Googling Weak Journalism

As I am out in rural northern California, I had my breakfast yesterday with a copy of the San Francisco Chronicle instead of the usual New York Times and Wall Street Journal. Wow, did this story chase the sleep from my eyes.

Few things are more dangerous than a journalist blinded by preconceived notions, especially when that reporter has made it his or her mission to prove a company guilty of some wrongdoing. Calls are made, subjects interviewed, records requested… and some semblance of the originally intended story written, filled with innuendo and rumor when supporting facts are disappointingly missing. Much ado is made about, as it turns out, nothing. In journalistic circles, it’s known as not letting the facts get in the way of a good story.

The front page of yesterday’s Chronicle had such a story of dubious distinction. Under the headline “Even Google Suffers Users’ Gripes,” the paper informed its readers of “the discontent Google’s growing legion of users have voiced” to the Federal Trade Commission. “Aggrieved, annoyed and occasionally misguided, users have lodged hundreds of complaints (emphasis mine) about everything from Google overcharging for advertising to returning pornographic Web sites when users search for their own names.”

The Chronicle’s information is based on a review of anti-Google consumer complaints filed with the FTC; the paper gained access to the information via “open records requests” that were made against the “backdrop” of a “larger federal review of Google’s proposed $3.1 billion acquisition of online advertising firm DoubleClick, following concerns that the deal will create a monopoly and harm consumers.”

Sounds like a legitimate enough story idea, right? Well, despite what the negative headline implies, there were, relatively speaking, a very small number of complaints lodged against Google when you consider how many people use their services every day. Readers who took the time to continue reading the story’s jump inside the paper learned that the hundreds of complaints against Google were filed over a 30-month period: 74 in 2005, 133 in 2006, and 176 in the first six months of this year. That’s right – a whopping 383 complaints during this time. To be fair, the Chronicle admits that these numbers are “a small sliver of consumers, considering that in August, Google had 128.5 million U.S. users” and, later in the story, that “only a handful of complaints took aim at Google’s proposed merger with DoubleClick or the information Google collects about its users.”

But talk about making mountains out of molehills! Despite all the qualifiers, the Chronicle still deemed this non-story worthy of page one treatment – and above the fold no less. Ironically, the story ran on a day that Google’s stock closed above $600 for the first time. The company is based in Mountain View, which is just beyond the Chronicle’s backyard.

When you read trite stories like this one, is it really any wonder that local newspapers, including the Chronicle, have suffered a major erosion of readership? The Internet, an easy scapegoat, is usually blamed for what ails the print news industry. That makes sense. Whereas people once turned to their local broadcast outlets to learn details about breaking news, they can now go online and access that information from a broad and geographically diverse range of sources.

But is blaming the Internet a cop-out? To some extent, yes, as there is another elephant in the newsroom that should not be ignored. Sadly, budget-conscious publishers are showing the door at an alarming rate to experienced editors and reporters who are subsequently replaced by neophytes who are not yet ready to fill their shoes – and their stories reflect it. While I’m not trying to suggest that that may be the reason for the unimpressive Chronicle story, the reality is that upstart print reporters, especially on the business beat, are all too frequently thrust into editorial positions before developing the journalistic depth, financial sophistication, and business acumen necessary to write compelling stories. The sad truth is that daily newspapers are rapidly losing readers because increasingly they are publishing stories that just are not worth reading.

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• A Demonstration We Can Do Without

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