The San Francisco Panorama: A Newspaper Critique

Mike Fourcher did not like it.

Again, I only have my initial impressions on which to base this judgment, but I’m inclined to agree with his criticisms of the Panorama’s content. I’d argue, though, that perhaps his points are ultimately irrelevant. As he says, a real newspaper obviously has time constraints and therefore be unable to give its contributors months to draft their pieces. The content will be drastically different for any paper attempting to follow the Panorama’s model - it’s the newspaper’s form, design and general editorial vision that’s thought-provoking here above all else.

The Panorama’s huge average story length is not the only anchor weighing it down: It is full of undirected liberal angst. Cases in point: The Magazine’s two short entry “Dispatches”, one from an Army psychiatrist in Afghanistan who laments that his job is to patch soldier’s minds up only to go back to the brutality of battle, and another from a Gulf of Mexico deckhand who moans about his vessel’s toxic waste dumping. The highly trained doctor behaves as if the conditions of war and the purpose of his job is surprising. The deckhand does nothing about his ship’s dumping and thanks the reader for listening.

This sort of writing seems criminal when one considers the Power Of The Press. Newspapers do not exist so we may simply unburden ourselves of our personal demons - that’s what diaries and blogs are for. Newspapers are capable of bringing sunlight to the dark places so change may come and evil can be arrested.