The Pensacola News-Journal: A Case Study in Journalistic Split Personality

The Pensacola News-Journal is the principal messenger of print-based journalism to those living in Escambia County, Florida. In fact, the only alternatives are weeklies that typically follow the same ideological stripe and rarely threaten the status quo. The News-Journal is a daily that arrives on the driveways of residents seven days a week. Since it is a Gannett paper it bears a strong relationship in form to the USA Today that can be bought from vending machines that are always placed alongside News-Journal vending machines throughout the county. The paper is therefore rather unimaginatively sectioned: the front page section that deals primarily with news of national interest and the most sordid of local news deemed worthy of inclusion, a local section devoted to less tabloidesque news, a money section that does its part to inculcate the notion that it is every American's duty to spend like one of the drunken sailors that routinely can be found on the city's streets, the sports section and then a life section that apparently confuses the meaning of life with being entertained.

With rare exceptions, photojournalism is done in monotone; very few color pictures ever make it into the newspaper except for the front page. The Pensacola News-Journal relies mostly on wire services for national stories, while the local news is covered by beat of local writers, most of whom have been the same for the past twenty years or so. Recently, the paper has began to expand toward offering newer writers columns to express opinion rather than the five W's, but to a person their opinions are all dishearteningly mainstream and written in a style that reminds you of a high school paper.