Internet is Killing the Newspaper

jose parinas writes "MediaDailyNews is reporting that 2005 will go down as one of the worst newspaper years in history, and 2006 doesn't look promising. Online media is continuously generating more readership and ad dollars, but currently only accounts for 5% of total newspaper revenues."

Comments

Re:Who cares?

[jangobongo]

I live in the Phoenix area which is served by the Arizona Republic. Their excellent online version carries all the same stories that the print one does.

I just set my Yahoo RSS reader to list their news, business, community, and offbeat sections and it gives me the top ten stories for each main section of the paper (at least, the ones that I'm interested in). I can scan the headlines and brief intro to see if I would like to read more in depth and I find much more relevant local news that way. I never waste my time on television news unless there is some national breaking news story being covered by the news channels.

If there is breaking local news, the RSS is updated, and I usually read about it long before it makes it to the print version. We get the paper every day, but it's a complete waste for me because I get much more news from the online version.

Re:What do you expect?

[plover]

It's all pulpwood, grown expressly for the purpose of becoming newsprint. It's a farm crop, like corn or beans. And much of the newsprint is recycled, making it even less of an issue.

I'm not saying electronic delivery isn't much less of an expense (both in terms of resources and energy to make and deliver them), I'm just saying that it's not like anyone is denuding virgin forests of 200-year-old trees just to make a few bird cage liners.

Re:What do you expect?

[Daxster]

It's all pulpwood, grown expressly for the purpose of becoming newsprint. It's a farm crop, like corn or beans.

I won't deny that you have a point of newspapers using recycled paper, but I live in an area that has most profits generated from pulp mills and logging. Simply put - the trees are not on a farm, they're first-growth temperate rainforest trees. Although selective logging has been introduced, the logging companies and pulp mills are interested in profits, so many areas are clearcut when they can't be seen by the public (remote areas behind mountains, etc).
Newspapers do use a lot of resources :-(

Re:What do you expect?

[Joe Random]

Simply put - the trees are not on a farm, they're first-growth temperate rainforest trees.

They may not be on a traditional farm-type piece of land, but they usually are replanted after harvesting, and the same location is re-harvested whenever possible. So the grandparent was right when he stated that pulpwood is a farm crop.

And I don't see what clearcutting has to do with it. As long as it's not a eyesore (and you state that it's usually done in remote areas) then it generally makes sense to harvest all of the crop of trees. The only exception I can think of is that, in some circumstances, erosion might be worsened by clearcutting. However, as you said, many companies are now practicing selective logging, probably for that exact reason.

Re:What do you expect?

[bm_luethke]

I live in an area (I live near Clahoun, Tennessee) that creates a large amount of pulpwood for newspapers and is farmed. In fact, I believe the company is the largest producer of newspaper pulp in the US (at least it was a few years back - I don't really neep up with it or anything).

The company is called bowaters and owns several million acres of property. It is some of the best hunting lands in the state for pretty much all our local wildlife (and feral wildlife also). While yes, they clear cut if they aquire new property, and always clear cut when they harvest, the replanting of the trees is about as dense as can be sustained and is GREAT for wildlife - again one of the top hunting areas in the state with both large mature animals taken and a large yearly bag limit (and it's quite expensive to hunt as well).

They allow independant and govt forresters to view thier managment and make suggestions - they even usually follow them also.

I don't know what company you are near, but it is insane to purchase old growth forrest for wood pulp. It takes specific types of trees to make and old growth forrests are not very dense. Pulp manufacturers only purchase them if they need more land, and in many cases what they do with the land is beneficial for the local wildlife in the long term. Basically old growth is horrid for paper pulp - though it is generally good for expensive lumber because of the size of boards that can be harvested.

About the worst that can be said is that the place stinks real bad when you are not used to it and the gasses released, while not damaging, make a fog so thick that you can not see past the end of the hood on your car (literally). When conditions are right it can creep out over the interstate and has caused some of the largest wrecks in US history.

Re:Internet is Killing the Newspaper. . .

[crimperman]

. . . and it's saving the trees.

Newsprint doesn't contain as much tree as it used to. In the UK at least newspaper publishers are required by law to ensure that their newsprint in made of a minimum of 65% recycled fibre - this goes up to 70% on 1 Jan 2006.

Re:What do you expect?

[schmelter_tim]

On the internet there are no constraints on how long an article or new clip can be, no limit on the number of photos, no reason you can't post raw video or audio along with the typical edited clips so that people who are interested in a subject can see more indepth coverage.

[Disclaimer: I work for a metro newspaper in the online department, and these opinions are mine, not necessarily reflective of any editorial policies, etc, etc.]

When I first started at the newspaper, I believed exactly as you did--no reason you can't post the entire story, with lots of extra content that couldn't make it into the paper, but there are actually a number of practical limits that make that infeasible:

• Longer stories take more of a reporter's time to craft. As with most organizations, the single biggest expense a newspaper has is payroll
• Even "raw" video, photos, etc. take some resources to process: time & bandwidth being chief among them
• One of the benefits any news organization brings to its readership is editorial decision-making: This is what we think is important today. Yes, it's inherently biased and favors certain types of stories over others. But as has been proven time and again, if information wants to be free, it will be posted, and if people find it important and relevant, that information will be read.

But the single biggest eye-opener for me, and one that cured me of thinking "just post it all!" was our readership numbers. The online features that draw the biggest readership numbers are web-exclusive photo galleries of our local college football team. Top viewed stories every day during football season? Stories relating to that team. Admittedly, I live in Texas, where football is the state religion, but the readers vote with their mice, and the mice are saying "Give us pretty pictures of football, please!"

Newspapers are one part community service and one part business. If the community is obviously overwhelmingly interested in a certain kind of content, then more resources will gravitate toward providing that content.