Looking Past the Death of Newspapers (Dinosaur Media DeathWatch™)

Poynter Online ^ | August 25, 2008 | Amy Gahran

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Last week news industry consultant Vin Crosbie published part 1 of a thoughtful, pointed essay: Transforming American Newspapers. (UPDATE: Part 2 is now available, too.) This is must-read material.

Here's Crosbie's stunning prediction, with which I agree: "More than half of the 1,439 daily newspapers in the U.S. won't exist in print, e-paper, or Web formats by the end of next decade. They will go out of business. The few national dailies... will have diminished but continuing existences via the Web and e-paper, but not in print. The first dailies to expire will be the regional dailies, which have already begun to implode. Those plus a very many smaller dailies, most of whose circulations are steadily evaporating, will decline to levels at which they will no longer be economically viable to publish daily. Further layoffs of staffs by those newspapers' companies cannot avoid this fate -- not so long as daily circulations and readerships continually and increasingly decline."

If you think that's too drastic to possibly come true, read Crosbie's post. He supplies the research to support it.

Online is not the answer, Crosbie contends: "Adding multimedia, convergence, interactivity, Web 2.0, and 'citizen journalism' to what their newspapers have always done aren't cures but merely balms and accessories. ...The absences of multimedia or interactivity aren't why the circulations and readerships of American daily newspapers have been declining in relation to both population and households for more than three decades. Half of American newspapers' declines in weekday circulation and readership relative to population occurred before the Internet opened to the public in late 1991, prior to popular awareness of interactivity or multimedia."

Crosbie highlights two core problems at the downfall of the newspaper business. First, and primarily, that "American newspaper companies have... failed to adapt their core product to a radical change in consumers' supply of news and information during the past 15 years." Secondly, "Too many of those companies have deviated from their local roots."

And in Part 2 he contends: "The problem is that [the newspaper industry's] general-interest product has become obsolete. ...The average supermarket in America contains 45,000 different types of items. However, imagine that you instead walked into a 400-year old market where the clerks hand you and every other customer an identical bag containing exactly the same mix of some 50 items and they tell you it contains what the supermarket's manager thought you and everyone else should or would like to eat. Despite its venerable history, would you shop at this market again?"

So far, I think he's on-target. Except for one thing.

Crosbie also predicted that "the deaths of large numbers of daily newspapers in the U.S. won't cause a new Dark Age but will certainly cause a 'Gray Age' for American journalism during the next decade. Much local and regional news won't see the light of publication." While this is possibly true, I disagree that it's necessarily true.

It seems to me that the nature of news and journalism are transforming. It's not just about the "news business," and definitely not just about "newspapers." It's possible that the era of traditional journalism may be on the wane -- but does that mean that people will do without news or information? As I wrote last week: I don't think so.

I think that people who want news will still get it through other means, possibly less directly, probably more collaboratively. It may not look like what journalists think news "should" look like. It may include a strongly automated, algorithmic component layered with human insight. It may look more like bullet points than stories. It'll probably be strongly focused on mobile and social delivery channels. It may not even call itself journalism. But will it offer people the benefits they currently seek from news orgs? I think it could -- maybe even better, in some cases. And to me, that wouldn't necessarily be a "Gray Age." Just a new chapter.

But I will say this: I agree with Michele McLellan that in light of the current state of the news business, the fact that news organizations plan to send an estimated 15,000 journalists to EACH of the upcoming national political conventions is an unconscionable waste of news resources. I hope the next era of news is more resistant to the herd mentality -- especially when it comes to covering scripted pageantry.

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ping

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http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=129&aid=149246
Convention Coverage a Story of Innovation Amid Cutbacks

http://www.digitaldeliverance.com/blog/2008/08/transforming_american_newspape_1.html
Transforming American Newspapers (Part 2)

http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA6589801.html
FX to Stream Shows on Relaunched Site

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003842072
4th Newspaper Company to Be Delisted? ACN Receives AMEX Warning

[aimhigh]

I just wish our local paper’s website had all the local ads.

[RobbyS]

Part of the problem is that many, many Americans are not literate, in any meaningfull sense of the term. When my wife was in Moscow about twenty years ago, she remarked that everyone she saw had his/her nose in a newspaper, save Pravda. Got back fifty years and a subway station in Manhatten: same thing. Television made us more visually oriented. Our schools went along with this by dumbing down textbooks. Forty years ago, teachers in high school routinely required students to give book reports, and most students complied. Ten years ago, didn’t happen.

[Milhous]

But I will say this: I agree with Michele McLellan that in light of the current state of the news business, the fact that news organizations plan to send an estimated 15,000 journalists to EACH of the upcoming national political conventions is an unconscionable waste of news resources. I hope the next era of news is more resistant to the herd mentality -- especially when it comes to covering scripted pageantry.

Journalists question DNC media overkill

While the news industry faces stark financial pressures resulting in ongoing layoffs, newspaper fire sales and tumbling stock prices, 15,000 journalists with flush expense accounts are expected to report from the dual Democratic and Republican political conventions in the coming weeks. ...

Enter Mark Potts at Recovering Journalist who rips off the last vestiges of the Emperor's clothes:

... there's really no (legitimate) excuse for a single news organization to send a large number of journalists to the convention. What stories are they going to get that the AP bloggers can't supply? Hijinks of the local delegates? Inside info about what the candidates hope to do for the economy back home? Local color on Denver and St. Paul? It's really hard to understand the need for this kind of bulk coverage.

Unless, of course, you understand that the conventions serve as gala social events for journalists, as well. It isn't just political reporters that go to big events like these–it's editors, managing editors and publishers who get to go along for the expense-account ride (in expensive style, no doubt). That puffs up those numbers of attendees. It's a way of showing the flag, of hanging out with old friends, of doing some (much-needed these days) job networking.

But that doesn't make it right. In fact, at a time when coverage is being cut back and newspapers and broadcasters really need to be devoting more resources to local coverage and other journalism that readers truly care about, this sort of boondoggle is just plain wrong.'

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Fitting Network TV for a Toe Tag

... It may be time to perform an autopsy on network TV, which some have pronounced officially dead at age 60, the victim of a lifetime of big spending, hard living, and bad planning. Here's the coroner's report: The evening newscasts have been mowed down by cable's heat, spin, and round-the-clock immediacy. In prime time, nobody watches reruns anymore—and reruns, along with syndication, used to be the only way comedy and drama series, the heart of a network's prime-time business, made money. (The way they make money now is...well, the networks will get back to you as soon as they figure that out.) ...

[KeyLargo]

Stupid Investment of the Week

Read all about newspapers’ plight but don’t buy into the stocks

By Chuck Jaffe, MarketWatch
Last update: 9:35 p.m. EDT Aug. 21, 2008

BOSTON (MarketWatch) — Gannett Corp. last week announced plans to eliminate 1,000 jobs and its stock popped 11% in response to the news. A former newspaper colleague of mine later dropped me an email saying he had long been thinking of getting out of his former employer’s stock and wondered if there was a rally in the offing.

“The stock was bad last year and now it has been cut in half this year,” he wrote. “I’m hoping for a rebound, maybe to get me back some of these losses. Is [last week’s one-day] rally a sign that it hit bottom?”

No, and at the risk of biting the hand that feeds me (through syndication of my columns), it’s not just Gannett that hasn’t hit a low, it’s newspaper stocks in general, as the entire genre can add “Stupid Investment of the Week” to the seemingly endless string of bad news headlines in the industry — an industry that not only will get worse before it improves, but which may be so sick that improvement never comes.

Stupid Investment of the Week highlights the concerns and characteristics that make an investment less than ideal for the average investor and is written in the hope that showcasing problems in one business will make trouble easier to spot elsewhere. While obviously not a purchase recommendation, neither is the column intended as an automatic sell signal, as there may be times when unloading a problem investment creates a whole new set of issues.

Excerpt

http://www.marketwatch.com/News/Story/Story.aspx?guid=5b2659e3509a4712bab9f06f734f620b&siteid=nwhpf&sguid=Uj1imsMf4UGYpajjkJLuNg

[Milhous]

Editorial note: "AP" changed to "bloggers" in Mark Potts quote.

[ArchAngel1983]

” Crosbie highlights two core problems at the downfall of the newspaper business. First, and primarily, that "American newspaper companies have... failed to adapt their core product to a radical change in consumers' supply of news and information during the past 15 years." Secondly, "Too many of those companies have deviated from their local roots."

It couldn’t possibly be due to shoddy reporting, extremely biased liberal slant, selective outrage, incredible double standards, and just plain bogus lies, disinformation, distortion of facts, fiction and a wacked out world-view. Naaaa…

[abb]

http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentary/27290284.html
Scott Gillespie: A new way to get your daily dose of opinions

At StarTribune.com, we’re launching an up-to-date, interactive feed that includes our coverage and more.

[MovementConservative]

Oh no no no no no. I refuse to look that far ahead. I don’t want to be robbed of the unrestrained glee I’m going to feel when the first one goes belly up. Hopefully it’s the SF Chron. Oh the rejoicing and dancing that will occur on that day. Each death is to be duly celebrated.

[Milhous]

Angry Journalist #6332:

I’m angry because I made more money delivering pizzas than I do at a job I pretty much dedicate my life to. ...