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Are Newspapers Doomed?
Posted by
kdawson
on Sun Dec 21, 2008 08:11 AM
from the don't-even-say-it dept.
from the don't-even-say-it dept.
Ponca City, We love you writes "James Surowiecki has an interesting article in the New Yorker that crystalizes the problems facing print newspapers today and explains why we may soon be seeing more major newspapers filing for bankruptcy, as the Tribune Company did last week. 'There's no mystery as to the source of all the trouble: advertising revenue has dried up,' writes Surowiecki, but the 'peculiar fact about the current crisis is that even as big papers have become less profitable they've arguably become more popular,' with the blogosphere piggybacking on traditional journalism's content. Surowiecki imagines many possible futures for newspapers, from becoming foundation-run nonprofits to relying on reader donations to deep-pocketed patrons. 'For a while now, readers have had the best of both worlds: all the benefits of the old, high-profit regime — intensive reporting, experienced editors, and so on — and the low costs of the new one. But that situation can't last. Soon enough, we're going to start getting what we pay for, and we may find out just how little that is.'"
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Print News Fading, Still Source of Much News 140 comments
CNet's Dan Farber took a look, not only at the popular news of how print media is dying a slow death, but also what contribution to the news print journalists are still making. According to research quoted, while the physical publications are quickly becoming a thing of the past much of the news that makes its way into circulation via blogs and other means still originates from the hard work of those print journalists. (We discussed a similar perspective on the news a week back.) "While the Internet is growing as the place where people go for news, the revenue simply isn't catching up fast enough. The less obvious part of the Internet overtaking newspapers as the main source for national and international news is that much of the seed content--the original reporting that breaks national and international news and is subsequently refactored by legions of bloggers--comes from the reporters and editors working at the financially strapped newspapers and national and local television outlets. [...] As the financial pressures mount--the outlook for 2009 is dismal--and the cost cutting continues, we can only hope that the original news reporting by top-flight journalists is not a major casualty."
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Oh No! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Oh No! (Score:4, Insightful)
This is terrible. You can't put websites at the bottom of the parrot cage!
Newspapers were considered so important to the country that the first amendment to the Constitution preserved the freedom of the press. It's sad that I'll likely live to see the end of newspapers in this country. Most have already lost relevance. It may seem cool to get your news from bloggers but they aren't news sources they just voice opinions they aren't held to any standards. Even broadcast news is all opinion pieces these days. Objective news is a dying thing. Free speech and freedom of the press were separate things in the Constitution for a reason. One is opinion and one is supposed to preserve the right to objective news that isn't controlled by the government. This country would not exist as we know it without newspapers so they deserve more respect than to be viewed as bird cage filler. It'll be a sad day when the last newspaper closes. The founding fathers would be horrified and we should be as well.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Newspapers were considered so important to the country that the first amendment to the Constitution preserved the freedom of the press.
Nope. Newspapers aren't all that important, even in those early days.
What was really important was pamhlets. And those live on, in the form of not only that laser printer on your desk, but also the flash-ban books in the nonfiction section. And blogs.
Free speech and freedom of the press were separate things in the Constitution for a reason.
Yes, but not for the reason you think. Speech and press are mentioned separately -- in the REDUNDANT first ten amendments -- because we inherited British jurisprudence, which has them be separate things.
Remember that the Bill of Rights was written as a "sur
Re:Not quite (Score:5, Informative)
I hate responding to an AC here... as this is usually an exercise in futility. Still.... I hate to see stuff like this get posted that is so blatantly untrue.
I don't get this. The Bill of rights clearly followed the procedure of Article V of the original constitution, including having the 1st U.S. Congress pass the wording on twelve amendments and submitted them to the state legislatures for approval.
Of those original twelve suggested amendments, ten of them were passed by the required number of state legislatures rather quickly and became known as the "bill of rights". One of them, now known as the 27th Amendment, was finally "approved" in 1992 when the Michigan state legislature ratified that amendment proposal and is surprisingly the most recent addition to the U.S. Constitution.
This amendment, BTW, attempts to stop Congress from giving themselves pay raises while in office... although it hasn't seemed to work out very well, nor has Congress really followed the intent of this amendment since its passage.
What happened to amendment #12 of this original proposal? It was about how Congress (the U.S. House of Representatives in particular) could in theory be expanded substantially if the population of the USA were to grow significantly from 1780 levels. The House is no where near the maximum number of representatives allowed under the U.S. Constitution, so this amendment is really irrelevant to the current conditions of the country.
Where it gets unconstitutional is that the passage of the Constitution was provisional for some states until the bill of rights were passed and approved. So technically the meeting of the 1st congress was unconstitutional as the constitution wasn't yet approved completely.
This shouldn't imply, however, that the founding political leaders of the USA didn't like the bill of rights and didn't think it should be in the document. The only argument against the bill of rights is that "rights" not found in this document would be taken away by the government on a whim. This has, unfortunately, proven to be a correct assessment as well.
Parent
Re:Oh No! (Score:5, Interesting)
>>>Free speech and freedom of the press were separate things in the Constitution for a reason. One is opinion and one is supposed to preserve the right to objective news
>>>
This is revisionist history. If you actually traveled back to the 1780s, 1790s, and 1810s, you would find all kinds of "unverified opinions" coming out of the presses. Newspapers and pamphlets (like "Common Sense" by Paine) were typically run by a single man, and that man used his press to push his own personal views. There was no objectivity back then.
And why should there be? If I want to publish a newspaper called "Liberty Today" why should I have to present both sides? It's MY paper and MY press. I should be able to decide what will and will not be published with MY dollars.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No individual view is objectve, but if different views are aired - without any official hindrance (congess shall make no law...), people can make up their own minds among them. In practice the real extreme loonies usually cancel each other out.
That of course works as long as the people are well informed & educated enough to choose wisely...
Re:Oh No! (Score:4, Informative)
Newspapers were considered so important to the country that the first amendment to the Constitution preserved the freedom of the press.
If we follow that what you say is true, which I don't but lets for the sake of argument, then horse carts were also considered important to the country at that time. However you don't see the US still keeping that industry afloat. Rather it's the free press part that matters.
Newspapers are dying out due to technological advances. By virtue of what they represent it's more sad than with other things that have done so. And of course they will go down kicking and screaming. I'll personally miss a cheap way to line a kitten or puppies floor area. Or an alternative to a drop cloth when I'm painting something.
Parent
Re:Oh No! (Score:5, Interesting)
correction: free press is so important to democracy that the first amendment to the Constitution specifically includes a clause for its explicit preservation. there's a reason it's called 'freedom of press,' not 'freedom of newspaper.'
i think it would be sad for professional journalism to go the way of the dodo, however i don't see this as likely to happen. we're simply seeing a shift from traditional media--like newspapers, magazines, TV, radio, etc.--to the new media of the web. and frankly, this is a very good thing. over the past few decades the mainstream media has become increasingly consolidated, with most media outlets being controlled by a handful of media conglomerates. this has not only homogenized the media, but it has also put the power of controlling how the public perceives the world into the hands of a select few.
however, with the advent of the web, we're starting to see a resurgence in independent news sources. this along with web search technology has made it easier than ever for individuals to access a wide/diverse range of media sources large and small, allowing people to account for inherent biases in the media and easily perform their own research and fact-checking. whereas newspapers and TV networks rarely publish/broadcast corrections (where people can see them) and admit to their journalistic blunders (such as the whole Saddam Hussein/al-Qaida connection, the non-existent WMDs, the incorrect reporting of election results, etc.), the online media establishment is very keen to challenge the facts reported by other news sources and identify misinformation.
frankly, this notion that print journalism is dead or dying is nothing new. TV/radio was supposed to have killed print journalism a long time ago. when JFK was shot, the newspapers found themselves unable to keep up with the live coverage and constant updates by TV networks. by the time they got a story out, it was already outdated or incorrect because the story had changed. they had to release several editions on the same day, and ended up printing different versions of the same edition with conflicting headlines [historybuff.com]. but somehow they managed to survive to this day one way or another.
personally, i'd prefer if newspapers became non-profits. by selling ads (usually about 50% of each edition) newspaper publishers become beholden to advertisers. additionally, most traditional media outlets are commercially tied to other corporate industries which have a vested interest in pushing public opinion in a certain direction, creating a very dangerous conflict of interest. for instance, General Electric, a major arms manufacturer, owns NBC, CNBC, MSNBC. this has serious implications on how these media outlets cover (or don't cover) the news.
Parent
Re:Oh No! (Score:4, Insightful)
It may seem cool to get your news from bloggers but they aren't news sources they just voice opinions they aren't held to any standards.
Newspapers haven't had standards at least since the 1970s.
Even broadcast news is all opinion pieces these days.
"Duh." Anyone who watched the insane rush to anoint Barack Obama and the nastiness with which every member of the press treated the other side (not to mention the witch-hunt mentality towards the few actually neutral reporters who dared to ask Obama/Biden the TOUGH questions) will realize this.
Of course, there's plenty of other evidence why this was the case [howobamagotelected.com].
Objective news is a dying thing.
Again, "Duh." The populace hasn't demanded balanced news, so it's dying. The recent push for the reinstitution of the "Fairness Doctrine" [wikipedia.org] by the Dems is not really about "fairness", it's about their trying to take a stab at media outlets that don't carry their party line; you can be damn sure they would claim the "big" news networks are already "fair" and so "don't need changing" while they try to censor out anyone that doesn't agree with them.
Free speech and freedom of the press were separate things in the Constitution for a reason. One is opinion and one is supposed to preserve the right to objective news that isn't controlled by the government.
"The right to objective news that isn't controlled by the government" - sadly, the idea of "objective news" is nigh impossible to find. There are so many ways to tilt a story:
- Weasel words
- Incendiary words
- Selective sourcing
- Abuse of statistics ("counting the hits, forgetting the misses", etc)
And that's just a few.
It'll be a sad day when the last newspaper closes.
Funny, I think the opposite. Newspapers will either adapt, or they won't. I'd rather have a lot more, smaller newspapers (and local papers seem to do just fine, because they can get locally-targeted advertising) competing and catching each other's mistakes than one big conglomerate that simply wants to indoctrinate, lie to, deceive, manipulate, and tilt the story over and over and over again.
Parent
It's attrition in the target audience. (Score:3, Insightful)
Once most of the people who grew up reading newspapers die or just stop reading them, it's inevitable that the print form will cease to exist -- as we know it. I see a lot more prints of news websites than I see newspaper clippings, so the need for SOME of it to hit paper is still there. It's just that most people don't want the whole thing delivered physically any more. They still want the content, but most of it never leaves the digital form, so while NEWSPAPERS may die, journalism does not necessarily follow suit.
Mal-2
Re:It's attrition in the target audience. (Score:5, Insightful)
Once most of the people who grew up reading newspapers die or just stop reading them, it's inevitable that the print form will cease to exist -- as we know it.
That would be me, then. I grew a broadsheet reader, but I don't bother nowadays. The press try to claim a "gatekeeper" role, filtering the real news from the dross (I see they're still claiming "intensive reporting, experienced editors, and so on"), but they've long since abandoned that. Apart from opinion, all you find in newspapers now is PR releases reprinted almost verbatim and Associated Press reports reprinted almost verbatim (it's fascinating to compare reports of the same incident in different newspapers: big news each paper will put it's own spin on, but mid-range and low level news is often word-for-word the same between newspapers). The only question the editors ask is "will this sell" (more precisely, "will this supply readers who we can sell to advertisers"), which is no more effective as a gatekeeper than the blogger who says "will this entertain my readers". I don't see how the news press can survive; it's only added value for the readers would be investigation, fact checking and real, on-the-ground reporting, and that's expensive (too expensive for the extra readership it attracts). All that's left is pure entertainment -- celeb gossip, pictures of scantily clad young people and amusing factoids pretending to be news. The internet is a threat there, too, but at least it's cheaper. I'm guessing that it's cheaper to send a reporter to a celebrity party than to a war zone?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I think the newspapers with wider circulation may survive with local papers dying out completely. It should be possible for the nationally distributed newspapers to cannibalize the local and regional newspapers by offering versions with local news.
On top of that, they could probably also offer additional customization of content such as allowing you to choose which columnists appear in your copy. A service like that, combined with the fact that at least some sentimentality over print is likely to be passed
Re:It's attrition in the target audience. (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other hand, my local paper, run by a chain that publishes a similar paper in about two dozen nearby areas, is thriving, albeit not setting any profitability records.
Local papers have local news and that's what's important to people. It's still a thrill for a parent to see their kid's picture in the local paper. Local merchants need a way to reach local customers.
When the web becomes a truly localized place for most people, then the small papers may disappear. Right now they fill a niche and throughout all of publishing, those are the businesses that are surviving the "onslaught" of the web.
Parent
"Soon?" (Score:4, Insightful)
'For a while now, readers have had the best of both worlds: all the benefits of the old, high-profit regime â" intensive reporting, experienced editors, and so on â" and the low costs of the new one. But that situation can't last. Soon enough, we're going to start getting what we pay for, and we may find out just how little that is.'
really? I thought that vanished in 1999
There has been very little fact checking or true investigation in reporting in quite some time, and I'm afraid you can't blame the internet for that.
Newspapers will not die though. Most of their stories are sourced from the same organizations which source on-line content (reuters, associated press, et al), and they will continue on in their ineptitude and failure to fact check or investigate, as usual.
Re:"Soon?" (Score:4, Insightful)
Newspapers will not die though. Most of their stories are sourced from the same organizations which source on-line content (reuters, associated press, et al), and they will continue on in their ineptitude and failure to fact check or investigate, as usual.
Aye. And also newspapers are (have always been IMHO) "influencers". They are bought and maintained with the idea of having a way of influencing public opinion. In a democracy, public opinion is a source of money, so the owners of newspapers are richly paid beyond the advertising revenues, in ways not reflected in the accounting books. In short, we are always reading about newspapers dying, but I seem to detect no lack of them in the newsstands.
Parent
Re:"Soon?" (Score:5, Insightful)
[citation needed]
Parent
Re:"Soon?" (Score:5, Interesting)
I would argue it was even before that when the 'news' papers ( and TV news ) lost all morality and no longer reported news, but instead lies and agendas.
My realization came in the late 80s after witnessing an 'event' in person and noticing that NOONE had the truth afterwards. Each news outlet twisted the facts to suit their own agenda. But if you were not there you would never know.
Parent
Re:"Soon?" (Score:5, Interesting)
You are incorrect. There is still solid investigative news journalism going on. You just don't notice it because of the flood of other news from the limited number of places you look (many of which are likely tailored to your interests), and that is the fault of the internet.
Look at the list of "ongoing special projects" on this page describing the investigative journalism [mcclatchy.com] at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Each of those stories was an extensive investigation followed by a series of articles. Every one of them went through several reviews to ensure objectivity and defense-ability, because true, print journals publishing libel is easy fodder for lawsuits. In several cases, the subjects of the stories were arrested and charged after the stories were published, based in part on the research.
Parent
i hope so (Score:4, Insightful)
last I checked my local newspaper was easily 50% to 70% just ads
and the content trashy with alot of spelling mistakes
at least on the web we can adblock the noise
Re:i hope so (Score:4, Insightful)
This is the primary reason that the newspaper industry must survive. Ad revenue is what supports the media industry (whatever media you choose to pick). Everyone ignores ads to a greater or lesser extent. But it is easier for the publishers to sell companies on the idea that their ads might be seen in a physical media than an on-line media. This is the primary reason that the TV industry is so against the time shifters - be it VCRs or more modern variants. If my commercial is zapped, why should I pay to put it on your show? It's a point that is even harder to sell on-line.
When there is no revenue from ads, the subscribers won't pay a high enough price to cover your operating costs. How many on-line news sources do you actually subscribe to? How many do you subscribe to if the "cost" is nothing more than an on-line registration? I'd guess pretty few. So you are a content leach. That works fine for you, since there are still enough people paying money in print (or cable TV subscriptions, or on-line equivalents) to pay people enough to produce content that they can distribute in its entirety or in reduced form to the on-line world.
If the revenue flow ceases to exist, there isn't going to be much content worth reading. As things become tighter, you can be assured that those providing content will seek to protect it further. The cost of litigation is something that the on-line bloggers haven't had to deal with much yet. You can rest assured it will happen.
Those editors have lots of job functions. I'll be the first to agree that the quality of the newspapers has declined somewhat. The editors might be just as good, but the reporters ability to write correct English has declined. More mistakes are getting through edit. Another important job function is to keep the content fresh. A particular blogger may have an agenda, but if he or she never extends beyond that agenda - do you keep coming back? A third job function is to keep the paper from being sued for libel. That is another litigation expense that the on-line only crowd hasn't had to deal with much yet.
On-line will always have a place. It is convenient to find news about a particular subject during the day when the newspaper is not at hand. But at the end of the day of looking at a computer screen for 8 hours, I'd much rather sit down to a nice local newspaper and a nice global newspaper to read the pieces of news I'm interested in. I personally can't stand the talking heads on TV blathering the same 1 minute sound bite every 15 minutes. I'd much rather skip around and read what I want from print.
Parent
Re:i hope so (Score:5, Funny)
'last I checked my local newspaper was easily 50% to 70% just ads
and the content trashy with alot of spelling mistakes...'
How did you notice?
Parent
I doubt all newspapers are... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2003/11/61165 [wired.com]
And that's 2003... it's got worse since.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
>>>Goldstein stopped publishing Screw magazine and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy,
Well that's a loss of a fine publication. Boy. Our civilization will never be the same without "Screw" magazine. ;-) But seriously there's still a market for porn, but you can't just publish any old trash. You have to select the most artistic photos - something worthy of hanging in a museum, not some junk you tossed together in 5 minutes. If you make the photos artistic, you'll can still sell them in book form.
I
How about the debt load (Score:5, Informative)
OK, newspapers have their problems, but the biggest problem with the Tribune is that Sam Zell loaded it up with an unmanageable level of debt when he bought it.
The Tribune is more an example of how raiders like Zell enrich themselves during a leveraged buyout than an example of a failing newspaper.
Re:How about the debt load (Score:5, Informative)
Everyone's talking about how the advertising model isn't working, well what this says is that the subscriber model isn't working either. That doesn't leave many funding models to try... let's see... government subsidy, pledge drives and tip jars, billionaire sponsorship, bake sales, criminal enterprise, and "... ????
Parent
Ad revenue is a bad model (Score:5, Insightful)
Ad revenue cannot and should not sustain newspapers or television. We really need to figure out what is important to have in our society and start ponying up money to support it. I would like to see more money going to services like PBS and NPR to expand that quality of programming into a local printed publication. I have to admit that I very rarely read a paper, but I do listen to NPR pretty much every time I am in the car and I recognize that the bulk of their programming comes from news discovered by print journalists.
Go ahead and tax people for it and give the papers away. If there are no reporters out there to dig up the interesting stories that don't qualify for the sensationalist 10PM news shows then we are in danger of losing that part of our history. It's time people stop thinking about themselves, and making a quick buck on ads by catering to the lowest common denominator and start thinking about what they can do to add value to the quality of life for the entire human race.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I do not want to support what you support. I'm perfectly happy without TV and getting my news on the internet without any level of burden to tax payers save the .gov sites.
Why? Everytime I go see a free paper on one of typical newspaper vending machines, most of them are still there. People don't value them because they see it's free and figure it translates to cheap or not worthwhile. Also, many people take those free papers and not read one word,
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Utter and complete nonsense. Almost every TV company in the free world is ad supported. Most usually successfully, until recently anyway. You are aware that many TV executives get paid in the millions?
The only reason Newspapers and TV companies are struggling is because they are failing to take advantage of new technology. They cling to 1950's business models -- Neilsen ratings, distribution and syndication methods that have remained unc
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Not necessarily. Targeting is not just by want, but also by time and location. Print and TV are location based, due to physics.
For example, if we take a fast food restaurant: By necessity, location based. Corporate wants to run a trial sandwich, only in a certain area, for a certain period of time. It will advertise that new McStinky only on the local channels, for a specific price
Re:Ad revenue is a bad model (Score:5, Interesting)
Would a government-owned news reporting company be more biased than what we have now?
That really depends on how the government decides to run it. It's simplistic to think that a government will always run things in the worst way possible, even if that is often the case. Ultimately, the question is, "Who is the government afraid of, and what does that person (or those people) want?" If the government is afraid of nobody, you get a propaganda arm. If the government is afraid of the voters, then you get what the voters want, whatever that may be.
Is the BBC worse than CNN or FOX News?
Absolutely not. The BBC is miles ahead of CNN or Fox News or, as far as I can tell, any other mainstream media outlet in the US. The Beeb is known for joyfully and viciously biting the hand that feeds it. The government doesn't like it, and often there are news stories about the gov threatening to pull funding, but I think (I don't live in Britain) that people just wouldn't tolerate it.
I watched the US Election coverage on the BBC (online stream) and the difference was amazing. It was also funny to see the American talking heads taking a beating when they got called on some of their more blatant departures from reality. They simply had no idea what it was like to be interviewed by an intelligent, skeptical person who wasn't prepared to swallow any bullshit. And the BBC people were actually being nice.
Government-paid television doesn't necessarily mean government-controlled television.
Parent
Re:Ad revenue is a bad model (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't forget too that BBC News also covers things that are shameful for the BBC itself, such as the fines [bbc.co.uk].
I think the BBC is one of, if not the, most impartial news source around, personally. Certainly far better than Fox News etc.
But then, I've always had trouble believing what anyone like Nancy Grace, Bill O'Reilly, Diane Dimond et al have to say given their very confrontational tone of voice and quickness to anger when they are called on their views, or are otherwise contradicted. They would say they are hard-hitting. I would say they are hot-headed egotistical scuzzbags.
Parent
news from the 1990s (Score:3, Interesting)
Newspapers have been declared dead every few years for the past 15 or so. When I went to university, one of our projects was to come up with suggestions on how newspapers could leverage all the new tech (Internet was new at that time) so they could "survive".
Look, they're still around. I guess they'll still be here in another 15 years.
Nobody's saying they'll just "poof" (Score:3, Insightful)
Nobody's saying they'll just go "poof" and just cease to exist, one day. There most certainly will be newspapers around in 15 years time. But how many?
I used to read a newspaper in the metro, and even got the paper delivered to my mailbox; but it's even easier to just read it on one of my 24" screens instead of having to go down the stairs to pick it up. And in the metro I just read the news on my $smartphone.
I heard this 10 years ago - the death of the free (Score:5, Insightful)
internet. Once micropayments came along (which back then was always real soon), everything on the internet was supposed to become pay-for. Every website you visit would deduct a fraction of a penny from your browser or something. This would be "necessary" to pay for inherent costs. What they didn't count on was that on the internet, oftentimes, if someone doesn't provide it free, someone else is willing to step in and grab that audience.
Also, since many newspapers are little more than repackaged AP and Reuters news, looking at the NY Times for guidance - I don't know what their value proposition is supposed to be. This past election cycle, because I paid attention to politics - I have seen how the old media doesn't even pretend to present the world as it is but just their packaged version of it - they do a bad job of reporting things of niche interest - 3rd parties, other people running other than the "top 2" candidates that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, etc.
Considering this, what value do they bring to the table? If they don't carry the most general of news, someone else will. And since they don't cover anything in depth (not every interest in audience, by nature), most easy to find forums, blogs, etc will cover a subject deeper and be more informative.
All I see is someone bickering that their pre-packaged, repackaged jack-of-all-subjects, master-of-none is becoming obsolete by the fact that it's not the pre-1980s anymore when people relied on print to stay informed.
Re:I heard this 10 years ago - the death of the fr (Score:5, Insightful)
This ignores the point of the article - that the bedrock, actual "sources" of news such as the NYT are also in dire financial straits [gawker.com]. Once they are gone (and by that I don't mean "cease to exist," merely that the quality nosedives because there are fewer investigative journalist slots) then all the secondary news sources you decry - and their readers - will be high and dry. The blogs and forums are just cud-chewers. Somebody still has to do the interviews and take the photos for them to ruminate over.
Parent
AP broke the newspaper industry (Score:5, Insightful)
I get two newspapers each week.
One is going broke, one is doing fine.
One is skimmed, one is read front to back.
One is full of AP content, one has no AP content.
One is full of news I have already seen online, one is full of fresh stories.
Most newspapers are trying to churn out stories for the AP, hoping that their (version of the) story gets picked up and brings in some money. Meanwhile they have to pay for the expensive incoming AP stories, which they use liberally in their papers to justify the cost, filling their paper with barely readable, highly edited and condensed, dreck that has been widely available elsewhere.
Newspapers that will survive are covering the stories that no one else is covering.
Re:AP broke the newspaper industry (Score:5, Interesting)
I get two as well. One is a big regional paper and one is a tiny paper covering just two local towns. I read the comics and op/ed page in the big paper. I get nothing more out of it. All the "big" stories are old news because I've read them all online.
I do read the little local paper cover to cover and I always learn something new. I get full police reports ("mary and jimmys son was arrested again"), planning and zoning ("the wilburs got denied a permit to turn their garage into a rental apt...hah!"), legal ads, editorials about local politics, etc. I get way more out of the little one and I couldn't care less if projo.com dies.
Parent
Perhaps the giants are dying (Score:5, Informative)
Newspapers used to be the main source of aggregated of information about current events; they were few alternatives. Now we have a wide variety of sources for the same information; and don't need a daily paper to satisfy our information needs. As a result, the business model will change
You'll still need services such as the AP; but how the information is used will change. I would expect to see the multi-channel news organizations who can combine television, radio, and internet (blogs, websites, streaming data) to be replace newspapers as the primary daily news source.
As a side note, I expect more DCMA take down notices as organizations seek to protect their IP from being redistributed by outlets that don't pay for it.
I'd also expect to see local papers thrive - they can cover stories of limited interest beyond their communities, and deliver targeted ads for businesses. In addition, I'd expect specialty papers that target specific audiences (such as sports fans) to thrive because they can do more in depth and broader coverage of a narrow topic than say the AP. And of course, USA Today because every major hotel in the US buys a ton of them.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
In my town of roughly 30,000 people there are two newspapers. One of which is the traditional type, owned by some big conglomerate, that carries mostly wire stories and syndicated columns. In addition to being chock full of ads, you have to pay to get the thing.
The other one is published locally, by local folks, and mostly runs stories about local topics and columns from local writers. It too has lots of ads, but is doled out for free every week.
Guess which one of these is in financial trouble?
The proble
Chicken and the Egg: Ad Revenue and Content (Score:3, Insightful)
The comment above points to ad revenue drying up as one cause for the demise of print news. While reduced ad revenue may cause newspapers to fold (pun intended), it is not the cause of the reduced circulation and therefore lower ad revenue.
Content is everything and as our society has become more politically polarized, the bias in American news media has become more and more obvious. This leads potential readers (like me) to simply not subscribe. Just as when I see movies with certain politically vocal stars, I simply avoid the box office. This is America and actors can be advocates and newspapers can be political advertisements, but choices have consequences and I sometimes wonder if these groups understand that you can't diss half of your audience without consequences.
I am a computer guy, but I hate to read long pieces on line. I would actually like to subscribe to a regional paper if I really did think that I was being offered unbiased news. So although I think that online media contributes to the demise, once again I do not think it is the cause.
The simplest cause for the demise of newspapers: content (or lack thereof).
People interested in news aren't stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
Investigative newspaper reporting died over a decade ago. Newspapers today are nothing more than a collection of press releases.
The investigative reporters are now almost exclusively online. You no longer need a distribution network, and printing facilities. A good investigative reporter can setup a web site fairly easily, and if he/she is any good, the ad dollars will follow.
Take thetruthaboutcars.com - those guys called the demise of the American autos years ago - way before mainstream media. They were able to perform the in-depth financial analysis that the journalists at major newspapers simply ignored until recently.
Investors know this as well. Not many investors I know read newspapers any more for news. By the time the newspapers report it; the information is almost useless.
Goodbye newspapers. A generation of kids is growing up seeing the newspaper as obsolete as the typewriter.
-ted
Same story (Score:4, Interesting)
I also work for a newspaper, and I was shown stories from the advent of radio how radio was going to kill newspapers. Then TV was going to kill newspapers. Then the internet was going to kill newspapers. IBM also said computers would give us a paperless office.
Mainstream reporting is biased, full of crap (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't think we need to look much further than the most recent Iraq war to see how dangerous the current system is. All of our major media outlets are owned by very large corporations, many with defense interests. The press has always curried the favor of the deep pocket interests of the day. It's very instructive to look back at old press clippings on topics where we today know what the facts were ("Was the war a bad idea?" "Was this person corrupt?" "Will this harmless additive kill us?") and see how calm, certain, and forthright the pressmen were in their defense of the special interest. They have the air of the level-headed man of reason, putting our concerns to rest. Of course, they were dead fucking wrong but hey, we're all human, right?
It's true that the current blog model uses press articles and news reports as talking points to begin their own articles, those articles foster discussion threads, etc. If those dry up, more original reporting will need to be done.
But you know what? We've already reached that point with the mainstream media. Investigative journalism is expensive, nobody wants to pay for it. Most news articles these days are just repackaged press releases. Nobody wants to rock the boat and lose their jobs. If Bush says that Iraq has WMD's, if your editor tells you the organization is backing the administration's line because it's good for business, then you're writing about the WMD's. If you won't, there's a thousand other cub reporters just dying to get their shot at the big leagues.
I predict what we'll eventually see is all news sourcing going directly online. There's a lot of capital tied up in a traditional media operation be it the printing presses, distribution chain, and the useless overhead of the parent corporation that demands the news outlet be a profit center. Crossing my fingers, I hope we see a shakeout where traditional media outlets cannot compete with the price model of the net, they fall apart, and what replaces the AP feed is a loose federation of small-time private journalists who have small enough operations they can make their money off of the banner ads. They would peer with other sources to create their own wire feed and we see a more economic business model.
Analogous to music (Score:5, Insightful)
....SOMEONE has to create the content. The blogosphere (and hell, even slashdot) mostly points to someone else's content. Joe Blogger isn't going to be doing any in-depth investigations and that is the foundation of journalism. One can look at how superficial how TV journalism is to print journalism...and then realize that the blogosphere offers insight and nothing else.
Content isn't going to come with compensation.
Porting Journalism to the Web (Score:3, Interesting)
We're near the tipping point at which online news sites need to hire or acquire the talent that supported print publications. The recession will speed the demise of newspapers, making lots of talent available. Can web companies afford to seize this opportunity and invest in staff? It can happen. The Politico [politico.com] is one example of this opportunity.
But the bottom line is that there are a number of lean years ahead for journalists, who will likely face pay cuts as they shift from print to online.
Newspaper Niche Disappearing (Score:4, Interesting)
25 years too early, but it was a very insightful prediction nonetheless. The problem newspapers are facing is that they have historically filled a very specific niche: rapid distribution of largely perishable information, i.e. "news". In the beginning, advances in communication technology only helped newspapers, as they were expensive and only a well funded entity could afford to transmit and receive information over long distances. TV and radio were the first to threaten newspapers, but they actually ended up just exploiting a new market for the most part--- "live" news--- as they're limited to the relatively low-speed communication inherent to the spoken word. Newspapers held an advantage purely in bandwidth. Large quantities of printed information on cheap pulp delivered to your door beat anything TV or radio could offer in sheer volume of information.
Then came the publicly available Internet. Essentially at one stroke, newspapers were pushed to second place in bandwidth. Even a 56Kbps dialup connection could feed the printed word faster and in greater volume than a printing press. Newspapers were doomed, but they didn't know it yet. It took some time for people to catch on. I personally put the tipping point about four years ago. For decades the local newspaper where I live has run an annoying telemarketing division to badger people into getting the local paper. About four years ago, I started answering their entreaties with "no thanks, I already read that paper online for free". These telemarketers, who historically had a scripted response to any excuse, could only respond "oh, OK, thanks for your time"! When a Los Angeles Times telemarketer can't come up with a reason for you to subscribe, the jig is up.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Heh, heh. Well, I'd say Tistork's subject line is spot on, but there's the great melting pot for you. I quit reading newspapers years ago because they unreflectively mouth the Neocon Proto-Fascist line. Quit watching network news and listening to public radio and switched to the BBC and Paris for audio and video and the internet for print for that matter.
Met a proud liberal around the Reagan years who started a campaign of spray-painting "Lies" on our metro newspaper boxes. According to Tistork, he must
Re:Epic 2015. (Score:4, Insightful)
What you end up with in that future is a bunch porn, twiiter and trivial drool and nothing of substance.
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Re:Epic 2015. (Score:5, Interesting)
The big problem with "newspapers" is that, subtract the porn, what you describe is most of what you have left. Local newspapers, anyway.
As a former employee of the now-defunct Knight-Ridder newspaper chain and founder of two alternative weekly newspapers, I have some experience with the actual creation and operation of newspapers as a business. To keep it short, I'll keep it to a few points:
1) For years, the big newspaper chains have owed their problems more to shareholder expectations than to ability to actually make money. It created an environment where increased corporate profit (annually) was the only goal; when you can't charge more for product you decrease labor costs. Instead of investing in what makes their product useful (news), they rely on wire services (the AP) and use local writers for drivel. (See below.) So every year, if they did not make more money than they made the year before, their stoke prices fell. When their stock prices fell, they became more and more vulnerable to corporate takeover. Newspaper companies became more and more gobbled up into larger and larger companies. Large companies could hide the loses of inefficient newspapers with the massive profits of efficient newspapers. But when the company decides to cut employees, it doesn't say, "Paper A, you are a turd and you are going to lose all your employees, and we may shut you down. Paper B, you are the goose that lays the golden egg, and we shall not touch a feather." No, a corporate newspaper company says, "We are going to lay off 10 percent of our workforce," then everyone loses 10 percent, usually by early retirement and seniority, relatively arbitrary and simple methods of reducing workforce that don't involve anyone saying, "you suck; you're fired."
2) Some corporate idiot started asking the public what they wanted. Survey after survey showed that people "don't like bad news." Well, no kidding. But that's what they buy the paper for. It speaks to our primal need to find and avoid dangers. It scares the hell out of us so that we'll remember it, like watching your buddy get jumped by a lion on the plains. You think to yourself, "I better remember that Bob got jumped right there." And when you get back to the tribe, you don't say "Bob and I had a great day finding berries and hunting." You say, "Bob, hunter gatherer, killed in lion attack." But, 95% of the stories in your local newspapers will be about berries. Readers only remember the lions -- the other five percent -- which are bad news. Which makes you wonder why they bother with the 95 percent at all. It is a significant waste of one's resources. Those corporate tools also see statehouse reporting (for example) coverage as redundant, so save the local guy for the really local bourgeois stuff -- bake sales, feel-good ditties about toy runs and the Salvation Army, all the other things that no one complains (or cares) about. So, for years now corporately owned regional and local newspapers have been cutting back and back and back on any coverage that can be pooled. Then they wonder why nobody reads their publication to get the news. Well, because CNN had the same story from the AP posted on the web last night, you jackass. Break some news.
3) Newsprint is just a physical media. For some publications, it is perfect. Anything where you want people who are out and about to pick it up and carry it with you. But it's hella expensive. Not as expensive as people to write, but expensive. Still, the people are the really expensive part. My newspapers had almost all volunteer staffs and the newsprint was about 1/3 of the cost. But 1/3 less is 1/3 less.
Newspapers may die, but written journalism will live on. The shock to everyone is going to be that if you want to get paid for writing news then you are going to have to go out and report some new news all the time. Sorry, people aren't going to by regurgitated stories about Bob's lion attack when they've already heard it.
Local TV news is likewise doomed. Without a local newspaper to crib from, they
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