A new Harris Poll found that a majority of Americans don’t trust the media and believe traditional journalism is “out of touch,” according to The Editor’s Weblog.

Here are two statistics that I want to home in on:

1. More than 50% of Americans polled now do not trust the press
2. 2/3 of Americans believe traditional journalism is “out of touch” with what readers want from their news.

These findings are eerily similar to a recent We Media/Zogby Interactive poll. That poll featured such gems as:

1. 67% of Americans feel traditional journalism is not meeting their expectations
2. 70% feel journalism is important to the “quality of life” in their communities, yet 64% are dissatisfied with journalism in their communities.

Journalists can blame the Web, Craigslist, Monster.com, the economy, the consolidation of ownership and all the other bogymen out there, but that can’t shake the fact that Americans don’t believe traditional journalism understands what readers want. It’s hard to run a business when employees don’t care about customers.

At the end of the day, journalists need to realize the cold, hard reality that journalism is in fact a business, and business thrive when they serve their customers well. The vast majority of journalism is not Fourth Estate Journalism. It’s community journalism — the kind of journalism that the community decides what is important.

I’ve talked a whole lot about niche journalism recently. That’s what the Web represents and what people want. Well, you can’t have a successful niche audience if you only care about what interests you.

Audience is key. You have to care about your audience.

That’s the fundamental problem with traditional journalism — not enough journalists care about their audiences.

The Gannett blog (not affiliated with Gannett) reports that Gannett’s 10-paper Wisconsin Newspapers group is considering a plan that would merge copy and pagination work into a regional operation.

Obviously, Gannett believes the plan will save money by eliminating positions and reducing “duplicate” work.

Consolidating all copy editing into giant regional or statewide desks has emerged as another way for newspaper publishers to cut labor costs at a time when revenue is falling. But critics say copy editors can’t do their jobs well when they work far from the communities their papers serve. (Mayor Smith? Smyth?) Gannett business partner MediaNews Group is a prominent proponent of consolidation.

I’m sure this move would save money in the short term. It might even save a lot of money. In the long term, however, I’m fairly confident this cost saving strategy will cost Gannett money by further compromising their journalism products.
Most copy editors I know are overworked as it is. I’ve known Gannett copy editors at small and mid-sized papers that routinely worked more than their 37.5 hour work week, but were not paid overtime. They had little to no time to take breaks either.

Cutting positions would only increase the overwhelming workload that many copy desks operate under. That kind of work load is one reason why so many misspellings and factual errors creep into stories (that and the fact that writers have to write ridiculous amounts of copy these days). Each one of these errors undermines the core value of a newspaper, causing some readers to cancel their subscriptions because they feel the product isn’t good enough.

Credibility is all journalism has, and I fear too many publishers and business staffers don’t understand that concept. All they see are dollars and cents, but readers see so much more. Every mistake could be the last mistake that a reader is willing to tolerate.

I do think the concerns over copy editors not knowing about local communities are valid. Certainly remote copy editing can work, but it often takes more time. A local copy editor knows the area well, and won’t have to look up nearly the same amount of information as a remote copy editor.

Now, I could see the merit of combining design desks, because design work could be done reasonably well remotely. Plus, many papers within the same chain have identical designs to begin with. A good, clean design is important, but design is not nearly as important as content.

Heck, most of the stories I read each day I read through Google reader. For me — and millions of other readers — content is king.

What do you think about creating a regional copy and design desk? It seems to me to be another short-term fix that will cause long-term damage.