News Tower proves good journalism is no game

Have you ever looked at The Washington Post and thought, “Why is a billionaire allowed to use his massive wealth to influence and punish editorial decisions at one of the nation’s premier newspapers?” and / or “I wonder if I could do that?” Well, News Tower can help you answer at least one of those questions.

News Tower, out now on Steam, is a management sim game that covers the business of running a newspaper in the 1930s. Players inherit a struggling paper with aims to turn it into New York’s premier news destination, but they’ll have to manage everything from keeping the lights on, keeping their reporters happy, and keeping rival newspapers, mobsters, lawsuits, fake news, and old news at bay.

In addition to providing all the news fit to print, your main job in News Tower is making your employees efficient and happy. Smells, loud noises, heat, and lacking a sense of purpose all degrade their happiness, leading to sloppy, slow work. You can mitigate those annoyances by building office walls, installing fans, and generally making your tower a good place to work. Initially, I was confused that some of my employees were unhappy even though they all had their own offices. It was only when I started adding little amenities like plants, clocks, and decorative wallpaper — items not strictly tied to increasing their skills or getting rid of annoyances — that they improved. Hmm, wonder if there’s a metaphor in there somewhere?

I love this little game and not only because it’s rare to have one that caters to my specific profession. Management sims can get tedious, especially if the majority of gameplay is done by reading text and menus (*cough* Crusader Kings *cough*). But News Tower feels more like a god playing with dolls than with spreadsheets. Employees amble across the screen, filing reports and repairing broken fixtures with the charming jank of South Park’s Terrance and Phillip puppets. Your news tower responds to you as you build it up, with light fixtures jangling and dust clouds swirling every time you move walls around. When it’s time to go to print, you have to throw a big switch that makes a pleasing and tactile ka-thunk noise. Even the soundtrack adds to the immersion, with iconic big band drum licks playing as your paper flies through the presses just like in the moving pictures.

Playing News Tower as a journalist surprised me in ways I should have expected but did not prepare for. I went into this with the goal of playing it as true to life as the systems would allow, thinking that my skills would translate easily and quickly into success. But so far, I’ve bankrupted my newspaper, The Star, on three separate occasions.

Every week, your news wire operator brings stories that you can assign to your reporters. You choose which stories to pursue based on multiple factors, including what readers in a certain district want, synergy with other stories you’re working on, and your reporters’ strengths.

There are also powerful factions like the mob, the mayor, and more who, depending on if you’re courting them or not, can influence your decisions. It’s easy to say, like I did, “I’m an ethical journalist, I won’t let anyone dictate what I can write about!” But that calculation swiftly changes when the mob offers me cash to leave any stories about crime on the cutting room floor or when pleasing the mayor gets me favorable deals on the loans I need to keep my reporters paid. Even though I never took cash, I did play along with the different factions so long as their requests stayed within what I deemed ethically acceptable. After all, that’s how the game is played for real. But also like real life, money turned out to be my biggest challenge.

Over time, all your employees grow in skill, requiring higher salaries. I could have replaced the senior reporters with cheaper newbies, but that would have slowed the paper down, and I had gotten used to stories coming in on Thursday and Friday instead of the Sunday deadline (with abundant, self-aware apologies to my editor). Paper was another ironic money sink. As my reporters improved and articles came in faster, I was forced to expand my paper’s size up to two- and three-page runs. So though I was breaking sales records and pleasing readers with high-quality journalism, I was hardly making a profit because it cost so much extra money to print.

There was a point where I reached a happy medium where the paper was profitable and of good reputation and quality. But I was feeling a bit of FOMO because The Star wasn’t printing even higher-quality stories because it didn’t have a photographer. So I took my healthy profits and hired a photographer, thinking that’d solve my problem… but it made things worse. I didn’t realize that a photographer just taking the pictures wouldn’t be enough to get them on the page. I had to hire a developer and build them a dark room, then hire a chemical processor and build them their own room because the chemical smell impacted employee morale. My single, thoughtless purchase behind chasing a new technology turned into an avalanche of expenses that eventually led me to bankruptcy. Okay, yeah there’s definitely some metaphors in here.
I don’t love News Tower because it’s professional flattery wrapped up in a management sim. I love it because it pretty faithfully exposes why good journalism is so hard to find these days. Being a craven opportunist will net you the cash but none of the quality. Do the work the right way, and your paper will get choked to death by bigger competitors with less scruples. After many failures, I’m doing a run where I’m expanding as slowly and cost-effectively as I can without taking any favors, no matter what. I can see why Mr. Bezos does what he does, running a newspaper ethically is hard. I’m gonna do it anyway.