The Newspaper Is Dead, Long Live The Newspaper

Last week's newest bloodletting at Sam Zell's Chicago Tribune saw bone start to be jettisoned along with flesh. On top of hundreds of job losses since the beginning of the year, early-buyout exits by managing news editor Hanke Gratteau and public editor Timothy McNulty-along with two dozen other core newsroom staff-from one of the most important news outfits in the nation is shocking.

But it's no surprise (at least not for anyone who's ever glanced at Newspaper Death Watch). The Trib and the newspaper industry in general are suffering from one grand malady that no number of injudicious job cuts can solve: the American newspaper as we know it is already dead. Not ailing. Not on life support. No longer revivable. Stiff, hard, lifeless.

Welcome to 2008, almost a decade into a twenty-first century where working stiffs like you and me long ago learned to put down our newspapers and get most of our information off of the Internet, and where most of our children have never even learned to pick up a paper in the first place.

Print media came to pass in a much different era, one in which the speed of communication was defined by the speed of your fastest horse. After all, horses drew the carriages that delivered millions of papers to news-hungry Americans until well into the twentieth century.

The traditional newspaper model made sense at the time: create a product keyed to the fastest delivery method possible and build an industry around it. Printed news, publishing money fronted by printed ads, physically distributed to subscribers who paid for the convenience of having the world delivered to their doorstep each morning.

Unfortunately, it's an entirely irrelevant model today. In 2008, instant communication is defined by the speed of light-the rapid rate at which electronic information zips from one end of Planet Earth to the other. Nowadays, we expect the world to be instantly available from our desktop, not waiting for us once a day on our doorstep.

This is reality. We are a plugged in populace these days. It's getting harder and harder to claim a "digital divide" in an era of $200 home computers and universal Internet access at our nation's libraries. Our national watchwords seem to have morphed from "a chicken in every pot" to "a cell phone in every pocket"-and this across the entire socioeconomic spectrum.

So why do the feet of the newspaper industry continue to straddle two centuries?

True, since the 1990s most papers have made huge strides in creating online versions of themselves. The best of these are free, receive minute-by-minute updates throughout the day, and offer a wide variety of interactive functionality to readers.

The worst of these are gone. They were the paid electronic versions, the most notorious of which being the now defunct New York Times Select service, that sought to build a firewall around their content, essentially bringing the news-for-a-fee print model onto the World Wide Web.

The failure of paid electronic newspapers should have been telling: the Internet is a wholly different environment. Instant, yes, but also consociational, open source, and freely available. And consumers in that sphere like it that way-they certainly liked it enough to take their Times news-reading elsewhere.

So the industry has learned at least about the reality of the electronic market in which it must now compete. But actually building an engaging and free web presence that is also a profitable one remains an open question. While groping desperately for an answer, this nation's newspapers have resorted to all sorts of folly to tighten their belts around their nineteenth-century waists. Changing inks. Compacting sizes. Dropping beats. Jettisoning staff.

That these stop-gap efforts are being chased equally by paid and free papers (Chicago Reader, anyone?) is an important point. That freebies can't even bring their print readers back in sufficient number to keep their advertisers happy ought to set off klaxons in the industry-loud ones, with big, red, spinning lights, perhaps accompanied by pointed EBS industry weather warning.

Instead, we get the Trib showing Hanke Gratteau and Timothy McNulty the door. And, in case you haven't been paying attention, to add stupidity to injury, Bill Parker, the person responsible for the Trib's web presence is out the door, too.

It's a pathetic state of affairs. The American newspaper industry seems dead set on going to its collective grave in a futile effort to fit an 1800s business model into a 2000s consumer market. But you can't turn back the clock, least of all on techonological realities, and the deep and abiding economic changes they bring.

There is a solution, more than likely an inevitable one. In fact, that inevitability is probably why the industry is doing everything it can to try and make the old model work. However, it's not an easy fix. It requires a wholesale letting go of the industry as we know it.

Newspapers must accept the fact that their online versions are their primary versions now. Not in the future. Not potentially. Already. The long-vaunted printed paper may still be kicking for the moment, but it is already a secondary outlet and there is no going back. American newspapers that survive in this century will be those who grasp, accept, and celebrate this concept. You are electronic media now, first and foremost.

Whether this means a future where printed news is absent entirely or a premium product provided to a select few who wish to pay for it is anyone's guess. It does, however require the industry to remove its head from the rump of yesteryear's unworkable business model and concentrate, instead and fully, on devising an online model with the power to enage and entire readers and advertisers to come along for the ride.

The industry can continue to create its own problems, or wake up and smell the virtual coffee. No matter what, you can't fight fate. Note to cowering media mavens: next time you come down from your towers and take a walk past a newsstand, please take heed. See it for what it is: a sidewalk museum of failed economics. Let the pain in. Take a deep breath. Let go of the past, it's only hurting you, you know.

Then grab a sandwich and an Orangina, head back to your offices, and brainstorm a way to truly join the rest of us in the twenty-first century economy.

That's an information economy, folks, in case you haven't paying attention. For the past 15 years.

Comments

[ignrnthllblly]

But Mike, shouldn't you acknowledge the fantastic success rate of bloodletting historically?
I have no doubt that the cure effected upon newspapers will be absolute; I also have no doubt that what survives will not be a newspaper. [insert paleo-nostalgia passing for wisdom here]

I recently miss the newspaper ritual as well--certainly the smell of fresh newsprint. I certainly liked that the articles read the same later. Less recently, I also began to miss the clacking of manual typewriters, a newsroom full of seasoned reporters, the five editions daily (plus extras), and--oh yeah--timely and accurate reporting. The old cost-inefficient ways got authoritative news into my hands faster than today's "streamlined" newspaper production methods can deliver yesterday's news tomorrow. With the elimination of "outdated" technology, whole departments which were crucial and non-motorized delivery, my local paper's one edition now goes to bed much earlier than it ever did before. The news that used to be in the next morning's paper is now in the following day's paper. Public record information that used to be reported immediately now languishes--sometimes approaching two months. Local TV and radio can no longer fake local coverage as well because there's nothing to rewrite. In short, my paper has cut back on local coverage--the one niche which it could occupy without competition--because of short-term, bottom-line thinking. The news hole is filled from a can.

Maybe the solution is as simple as Back to the Past?

[larry278]

The Tribune never was a newspaper of record or world's greatest newspaper [Is Col McCormick turning over his grave over the changes Sam Zell is making?]. The other Chicago paper never was good either. If you live in a 1 paper town & that paper is owned by the CHICAGO TRIBUNE as I do, the only thing that the local blute is useful for is lining the bottom of your bird cage. That also goes for the NYT & both Chicago papers. I'll admit that the girdle ads in the NYT's Sunday Magazine were a turn on before PLAYBOY. That was a log time ago though.
Face it-a lot of people get their news from the web & no longer subscribe to or even look at a newspaper. You don't have to get rid of the content of a web site but you have to throw out yesterday's paper. When the current readers of newspapers die off many papers will die too. There will be other ways to find obits & other local "news" on the web. Pro Publica may inspire the start of local investigative reporting sites. One can get tle local police log easily on-line in many areas. Who needs a paper in 2008?

[gladiatorpodolsky]

Good ridddance. They were prima donna character assassinators, unelected judge and jury that sentenced people to bad reputation without due process. The Tribune savaged me twice without good reason or allowing me to defend myself. I'm tickled to death to see it disappear and all the egos lose their jobs. --Neil Elliott

[Mike Doyle - Huffpost Blogger]

Let's not go overboard, though. I don't enjoy seeing anyone lose their job. My point is not for reporters and editors to be kicked to the curb. Instead, I'm talking about those who own and manage in the industry accepting the primacy of electronic media now, so that they can focus on building a workable virtual business model so that news scribes can continue to bring us the news and not be laid off in droves.

I do think there will be a lot more commentary (from rank-and-file folks like me--and you) involved. But I also think online there's room for everybody. You could even see it as an expansion of the industry, in those terms.

[larry278]

Whatever, capitalism is cruel & gets even more cruel when a new technology replaces &/or destroys an old technology. The workers in the old technology are left unemployed when their old tech employer folds. The displaced employees, all too often, must find a new occupation, learn new skills quickly, take a big cut in pay to even get a job & face a future in less lucerative business which forces them to cut their standard of living for life. There are others who never get steady, full time work in any occupation. They have to make do with part-time, short term employeement with 2 or 3 part time jobs at the same time to barely survive in much reduced circumstances; if the ever do find any gainful employeement. The British call workers who are put of work being made redundant. Regardless of the name these displaced worker bear, they're thrown away.
That hurts. American business is given to throwing workers away when they adapt to a new business model. They don't want to retrain workers & spend little to no money on retraining. They hire young new employees & throw away experienced employee who could work 10 to 25 years more if they were retrained. Business wants, young, dumb, poorly paid workers, not loyal, adaptable, veteran employees at any rate of pay.

[beth4158]

What's so staggering about the Tribune as a player in this greater production of The Decline of Newspapers is how swiftly a once-mighty and historical title is coming undone. When I worked there, the Tribune celebrated its sesquicentennial (150 years). Now, 11 years after I left those hallowed halls, I wonder how much longer the print edition will exist. Meanwhile, a huge amount of talent is seeping out of that gothic tower, be it walking out the door or being kicked down the stairs.

[JJeff88]

I've been waiting for someone to write this article and now Mr. Doyle has done so.

Attaboy!

The imminent death of the newspaper as we know it is due both to obsolete technology and bad management.

If you back away from the proverbial forest for a moment, you can see that the perfect news gathering system would provide its audience with a terrific news product (in relevance, depth and breadth) in an easy-to understand format (i.e. news & info must be organized in a manner that people can readily take in and process). This is the first challenge.

The second is figuring out a profitable revenue model (no doubt the continued mix of newstand and subscription prices and ad/promo revenue). So far, doing this successfully via the Internet has been a bit daunting, but the capability of having a :30 second commercial pod-cast pop up into the middle of an article is now with us, and my guess is that good media execs will figure out how to make a dollar.'

But in the end, it's "all about product" and, to succeed, the (now electronic) media business must be taken away from the bean counters and placed back in the hands of the editors.

[nellie]

I have been amazed by the amount of revenue that can be generated by a website. What would be an ideal solution is to get to a point where web and print ads can support both formats. We still have books, we still have magazines, we still have radio. The internet is not likely to completely replace these forms of media. It probably won't completely replace the newspaper, either.

Thank you for this in-depth treatment of the topic. Very informative.

[jmcgrath]

The primary version of a paper can be electronic while still offering a print version for the many, many people who want it, especially on the weekend. They're not mutually exclusive. And while the trendline is obvious, newspapers still make the lion's share of their revenue from print, so jettisoning it at this point would be stupid. Might as well wring every last dollar from print while doing everything possible to figure out a business model for the digital side.

I'm tired of the "newspapers are dumb" articles--they're easy, and lazy. There's a lot of desperation and stupidity in journalism (and other digitally-threatened industries, like music and television) but some papers (like the NYTimes, where I work, though I hardly speak for them) have been funneling massive resources at online for a while, and that's only increasing. Everyone knows the future, and present, are online. The hard part, for which you offer no suggestions, is figuring out a business model capable of funding serious journalism.

[Mike Doyle - Huffpost Blogger]

You're right, jmcgrath, on two counts. First, I don't offer any solution here. If there were any obvious business model to follow, the industry wouldn't be in the dire straits it's in now.

Second, I don't find anything intelligent about gutting a news room. So is this a "newspapers are dumb" article? Some publishers clearly still don't get what you claim they find obvious--if they believe the future is a purely digital one, they're sure not saying it out loud (and why would they--they'd only scare their advertisers). Dumping your greatest journalistic assets en masse, however, is not the answer.

Massive resources are meaningless without a paradigm shift in thinking. Frankly, part of that shift is going to have to be a wholesale rethinking--and expansion--of what defines "serious journalism". The industry's longstanding exclusion of voices that don't jibe with a conservative, journalism-school vision of the industry continues to do damage here.

I give the Tribune a lot of credit for its "Colonel Tribune" social-media outreach initiative. But the fact that only half the newsroom is bothering to participate underscores the dangers of an entrenched worldview. Being plugged in should not be an option at the Trib, it should be an absolute requirement.

That said, no, I'm sorry, I don't have the solution to the industry's woes. But I do think we need to be very clear about the problem.

If you have a constructive solution, though, I'd be glad to hear it.

[Pigliacci]

There's the rub: It's not merely that the format and delivery have to change, but that the entire edifice of "serious journalism " must be rebuilt from the ground up. When the customary gatekeepers and opinion-makers are rendered irrelevant, when anyone with access to the Internet can reach a larger audience than any daily newspaper (including the Times), and produce some pretty serious journalism in the process, funding a finite universe of newspaper desks starts to seem quaint and adorable like Hildy Johnson, or pathetic and desperate like Walter Winchell.

[Yvan]

Can you spell "ATTENUATION" ? Newspapers in this country have been targeted by this administration with attenuation. What is attenuation ? Technically, it isn't spying. It is the systematic destruction of communication links for the purposes of social and economic isolation. The people in this administration doing it have zero interest in the content of communications, they only care whether the particular communications is a sustaining personal or business resource. You start out talking with live people, then you reach only voice mail boxes and emails that go unanswered and finally that person -- a customer, a source of information, a lawyer, whatever, drops out of your sphere of contact, diminishing the resources that you can draw on for survival. Finally you look and feel like an inconsequential dinosaur, completely out of the loop, imagining reasons for your failure, blaming yourself.

[Mike Doyle - Huffpost Blogger]

I don't know, that sounds like a chicken-and-egg argument to me. Which came first? Political isolationism aimed at the communications sector, or the sheer economic reality of the contemporary information economy?

Can you truly say that the newspaper industry would not be in the state it's in today if all other factors except the economic were taken into account?

[Yvan]

A rule of combat is to push people in the direction in which they are falling. You use attenuation in a failing industry to pick and choose who will win and then you control the winner. Of course the economic and technological reality is unfavorable to the current business model of newspapers but given enough time they would adjust to the new model -- UNLESS first pushed over the cliff -- then it is every man for themselves.

NEVER lose sight of the goal -- the goal is to push all media from an uncontrollable realm (newspapers are physically hand delivered, and therefore impractical to stop or fake) to a realm which they can completely control -- the virtual realm of the Internet. You push all exchange of media onto one road and then you take over the bridges -- duh, straight out of the Idiot's guide to war.

[Cheryl44]

I'll grab a Reader to look through while I'm doing laundry, but that's about the extent of my reading the newspaper offline and has been for a number of years.

[T4Phage]

I guess i'm slowly going the way of the dinosaur because i love getting a newspaper every morning...started reading it faithfully when i was 16 and now at 45 i haven't let up.....but for me, its all about having something to read while i have my daily bm...after that i still go online to read even more news from around the world...the daily paper gives me local news and sports in a detail that i don't want to read about online and going online lets me read about news that american msm refuses to cover in fear of actually educating the populace....i'm going to miss my newspaper

[jesdakota]

I'd half agree with you, if ordering a paper-subscription to my local newspaper hadn't changed my life in such a positive way. Maybe I'm different, in that I don't have to leave the house first-thing in the morning and hop on a train, or commute anywhere. But who'd serve the stay-at-home mom population, I'm sure we're too small.

Anyway, it's all about the ritual for me. Get up, smell that paper so kindly delivered to me by a guy who's up before dawn, earning his bread (I imagine his wife comes along for the ride sometimes, just to keep him company). My kids will grow up watching me savor my morning paper, and the only thing that would stand in the way of them repeating the paper, is cost analysis.

Hopefully, by then, the Iraqui's will have realized that if they give us cheaper oil, we will have cheaper groceries (but only after we've suffered enough to be truly grateful). Then, the "starving Ethiopian" problem (which seems to never go away), will be relieved by the extra resources we all now have, and vow to use charitably...so grateful are we to those noble and forward-thinking Iraquis.

[Mike Doyle - Huffpost Blogger]

I totally agree about the ritual element of the newspaper. I love waking up on a Sunday to a pot of coffee, a lox bagel (that's the native New Yorker in me), morning TV, and a big, fat weekend paper.

Trouble is, I don't enjoy that during the week. Like may others, I find myself grazing news on the Internet, gobbling down a granola-covered yogurt, and getting to work.

Mind you, I consult and blog from a laptop about 20 feet from where I sleep, so I'm part of the stay-at-home population, too. Though my mileage on the matter differs, I can see newspapers becoming a niche product for those with the extra weekday time to read them.

What I more expect is for the industry to continue to cut out weekday editions (some papers have already stopped printing on Mondays) until we're left with those big, fat, comfy, printed Sunday papers, and online content for weekday reading.

I think that because that's the only way I and most people I know have read the paper for years now.

[Pigliacci]

I'm one of the dinosaurs, I guess.

I get the New York Times daily, plus the Tribune on Sunday. I cherish my hour with the Times during the morning and evening METRA commute, but this is largely a quirky pastime: Most of my fellow passengers have long since moved on to laptop games and movies--when they're not actually already working.

The truth is, like everyone else (except John McCain?) I am thoroughly immersed in the current century once at the office. My primary source of news and opinion is not newspapers or magazines, not radio or TV. The blogosphere has left them all in the dust.

Finally, insult-to-injury, my personalized information stream is delivered continuously, and at virtually no cost. No oil is pumped, no forests are felled, and no greenhouse gases are expelled to bring me literally EVERYTHING in the world, and I can share and discuss all of it with anyone in the world in a matter of seconds.

Game over. The future is here and it looks a lot like HuffPo.