Slashdot Mirror
Are Newspapers Doomed?
Ponca City, We love you writes "James Surowiecki has an interesting article in the New Yorker that crystalizes the problems facing print newspapers today and explains why we may soon be seeing more major newspapers filing for bankruptcy, as the Tribune Company did last week. 'There's no mystery as to the source of all the trouble: advertising revenue has dried up,' writes Surowiecki, but the 'peculiar fact about the current crisis is that even as big papers have become less profitable they've arguably become more popular,' with the blogosphere piggybacking on traditional journalism's content. Surowiecki imagines many possible futures for newspapers, from becoming foundation-run nonprofits to relying on reader donations to deep-pocketed patrons. 'For a while now, readers have had the best of both worlds: all the benefits of the old, high-profit regime — intensive reporting, experienced editors, and so on — and the low costs of the new one. But that situation can't last. Soon enough, we're going to start getting what we pay for, and we may find out just how little that is.'"
This is terrible. You can't put websites at the bottom of the parrot cage!
'For a while now, readers have had the best of both worlds: all the benefits of the old, high-profit regime â" intensive reporting, experienced editors, and so on â" and the low costs of the new one. But that situation can't last. Soon enough, we're going to start getting what we pay for, and we may find out just how little that is.'
really? I thought that vanished in 1999
There has been very little fact checking or true investigation in reporting in quite some time, and I'm afraid you can't blame the internet for that.
Newspapers will not die though. Most of their stories are sourced from the same organizations which source on-line content (reuters, associated press, et al), and they will continue on in their ineptitude and failure to fact check or investigate, as usual.
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OK, newspapers have their problems, but the biggest problem with the Tribune is that Sam Zell loaded it up with an unmanageable level of debt when he bought it.
The Tribune is more an example of how raiders like Zell enrich themselves during a leveraged buyout than an example of a failing newspaper.
Ad revenue cannot and should not sustain newspapers or television. We really need to figure out what is important to have in our society and start ponying up money to support it. I would like to see more money going to services like PBS and NPR to expand that quality of programming into a local printed publication. I have to admit that I very rarely read a paper, but I do listen to NPR pretty much every time I am in the car and I recognize that the bulk of their programming comes from news discovered by print journalists.
Go ahead and tax people for it and give the papers away. If there are no reporters out there to dig up the interesting stories that don't qualify for the sensationalist 10PM news shows then we are in danger of losing that part of our history. It's time people stop thinking about themselves, and making a quick buck on ads by catering to the lowest common denominator and start thinking about what they can do to add value to the quality of life for the entire human race.
internet. Once micropayments came along (which back then was always real soon), everything on the internet was supposed to become pay-for. Every website you visit would deduct a fraction of a penny from your browser or something. This would be "necessary" to pay for inherent costs. What they didn't count on was that on the internet, oftentimes, if someone doesn't provide it free, someone else is willing to step in and grab that audience.
Also, since many newspapers are little more than repackaged AP and Reuters news, looking at the NY Times for guidance - I don't know what their value proposition is supposed to be. This past election cycle, because I paid attention to politics - I have seen how the old media doesn't even pretend to present the world as it is but just their packaged version of it - they do a bad job of reporting things of niche interest - 3rd parties, other people running other than the "top 2" candidates that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, etc.
Considering this, what value do they bring to the table? If they don't carry the most general of news, someone else will. And since they don't cover anything in depth (not every interest in audience, by nature), most easy to find forums, blogs, etc will cover a subject deeper and be more informative.
All I see is someone bickering that their pre-packaged, repackaged jack-of-all-subjects, master-of-none is becoming obsolete by the fact that it's not the pre-1980s anymore when people relied on print to stay informed.
I get two newspapers each week.
One is going broke, one is doing fine.
One is skimmed, one is read front to back.
One is full of AP content, one has no AP content.
One is full of news I have already seen online, one is full of fresh stories.
Most newspapers are trying to churn out stories for the AP, hoping that their (version of the) story gets picked up and brings in some money. Meanwhile they have to pay for the expensive incoming AP stories, which they use liberally in their papers to justify the cost, filling their paper with barely readable, highly edited and condensed, dreck that has been widely available elsewhere.
Newspapers that will survive are covering the stories that no one else is covering.
Newspapers used to be the main source of aggregated of information about current events; they were few alternatives. Now we have a wide variety of sources for the same information; and don't need a daily paper to satisfy our information needs. As a result, the business model will change
You'll still need services such as the AP; but how the information is used will change. I would expect to see the multi-channel news organizations who can combine television, radio, and internet (blogs, websites, streaming data) to be replace newspapers as the primary daily news source.
As a side note, I expect more DCMA take down notices as organizations seek to protect their IP from being redistributed by outlets that don't pay for it.
I'd also expect to see local papers thrive - they can cover stories of limited interest beyond their communities, and deliver targeted ads for businesses. In addition, I'd expect specialty papers that target specific audiences (such as sports fans) to thrive because they can do more in depth and broader coverage of a narrow topic than say the AP. And of course, USA Today because every major hotel in the US buys a ton of them.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Investigative newspaper reporting died over a decade ago. Newspapers today are nothing more than a collection of press releases.
The investigative reporters are now almost exclusively online. You no longer need a distribution network, and printing facilities. A good investigative reporter can setup a web site fairly easily, and if he/she is any good, the ad dollars will follow.
Take thetruthaboutcars.com - those guys called the demise of the American autos years ago - way before mainstream media. They were able to perform the in-depth financial analysis that the journalists at major newspapers simply ignored until recently.
Investors know this as well. Not many investors I know read newspapers any more for news. By the time the newspapers report it; the information is almost useless.
Goodbye newspapers. A generation of kids is growing up seeing the newspaper as obsolete as the typewriter.
-ted
Once most of the people who grew up reading newspapers die or just stop reading them, it's inevitable that the print form will cease to exist -- as we know it.
That would be me, then. I grew a broadsheet reader, but I don't bother nowadays. The press try to claim a "gatekeeper" role, filtering the real news from the dross (I see they're still claiming "intensive reporting, experienced editors, and so on"), but they've long since abandoned that. Apart from opinion, all you find in newspapers now is PR releases reprinted almost verbatim and Associated Press reports reprinted almost verbatim (it's fascinating to compare reports of the same incident in different newspapers: big news each paper will put it's own spin on, but mid-range and low level news is often word-for-word the same between newspapers). The only question the editors ask is "will this sell" (more precisely, "will this supply readers who we can sell to advertisers"), which is no more effective as a gatekeeper than the blogger who says "will this entertain my readers". I don't see how the news press can survive; it's only added value for the readers would be investigation, fact checking and real, on-the-ground reporting, and that's expensive (too expensive for the extra readership it attracts). All that's left is pure entertainment -- celeb gossip, pictures of scantily clad young people and amusing factoids pretending to be news. The internet is a threat there, too, but at least it's cheaper. I'm guessing that it's cheaper to send a reporter to a celebrity party than to a war zone?
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This is the primary reason that the newspaper industry must survive. Ad revenue is what supports the media industry (whatever media you choose to pick). Everyone ignores ads to a greater or lesser extent. But it is easier for the publishers to sell companies on the idea that their ads might be seen in a physical media than an on-line media. This is the primary reason that the TV industry is so against the time shifters - be it VCRs or more modern variants. If my commercial is zapped, why should I pay to put it on your show? It's a point that is even harder to sell on-line.
When there is no revenue from ads, the subscribers won't pay a high enough price to cover your operating costs. How many on-line news sources do you actually subscribe to? How many do you subscribe to if the "cost" is nothing more than an on-line registration? I'd guess pretty few. So you are a content leach. That works fine for you, since there are still enough people paying money in print (or cable TV subscriptions, or on-line equivalents) to pay people enough to produce content that they can distribute in its entirety or in reduced form to the on-line world.
If the revenue flow ceases to exist, there isn't going to be much content worth reading. As things become tighter, you can be assured that those providing content will seek to protect it further. The cost of litigation is something that the on-line bloggers haven't had to deal with much yet. You can rest assured it will happen.
Those editors have lots of job functions. I'll be the first to agree that the quality of the newspapers has declined somewhat. The editors might be just as good, but the reporters ability to write correct English has declined. More mistakes are getting through edit. Another important job function is to keep the content fresh. A particular blogger may have an agenda, but if he or she never extends beyond that agenda - do you keep coming back? A third job function is to keep the paper from being sued for libel. That is another litigation expense that the on-line only crowd hasn't had to deal with much yet.
On-line will always have a place. It is convenient to find news about a particular subject during the day when the newspaper is not at hand. But at the end of the day of looking at a computer screen for 8 hours, I'd much rather sit down to a nice local newspaper and a nice global newspaper to read the pieces of news I'm interested in. I personally can't stand the talking heads on TV blathering the same 1 minute sound bite every 15 minutes. I'd much rather skip around and read what I want from print.
....SOMEONE has to create the content. The blogosphere (and hell, even slashdot) mostly points to someone else's content. Joe Blogger isn't going to be doing any in-depth investigations and that is the foundation of journalism. One can look at how superficial how TV journalism is to print journalism...and then realize that the blogosphere offers insight and nothing else.
Content isn't going to come with compensation.
'last I checked my local newspaper was easily 50% to 70% just ads
and the content trashy with alot of spelling mistakes...'
How did you notice?
On the other hand, my local paper, run by a chain that publishes a similar paper in about two dozen nearby areas, is thriving, albeit not setting any profitability records.
Local papers have local news and that's what's important to people. It's still a thrill for a parent to see their kid's picture in the local paper. Local merchants need a way to reach local customers.
When the web becomes a truly localized place for most people, then the small papers may disappear. Right now they fill a niche and throughout all of publishing, those are the businesses that are surviving the "onslaught" of the web.
== First cross river, then insult alligator.
This ignores the point of the article - that the bedrock, actual "sources" of news such as the NYT are also in dire financial straits. Once they are gone (and by that I don't mean "cease to exist," merely that the quality nosedives because there are fewer investigative journalist slots) then all the secondary news sources you decry - and their readers - will be high and dry. The blogs and forums are just cud-chewers. Somebody still has to do the interviews and take the photos for them to ruminate over.
I hate responding to an AC here... as this is usually an exercise in futility. Still.... I hate to see stuff like this get posted that is so blatantly untrue.
I don't get this. The Bill of rights clearly followed the procedure of Article V of the original constitution, including having the 1st U.S. Congress pass the wording on twelve amendments and submitted them to the state legislatures for approval.
Of those original twelve suggested amendments, ten of them were passed by the required number of state legislatures rather quickly and became known as the "bill of rights". One of them, now known as the 27th Amendment, was finally "approved" in 1992 when the Michigan state legislature ratified that amendment proposal and is surprisingly the most recent addition to the U.S. Constitution.
This amendment, BTW, attempts to stop Congress from giving themselves pay raises while in office... although it hasn't seemed to work out very well, nor has Congress really followed the intent of this amendment since its passage.
What happened to amendment #12 of this original proposal? It was about how Congress (the U.S. House of Representatives in particular) could in theory be expanded substantially if the population of the USA were to grow significantly from 1780 levels. The House is no where near the maximum number of representatives allowed under the U.S. Constitution, so this amendment is really irrelevant to the current conditions of the country.
Where it gets unconstitutional is that the passage of the Constitution was provisional for some states until the bill of rights were passed and approved. So technically the meeting of the 1st congress was unconstitutional as the constitution wasn't yet approved completely.
This shouldn't imply, however, that the founding political leaders of the USA didn't like the bill of rights and didn't think it should be in the document. The only argument against the bill of rights is that "rights" not found in this document would be taken away by the government on a whim. This has, unfortunately, proven to be a correct assessment as well.
The big problem with "newspapers" is that, subtract the porn, what you describe is most of what you have left. Local newspapers, anyway.
As a former employee of the now-defunct Knight-Ridder newspaper chain and founder of two alternative weekly newspapers, I have some experience with the actual creation and operation of newspapers as a business. To keep it short, I'll keep it to a few points:
1) For years, the big newspaper chains have owed their problems more to shareholder expectations than to ability to actually make money. It created an environment where increased corporate profit (annually) was the only goal; when you can't charge more for product you decrease labor costs. Instead of investing in what makes their product useful (news), they rely on wire services (the AP) and use local writers for drivel. (See below.) So every year, if they did not make more money than they made the year before, their stoke prices fell. When their stock prices fell, they became more and more vulnerable to corporate takeover. Newspaper companies became more and more gobbled up into larger and larger companies. Large companies could hide the loses of inefficient newspapers with the massive profits of efficient newspapers. But when the company decides to cut employees, it doesn't say, "Paper A, you are a turd and you are going to lose all your employees, and we may shut you down. Paper B, you are the goose that lays the golden egg, and we shall not touch a feather." No, a corporate newspaper company says, "We are going to lay off 10 percent of our workforce," then everyone loses 10 percent, usually by early retirement and seniority, relatively arbitrary and simple methods of reducing workforce that don't involve anyone saying, "you suck; you're fired."
2) Some corporate idiot started asking the public what they wanted. Survey after survey showed that people "don't like bad news." Well, no kidding. But that's what they buy the paper for. It speaks to our primal need to find and avoid dangers. It scares the hell out of us so that we'll remember it, like watching your buddy get jumped by a lion on the plains. You think to yourself, "I better remember that Bob got jumped right there." And when you get back to the tribe, you don't say "Bob and I had a great day finding berries and hunting." You say, "Bob, hunter gatherer, killed in lion attack." But, 95% of the stories in your local newspapers will be about berries. Readers only remember the lions -- the other five percent -- which are bad news. Which makes you wonder why they bother with the 95 percent at all. It is a significant waste of one's resources. Those corporate tools also see statehouse reporting (for example) coverage as redundant, so save the local guy for the really local bourgeois stuff -- bake sales, feel-good ditties about toy runs and the Salvation Army, all the other things that no one complains (or cares) about. So, for years now corporately owned regional and local newspapers have been cutting back and back and back on any coverage that can be pooled. Then they wonder why nobody reads their publication to get the news. Well, because CNN had the same story from the AP posted on the web last night, you jackass. Break some news.
3) Newsprint is just a physical media. For some publications, it is perfect. Anything where you want people who are out and about to pick it up and carry it with you. But it's hella expensive. Not as expensive as people to write, but expensive. Still, the people are the really expensive part. My newspapers had almost all volunteer staffs and the newsprint was about 1/3 of the cost. But 1/3 less is 1/3 less.
Newspapers may die, but written journalism will live on. The shock to everyone is going to be that if you want to get paid for writing news then you are going to have to go out and report some new news all the time. Sorry, people aren't going to by regurgitated stories about Bob's lion attack when they've already heard it.
Local TV news is likewise doomed. Without a local newspaper to crib from, they