How Business Travelers Contributed to USA Today's Decline (Dinosaur Media DeathWatch™)

Even in an industry accustomed to bad news, the recent cutbacks at USA Today exposed a harsh reality: For many former readers, newspapers have become so passé that it's become hard even to give them away.

Last month, the Gannett-owned publication announced it was laying off about 130 people, shifting its emphasis from its iconic print edition, and devoting more resources online. USA Today has experienced a sharp circulation drop, even among people who get the paper free -- the business travelers who make up more than half of its readership.

As road warriors know, copies of USA Today have become almost as ubiquitous as Bibles and little shampoo bottles in most hotels. For years, Gannett has maintained distribution agreements with major lodging chains, which leave complimentary copies outside guestroom doors each weekday morning.

The problem is that a lot of travelers nowadays simply aren't bothering to bend down and get them.

"People will pick it up from in front of their door only because it's kind of strange just to step over it," said Steven Carvell, a Cornell University professor of Hotel Administration. "But they're not being read through."

Last year, Marriott International -- in the name of "reducing waste" -- announced it would discontinue automatic newspaper delivery in more than 2,600 hotels. Customers at about 400 full-service Marriott properties nationwide still can ask for a USA Today to be brought to their rooms. (They also can request a local newspaper or the Wall Street Journal, which is aggressively trying to skim off what's left of the hotel newspaper business.) At the limited-service hotels that make up the bulk of the Marriott portfolio, such as Courtyard and Residence Inn, free newspapers now are available only in the lobby.

By Marriott's count, the new policy reduced USA Today's paid circulation by about 50,000 copies a day, worsening a decline the publication had experienced because of the slow economy and a nationwide drop in business travel. (While the newspapers are given to guests free, USA Today can count them as paid circulation because hotels purchase them at a bulk rate and technically pass along the cost to customers as part of the room price. The fine print on hotel bills often notes that a 75 cent or dollar newspaper charge has been included in the room rate.)

When Marriott announced the policy change last year, it said demand for free newspapers had declined 25 percent. "I visit more than 250 hotels a year, and more often than not, I'm stepping over unclaimed newspapers as I walk down the hallway," explained Chairman Bill Marriott, Jr., who sounds far less enthusiastic about USA Today now than he did when he personally appeared in a 1984 television ad promoting the then-new publication.

In that era when USA Today was an ambitious and brashly-colorful upstart, Marriott was the first major hotel chain to partner with Gannett and deliver the paper to guest rooms. The practice quickly spread through the travel industry and played a big role in the publication's early success, giving USA Today a strong following among upscale business people. As the newspaper forged additional bulk sales arrangements, travelers could find free copies of USA Today in airport club lounges, inside their rental cars, and in all but the most basic hotels.

"It was sort of the business travel ritual," said writer Tim Winship, a former manager of Hilton's frequent guest program who now blogs at frequentflier.com. He said the free newspapers were a popular perk with hotel customers, and he himself often pored over his USA Today for almost an hour as he ate his room-service breakfast. "It was kind of a comforting thing," Winship said.

Not surprisingly, the newspaper ritual became less prevalent as hotels began rolling out another, more modern amenity: high-speed Internet access. In-room broadband connections -- an expensive novelty just a few years ago -- have become standard at virtually all of the nation's chain hotels, and free at many of them. Winship said he now spends mornings on the road reading the news on his laptop computer.

"I usually just kick it inside when I go out in the morning," Winship said. "Then, when I come back, I bend over and put it in the trash can."

Surveys have found that the vast majority of business travelers carry laptops, while the use of smart phones (which don't require a hotel Internet connection) has skyrocketed among frequent hotel guests even faster than in the rest of the population. A July study by PhoCusWright, a travel industry research firm, concluded that 75 percent of regular business travelers carry devices such as BlackBerries or iPhones. A separate Pew Research Center report in July found that 38 percent of the general adult population uses mobiles devices to access the Internet.

"When you look at the demographic of business travelers, they are becoming younger," said PhoCusWright research director Carroll Rheem. "They're used to consuming their news from digital media."

A Marriott spokeswoman said she had no immediate information on how many guests pick up free newspapers in hotel lobbies or still request them to be delivered to their rooms. But it's clear that some guests remain loyal to the print editions. On flyertalk.com, a discussion forum for frequent travelers, more than a dozen regular Marriott customers responded positively when I asked, "Do you read your free newspaper"?

"I find them very nice to have and [I'm] lost without 'em," wrote IT consultant Matt Nevans, who said he saves two days' papers to read on his flights home. "It's nice to have something to do on the plane during 'no electronics' time." Another traveler expressed a similar preference for low-tech reading material in a place equally ill-suited for electronics. "I like to start the morning off reading the paper while relaxing in the Jacuzzi," he wrote.

On the other hand, several respondents said they read the complimentary Wall Street Journal when it's available, but not USA Today. And a handful said they refuse all newspapers when they check in to the hotel or ignore them if they're delivered to their room. "The best source for any news is strapped to my hip 80 percent of any waking day," said Los Angeles software engineer Kenneth Crudup.

Indeed, as Gannett puts more emphasis on its digital products, its challenge is to create a prominent online destination for all those hip-strapped devices. Deprived of the competitive advantage that comes with being the only newspaper outside a hotel guest's door, USA Today hopes to hold on to its traditional readers by producing mobile content related to travel, aviation, technology, and other subjects. To continue to reach Marriott customers, Gannett has partnered with the lodging company to promote USA Today's iPad app. It also has begun displaying USA Today content on large touch-screens in hotel lobbies.

It's uncertain whether such digital initiatives will help replace USA Today's lost circulation among business travelers. But Carroll Rheem, the travel industry researcher, said hoteliers are likely to embrace technology as a cheaper alternative to the labor intensive practice of distributing dozens of newspapers to guest rooms each morning. Rheem said it's not unimaginable that within a few years, complimentary newspapers may go the way of other once-common hotel amenities, such as free matchbooks and coin-operated vibrating beds.

"Consumers expect to consume news on the road just as they do at home," Rheem said.

“Grampa Dave has been doing this for years. He says the satisfaction from doing it is worth way more than the $0.75.”

In a couple of weeks my wife and I will be celebrating our anniversary at a nice lodge by the ocean. We were there this spring for her birthday.

When I made reservations, I sent an email re comments and personal notes to the lodge, that we didn’t want the USA and deduct from our bill the cost.

I got a reply that I was on their computer with that request, and they would deduct a $ from our bill each day.

A Scot American couldn’t ask for more: A $ back per night for us. Saving trees and carbon re no newspaper/ink and helping to weaken and hopefully drive into bankruptcy, an enemy of America.

I would be content to debate their ideas on an equal footing.

The purpose of a news organ isn't to debate. It's to inform. The debate can take place in some other forum.

In my considered opinion, the reason conservative political theory has not transcended is that the means of communication has been corrupted and owned by the other side for many decades.

Absolutely correct. So conservatives sought -- and won -- other venues to disseminate their ideology, much to the dismay and detriment of the old-line media who are only now coming to grasp the slow erosion of their influence.

But as they do, they will use their power, their influence, and their reputations (such as they are) to muscle their way into the "new media." We need to be prepared for the next front in the war, and this is it.

Good riddance to bad rubbish. These people are not "journalists." They are spoiled children who deserve to be unemployed.

Words mean things - but what does the word "journalist" actually mean?
Literally, "jour" means "day" - and a journalist meets a daily deadline (or shorter, in the case of "breaking news"). From that perspective, it used to bother me when Rush would say, "I am not a journalist." But on further consideration, I have decided that we are better off recognizing the inherent negatives of journalism:

The deadline which defines journalism ineluctably produces superficiality. "There's nothing more worthless than yesterday's newspaper."

News inherently emphasizes the negative. "No news is good news" - because generally, good news "isn't news." If it's bad news when a house burns down, it must be good news when a house gets built - but whereas the destructive fire is a sudden surprise, the construction of the house is a gradual process which, as Abraham Lincoln suggested with his "framing timbers" allusion, should surprise no one. And therefore isn't news (actually, it probably will make the newspaper - in the form of a paid advertisement seeking a buyer for the house).

News is inherently unrepresentative. "Man Bites Dog" is the headline the editor wants to print, and "Dog Bites Man" - i.e., whatever is usual - makes page 13 below the fold in the unlikely event that it's in the paper at all.

Journalism as we know it is extremely biased. Here you would probably expect to hear a litany of examples, but instead I simply refer to the fact that every journalist promotes the conceit that all journalists are objective -and that belief in his own objectivity is the defining characteristic of the man who is not objective.

So I say, accept the fact that "these people" are indeed journalists, doing exactly what journalists do - which is, and ought to be seen as, disreputable.
You will say, "but what about the First Amendment and freedom of the press?" To which I reply that freedom of the press is a wonderful idea, and we ought to try it. Journalism presumes to call itself "the press," as if it were a class separate from we-the-people. But in fact, under the Constitution there are only three subdivisions - the federal government, the state governments, and the people. People who don't own a press aren't a separate species from those who do - they simply are people who don't own a press yet. More than anything, the First Amendment reference to freedom of "the press" is supposed to mean that anyone who decides to spend the money for a press (and ink and paper) is allowed to do so.
Those who style themselves "the press" actually depend for their self-definiton on the scarcity and expense of presses, not the "freedom" thereof. If every Tom, Dick, and Harriet had a press, journalists calling themselves "the press" would be no big deal. And that is actually now the case. To all intents and purposes, FreeRepublic.com is a press, and you are able to read this posting (so be that JimRob and his moderators don't object) anywhere in the world.
But is FreeRepublic.com actually a "press" under the intent of the First Amendment, which was written long before the telegraph - let alone the Internet? Absolutely. First, because "the progress of science and useful arts" was contemplated by the framers of the Constitution:
Article 1 Section 8. The Congress shall have power . . . To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries . . .
Under what logical framework is progress in the technology of communication excluded from the Constitution? If the Ninth Amendment means anything at all
Amendment 9
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
the First Amendment is a floor rather than a ceiling on our rights - and freedom of "the press" does not mean censorship of other, later, communication technologies. Else, can the newswires be censored because the telegraph isn't a printing press?

Journalism and Objectivity
The Right to Know

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