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.

www.johnmcquaid.com/blog

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Comments

[westtexasboy]

Back in the late 1980s, the American society of newspaper editors magazine published an issue with a dinosaur on the cover. I was a journalism teacher then, recently returned to the classroom from the newsroom. I laughed when I saw the cover and thought it should have been a phoenix, realizing at that moment that the reason I wanted to teach was to help train the young people who would find ways to raise the newspapers from the ashes. Many of them have accomplished at least a little of that vision -- one covers the presidential race while another produces the business section at the NYT, another edits foreign news for the Wapo, another writes at the DMN, another presides over PRI. There are literally hundreds of others, none with lesser lights. Now they are mid-career pros, most of them dedicated and innovative. Not one is a naval-gazer. And I do not expect any of them to become geezers. Why not? Because what they have in common is not for sale -- they define publicly where the cutting edge is -- every day, they change gears as smoothly as Lewis Hamilton -- every day, and they do not know how to let the bastards grind them down. So, do not lose heart, John McQuaid. These folks are hard at work.

[Foohog]

Just a suggestion from someone who recently spent 14 months delivering newspapers in the rural countryside: charge people more if it costs more to deliver to them.

My paper sold at the machine in town for 50 cents. The subscription rate was 13.75. So in a five week month, it was almost cheaper to have it delivered to your door than it would be to drive into town and get it from the machine in front of the newspaper's office building. On top of that, just to get someone to deliver the paper in the outlying areas they had to pay me a rate of 40 cents per paper because of the cost of gas and the terrible condition of our rural roads. Doesn't leave much profit for the paper.

The model most newspapers use in their delivery subscription prices has been out of date since gasoline went above $2 a gallon.

[TooLooze]

Being 58 years old, I am a member of the newspaper generation. Unfortunately, I don't read the newspaper any more. Most medium to large cities in the sixties had two papers; one conservative and one liberal. Those days are unfortunately gone.

I canceled the Orlando Sentinel a few years ago when they ran a front page article on the number of black owned business that were open on MLK day. Any paper that doesn't understand that MLK day is not a BLACK holiday doesn't seem worth reading. I subscribed to USA Today and my dog really likes bringing it into the house for me and then I throw it away. It is garbage.

The internet, as long as it remains free, is the way to go.

[lisakaz2]

John,

I have a BSJ from Northwestern and studied with some fine journalists, including Dick Hainey, David Protess and Frank Maier. I have felt that if print has a problem it is because it has taken a corporatist, infotainment spin in the last 15-20 yrs or longer and no longer cares about Job 1: reporting the news, not reporting how ppl spin the news. They've become lazy. They don't mediate the points of view; they don't examine the veracity of any "spin" -- like what would Woodward/Bernstein circa '73 made of the whole WMD bs? They wouldn't have been suckers ala Judith Miller.

They may well fall apart and corporations may abandon them to upstart ppl who care about news not profit margins, I'm not sorry if they all go away. In the end, we'll actually get back to news.

[LeonBNJ]

To me the biggest reason for newspapers delining is that more people don't have the time to read them anymore and are more likely to watch local/regional TV news or on the internet.
The best chance of survival is to cover local, state and regional news as well as national and international news with some connecting references. The also need to be attuned to local market demographics, including significant ethnic groups, school aged as well as seniors with news they need or to help the community.
They also must not be so neutral or biased in favor or the Political parites in power. They need to be fair, balanced and not openly identifiable with corporate powers.
Newspapers are much more likely to cover state government, local government, businesses in their market areas, political issues, zoning and planning issues, local corruption, local injustices, local pollution issues and so on. That is probably why newspapers still are important for most people that get them.

[thecanadian]

Absolutely the printed word can be saved. Both in Print and the Internet. This U.S. Political campaign has really highlighted the absolute need for print versus the Electronic Media . No one trusts the Television talking heads at all anymore. They Spin and Lie for ratings.
Keep the word coming!

[Paul]

Unfortunately the people who are in control of newspapers now bought them because newspapers have historically been cash cows.

With declining circulation and reduced classified revenues and less advertising money going into the MSM, the accountants who run newspapers these days are actually going to have to think and produce a product people will want to see.

And what are the chances of that actually happening?

[jah2008]

They can save it if they report facts instead of opining. If they want to opine, they should go the way of HuffPo by allowing people to shout back. We're in a different era. We want to be heard instead of being told how we should feel and think. When we see bias, we want to tell them so.

CNN's Ticker/blog is one example of corporate media not understanding the medium. Comments are heavily moderated and closed within an hour after the item is posted.

[pithy]

I've written as a freelance features-writer for a local paper for 17 years.

What's needed is less "naval gazing" opinion columns and more in-depth local investigative work.

Example - our paper did a lengthy series on one wealthy County, which had attracted every big-box you could think of and was rolling in sales tax dough.

The angle was the enormous fleet of County cars being provided to everybody and his brother, right down to the dog catcher's sister-in-law - all costing the taxpayers a bundle. The series of articles brought home to the taxpayers the incredible extravagance going on - and ended in 52 cars being sold and more people getting involved in some of the other budget issues.

Pieces like that take a lot of time, resources, and make a lot of enemies - but they're relative to the residents and sell papers galore.

They also perform the highest function of the 4th estate - which is what's missing and the reason people just don't bother with the paper anymore.

[MaverickModerate]

Newspapers can only be saved if they evolve into new media. At this point, they are very much like horse drawn carriage makers at the turn of the 20th century. Either they had to retool to make carriages for automobile makers or they dissovled.

With 60 million social networking millenials coming of age in the next 10 years, millions of Gen-X'ers turning to blogging, and Boomers and Silent generationers retiring or dying off the audience for newspapers is disappearing.

Their future is in providing the backbone for use in new media (like RSS feeds), just as carriage makers just made the carriage hosings for autombiles, RSS feeds power the blogs and social networks.

[wm1066]

The right wing neocons have bought the two papers in the Twin Cities and they haven't a clue on what the reader wants. The MPLS Trib has made huge mistakes in hiring columnists that the readers don't like but they refuse to get rid of them. They keep calling me to renew my subscription and I have alot of fun telling them why I wont buy thier paper. They think they can ram a neocon view down our throats and we will still support them...fat chance!

[burnt]

"Can Newspapers Be Saved?"

As your experience and insight suggest... IF (and only if), they learn to adapt before they face total bankruptcy.

"But papers also have to protect and nourish two things they already have -- reporting and the newspaper "brand."

I would add that they also have to lend their experience to the blogosphere, in a constructive (non-controlling) way... The traditional newspapers will only gain acceptance of their adaptation to the web, if it can be perceived by those who judge journalism, that they are leading an attempt to share experience and accessibility with those who do not come from a "newspaper" background.

This is mostly an effort to counter a part of the American misperception that "you (are/must be) judged by the company you keep". On the surface that effort seems counterproductive and not very "competitive", but I believe it's possible to protect "brand" as you suggest, while concurrently pulling the blogging world up to higher reporting standards, even if it would mostly be geared towards enlightened self-interest.

Of course, MSM congloms are not going to do that... so this is mostly just an exercise.