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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."
You know it's very important to be the frist one to break the news.
They were right - the revolution did not get televised. It was posted on YouTube instead. All in 120 characters. SLOOSH!
People don't like to get newspaper ink on their hands. The internet has just been a very elaborate solution to that problem.
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.
God: When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.
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.
"we can only hope that the original news reporting by top-flight journalists is not a major casualty"
Is this the Onion or something? The above statement is a joke, right? Maybe part of the reason print media is taking such a downturn is both the internet AND the inability of many of the "top-flight journalists" to do anything that remotely resembles objective reporting. The internet is too accessible, cheap, and more or less admits its bias. Journalists - particularly those at the top - seem to believe that their training and expertise and degrees somehow give them license to disguise their personal beliefs and views as objective reporting.
Or, as Sledge Hammer said when asked, "Don't you read the newspapers?"
"No ma'am, I prefer to get my information from reliable sources, like rumor, and small children."
This issue scares me. We need more, not fewer, journalists to watch over our government and businesses.
Hopefully, people will eventually realize that one way or another, we need to pay for reporting to get done.
My fear is that we won't realize that, and figure out a way to pay for it, until too late. That is, until legions of seasoned investigative journalists have left for greener pastures, and many good journalism schools have been shut down.
PHONING IT IN, mid-afternoon - An ambulance service has praised a five-year-old boy after he successfully called 999 to report that his mother had collapsed and was unconscious in their home.
In other news, a pet wears a seatbelt, alleged scientists have yet again discovered a formula for the perfect attractive woman (it apparently involves being short with long legs and large breasts), there's a piece on ancient Roman bikinis, how to make the perfect cup of tea and lots of pictures of sunburnt, drug-addled women in bikini tops at a summer rock festival, including ones that aren't Amy Winehouse.
Crop circles have fallen out of favour in recent years. How the A-levels these days aren't as good as proper A-levels were back in my day, you mark my words, remains a perennial favourite. With pictures of students in bikini tops.
"We're holding out hope of the first skateboarding duck of the season," said one of the few reporters still left in the office. "In the meantime, I'm researching a story about a long, short-breasted, large-legged sunburnt woman in a Roman bikini top making me the perfect cup of tea."
Remember: it's the Watchdog of the Press that protects our democracy.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
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.
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?
In my city, like many others, the major newspaper has made serious cuts to the news department and some top reporters were let go. Some of those reporters have moved to an online only newspaper which has become an excellent source of news.
Our newspaper, again like many others, has always had an agenda and an involvement in local politics that prevented honest reporting on certain topics. The reporters that moved now have more freedom to tell it like it is.
For the first time ordinary citizens have the opportunity to learn what goes on behind the scenes in local government. We learn about the conflicts between developers and the need for city services- water, sewer, traffic management, schools, etc. We also learn about the conflicts between officials who would cut labor costs and union workers who need a living wage. We are finally aware of personal conflicts between government officials and others who hold our future in their hands.
I have no idea how these reporters get paid. The new online newspaper is a non-profit, dependent upon donations. I hope it is getting the support that has been earned, but I suspect this may not be a sustainable model.
...omphaloskepsis often...
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
Am I missing something here. I subscribe to the newspaper so I can access the archives on their website I put the actual paper in the recycling on my way out the door every morning.
This gives them the same revenue from me they would be getting if I actually read the paper. If they embrace this business model for techies and sell the dead trees to everyone else(there are still people not on the internet) they will be fine.
I also get some other extras for subscribing vs. free registration like the actual paper in PDF format and advanced data search capabilities in their archives.
Part of the problem is it is cheaper to subscribe to the paper then just pay for an account online. This points towards draconian thinking. Once setup the cost for the online service approaches zero. So they should charge less not more.
"The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget." -Thomas Szasz
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
CNET is owned by CBS, one of the major networks who's prejudiced "coverage" of the news is prompting people to cancel subscriptions and tune out. The obviously, grossly biased news on CBS even cost Dan Rather his job for the simple sake of appearances (even though he's just the talking head that reads what the producer puts on the teleprompter). Despite this, the lesson still isn't learned. So CNET has a strong interest in putting this kind of "analysis" out.
In truth, most old-media outlets get their news from the same source: The Associated Press. Watching almost any local or national newscast, or picking up nearly any newspaper in America, shows a near-perfect reprint of the AP feed. And the AP feed is exactly what people are getting from the syndicated news site of their choice, whether it has a Yahoo, MSN, Google or some other banner at the top of the page. Why watch some overpaid talking-head and suffer through bad advertising if you can just go online, read the source of the copy?
Local and insightful reporting is a dead art, and THAT is what people are turning to the internet for, because it's hard to get from anywhere but a blog in the US.
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.
Many bloggers complain that the "MSM" (that is, professional journalists) filter the news, and they want to bypass that filter. But the reality is that blogs are often a second filter on top of the first one. They take the content generated by the professionals (sometimes an article, sometimes some words taken out of context), and the blogger frames it with their own perspective and context.
Why would anyone want some random person adding yet another filter to their news? In large part, I think it's because the bloggers are willing to offer a level of info-tainment that the professionals won't: Uncorroborated rumor, conspiracy theory, unfounded amateur analysis, and outraged or outrageous opinions.
(Of course, there are many good aspects to blogs (here I am reading /.) and there are lousy professionals.)
We used to get our paper every day. Then I noticed that we were taking the paper in in the morning and putting it into the recycle bin unread at the end of the week. We were getting all of our news from TV and the Internet. We only really used the paper for the Sunday ads (finding sales and coupons). We looked into Sunday only delivery and determined that our paper's Saturday-Sunday rate was a better deal. (I would read the paper most times on Saturday.) After awhile, we got a notice from our paper that we were being switchded to Thursday-Sunday delivery for no additional cost. Now we're basically in nearly the same boat as before. Every recycling day, 2 papers (Thursday & Friday) go into the bin unread. Saturday's is read and Sunday's is read only for the ads. If we could get the circulars/coupons online for cheaper than the cost of the paper (this would need to include ink costs to print the coupons), we would cancel our subscription entirely.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
The problem with what you just said is that it's reactive, not creative. Yes, the traditional media misses the boat, or gets its facts wrong at times. It's just as bad - if not worse - in the blogosphere. I've seen any number of blogs detailing how 9-11 was a conspiracy, "break" a story that turns out to be totally wrong, and drop the ball on a number of stories. The idea that blogs are going to be able to supplant the functions of the professional journalists isn't realistic.
I for one welcome.
Here in Canada our mainstream newspapers and main news TV programs are all owned by two large corporations, CTVGlobeMedia and CanWestGlobal, whose editorial stance is somewhere to the right of Attila the Hun.
I mean the term democratic socialist media mogul is kind of an oxymoron isn't it.
It will be interesting to see if the blogosphere ends up with any particular bias that is different than what good citizens are pablum-fed in their daily TV news broadcast.
I surely hope so.
Although I am not sure that the move from people all having one spoon-fed opinion to a state of truthy factoid bombardment from all sides leading to a catatonic equal acceptance of or non-committal to any old statement or viewpoint is really a victory.
Crowd chants:
"WE ARE ALL INDIVIDUALS"
"WE ARE ALL INDIVIDUALS"
"WE ARE ALL INDIVIDUALS"
Pathetic squeaky voice in background:
"umm, errr, I'm not."
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Of course subscription = revenue. BUT revenue does NOT mean Cover All Operating Costs.
I used to work for a software vendor writing and implementing enterprise circulation systems for medium and large newspapers. For the greatest majority of all print media (and I would be surprised if there were more than a handful of exceptions) MOST revenue is derived from advertising. (How much did it cost to buy that one full page Firefox ad in the New York Times a few years ago?) In all cases, the cost of a subscription for a direct to home subscriber (if this is offered by the newspaper), and wholesale revenue to distributors, stores, etc. only covers a part of the distribution costs. Having your own experienced reporters in key areas of the world is very expensive. While most individual newspapers do not have the financial resources field reporters on their own, their publishers who own groups of papers can combine the revenue and pay for this quality reporting.
In the U.S.A. the papers offer what is called 'Total Market Coverage'. They have extensive and verified address lists for whole regions. They know who they deliver to on the main days where advertising goes out (usually Sundays in the U.S.A... could be Saturday or Sunday in Canada). They know the addresses they deliver Sunday papers to with all those adverts. They then also know the households that don't get the adverts. The paper then snail mails the advertisements and fliers to the remaining households that do not subscribe to the paper. The work they do verifying the addresses reduces the mailing costs but still it is expensive. They also have demographic information for the areas to make sure they don't sell ads for Cadillacs to areas that can only afford Kias.
The amount they can charge for advertising is based on numbers collected for the 'Audit Bureau of Circulation' (ABC); the 'Nelson Rating' of newspaper circulation. The most important numbers are ones reflecting 'paid circulation' as it is assumed those who pay for a newspaper actually read it. The higher the ABC number for paid subscriptions, the more a newspaper can charge for advertising... just like T.V.... more people watching means better revenue. When less newspapers are sold, less money is made. Ads may be mailed out to everyone, but you know the people who read the papers are more likely to see the ads and use them (or at least see them before they throw them out!).
In 1999 one of the big publishers (it might have been the one owning USA Today) successfully pushed to get unpaid circulation numbers into the ABC audit figures as well. This was to push up their numbers to be relatively high because they are the papers that show up at every hotel door in America every morning (but are not necessarily read). This gives a sort of bragging right: "look how big our circulation is". Even though many hotel guests just step over the paper on the way out the door. This is also an indication that subscription revenue doesn't really cover much when they can give away the paper for nothing (and in these cases most of the content is light weight news feed work where they don't have their own reporters stationed around the world).
The bottom line is that if papers can't keep their revenue stream up, and it is sliding like a runaway toboggan, they won't be able to function much longer. We won't have reliable and quality reporting any more. Sorry, but I don't believe some guy with no credentials or anyone to vouch for him personally, who writes something on the internet under an assumed blogger name, is trustworthy (but why not? if you read it on the internet it must be true... right?). Yes we can try to sell advertisements on newspaper web sites and charge by how many hits the paper gets as a rating mechanism. But with adblock and mostly unreliable hit counters (unreliable for basing expensive economic models on), it is an extremely steep uphill battle that I for one, am uncertain can be overcome.
Where there is a need, yes there will be someone to sell y
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
Whoa is the press and their loss of financial recompense. Still, the perfect storm here is that the internet is taking over at the same rate that professional news is getting useless.
I see the newspapers, and the media in general, as shallow. They parrot news at the same level of understanding as an immature, uninformed citizen. (And they get praise from immature, uninformed citizens for doing this.) I'd like to think they are pandering, but I bet, as a whole, they've done it so long that true immaturity fills their ranks. I get talking heads presenting undue fear or bravado at every turn. I never feel I get a balanced set of facts. And frankly, I feel at times that it is malicious.
If anybody is the keeper of language, shouldn't it be the press? I barely know what "recession" or "bail-out" (or "liberal") mean anymore.
I expect the press to make us feel a little bit bad for attacking the wrong source of a problem or for slinging mud at persons who are making the best decisions possible. Instead, they encourage and indulge in childish behavior.
The presidential campaign was a travesty. The economic crisis is well on its was as one. I'd like to see news outlets sued for breach of contract to inform, but they never actually had a contract! It was implied. And I think they take advantage of this.
When they go after companies for jets, I think about the pot calling the kettle black.
The problem with the auto industry is that no one trusts they will turn the corner because they lived with their heads in the sand for 20 years. (And BTW, how can such a long-standing, high revenue industry turn upside down in just one month?) I think the media has the same implied problem. I think they've been digging this hole for 20 years. It's not just the internet. And not everyone wants to see them survive as is. Its time for some gut-wrenching change in quality.
Well, I ramble. You get the idea...
Just because the web model doesn't generate any cash is not the reason to disagree with it.
That's like saying people shouldn't drive faster than 55mph/100kph because it's more dangerous. People are going to drive faster simply because they want to. People are going to use the web because they want to.
The web model does make sense and it makes a ton of money. The reason it makes money is the input cost is radically smaller. No infrastructure cost for distribution. Far fewer staff involved in the delivery of content. Physical cost like office and production space are slashed to a fraction. Simple advertising on a web site can be great source of cash. So your input cash stream may be smaller. But your outgoing cash stream is almost zip.
The key challenges with this new medium is that the format of the paper is now turned on it's head. The individual sections of the paper have become industries in their own right. Classifieds are probably the best example. Not only have classifieds become another industry they have further fractured in sub industries. Case in point job adds.
In general the sections of the paper that operated as a middle man between the supply of the information and consumer have now moved directly to the supplier. For example: TV listings.
So basically the portions of the news paper that can be seen as operating as a middle man should be discarded. As these are going to be money pits. The "News Paper" is then basically left with "News". Consider this as a core value product of the industry. This is what print news needs to wrap their head around.
Lets look at a wildly successful on line news source, CNN. What does the site offer? Just News, ( Not the most accurate, but it's news ). That's it. Does it make money. Sure does.
----
As for wireless access to news everyday. It's here. Just the format is not paper like. I currently read the news on the way to work every day on my phone. Nice big screen, no worries about shoving my elbow into the guy next to me as I flip the page. And it's already 100% customized to the stuff I want to read. Around me I see people using EEPC's, Macbook air's, Even some of them subscribe to audio streaming news and listen to that on the way to work. As you see people are choosing the format they like. You may want/like a paper like analogue. But it will come down to personal choice and as such market demand.