, that's true.

And they have reason not to trust us in some ways, because I don't want to attach it to one person or something.

But I think there was a period of time where a lot of commentary, a lot of opinion got in news stories.

Now, when I grew up in this business, we were supposed to just cover the facts.

It would be like having a giant.

I had a an editor once say, where a newspaper's job, a reporter's job is to have a giant mirror that reflects what's going on in the community.

And sometimes it gets distorted.

But your goal is to keep it as straight and give as much information.

Who, what, where?

What happened?

Leave the adjective.

Leave the adverbs out of your you're stories that you write.

I see it seeping in to all kinds of stories.

We run in our newspaper every day.

We have to sometimes take it out.

I wish we would just report the news.

So there is some question.

Plus, you throw in the Internet where you have these Internet reporters that don't they don't substantiate any of their background and they just put it out and people lap it up like it's like it's a dog treat and we have to stop that.

And it's tough.

And our industry is suffering.

There are large companies that own these that own the newspapers and they want profit.

And if they don't get profit, then they start cutting.

Doni: But you know what I think that people don't always recognize and we talked about this a bit before the show, is the connection between the protection of our democracy and the validity of the things that journalists report, crime journalists in so many ways are the watchdog.

Yeah, the this entire thing that we call America.

Yes.

And so when they start to respond to people who want their news right away or or the the difficulties that we place journalists in in their ability to be able to report and local the lack of local resources, those kinds of things, how do we make people understand the impact of that?

Kurt: Well, we have to keep doing is chipping away at every day.

I mean, you you asked me earlier what I think of CNN and Fox and everything.

When when Ted Turner started CNN back in the early eighties, his idea was to have news, action news.

You go cover it.

There were few talking heads.

The talking heads have now become part of our landscape or whatever you want to do, whether it be on Fox or it's on CNN or it's an NBC.

Kurt: And you bring on these experts and they may bring some something to it.

But after two or 3 hours of hearing the same thing over and over again, that really hurts.

I think our job as a newspaper and as a news organization is to be that watchdog role.

Doni: Absolutely.

Kurt: To play that role, to uncover, to shine light where there's darkness.

I know that sounds trite, but at the same time, it's really important for us to figure out where there's wrongdoing going on.

And if we don't do that the right way and cover our community the right way, then our community suffers.

And then what happens, Donny, is you have these what is now a very big thing.

You have these news deserts, communities without anyone covering their community.

And that is pitiful that that's happening.

But it's happening because because of financial reasons, because a lot of people don't want to get in this business anymore.

And going back to what you said earlier, some people don't trust some of the journalists that are out there in America.

Doni: They're one of the statistics that I read that I found particularly alarming was that and I mention this to you as well, it was in a New York Times article, 37,000 jobs in journalism had been lost.

Court salary reduced.

Yes, 37,000 since the pandemic.

Since 2020.

Kurt: And if you go back even farther, you can say back to, say, early nineties or early 2000, there were even more 71% fewer journalists that work at newspapers than did back in 2000.

It is it is because people can't these news organizations, they're they're private equity firms.

They have to make money.

They have to show to Wall Street that they're making some money.

I mean, when when I was working in Florida back in the nineties, they the average newspaper margin was 30 to 40%.

Now, most companies don't make 30 to 40%.

But if you if you were in successful if executives weren't making 30 to 40%, they would lose their job.

Now, that's come down to like 10 to 15% now.

Sure.

But what happens is when they need to cut the journalists, which a lot of people will call cost centers, will be the first ones to go there.

The Los Angeles Times, that story just two or three weeks ago.

How a paper in Southern California Fire, L.A., California, had 35 people ten years ago.

They have no journalists right now and they put out a paper.

I don't know what's in that paper, but no one's covering in that community.

And it's it's pretty pitiful.

Doni: So what's the future look like here?

We've got an industry that's shrinking.

We have a lack of trust in the folks who are providing the news.

And and I do want to talk about this for a bit.

Surely we have somehow created this pathway that journalists are expected to follow, which leads them to the sexiest way of reporting a story which then directly interferes with your earlier notion of unbiased reporting.

Kurt: So what I think what we need to do is we need to have organizations that are still very much committed to covering local news.

Local news is has always been a franchise of a local newspaper, whether it's covering the community for cops and and fire or covering a community, the mayor of Toledo or things like that.

We need to stay on top of that.

And and I as president of the Blade need to be able to find resources to pay these journalists so that we are able to come up and cover some things.

Doni: But how do you get that done?

Kurt: Well, it's difficult.

There has been some talk of of having the government involved.

The government has bailed out some a lot of industries, including the auto industry.

Yeah, there is there's a push in Congress to do that.

Whether or not it will get very far or not, that would be helpful.

There's also other news organizations, newspapers that are now nonprofit that get money from from grants and things like that.

I personally don't like that because so you get a you get a grant from a company and then you can't write about that company.

So I still think the way to do it is advertising drives it tremendously.

We've lost a lot of advertising because people now want digital.

They want on on their phone.

When I first got here in 2000, there were 40 or 50 inserts in the Sunday paper.

I mean, loaded in, made the paper fat like this.

Now we're down to five or six people want Kroger wants to advertise on your phone.

Other people want to advertise here.

That hurts every time we do that.

And when you switch from print to digital, it's like dollars versus dimes.

You don't get as much money as you did.

So we have to make that up in volume.

And that's tough to do.

And it keeps our sales people very busy.

Doni: You know, one of the topics I want to talk about, we're going to we're going to break for just a minute.

I'd like you to think about this while we're away.

Is that we are.

I don't know if we're at the end, but we're somewhere in the process.

I think of one of the most difficult news reporting seasons that we've ever had.

And I'd like to talk to you.

I'd like to hear what you think about the impact that this whole idea of fake news has had on.

Kurt: Your.

Doni: Country and on your folks.

Sure.

Sure.

We're going to go away.

Please stay with us.

We'll be right back.

Jaden: Trust is hard to gain, but it's also easily broken, which is why this week on On Point, we're asking the important question, where do you get your news?

Lady: Well, I like 13 ABC, but I do like PBS World News.

My mom turned me on to PBS World News.

And I like I like hearing about events in Ukraine and Africa.

I think we should be more in touch with the world around us.

Jaden: Where do you get your news?

Lady: So I get my news at Jayden Underscore Jefferson.

Jaden: Where do you get your news?

Man: Well, I usually like to go online and look at Tik tok.

I like to follow people that have similar views with me and just go to people that I feel like I can trust that they have the of everybody in mind, like a maybe a humanitarian outlook.

That's kind of where I go.

Jaden: On point this week, I'm Jaden Jefferson.

Doni: Connect with us on our social media pages.

And again, please, please please email me at doni _miller@wgte.org.

And again for this episode and other additional extras, go to wgte.org/ To the point, when we left, we were I asked you to think about the impact that fake news has had on on your industry and how your industry reports.

I would venture to say that this notion of fake news that has that phrase actually has become popular.

And in the last four or six years, yes, that that has had the most significant impact on news than any other two words have had a very, very long time probably.

Kurt: I think that's true.

I think without getting into the politics, because, I mean, we I could sit here and talk politics all day with you when I first heard it.

I despise the term I still do to this day.

I don't like being called enemy of the people.

But what I have to do, what our editors have to do, is we have to go through and try to eliminate as much the fake news, the country, my news services that even comes from our reporters when they put their opinions, it opinions should be relegated to a newspaper to the opinion section.

And we have that very well laid out at the blade.

But if you're going to go cover something, I go back to that may or reflect what's going on.

There could be some distortion, but get away from that distortion.

Just give the news that people want to have.

They want to get their hands on.

Doni: But, you know, it almost seems as though you all are chasing your own tails.

You have to raise money.

Yes.

Fake news is is, again, that alluring kind of emotion generating information that people respond to.

And those are the things that that's the kind of response that networks need in order to raise money.

Kurt: And in your right.

So your.

Doni: Integrity is is.

Kurt: Integrity.

There we are chasing a tail to some degree, but we're also trying to figure out different ways.

I will be the first to say the newspaper model is broken.

It's been broken for years.

If I go back to 1994, when newspapers were deciding at that point, should we give our our information out on the Internet for free, or should we do what the Wall Street Journal did?

Wall Street Journal went ahead and they charged daily.

You could set it up.

So your you set up your your computer and it would be there in the morning on a very slow modem and everything like that.

But newspapers figured, okay, we're already paying our journalists, so we'll shovel it and put it all in the Internet.

Well, people were reading the paper then they were going to the Internet to read it.

Pardon me.

And that hurt.

That hurt us.

So we had to figure out different ways to do that.

Now what we have to do is come up with some way and we've done it.

The blade.

We we publish seven days a week, but we print two days a week.

The cost for us, Donny is paper in the printing of a newspaper.

After that, then we have salaries.

We want to continue with the salaries.

We want to eliminate the people that we don't need, that we used to use back in the sixties.

We don't need them anymore, but we do need the journalists to go out and reports some stuff.

And you could give me five more journalists and I'd be a happy man.

And I think we get things done.

But are we making the money?

Are we bringing in the advertising?

We're trying hard to do?

And it's a tough battle for us every day.

Doni: It's really tough for your journalists as well, isn't it?

I mean, there is something that I read about it called journalism fatigue.

Kurt: Yes.

Some of them.

I contend that the journalists that I grew up with are a lot different than the journalists that that I that I dealt with when I was in the business.

I had some editors that were tough as nails.

Nowadays, I think we have to work with some of the journalists a little bit more than we have in the past.

We have to explain more a lot of people nowadays don't want to go into journalism.

It's not the most lucrative business to be in.

Yeah, you get your the door shut on you quite a bit, but you have to be tough to do it.

I was made to be a journalist ever since I was 11 years old and have had a paper in my neighborhood.

So I have loved this.

I've done it for almost.

We're coming up 45 years and I don't want to make a change right now, but I do think that the fake news thing that you initially brought about is a little troubling.

We'll see how the next how the election goes in the next couple of years.

I don't know of I hope it's cool.

I hope it goes away.

I don't know.

Doni: Yeah, it obviously can do the damage that it can cause.

Is is substantial.

And we've seen that with the recent brouhaha at Fox.

Yeah.

Around.

Kurt: Yes we have.

Yeah it's and then there there I mean you can look at CNN since Biden became the president, their ratings are going down Fox his ratings because of this lawsuit has hurt MSNBC.

All these television networks are all hurting.

The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal all doing pretty well because they're big national newspapers.

Some regional papers are doing well, but circulation has dropped.

Not as many people are picking up a newspaper, whether print or a digital paper as they used to.

That's the advantage that we do have is we have a digital president presence and there are more people that reading our news through the Internet, whether it be.

Doni: 53%.

Kurt: Less than they did before.

And you could never there was a figure that salespeople used for years that every time somebody picked up a paper, it would go from one and a half to two people would read that paper.

I don't know where they came up with their statistics, but with analytics.

Now I can tell you exactly how many people are going to our website or reading our E blade or reading our Pittsburgh Electronic or E delivered edition.

I can tell you all that, but I could never substantiate how many people were actually picking up the paper every day.

Some people I drive down my neighborhood and some papers are out there for days.

Doni: So yeah, that that's changed.

So, so I've always been pretty curious about this.

There seems to be a natural contradiction between the objective reporting of the news and the journalist who becomes the news, the journalist who becomes the celebrity, the Tucker Carlson Correct.

For, for example, is is that anything we can get our arms around?

Well, again, it's an impact that you have to pay attention to.

Kurt: That's a good example.

Use with Tucker Carlson, because he's not my favorite.

I interviewed him for something The Blade did with the library a couple of years ago.

It was during the first run for for Trump.

And he's gotten more he he he's more in love with himself now.

He's never been before.

I don't like when a journalist becomes part of the story, Right.

I don't it's awkward for me to be in front of this camera right now because I'm used to organizing and dispatching journalists to do that.

I understand the need to do this, but he has become a celebrity of his own and he's coming up under a lot of fire.

But people tune in to him every night, don't they?

They do and they do.

I do.

Walter Cronkite was never he.

Let's go back to him.

He was never a celebrity.

He just reported the news.

Doni: That's right.

Kurt: And those days don't exist anymore.

Whether it's good or bad, I can't quantify if that's a good idea or not a good idea.

I just think the idea of a local newspaper is to undermine and uncover any kind of wrongs that are going on in a community.

We've done a lot of stories on that over the years.

I want to do more of those kinds of stories.

Why do we spend money on that?

Why?

Why is there led in our homes and things like that?

Those are what's important for northwest Ohio residents and I contend we somewhat set the stage of what television does.

They'll read our paper.

Last night we had a shooting of a 15 year old boy who was killed.

We were able to get the information before the other papers or the other television stations did even even one of the television stations attributed to the Blade.

That's the kind of journalism that we have to continue to do.

We have to be out there and get that information.

Doni: We are not going to have a lot of time to talk about this.

But I would love to talk to you about this at some other point.

And that is the I want people to leave our conversation understanding how critical what you all do actually is to the fabric of this country.

It's it's in the newspaper that we are able to see different points of views.

And one of the challenges that I see journalists facing these days is that pull around being pulled into issues are reporting issues in a way that how polarized is this country?

Yes, this country.

I don't know how they stay out of those issues or how they report them in an unbiased fashion.

Those issues are intrinsically.

Kurt: And I understand that as a reporter or an editor, you will have opinions on something.

All I'm asking is when you're writing a news story, just give me the facts.

Tell me what's going on.

You can have your opinion.

If you want your opinion, then it should be labeled as country or it should be labeled as editorial.

And that's where the differences I get up, get upset when opinions bleed into news stories, and then it's not fair reporting.

And I've seen that slippage in the last ten years.

Yes.

Where the reporters are putting their opinions.

And part of that is that is not I don't want to say talk radio, but part of it is the talking heads on TV, Right.

I mean, there are numerous people from The New York Times that are on CNN all the time.

You can't tell me that some of their opinions that they're giving on that show don't bleed into the stories.

Doni: Absolutely.

Absolutely.

And we didn't have time to talk about this whole idea of political agendas that actually.

Kurt: They.

Doni: Seep into the reporting.

And I'd really like to talk about that again.

But in the 30 seconds that we have left, we want to mention that our blade is alive and well.

Kurt: It is actually alive and well.

And we will continue to do that.

We'll continue to break some news.

And I'm very pleased.

It's just that, as I said before, the newspaper model is broken.

We have to figure out different ways that we can keep it going.

And and I'm optimistic that we can do that.

I really do feel good about it.

Doni: I'm so glad that you were with us today.

I hope we get to talking again, please.

Kurt: It's my pleasure.

Doni: Thank you so much for joining us on to the point and we'll see you next time.

Announcer: The views and opinions expressed in to the point are those of the host of the program and its guests.

They do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of WG Public Media.

This program was made possible in part by viewers like you.