Posted on 05/14/2009 6:44:00 AM PDT by Zakeet
Some of the numbers are chilling.
Newspaper ad revenues have fallen 23% in the last two years. Some papers are in bankruptcy, and others have lost three-quarters of their value. By our calculations, nearly one out of every five journalists working for newspapers in 2001 is now gone, and 2009 may be the worst year yet.
In local television, news staffs, already too small to adequately cover their communities, are being cut at unprecedented rates; revenues fell by 7% in an election year—something unheard of—and ratings are now falling or are flat across the schedule. In network news, even the rare programs increasing their ratings are seeing revenues fall.
Now the ethnic press is also troubled and in many ways is the most vulnerable because so many operations are small.
Only cable news really flourished in 2008, thanks to an Ahab-like focus on the election, although some of the ratings gains were erased after the election.
Perhaps least noticed yet most important, the audience migration to the Internet is now accelerating. The number of Americans who regularly go online for news, by one survey, jumped 19% in the last two years; in 2008 alone traffic to the top 50 news sites rose 27%. Yet it is now all but settled that advertising revenue—the model that financed journalism for the last century—will be inadequate to do so in this one. Growing by a third annually just two years ago, online ad revenue to news websites now appears to be flattening; in newspapers it is declining.
What does it all add up to?
Even before the recession, the fundamental question facing journalism was whether the news industry could win a race against the clock for survival: could it find new ways to underwrite the gathering of news online, while using the declining revenue of the old platforms to finance the transition?
In the last year, two important things happened that have effectively shortened the time left on that clock.
First, the hastening audience migration to the Web means the news industry has to reinvent itself sooner than it thought—even if most of those people are going to traditional news destinations. At least in the short run, a bigger online audience has worsened things for legacy news sites, not helped them.
Then came the collapsing economy. The numbers are only guesses, but executives estimate that the recession at least doubled the revenue losses in the news industry in 2008, perhaps more in network television. Even more important, it swamped most of the efforts at finding new sources of revenue. In trying to reinvent the business, 2008 may have been a lost year, and 2009 threatens to be the same.
Imagine someone about to begin physical therapy following a stroke, suddenly contracting a debilitating secondary illness.
Journalism, deluded by its profitability and fearful of technology, let others outside the industry steal chance after chance online. By 2008, the industry had finally begun to get serious. Now the global recession has made that harder.
This is the sixth edition of our annual report on the State of the News Media in the United States.
It is also the bleakest.
Much more HERE.
I just don’t see that this is a problem.
Well, I am sure our Sambo Chevez and Smilin’ Joe and the Demon-cratic Congress will find some $$$$$ to bail out those POS newspapers! Gotta keep the propaganda ministry fully employed to alert the American Sheeple as to what CRISIS is now underway....
IT has nothing to do with the collapsing economy it has to do with lying news that seem to have a problem with the truth..They should know the people that voted for Obama never picked up a news paper so that has nothing to do with it,they can't read so the people that do read get tired of all the news about how sorry Bush was or is and how our troops are torturing the terrorist..Take the blame idiots..I don't think it will matter anyway..Look on the bright side the tree huggers should be happy save the trees not more crappy news..
Some comments:
The government will give the press support in some manner shape or form. This press is boot lickers.
There is so much spin in the news that it is a waste of time to read the national and international news.
The skill level of the “reporters” is so low that what the write is drivel or actual copies of the AP copy.
In sort the product is dying because it is not worth the customer’s time or money.
When you drive a car with the steering wheel turned all the way to the left, why does it comes as such a shock when you don’t make any progress and all your passengers want out?
I would agree with you but there are reasons beyond the bias that doom newspapers, at least in friends my age (65+). You can get so much from the Internet that the daily paper misses. Neighbors who moved from California and elsewhere to Oregon can keep up with the news back "home" where they moved from. Others like my wife who is a soccer and tennis fanatic just can't get timely and accurate coverage in the papers. The highly subjective selection of news stories fail readers with a wide range of interests.
Then, as you say, there is the bias.
It has already started in Washington state. Thought for the day (or question). If the media is funded by the dim govt, they will have to run pro dim stories all the time. How would we be able to tell the difference from the current “news”?
One paper, I think, has seen the handwriting on the wall. The Houston Chronicle (comical) used to be all obama, all the time. Recently, very little coverage of the dimwit. Maybe they are starting to figure this out. And maybe they have figured out that the goofus dosen’t sell papers in southeast Texas. He sure sells the hell out of guns and ammo though.
I’m thinking they lurk here and watch for our threads...
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