Slashdot Mirror
Print News Fading, Still Source of Much News
CNet's Dan Farber took a look, not only at the popular news of how print media is dying a slow death, but also what contribution to the news print journalists are still making. According to research quoted, while the physical publications are quickly becoming a thing of the past much of the news that makes its way into circulation via blogs and other means still originates from the hard work of those print journalists. (We discussed a similar perspective on the news a week back.) "While the Internet is growing as the place where people go for news, the revenue simply isn't catching up fast enough. The less obvious part of the Internet overtaking newspapers as the main source for national and international news is that much of the seed content--the original reporting that breaks national and international news and is subsequently refactored by legions of bloggers--comes from the reporters and editors working at the financially strapped newspapers and national and local television outlets. [...] As the financial pressures mount--the outlook for 2009 is dismal--and the cost cutting continues, we can only hope that the original news reporting by top-flight journalists is not a major casualty."
How do you make what you do pay when the distribution medium changes? While we like to celebrate the Internet for it's ability to disseminate information, the fact is that gathering that information has to be done by someone. Bloggers have done quite a bit in terms of gathering news, or breaking it, but the problem is that most of it is scattered, and tends to be narrowly focused. The other stories, coverage, and news is still done by the traditional media. It's going to be that way for quite a while - we need people who have expertise (and get paid for that) to dig into the complex stories, we need organizations who are going to aggregate it and check it. The actual functions of newspapers and television reporting are needed, but the distribution channel changed. The question for them is can they hold on long enough to make what they do pay in a new medium.
Way before TV, radio, film and even the internet, the most efficient means to distribute news was for each population area to have its own publisher of news print. Cities, towns, burroughs etc. all had their own news papers. Larger areas, such as states, did not. It was not efficient to print a newspaper and deliver it through out the entire state all on the same day.
However, things changed and soon publishers adapted and you could buy the New York times throughout the State and throughout the country. Theater owners started showing news reels, radio started giving out news, and so did TV stations. But newspapers survived all of those because newspapers offered more stories with more depth.
However, the internet has changed the efficiencies for news distribution. Nowadays the internet offers more depth and is updated immediately, plus it offers video and audio, and yet another plus, it offers up to the minute commentary. It's simply asinine for each city/population center to physically publish news on paper and then deliver those papers via gas burning trucks to individuals, to read news articles that were published the day before on the net.
The answer is not to shut down news on the net, it's to accept the fate that newsprint is dead.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
The quick and the easy = AP, Reuters
The long and difficult = Local Reportage
When the metro newspapers finally figure out that a lot of folks actually like non-national stories again, they may be able to save themselves. Uniqueness and specialization are the drivers of everything online. Just running AP feeds will NOT bring in quality revenue.
If that's true, then do you have a theory for why newspapers, which have been racking their brains non-stop regarding this crisis, haven't latched onto the local-coverage solution?
If you're theory is correct, then I would expect a few newspapers to have tried it, made lots more money (or lost much less) then the others, and then every other paper would flock to the local-coverage approach.
Even if poor local coverage is an area where newspapers can get better, it may not be enough. Papers are also hurting baldy from the loss of classified ads, real estate listings, and car ads, all of which are migrating to the web (i.e., craigslist). The truth is, the web is just a better advertising medium than printed paper for most/all of those items and services. And newspapers really need ad revenue as well as subscription revenue.
both services have in their contract a "republish" clause on all of their clients' content. with The AP, it means a little more, as The AP is a cooperative owned by the newspapers and broadcasters itself (broadcasters are a subclass of ownership.)
any local stories you have on AP and UPI come from local news outlets, unless there is major statewide interest. the wire services have already been stripped down heavily, and fee cuts The AP will be making for the 2009 and 2010 years, as reported, mean the service has to cut its size AGAIN, by about a third.
and since 90-plus percent of their income comes from local outfits' budgets, you can see the fallacy of the argument by phorest.
As the locals go bust, the whole infrastructure is going to go down with them.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
By the time Fallujah came around, many media reports would make you believe that the Marines (that were effectively squashing all enemy resistance) had met their match against hardened "militants" (I love that catchphrase), and it was doubtful they would be successful. For those of us who have dug a little deeper into military history and engagements, we realize that Fallujah turned out to literally rewrite the book on the effectiveness of operations in an urban environment amongst an enemy established for ambush... the last historical example being Hue city in Vietnam. While we were out there doing our jobs with what we had available at the time (as the military has always done, in every war of our nation), that wonderful, benevolent, caring media reporting on us and using us for their purposes, could only talk about how thin we were stretched, how poor our supplies were, how ridiculous it was to expect us to do our missions with the numbers and supplies we had. When the political pressure mounted and twenty thousand additional pairs of boots were sent to help, along with massive increases in logistics, it was immediately spun as "putting more troops in harm's way" or "the war's not working so we're throwing more resources down a hole." In reality, having extra boots on the ground and rifles pointed downrange meant greater safety for everyone. Units could take more time off between combat patrols because there were more units to cycle in. Assaults could be handled with more fire support and faster evacuations for the wounded. As much as the mainstream media hates to admit it, "the surge" worked.
Lastly, I want to talk about the thing I hate talking about the most: friends who never made it home. While the moonbats at CBS, ABC, and (MS)NBC typically would have a segment at the end of their evening broadcasts showing the photographs of those killed in Iraq, with little other explanation than to senselessly display the fallen on television to stir animosity toward the war effort, Fox sends real men like LtCol North into the field to report on our units on the ground, how they are adapting and overcoming adversity, how they are still keeping their morale high in the face of a long and costly war.
These are the kinds of things that we veterans of this war will remember. We will also remember when bloggers use that "hard reporting" provided by the "big guys," and put it through basic smell tests to see if it passes. Reuters can thank Little Green Footballs for showing what a bunch of Hamas-friendly tools they were during the Israel-Lebanon war by doctoring
Except that I'm not convinced that this is a replacement of traditional print media by Internet sources so much as it is simply a decline in news readership. As a librarian, I've found that I don't really compete with bookstores. The more people read from the library, the more they also tend to buy from the bookstore. It tends to be a synergistic relationship.
On a related note, Central Connecticut State University President Jack Miller put out his annual Most Literate Cities study, which looks at what literary resources are available and used.
From a USA Today article on this year's study:
The findings come at a time when newspaper circulations across the USA are declining, and online newspaper reading is increasing. Miller's analysis suggests that, contrary to conventional wisdom, the availability of free online news is not to blame for the decline in newspapers' print circulation -- and that neither is the decline in bookstores across the country caused by the rise in online book buying.
Cities that ranked higher for having more bookstores also have a higher proportion of people buying books online, the analysis found, and cities with newspapers that have high per-capita circulation rates also have more people reading newspapers online. Likewise, cities that ranked higher for having well-used libraries also have more booksellers.
So I don't think it's necessarily that people are actually choosing to read their news online instead of subscribe to a traditional newspaper. I think more people are just not reading in general and may happen across news online as they do other things--but that isn't the point of their Internet usage.
And if we aren't reading, will that leave us with just television reporters? :O
The journalistic institution with the most reporters is Bloomberg. They have more reporters than the Washington Post and The New York Times together.
Hard news is becoming the province of the weeklies. Time, Newsweek, and The Economist have real reporters out gathering news. The story quality is usually better than what's in the dailies; they're not as rushed. So nationally, we're doing OK.
As for local news, newspapers shot themselves in the foot with "fluff" sections - Food, Wine, Cars, Lifestyle, etc. that didn't require real reporting. On the advertising side, they ended up surviving on classifieds, real estate ads, car ads, and ads for local sales. The Internet does all those things better.
It's not clear who, if anybody, will pick up the slack with local news.
Some people devote their lives to a career because it's who they are, not what they do. As the newspapers die, a large pool of talent will be freed. Those who never really had the passion will find other jobs.
But, those who view journalism as their essence will somehow find a way to get paid while practicing their craft. They will invent the next journalism business. They will not quit.
Believing that the end of newspapers equals the end of journalists is like believing that once the record companies all die, there will be no more music.
Actually you are missing something. Classifieds and ads constituted of the majority of newspaper revenue, not subscriptions.
-The world would be a better place if everyone had a hoverboard
The editor in chief of one of the large Dutch newspapers (de Volkskrant) told me recently that this is actually shifting: as the demographics are changing (ie newspaper readers are becoming older) they are less interesting for advertisers and more able/willing to pay subscription fees. The ratio is now >50% subscription fees.
This is a quality newspaper, I can imagine that more popular/tabloid newspapers are more dependent on advertising, and the new free dailies obviously are, but I was surprised by the fact that it isn't the case for paid-for quality newspapers in the Netherlands.
Notwithstanding, the problem of free news sources freeriding on the work of the paid-for sources will have to be solved one way or another, as I have little doubt that print newspapers will only decline the coming decades and (exceptions excepted) blogs will not become professional investigative journalists overnight.
Since our democracy depends on independent, critical, and well-researched news, this is an important question for the coming time.