The Future of Newspapers, Part 1

If you work in the buggy whip business and somebody invents the automobile, you just have to accept that your job has become obsolete. You need to get out of it and re-tool your factory to make gloves or coats or exotic lingerie. Nobody needs or wants what you're selling, anymore.

The Internet has challenged the existence of newspapers, and yet Internet news and arts commentary runs and is founded on the journalism that people do at newspapers. Go to any of the popular sites and click on one of their headlines, and it will almost always take you to a newspaper web site -- or to a commentary based on news broken at a daily newspaper.

Meanwhile the web sites are thriving and the journalists who break the stories -- and whose work is in as much demand (or more demand) as ever -- are thought of as obsolete and face the very real possibility of being out of business. Even as the public devours the work of print journalists, you can find articles in magazines discussing the possibility of even the New York Times disappearing.

The problem is throughout the industry. At the beginning of this decade, the Chronicle was the 11th biggest daily in the United States, with a circulation topping out at 650,000. Today it has about half that circulation . . . and yet it's the 12th biggest daily in the United States.

Every newspaper is suffering, and today San Francisco faces the real possibility of soon being the first great American city, the first great arts and culture and population center, without a daily newspaper. And of course, if it happens here, it will happen elsewhere. This town is nothing if not...

Internet news and arts commentary runs and is founded on the journalism that people do at newspapers. Go to any of the popular sites and click on one of their headlines, and it will almost always take you to a newspaper web site -- or to a commentary based on news broken at a daily newspaper.

That is because the newspaper article is used as a basis for scorn and ridicule with its biased content.

The ill-educated, uninformed and "not sure/undecided" poll respondents, also known as the illiterati, are not in great enough supply to maintain readership at newspapers.

The news no longer lends itself to grab statistics out of thin air or to write poorly researched items without having them held up as evidence of journalistic malpractice.

The common newsprint newsrag is dying. They've left their left wing tripe on our doorsteps for too many years. Used to be people would buy it anyway for sports, local news, or grocery coupons.

But in a an electronics based arena, the media is finally suffering just a tiny bit from their unwillingness to print the truth. Even crime stories publish almost no details. They cheerlead for any left wing politician or cause. It's predictable and fewer people want to pay to read it. They still have an online audience.

The huge left wing news beast could use to have a couple of tentacles trimmed. I'm not sure it will decrease their power that much, because it's hard to avoid the multicultural left’s brainwashing, which is everywhere. Take a college course and just try to avoid their indoctrination.

The victory of Obama and the far left shows that the propaganda apparatus is in place and very effective. But newspapers have become obsolete and are no longer needed.

AP killed the newspapers. Why do I say that? Because the national news in most newspapers around the country is just the AP feed from the Washington Post, New York Times and maybe an occasional other report. All the local newspaper does is format the AP feed around the advertisements and maybe add a paragraph or two for local flavor. Since one newspaper is pretty much the same as any other, there is no reason to pay for one if I can get any other for free. The only exceptions are those with enough original content like the Wall Street Journal who can get away with charging for content. Those newspapers that want to survive will have to create enough original content that people are willing to pay for. The rest will either die or just become local distribution points for the nationals, adding a "local interest" section for sports, council meetings and bar advertisements.

I quit the print media after 20 years in the business in 1995. The coming death of the print media was obvious to me bcak then, and if it was obvious to me, then it had to be obvious to lots of other people, too.

In 1989 I was the editor of a small weekly in Oregon. I wrote an editorial about the use of computers in every home that would allow our little newspaper to be read online at home and compete with TV and radio 24/7 (although the phrases “online” and “24/7” were not the words I used, since they hadn’t been invented yet). My publisher pulled me into the office and told me that I shouldn’t be writing science fiction, especially about technology which would put him out of business.

He was half right. It’s an ironclad law of economics that a competitive market establishes the lowest price for a product, and in this case, as long as there is someone willing to offer the product (information) for free, that’s what people will pay. That’s why TV and radio are free, and why the British have to be forced to buy licenses (the state forces the higher price on people).

The other half of the issue is that the print media long ago abandoned its connection to the reader. Look at some old Mike Royko - he’s talking to you as if you’re drinking a beer with him. Compare that to Maureen Dowd, who talks to you as if she’s at some sophisticate’s cocktail party - assuming you were invited.

I could tell you all sorts of stories of fellow reporters and editors who ignored and insulted their readers. The bias was unrelenting leftist. The tone was ideologically shrill. I got out when the getting out was good. I could see that iceberg heading to the ship, and I knew the structure wasn’t as a watertight as advertised.

The good news is that eventually we’ll be back where we were with Thomas Paine and Ben Franklin. A single person will be able to be their own reporter, editor, publisher, advertising manager, and promoter using the current array of software and technology. Franklin put together “The Pennsylvania Gazette” on his own. When the San Fran Chronicle dies, writers will emerge, and some will attain popularity, those websites will struggle to find advertisers and support, and there will again be a diversity of voices and opinion in the community.

The other good news is that the print media will return to where it was back in the day - a place where men and women who felt the need to write, and expound, and share their thoughts can do so freely and openly.

And we’ll still have newspapers, in the same way that we still have poetry. It’ll just be a niche readership.

So let a thousand Limbaughs bloom! LOL

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