Newspapers: Shut 'em Down
"Journalism largely consists of saying 'Lord Jones is dead' to people that never knew Lord Jones was alive." - G. K. Chesterton
There comes a time to stop fretting and make a decision. The great angst over the future of newspaper journalism has become an unnecessary expenditure of energy. Choices have been eliminated by the marketplace. Certain eventualities are going to unfold and they cannot be stopped. The only option is to act now and take control and help the future get here ahead of schedule. Do the obvious: shut down the printing presses.
Maybe that's dramatic, but it is going to happen, eventually, anyway. And the reasons to do it now are compelling. As long as there is a print version of the local paper or the New York Times or L.A. Times, advertisers will keep buying space in the paper. If it goes away, they have nowhere to purchase those ads other than on the paper's web site. Sure, some of them may try radio or TV or another internet site but not enough to ruin a paper's finances.
Readers will have nowhere else to go, either, if they want to go to their old reliable source of news and information. The numbers of unique visitors to a newspaper's web site will go up dramatically, if the print version disappears. And as those numbers rise the rates charged for ads can also increase. Of course, the web also offers a definitive method for tracking metrics, too. An advertiser can see how many people have clicked on their ad and then executed the "call to action" that was promoted. There is no more precise measurement for assessing the value of an advertising dollar. Calculating the impact of a full page ad in a newspaper is a slightly more complex and imprecise process.
The numbers already show that printed newspapers are becoming dinosaurs too blind and dumb to find a tar pit to stumble into and die. The mighty NYT sells about a million newsstand copies per day and under 1.4 million on Sunday. The downward trend will not be reversed in the wireless economy. Ad revenue keeps dropping every quarter and that is not just a result of the economy. The NYT can probably continue to print and deliver the Sunday version because it has become such a cultural icon and ritual for many Americans, but the rest of the newspapers need to cease and desist.
Corporate accountants will argue that even the declining circulation figures are still providing a nice cash flow to the bottom line but no one wants to acknowledge the fact that such revenues are coming at the expense of growth for the web site. There is considerably more profit potential on newspaper web sites when the print versions die off. All of those car dealerships in your hometown that buy those Thursday ads in the paper can now spend that money on the website and drive visitors to their own site for interactive views and info on cars and trucks. Duh........
How hard can this be? The future of journalism is already manifesting itself on this web site as you are reading the Huffington Post. News won't just be generated by proprietary staff reporters. The process of delivering quality journalism will involve aggregation. Major metro and national papers like the NYT will lose some reporters and bureaus in the transition but their partnerships with reliable outside sources can supplement any shortcomings in coverage. Does a paper need a full time correspondent in India or can it rely on a stringer relationship or a wire service with a good reputation in the event of a Mumbai attack? The answer is obvious.
Papers and their publishers and editors have a fond affection for their bylines and datelines but, with rare exception, the public is oblivious. We didn't know Judy Miller until she began to let her perspective distort her reportage. And we don't know most of the other reporters at any paper, either. Just give your readers the news and make sure the source is reliable. This has already been happening in TV news at the local level for a number of years. In the heady days of big ad bucks, local news directors used to love to send their anchors and correspondents to cover big events. Hardly any station can still afford this luxury. They increasingly rely on affiliate services to give them a taped or live story with a custom outcue and viewers do not know the difference. In fact, the journalism tends to have more quality since the person working the locale on a daily basis generally has more nuanced information about the topic than the guy from Des Moines who showed up in his new London Fog to do a live remote broadcast.
Instead of delaying this transition to a full digital world and seeing how long they can sustain their print versions, media companies need to plan a full stop of printing presses and turn their web sites into their solitary news products. They can execute this strategy now or they can keep feeding money and intellectual energy into the already dead carcasses of their papers until they realize, too late, the paper is rancid with decay and the readers they might have captured on their web site have already gone elsewhere. Seems a simple choice.
Turn off the printing presses.
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I agree that the obit for newspapers is waiting to be written. Discerning readers will cull the internet herd and find the most reliable sources. They are out there. Who knows, perhaps a Thomas Paine will arise and individuals will spread print media sans advertisers and owners who demand a bias. Think about William Kristol.
"Just give your readers the news and make sure the source is reliable."
OK, how you gonna do that? How are you going to vet that source and how are you going to ensure that the source isn't putting their particular spin on the info they upload to you? Are you going to have editors, vetitors or whatever to make sure your source stays independent and unbiased? And how is that any different than what newspapers do? It is just a different entity paying for news and distributing it.
The papers are in an impossible situation when it comes to the costs of advertising.
Here an article from 2004, telling the story of a Colorado paper that increased it's ad rates
while circulation went down. It also mentions how more prudent, careful ad advisers think and
advise their clients. It caught the attention of quite a few, at a time when businesses, the
advertisers, were regarded as a bit foolish but with unlimited funds whom they could fleece.
http://den
and a look at current problems (just one example of many):
http://www
I think new possibilities will arise as the old media go down. The greater this decline is, the
easier it will possibly be to create something new, and then there is the need for genuine reporters
again. This demand / need will always. But then in far more efficient circumstances. The setup
or newspapers is ridiculous. They carry something like a waterhead as "overhead",
while a slim new online chance clould provide reproters a much better environment.
When one of these so called social media journalist wins a Pulitzer, then maybe it might be over for newspapers. But until then I think newspapers and professional journalists who know who do dig for stories will be needed.
They should have print stands where you can print today's paper.
hopefully this won't happen until after I die. I want my crossword, my paper to hold and read. and to be able to cut out articles, and recipes and pictures.
The point about keeping the Sunday Times is exactly the future of most print newspapers. There are just too many easier, quicker and cheaper ways to get current news whether Internet or broadcast. Newspapers should become local weekly magazines with more in depth reporting and printed on cheap newsprint for the masses.
The hard fact is that news papers, as they exist now, are not sustainable for much longer. They're either going to have to be subsidized (what a waste), or subscription fees will have to go up considerably.
The solution is to go all digital AND provide printability. Most sites already provide a printable version using CSS, which can produce some really nice output if you put the time into developing the style sheets properly. With the right infrastructure they could also generate a PDF that looks just as good as a real newspaper. Set your computer to automatically print the morning paper right before you wake up, and you're good to go.
The all-digital format opens up some other interesting possibilities. Off the top of my head:
- Paper printing services. They'd print out the morning snapshots in bulk and deliver to those willing to pay. It would be cheaper than running a full printing press, and since one company could do printing for multiple newspapers they could aggregate the few remaining print customers to drive costs down. I think this has the best chance of being able to continue to provide low-cost printed news for those without Internet access.
- On demand news stands. Basically a stand with a computer, Internet connection and a reasonably fast laser printer. You could walk up any time of day and get the latest edition of your favorite paper.
The technology is here TODAY. Someone just needs to use it.
So, the world is black or it's white.
I'm sure Mr. Moore's objective was provocation through hyperbole, but he doesn't add anything to the debate.
Just don't take away my NY Times online
When all the papers are dead, what are the aggregators going to aggregate? Each other?
Great article & true story.
I work in a small newspaper and it's a dinosaur waiting to die. The industry management pulled 20% profit margins for decades but didn't invest in their own future. The media industry is a cash cow for investors. Greed, greed, greed. My employer, a 5 day/week small local paper, has rude employees, poor customer service and resists all employee suggestion. It is a relief to leave the industry. They deserve to shut down.
So why not replace the jerks with competent people instead?
Why do I have the feeling that hmargrt is one of the rude employees?
My family is also involved in the running of a small dailey in a rural area. It is part of a company with several newspapers. Unemployment is high and retail is disappearing. Newspapers don't survive on subscriptions , they survive on ads.
But. Not everyone would have access to online sites. The poor and the elderly would be closed out. It is a quandry.
As part of your plan are you going to give every poor inner city kid and parent, every rural poor person a computer? I mean hey, who cares of huge chunks of americans can't afford the internet, let alone the subscription fees that are going to pop up everywhere? Lets get real for a moment here, Newspapers and the press in general serve some basic civic functions, some community functions. How do you expect to demonstrate a revenue stream strong enough to employ the number of people necessary to run a paper.... not just reporters and editors etc., I'm talking about foreign corespondents war correspondents investigative reporters. I love the Huff but how much news are you guys breaking that aren't gossip. Break something like Walter Reed, something like Watergate and then come to me and say papers are dead. We're in a paradigm shift but there is a reason in takes time switch from analog to digital, it gives people a chance to acclimate to new realities. I still read a newspaper and I love the internet, but there are generations that don't. The marketplace hasn't spoken yet, further this neoliberal nonsense about the market always being right is just that nonsense. Darwin wrote of the survival of the fittest but he also wrote (and they never report it) that we are human beings and can reject the survival the fittest because we have souls.
J
Good points. Until we close the digital divide the Internet can't be counted on to replace everything from newspapers to drivers license bureaus. EVERYONE has to have access to it and as you point out, oblivious to Moore and many other commentators, millions just don't.
This shift away from print has raised, I'm guessing, the same howls that arose when the printing press put lots of studiously transcribing monks out of business. Suddenly, we didn't need a monastery to create copies of the bible. But what of the illuminations? You can't just let any miscreant copy the Bible! Readers will adapt to a different form of newspapers AND book because they must. I'd prefer to rise my horse to the university (if I had one), but the transportation system just is not all that friendly to four-legged transport.
And as for those suddenly concerned about those without access: the transmission of and access to information has always been elitist and, many suspect, always will be. It is far, far less elitist than it was 250 years ago, and infinitely more so when the crown and church controlled all information flow.
And when the Internet service providers suddenly cut off service to all but a select few, then what?
Before then, they'll impose even more filters so we only access approved news.
Bank of America went completely paperless a few years back. Then the San Francisco Earthquake last decade took out their server farm. They lost nearly a week's worth of business as they repaired the server farm just so they could get to their digitized emergency procedures manuals stored on said servers.
Why the digitize-everything crowd keeps forgetting that power outages happen from time to time, and can last for weeks, is beyond me.
Um. What you describe is not the fault of digital infrastructure but of inadequate planning or execution. It's the equivalent of keeping every paper document at one place. But what if that place burns down?
You can't rely on a data center to be up all the time. That's why you replicate the same data at several locations around the world. It's not rocket science, really.
Last month, a huge ice storm blacked out a large swath of central and western Massachusetts. Some people were without power for twelve days due to Unitil's Brownie-like efforts. The local TV stations broadcast school cancellations for those towns for days, even though the people who needed to hear it couldn't turn on their TVs to begin with.
A couple years back, I was coming home from LA and a book I'd brought with me managed to disappear from my carryon. It only cost me $8 to replace, but imagine if it had been a $300 E-book reader...
The current demand for hands-free cellphone headsets for driving stems from the cellphone companies switching from in-car speakerphones to small pocket-sized deals. When I worked in a Verizon store, I lost count of the number of people who had abandoned their landlines in favor of the cellphone they'd just lost and needed to replace at cost of phone and contract.
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What's next: shutting down swimming lessons because of the invention of the lifejacket?
I read NYT, WashPost and HuffPo (of course) online. However, I never have read my local paper online, even the few months I didn't subscribe. I take the local paper for the ADS. I am not about to try reading ads online, I have only one store that emails me a reminder to look at their ad, and by the time I go through the ten steps to actually get to the ad, its just not worth the effort.
If all newspapers go online, newspapers will die. Most young people do read news online - but then, most young people don't care about the news, especially local news. Most Boomers don't want to read their news online, nor do they want to go to the trouble to fiddle with the screen in order to get it easy to read.
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