Life and Death in the Media Business

I go to a lot of meetings with a lot of bullsh**ters. One of the main topics of such people in a host of different businesses is a twofold argument with which they amuse themselves and each other. Here are its two prongs:

-- My business is coming up the ramp;

-- Some other business is dead.

The other business that is dead is, unless you are speaking to a very depressed person, not the one he or she is in.

So it depends on who you are speaking to, or to whom you are speaking, depending on whether that grammar stuff matters to you.

Following are the businesses that are dead, if you hang around with enough bullsh**ters in a wide enough range of fields:

-- The theater

-- Movies in movie houses

-- Public schools

-- Radio, because of satellite radio,

-- Satellite radio, because of Internet radio and ITunes

-- Broadcast television, because of cable and Internet video

-- Cable television, because of satellite TV and Internet video

-- Satellite television, because of digital television conversion and Internet video

-- Internet video, because of digital television conversion and downloading

-- DVDs, because of downloading

-- Downloading, because of the ubiquity of broadband streaming

-- Personal computers with hard drive capacity, due to cloud computing

-- Land-line telephones, because they're so 20th Century

-- Any internet company that is not Google (GOOG), for obvious reasons

-- Google, because, well, how long can they keep THIS up?

-- Books, of course

-- Magazines, except the ones that we're on the cover of, and...

-- Newspapers

The only one that everybody agrees about right now, among the b.s.-ing class, is newspapers. Newspapers are dead. Dead dead dead. Yes, Rupert Murdoch doesn't seem to believe so, but he is incorrect in this, or doesn't see the truth right now, or whatever. Because you know newspapers? They're dead.

This is not helped at all by the appearance of Sam Zell, who bought Tribune (TXA), and whose chief operating officer recently announced they would begin to judge the value of journalists by the column inches they produced in a year. This is sort of like saying that Chichi's is the best restaurant in America because it serves the greatest weight in nachos.

That aside, however, everybody does agree: they're dead. One day there will be no newspapers, because No Young People Read Newspapers. Is this true? My kids are of sentient age. They read newspapers. In fact, they're both knee deep in Obamamania right now, and read everything they can get their hands on. I see people reading newspapers on the street, in parks, on subways and buses... when you get a bad story in the newspaper it still ruins your day...

But no. They're dead. Know why? Because Advertising is Down in newspapers. Now of course, advertising is sort of down across the board, and actually MUCH more disappointing on all those social networks everybody loves so much... and newspapers still attract a HUGE proportion of total advertising...

But no. Newspapers are dead. And advertisers read that and, timid little lambkins that they are, cut their budgets even more, because after all who wants to advertise in a dead medium?

Finally, newspapers are, you know, dead because they Haven't Changed With The Times and News Is A Commodity That You Can Get Just As Well Online.

Except guess what. It's not. I'll just say what I think and get out of here. As always, if you agree, lob something in.

-- I like newspapers. I look at a few every day and even read some of each;

-- I don't believe everything I read in the paper, but I'm interested in what they think is interesting;

-- Newspapers have been around a long time, from medieval days through the time of Horace Greeley and beyond. Radio didn't kill them. TV didn't kill them. The internet will not kill them;

-- If there were no newspapers, all we'd have is the Internet, whose capacity for the promulgating and dispensation of bulls**t is unparalleled;

-- I am NOT interested in a PERSONAL, daily e-mail informing me only of the stuff I pre-select as of interest to me. What's the pleasure in that?

-- If we all had a euro for every article in some medium that declared another medium dead, we'd all be Europeans;

-- Aggregators can only aggregate content if there is content to aggregate. No content, no aggregators;

-- Contrary to popular belief, journalism is an actual profession that takes training, talent and skill, and one of the most rigorous and necessary places in which it's pursued is in newspapers;

-- 89% of all citizen-journalists are just full of it.

So let's take a breath and just agree: newspapers aren't any deader right now than any other coughing, wheezing business in this lousy environment. Lehman (LEH) is losing nearly $3 billion dollars this quarter. Nobody talks about investment banking being dead. Broadcast television just racked up more than $9.2 billion in its upfront sales season, in spite of analysts' predictions that this year would be its last. And not one social network is really making a go of it yet.

Now you guys in newspapers could probably help a little, going forward. Why not stop writing pieces every day about how dead every other industry is? Just a thought, tough guys.

Comments

[WorkingClass]

Newspapers are dying because they suck. Same with the Republican party.

[americaforme]

IT's a matter of cost, I love the printed page...I wont pay the price for half baked news, reported by so called literary genious's, controled and minipulated by the Big Five. News squashed and pressed like Chinese duck,dosen't set well on my palate. While Americans are behind the eight ball debt wise, yes you will see a major drop in the printed page...Magazines are minipulated too, having less to offer...costly also...Do you think that folks that give up Starbucks, has money to fritter away on printed rags?

[TRYKER]

When NEWSpapers begin to be NEWSpapers once again, their demise will be denied. N.E.W.S. hello!
But...I hope that ADvertising gets cut more and more...everywhere. Its like it has become some sort of God, its wading through quicksand to find anything of merit between all the ads. Watching a TV show has become nigh onto impossible, the ads run so often and so long, you miss the show if you blink.
If big pharma had to pay tax to the govt equal to the amount of advertising they do in allllll national media, our country would be in the black. Exactly how much do these full page ads for "prescription drugs" cost anyway? So why are our drug prices so high? DUH

[Bearymore]

Newspapers average a 15.6% profit margin according to PBS' Frontline. Not bad for a dead medium.

Of course, even if newspapers aren't dead, their owners are doing their best to kill them. I've subscribed to the LA Times for 30 years. Within months of the Tribune takeover, the quality went visibly downhill as the paper began to cut international and national news in favor of fluff (the "Image" section - give me a break!) and local coverage. With Sam Zell, the decline has become precipitous, with his latest plans to cut the news hole to 50% and continuing staff cuts. Except for local news, the paper has become worthless. If the NY Times California edition carried local news, I'd drop my LA Times subscription in a heartbeat. If the quality continues to decline, which I expect it will, I'll probably end up canceling my subscription anyway. This long time, loyal customer will be lost not to the internet, but to execrable management!

[Paul]

Exactly.

I cancelled my subscription to ther LA Times after 35 years because it is now a crappy newspaper.

Picke up a copy of the LA Times today while shopping to read about the Laker collapse. I would say that only about 20% of the paper are articles. The rest is just advertisements.

Whadda they gonna do when car dealers can't afford to buy 10-page ads for SUVs?

Nope. Newspapers are dying, if not dead.

[RButler]

I quit the LA Times years ago when it seemed like it was being sold by the pound. Advertisements and filler and more filler. Each section had a table of contents on the left column and each article had a summary at the top, so if you were to cut out all the ads and duplications you've probably have a paper of 10 pages or less.

[TheEmptinessOfTruthiness]

Many people are tired of using their ever-shrinking purchasing power to read lies and fluff that rarely if ever addresses their pressing problem of ever-shrinking purchasing power.

Only difference with the lies and fluff on tv is its more like an overhead cost where the lies and fluff are bundled in with whatever else they want to watch on tv.

[JScott]

Hmm I think the real reason is that intensely profitable newspapers are dead. But as the post said people still read them. I still find them on the bus seats, left behind in restaurants, and those inserts for sales and stuff (that I really don't read anyway) are more ubiquitous than ever-I still get tons of em in my mailbox. It's like they declared mom and pop grocery stores are dead too, but you still find em in some neighborhoods. In fact I think there was a post elsewhere on here that people are still snapping up vinyl LP records. And how do you explain all that stuff that everyone sez is dead finding itself on ebay and quickly snapped up for premium prices.

[itolduso]

I used the story of Southwest because they are a great example of a company that ensures it's future both by focusing on their 'core' purpose and by demonstrating that they value their customers even in the worst of times. Newspapers could learn a thing or two. In a nation at war, facing tremendous economic challenges and battered by divisive political campaigns- people need more & higher quality reporting of the facts, not less. We can live with less 'opinions' and entertainment and gossip. Invest in top journalists and give them the time and resources to fully investigate and report on stories that matter-that is how you insure your future.

[itolduso]

It seems too many businesses, in their chase for 'instant profit' , forget who they are and forget who they serve. Prior to 9/11 2001, there were a lot of airlines, many of them promoting themselves as "# 1 in service" and offering gourmet meals, fancy uniformed employees, elaborate airport lounges, and designer-decorated cabins with first-run movies and top-shelf beverages. A lot of energy went into providing all of those services- not nearly enough went into doing what their 'core' purpose was- getting passengers (& their luggage) from one point to another for a reasonable price, and in a reasonable amount of time. Their employees aren't dealing with the distraction of trying to be the best restaurant-waitress-movie theatre ect., -they don't have to be concerned with selling their passengers all the little perks- they are trained to escort their passengers safely . After Sept. 11 I heard an awful lot of horror stories of airline passengers stranded throughout the country-left on their own in the midst of confusion and fear. I was flying on Southwest Airlines that day and from the first report of the hijackings and terror, being forced to land in the nearest airport, and for the four days that we were stranded, Southwest employees kept their passengers together, kept us informed, put us up in hotels and arranged to transport us as soon as it was possible. Now THAT'S being # 1 in customer service!

[Cathexis]

I think you especially hit the proverbial nail with your observation about the aggregator/aggregate relationship. The majority of blog information is culled from news services / newspapers.

Newspapers are, IMO, quite useful. But it may be difficult to grow that business at the rates that greedy conglomerates like to see "growth" these days.

[noamjunior]

if newspapers are dead- they were killed by media conglomerates who stupidly think that papers should be growing at 20% a year while their staff is cut every couple of months
Newspapers got middle managed to death.

I stopped reading our local daily because of their consitent silence on IRaq and GOP malfeasence, coupled with a op-ed section drifting to the right of Mussolini

[edgraham]

Most of the "dead" media that you mention sounds or looks bad because the content sucks. Things change, and a lot of the media ownership make adjustments (read: cut costs and staff) that cause their product to sound or look like it is on the way to extinction.

I guess the hardest change to overcome is the dilution of the advertising dollar. There are so many media to spend it on and so many products. The amount of product will cause a decline in quality, and surviving media will be the ones that create new and interesting ways to inform and entertain. Bean counting will lose its luster and creative media people will survive.

The changes ahead will be interesting to watch. Change is developmental eventually- - it just takes time. Or, maybe I am nuts, and all is lost.

Ed Graham