Old dudes facing a changing newspaper world

Knoxville News Sentinel ^ | 4/17/5 | JACK McELROY

[SmithL]

What's an old dude to do?

That's how I'd summarize the theme of this year's convention of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, which took place in Washington, D.C., last week.

For years editors have been wringing their no-longer-ink-stained hands over the future of our venerable business. As newcomer news outlets have blossomed and proliferated, gloom and doom inevitably was forecast for the most mature of the media.

But newspapers have continued to crank out healthy profits, so it has been easy to find silver linings around the dark clouds and hope that no hard rain was actually gonna fall.

Lately, though, a palpable sense of panic can be felt when folks gather to discuss the future of newspapers. The reason: a precipitous decline in readership among young people. In a world swimming with media choices, more and more consumers under age 35 are finding the traditional daily paper irrelevant to the lives.

So what's an old editor dude to do?

Naturally, conferences such as this one provide more questions than answers. They leave participants with a swirl of images and information that only later may coalesce into coherent strategies.

So I share with you some of the tidbits swirling in my brain:

# Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch citing research that 44 percent of people in the 18- to 34-year-old group use an Internet portal daily, while only 19 percent of them open a newspaper.

# The Minneapolis Star Tribune showing off a prototype with a whimsical image of Paris Hilton and a centerpiece story about poker, with a brief guide to Texas Hold 'em, on the front page.

# Encountering an old colleague from Albuquerque who 15 years ago helped me launch an electronic edition of the newspaper on a bulletin board system using a 2400-baud modem.

# Remembering with an earlier Albuquerque friend how we missed the biggest story in town in those days - Bill Gates quietly creating Microsoft before moving it to Washington.

# The laptop computer in my hotel room alerting me to a story commemorating the 60th anniversary of the death of Ernie Pyle, the legendary World War II correspondent killed by a Japanese sniper.

# The editor of The Washington Examiner explaining how billionaire Phil Anschutz - creator of the Regal Cinema empire - now plans to launch free, home-delivered daily tabloids in 69 U.S. cities.

# An e-mail from a list-serv announcing that Yahoo! is launching a new service providing local business news.

# Hearing radio personality Garrison Keillor quoted as saying the reason people buy newspapers is for good writing.

# Listening to a panel of six experts on the future of newspapers and realizing that none of them actually works for a newspaper company. When one was asked what he would do if he were an editor returning to his newsroom after the conference, the panelist answered that he wouldn't take the job.

The conference seemed to come to consensus on two things.

First and obviously, the digital revolution is changing the world, and newspapers must change with it. Even the root word "paper" in newspaper was pointed to as obsolete. Newspapers will continue to evolve into multimedia, digital information sources.

Second, information is no longer the sole possession of media professionals. The Internet has made everyone a potential reporter, editor, publisher and pundit. Newspapers must function more as discussion leaders than as one-way information providers.

In that spirit, I'd love to hear your thoughts on what you see for the future of newspapers. Shoot me an e-mail at editor@knews.com. This old dude needs help.

[TheForceOfOne]

*Grin*

It was late, what I meant to say was:

Hello, NY Slimes,
I would like to cancel my subscription. I was under the impression your paper was Horse porn because everyone keeps referring to it as the perfect picture of a horses a$$. lol

[lawgirl]

To me, there is nothing they can do. I have not picked up a newspaper in about 5 years, and I don't intend on ever picking one up again. Why pay for news that I already read about on Free Republic 3 days ago?

FWIW, I am 30.

[qam1]

Xer Ping

Ping list for the discussion of the politics and social (and sometimes nostalgic) aspects that directly effects Generation Reagan / Generation-X (Those born from 1965-1981) including all the spending previous generations (i.e. The Baby Boomers) are doing that Gen-X and Y will end up paying for.

Freep mail me to be added or dropped. See my home page for details and previous articles.  

[LibertyRocks]

The only reason I buy a paper anymore is for the coupons and sales ads! And then, it's only on Sunday! I get all my news on the 'net (and much better quality I might add.) Newspaper "reporters and journalists" pretty much make me sick nowadays with the way they "report".

[LibertyRocks]

"Meanwhile the words of the paper consist of high-school level writing, wire copy that doesn't even know how outrageously biased it is, snotty leftist columnists snorting away, 1A "analysis" pieces trying to lie, spin and shape perceptions."

Thanks for the "inside scoop"! I'm glad it's not just my imagination regarding the the bias and low writing standards. (I'm actually kind of glad now that I didn't go into journalism as I had intended many years ago, it sounds like I would have been miserable!)

[LibertyRocks]

Strike the second "the" before bias please! (o;

[schu]

I thought I heard Rush say the other day that the WSJ nows generates more profits from their on-line version than their paper version (content is one and the same). I bought the WSJ everyday for 20 years, 2 years ago I canceled my hard copy version, the on-line is cheaper and I do not miss a thing.

Newspapers could revive themselves if they started to do true investigative journalism. A great example is the WAS State Govs election. If they dug in and uncovered the story, they would sell out every day IMHO.

[TXBSAFH]

I have no use for the dead tree legacy media. Other then shipping material, that is.

[LibertarianInExile]

Bump to that. If I could get the funnies to load on my ipaq without payin' for them, I'd never buy a paper again.

[ken21]

when i was a kid there was a morning paper and an afternoon paper in most cities of any size. the former was union, the latter the "bankers'" paper.

no one expected the truth in either, but the truth might be guessed at by reading both and triangulating the issues.

then, in the last several decades corporations bought out the vast majority of american newspapers.

they turned their editorial pages over to college-educated liberals and feminists.

the more control that these corporations gained, the more newspapers became less trusted and lost circulation.

newspapers have only themselves to blame. as feminists feminized newspapers with more home decor, diet, medical fads, ad infintum--all at the expense of hard news,

these papers lost circulation.

[lawgirl]

Have you been to comics.com? that is where i get my daily fix of Get Fuzzy. There are tons of cartoons published there every day.

[secretagent]

Newspapers have better pixel density, for now.

[LibertarianInExile]

I know, but you can only get one at a time. It's too slow.

I highly recommend the Houston Chronicle's build-your-own page. But it's slow, too, and it doesn't have every comic I'd like, as comics.com and ucomics.com have some but not all of my favorites. I wish I could get them all at once.

Anyway, check it out at http://www.chron.com/content/chronicle/comics/archive/byocp.mpl.

[AD from SpringBay]

The deepening shade continued to rise from the impact crater. Tremors were felt for miles. A nearby herd of daileditiors ran, fully aware they must stay ahead of the darkening shadows that grew quickly behind them. Off cliffsides and into marshes, through unknown thickets and into closed arroyos, the fear blinded beasts knew their survival was in question. Their round bellies ached. Swollen by years of lazy grazing they had long since forgotten how to fend for themselves and knew only the gentle slopes and sweet local grass. Thier small minds could not comprehend exactly what was happening, but the meteor I-ternetius reminded them of just how fragile their docility had become.

[tnlibertarian]

Since this article came from the paper that ends up in my box (or driveway, yard, bushes, neighbor’s breakfast table, etc.) everyday, I would like to offer Jack a suggestion which I will include in an email later. The paper recently ran a big comics promotion which invited people to vote on which comics stayed, which went, and which were added. It was a ‘Love It’ or ‘Hate It’ format. I suggest that Mr. McElroy do the same thing with his local columnists. The paper recently added a new Conservative columnist, who was found through a several month long process of locals writing columns and people expressing their opinion. I suppose this addition was in response to three or four local liberal columnists, who are of course referred to simply as ‘columnists’. I think ole Jack may be surprised to find out that in a conservative East Tennessee burg that people might not like the crap put forth from some of their featured writers. In particular, Don Williams was apparently infected with some sort of DU bug in the run-up to the election. He would soak in and repeat any whacked-out, left-wing rumor regardless of plausibility as fact and another obvious reason to not only not vote for W, but lock him away in some dark dungeon. The guy made Molly Ivins seam calm and reasoned.

That being said, about the only thing I read in the paper anymore is the sports page, classified, comics and puzzles.

[StoneColdGOP]

BTTT.

[Purple GOPer]

I think if newspapers did two things they would still be able to survive and thrive:

1) Admit they are not impartial and fine tune the "bias" to be closer to the local community. Yes NY & LA papers might get more slightly more liberal, but I don't think so. Media should would the 70/30 issues the same way politicians do.

2) Report actual news. I know it might be hard to do, but the paper should to be more than political and business press releases.

[GOP_1900AD]

Demographics 101. As the 70% left leaning (as a class) Baby Boomers entered the market during the period 1965 - 1985, the big city papers pandered to them. From 1985 - 1995 in particular, they moved further and further to the left, and away from mainstream America. Now, as the younger generations than the Boomers take over, not only are we less paper oriented and more on line oriented than the Boomers, but also, we are more conservative. The big city papers missed the boat by ignoring the younger generations and overly focussing on the boomers. And they are not the first. Most large commercial orgs overly focus on the Loudest Generation.

[qam1]

The big city papers missed the boat by ignoring the younger generations and overly focussing on the boomers.

And they still are

See (Chicago) Tribune to target baby boomer niche

"The Chicago Tribune is going after another niche market with a new magazine aimed at baby boomers......

ummm aren't the Baby Boomers already buying papers, so if they were smart businessmen wouldn't they be going after a different niche to increase circulation??

But I guess to a Baby Boomer, they are the center of the universe and there are no other niches

[GOP_1900AD]

Fascinating ...