The Daily Pilot published a Q&A with Voice of OC’s publisher, Norberto Santana Jr., Monday about the responsibility of reporters to hold government accountable, his recent transition to publisher, and the state of the American newspaper.
Santana also comments on recent changes at the Register, where he was once a reporter, and how the media landscape has changed in general.
Here is an excerpt:
…one of the aspects that’s troubled me is, again, this commitment to cover stories that are not going to be popular, stories that are important to tell because it’s your responsibility as the newspaper. I think, in that, given their lack of expertise in newspapering, the [Register] owners have not been well served just by some of their own decisions about how they’d gone into places like Anaheim, things like the brokering deals, and we certainly covered them fully.
If anything, I think, it’s a difficult time for the American newspaper. I think that the advertising model, many of the pillars that maintained it for so many years, have taken some hard hits, through Craigslist and through economic contractions, and it’s forced a lot of us to kind of have to rethink, “How does the American newspaper fit into our new life?” I don’t know if there’s any easy answers to this. I mean, you see cuts everywhere. So, again, I think they should be credited with the creativity that they’ve tried, but I think at the same time too, they are a walking cautionary tale.
Read the full article on the Daily Pilot website.