Can Newspapers Be Saved?
There are two reasons why I left the newspaper business and, at the moment anyway, have no intention of going back. The first was that many of the people controlling the business today do not care all that much about journalism. The second was that, among those who do care, hardly any have a clue about what has hit them, or what to do about it.
I don't have any magical suggestions, but it's clear the future of most newspapers is paperless, free, and heavily local in character. But these are very broad descriptions; there is still an enormous range of possible outcomes, good and bad, even with those preconditions.
For instance, the "hyperlocal" idea is useful but inadequate if taken literally, given that we're in an era when categories of local and global are increasingly blurred. Virtual communities know no geographical boundaries. Both economic globalization and climate change have serious local and global effects, and political/policy fixes will increasingly have to straddle those categories. The more "hyper" the local in newspaper coverage, and the more it becomes just a buzzword, driven by business models that don't incorporate an understanding of the community or the world, the more blinkered and navel-gazing the local newspaper will become. Not good, given where they're starting from.
Lee Abrams is Tribune's new innovation director, coming from XM Radio and a long, highly successful career as a radio executive, and he's made a practice of writing long, stream-of-consciousness memos about what's wrong with newspapers. His latest is up on Romenesko. (Speaking of, why did Tribune -- apparently -- make Abrams abandon his blog? Seems like exactly the kind of reflexive, decidedly non-innovative corporate diktat that is killing the business.) It's great to see an outsider and proven innovator looking critically at the business. But I'm not loving what I'm reading:
*Changes are made but they are SO subtle that no-one outside of the building notices.*Writers and Editors content is undermined by a generally dated and tired look, that is tweaked but not noticeably evolved.
*Are rife with assumptions. That people will find great stories...that the paper will get credit for breaking stories...that the writers are known commodities...that the paper is the center of the local news universe. Well---not necessarily. Historically yes, but in 2008, not a given. Gotta REALIZE WAR HAS BEEN DECLARED by the Google's and Fox's...and FIGHT BACK...RECLAIM YOUR TURF! Ain't gonna happen by osmosis.
*Are not very aggressive. At least by today's standards. If a radio station had the circulation declines facing newspapers, all hell would break loose and you'd see the big guns pulled out. I don't see that in newspapers. When AOL started declining, they blew up the company. My point is that we gotta fight back... fight back to reclaim. It'll never be 1938 again, but there's no reason newspapers can't aggressively get in the 2008 competitive groove and grow again.
Well, yeah. But all of this has been obvious for years. If Tribune needs to spend big bucks to hire a proven innovator to come in and write memos telling its employees what any reader can see, things are worse than even I imagined. And while a little old-fashioned fire in the belly can't hurt, it's not a solution. Abrams mentions Fox and Google as the competitors, the enemy newspapers must gird themselves to battle. But if you're at at a medium-sized, Tribune-owned paper, are Fox and Google really your chief competitors? How are newspaper execs, editors and reporters supposed to get lathered up for a fight when they don't even know who or what their rivals are anymore? (Blogs? XM Radio? iPods? Jon Stewart?)
Again, no brilliant solutions here. But newspapers do need to blow things up. The current model, with its layers of editors, copy editors, classified ad reps and pillar-of-the-community caution, has to go. Papers need to experiment, try new formats, new models. There's the open-source idea advanced by newassignment.net, or by local startups such as Paul Bass's New Haven Independent. That's one way to inject both new perspectives and some buzz into the business at the same time. But papers also have to protect and nourish two things they already have -- reporting and the newspaper "brand." Original voices and journalistic credibility are pretty much all papers have left -- and they're good both for making money and for the healthy functioning of society.
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Treeware periodicals are outdated. I haven't paid for a newspaper or magazine in years. There's always somebody else's copy floating around somewhere. Books, however, are another story. Can't stop buying them.
let the newspapers die. papers cost money. blogs are free
(the rest)
I blame it all on the accountants. Once they started getting involved in running businesses for short-term profits, and money was being made mostly by business acquisitions and mergers, it spelled the beginning of the end for lots of businesses and industries. No more recognition of an individual industry's natural business cycles. Now, monthly profits or it's time to cut expenses!
How about increasing the quality of the product, in order to try and increase sales and customer loyalty? Is that such a weird, off-the-wall idea that no one is willing to try it? Apparently. Instead, newspapers are now doing what other industries have done before them.... laying off some of their best assets. Workers, i.e., reporters, columnists, etc. The very people their customers once looked forward to reading.
Unless newspapers once again begin meeting the needs of their natural base-- Readers!-- I don't think they stand a real chance of recapturing their lost status.
Of course, it should go without saying that they need to report the Truth, too, despite the propaganda spewed out by the White House and the Pentagon, but I guess we can't really take that for granted, either.
(continued)
Newspapers used to have personalities, too, but not so much anymore, unless you consider that a homogenized mall has the same personality that a downtown district of independently-owned stores does.
It's also true that many newspapers have, perhaps not intentionally-- but it still hurts, everything possible to alienate their true core base: Readers. What's happened to all of the book review sections that used to be a standard part of any respectable newspaper's Sunday edition? Perhaps the same has happened to other arts and culture sections, but I wouldn't know, since I rarely buy a paper any more. And the Sunday magazine? I knew it was a bad omen when the Philadelphia Inquirer began including "Parade" in every copy, along with their own Sunday magazine that had highlighted popular feature writers. Sure enough, they eventually eliminated that section, too. [And they couldn't even get the TV section right, once they outsourced that, too.] Once a paper starts losing their Sunday customers, it's pretty much over. The Sunday paper was once the weekly highlight of the printed news business. Now, they're all pretty much the same. "Parade?" Give me a break!
Yep, reporting the news, and doing it better, would be a good start, but it might not be enough now. Anyone can find just plain news online.
(continued
"With global warming and soaring gasoline prices focusing consumer, political and eventually regulatory interest on environmental sustainability and energy consumption, people looking to be kinder to Mother Earth are going to start wondering about the impact their daily paper makes on the environment.
They might not like what they learn.
A prototypical publisher selling 250,000 newspapers on each of the 365 days of the year adds nearly 28,000 tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, according to calculations we’ll explain in a moment. That’s roughly equivalent to the CO2 spewed by almost 3,700 Ford Explorers being driven 10,000 miles apiece per year.
The problem for even the most environmentally sensitive print publisher is that every aspect of the business does uncontestable violence to the environment.
From chopping down trees, to carting them to mills, to processing them into pulp, to hauling reels to warehouses, to powering massive presses, to delivering the finished project by truck and automobile, newspapers and magazines not only consume tremendous amounts of energy but at the same time require the harvest of millions of trees that otherwise would be gobbling up CO2 via photosynthesis.
But that’s not all. Even more energy is consumed when old newspapers and magazines are responsibly collected and hauled off for recycling, where the process (apart from felling more trees) essentially begins anew." - Alan Mutter
"Papers need to experiment, try new formats, new models."
Yeah, like telling the truth. The NYT lost circulation because of their Iraq coverage, not because of their 'internet' excuses. No one is speaking the truth to the electorate any more except for bloggers.
John:
I would have settled for newspapers reporting the news. I was an inveterate newspaper reader. Loved them. Got three delivered to my door every morning.
But beginning with the Bush election, when they were ignoring reporting from Greg Palast on voter caging that was covered in British papers, that stopped. And they've continued to not cover major news since. Lying about the distrubution of Bush tax cuts? nope. Lying in the run-up to Iraq? nope. Three GAO reports detailing Bush's illegal use of propganda? nope. Bush's ignoring pre-911 warinings? Nope. Downing street memos? nope. A clear trail to the Bush white house on torture? nope. Lying about the cost of the prescription drug beneifit? nope. Bush breaking the FISA law? nope.
On and on, their failures mounted. Newspapers have the unique ability to provide analysis, context, and nuance. That's their competative advantage. They chose to be stenographers with an establishment filter, instead.
That's why they're dead. They could have easily coexisted with the Web, had they realized what differentiated them -- not "balance", not "fairness," not first with the most -- but a commitment to ferriting out the truth and reporting it; a willingness to speak truth to power, not falshoods for power.
Same here. I couldn't have said it better.
Lets face it, if newspapers spent more time reporting the news instead of trying to make news and influence its readers more citizens would subscribe to local papers. The bigger point is that the media has failed the public big time. The run up to the war has been one of the biggest failures and one that will not be soon forgotten. Just a couple of days ago by local paper in Pittsburgh ran a front page story with pictures of a police dog funeral. Several local TV stations lead with the story also . Both were met with numerous letters and emails as the newspaper and the local TV stations appear to place more importance on a dog than the young kid who was shot and killed by the police for shooting the dog. I agree with an earlier blogger that if newspapers are going to be in the influence business more space should be made available to the readers to question ,agree or disagree about what they are reading. Two many newspapers have become partners with local governments instead of watchdogs. The newspapers have done it to themselves.
The trouble with the old fashioned print media likenewspapers is by the time they hit the streets the news is often way behind the Internet web sites and blog sites which are instant.
That's the question I've been asking myself for years. Your take on the internet solution makes me remember how nice it has been to curl up with the Sunday paper, a pot of coffee. Not sure I'll feel as cozy with the internet solution. Having said that, the most important aspect of a "solution" is to get the widest variety of opinions and facts to the American people in what ever mode they can count on. That is what the gentlemen in Philadelphia so many years ago had in mind as fourth leg of our society's governmental stool.
What we have now is a far cry from what we need and it will be a difficult road back but one we must take if we value our freedoms.
As I write, the "National Observer" from the 60's comes to mind because it was my first introduction to real journalism as I now recall it. Don't know if I saw an old copy again today I would have the same opinion, but back then it was an "aha" moment during my college years.
JOHN:
Why should the newspapers be saved? They sold America on the Bush/Cheney neo-con republican lies about the war, as a result there are more than 5,000 dead soldiers, 60,000 maimed soldires and, 50,000 suffereing from PTSD - why should the main stream media be saved? Oh, lets not forget the maimed and dead Iraqis.
If, in this age of convergence, a single owner has a number of newspapers, radio stations, and tv stations
1) The newspapers have low profit margins compared to the other formats, and
2) TV and radio is a more effective propaganda tool
What is their motivation for "saving" the newspaper?
Wouldn't the owners be more motivated to kill the format altogether?
I don't know the answers to these questions, or even if the first presumption is accurate.
...But it would explain a lot.
Good riddance to bad rubbish.
Credibility?? Newspapers have credibility?? The NYPOST??? Even the NYtimes has almost a half-page of corrections every day! Judith Miller at the Times had credibility-until she had none!! Newspapers put the Iraq war back in the "international" section-THAT'S CREDIBILITY???Give me abreak-I could go on here about the LACK of credibility of the newspapers in South Florida-but my post would take hours!!! Credibility of newspapers is a BAD argument! I don't buy it for a second!!!!!
it would more likely take days to accurately the describe the credibility problems with the south florida newspapers.
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