Why newspapers are dying
It’s always bugged me to read stories in the press about the financial problems the press is having. Journalists, it turns out, aren’t too clear-eyed (and often aren’t too intellectually honest) when it comes to analyzing the collapse of their own profession.
My argument for what’s really going on, or at least the beginning of a series of them, is currently up at Splice Today.
The result is a long—too-long probably—detailing of the five central issues that I contend are at the heart of the collapse of daily journalism. To me it’s incredible that they are almost never detailed in mainstream accounts on the troubles of the industry—because there’s no way to fix the problems if it’s not acknowledged what they are.
Part I is up now. Part II will be up later today. I’d welcome, of course, comments, criticisms and other thoughts on the industry.
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That’s one singeing takedown. Definitely needed to be said.
excellent article!
My only real complaint about moving everything online and opening up to reader comments is the safety value of face to face communication is lost, and what sounds cool spoken can come across really harsh or really stupid online.
In particular I hate the fact the WSJ allows people to comment on articles, very few add anything of value to the discussion. (hint unions and management guess who gets all the blame)
Anyways being the first commenter (I’m sure of many) I’m sorry I can’t leave some witty well worth reading comment to you article. But hey I’m just one of those average joe readers.
regardless excellent article.
Thoughtful articles. I’m a news consumer, not a producer, so I have a different perspective on some of these items. (I do have family in the industry, though, which is how I found your articles.)
Some observations:
1) Newspaper subscribers may not pay full cash value for the paper delivered to their door, but they do pay back the advertisers with the time they spend reading the paper. No readers = No advertisers. News outlets aren’t just competing for subscription dollars, but subscribers’ eyeballs.
2) Newspapers were indeed monopolies for a long time. That insulated them from immediate consequences for one specific failing: loss of political objectivity. While the typical paper as a whole became blander, the typical editorial page swung to the left. Until a viable alternative appeared, conservatives whined, but continued buying their daily paper. While it’s true that the elderly are passing on, and youth are not replacing them on the subscriber rolls, many of the middle-aged have been cancelling subscriptions due to dissatisfaction. That would include me, about fifteen years ago.
3) Concur on the timidity factor. Let me add: Bland and biased from one local source doesn’t stand a chance against buzz and balance from a smorgasbord of international sources. Not that any one website is balanced, but the web as a whole offers the missing balance. And it’s not a matter of cost: monthly newspaper delivery is less expensive than monthly broadband internet service.
4) Your description of slow adoption of new communication and computer technologies is not unique to newspapers. My time in the industrial sector had the identical IT and management problems, right down to the underpowered computers in critical applications. Businesses suffered for it, learned from it, and fixed the problems. The nostalgia for manual typewriters in journalism was matched by the nostalgia for drafting tables in the design, architecture, and engineering worlds. The Luddites were fired or marginalized, and business moved on. I don’t think you’ve made a strong case that the newspaper industry was uniquely impacted by resistance to technological innovation. If anything, I think you’ve made the case that industries dominated by union workforces have suffered from the natural resistance of unions to innovation.
5) I concur with all of your recommendations for improvement. I can’t say I’ll ever subscribe to a print newspaper again, but I can be drawn to a well-designed website.
The media in general, and newspapers in particular, ruined it for themselves this past election cycle. Why would people pay money for a newspaper when they can get the same “facts” from DNC press releases? People want unbiased news so they can decide how they feel on issues. But the main stream media was so biased it even offended their supporters. Many outlets even were honest enough after the election to admit it … but haven’t changed. When you replace reporting and journalism with opinions and smear pieces, you stop being “news” and start competing with the gossip merchants.
The country still needs a free press and unbiased journalism … but I’m not sure where they are going to find it.
Hey Bill —
I had rather a lot of comment on your analysis – too much to summarize here.
While we agree on a majority of your points, I think there are serious flaws in others. I did a post on it here:
http://editor.blogspot.com/2009/08/why-are-newspaper-doomsayers-usually-so.html
Great piece. Thank you.
I’d love to read a website such as you describe at the end of your article. Left out of you article is any analysis of whether such a website would make money.
I read your part I - yes, it was way too long; too tiring, but you had some key points that had you kept to a paragraph or two as your lead, then listed ‘bullet remarks’, I’d have read it word for word.
Unfortunatley, it’s this very type of journalism, that HURTS the newspapers. Either it’s lacking in fact and detail WHEN BOTH ARE NEEDED, or it’s still lacking fact and NOT ENOUGH DETAIL. On top of that, it’s too often slanted and colored by the author’s personal viewpoint, and that riles up readers who don’t appreciate the ‘choice of words and tenor’ of the article.
I’d like you to summarize that long-winded article in a way that has IMPACT AND FACT - demonstrate the difference, and tell your READERS, how important it is to write a story WELL; get those facts into those first 2 paragraphs, and support with with BOLD TRUTHS and not fill up the paper with verbiage that is not needed, and too often, redundant.
These pieces are terrific. Media companies sucking up to shareholders, newspapers sucking up to nervous readers and advertisers, old guard newsies and their unions resisting the technology that has energized and liberated—not killed—newsgathering. You’ve nailed the tragic aspect of newspapers and old-look newsmen contributing to their own demise. Haven’t seen anything this brutally honest from someone who’s been part of it.
Interesting stuff; slightly different conclusions here:
http://designbygravity.wordpress.com/2009/08/10/washington-post-vs-gawker-1-the-value-add-of-bloggers/
and
http://designbygravity.wordpress.com/2009/08/11/washington-post-vs-gawker-2-how-to-monetize-the-news-industry/
but I agree completely on the blinkers-on mindset of our current media barons.
Bill,
I think many of the same processes are at work over here in the UK. I am particularly drawn to the notion that advertisers began to ‘pay for content.’ That is editors were willing to alter editorial to please advertisers, rather than just insuring that advertisers ‘bought’ the readership numbers to which they wanted to appeal. Now, in many ways, editorial has always been altered not to offend advertisers (particularly big ones, but then that is the whole purpose of supine business sections).
What has occurred more dramatically in the past … what? 20-25 years … is dedicated editorial to pander to requirements of advertisers. I think readers — however confused and ignorant what journalists do — actually do smell rats. So, crappy, fawning editorial, which the advertisers believe is good for them, is a profound turn off for significant numbers of readers. What’s the point of more content that stinks of promotion?
Readers stop reading, that is stop buying, and numbers fall. Advertisers are miffed and take their spending elsewhere. Editors, who should know better, are miffed and desperately try harder to please their boss and sales teams with more crappy content aimed at satisfying advertisers rather than readers. Vicious circle.
The only ones immune are specialist publications, where advertisers are less concerned with overall numbers and circulation but rather look intently ‘who’ reads it. So, perhaps, alternative publications and cultural papers can survive. But they won’t if they tailor editorial to please each and every advertiser — regardless if they’re paying the bills. Advertiser buyers (and sellers, too, for that matter) need to entrust editorial to independent folk who can prove that they are drawing the readers (and potential buyers) that the advertising companies and institutions want to reach.
Thought provoking pieces. Here’s a couple of questions:
1) What if, despite all of the good work your reporters do in running down a an important, hard-hitting, relevant story, your readership still won’t actually read it because they’re accustomed to processing only news-blurbs from TV and CNN.com? Do you “dumb down” the story for them, at the risk of alienating readers who don’t want bullet-points and a 5th grade vocabularly in their paper?
2) How to manage web content scooping the print edition? The Washington Post, for example, has most of the articles in their print edition online the day before–some of them online by the late morning. How do you maintain a strong web presence that also leads people to the print edition (the one that people pay for)?
Bill:
I don’t generally comment on blogs, but your piece on the newspaper industry cuts so close to my personal experience at a major media conglomorate it’s downright eerie. From the interactive side, I watched nearly everything you describe take its toll on the company for better than 12 years. After years of Sisyphean struggles up the hill, only to have some terrified idiot shove us back down, many of us got laid off in a senseless corporate takeover. These people have only themselves to blame, even if they’re too stubborn and egotistical to see it. You made my day — thanks a lot!
Excellent! Sound analysis and great conclusions -though hard to face for the average newspaper journalist.
Some time ago I wrote a couple of posts on the same idea: newspapers were just monopolies of the lines for the distribution of information, and so were doomed. Monopolies always crumble when competition appears, but not without giving a fight; and they usually fight to keep monopolistic conditions, not to shape themselves up for competition.
Christopher Lasch’s “The Rebellion of the Elites” gives a good perspective on the difficult relation between newspapers and democracy in USA and how the ideal of “jurnalistic objectivity” became instead a shallow “golden rule”: “keep to the facts, never give your opinion” became “be as non-controversial as you can, but do not became boring”. And, as Lasch points out, democracy needs controversy.
Regards and thanks a lot,
Interesting article, and something that probably needs to be talked about more.
Were all the ‘major publication’, ‘major American city’, etc. really necessary? Especially when anyone who follows the links back to here can fill in most the blanks?
Found and read your long Splice piece today after digging further into this story about Rupert Murdoch trying to build a pay-wall around most of the commercial media.
“News Corp ‘in talks on web news consortium’: Media giant in discussions with other big publishers on forming a consortium to charge for online content, according to report” (link), by Jason Deans, Guardian, August 21, 2009.
There are numerous points I’d like to bring up but I’ll try to keep this to a brief comment and not another blog post
So you’re a big fan of the AZ Republic. My blogging partner Debi’s had a lot to say about Catherine Reagor, Jay Butler and the usual real estate suspects there. Hope you didn’t get caught in the collapse of house prices in Phoenix, but if you’ve been reading Debi at least you were warned.
Your citing the need for hyper-local arts coverage hit a nerver here. I spent 6 months learning the tenor part to Beethoven Op. 123 and we put it on as a pretty credible one-shot. Local media barely promoted it and then didn’t cover it at all. You’d think if we’d had the guts to attempt the most terrifying choral piece ever (YouTube link) they’d at least have the decency to pan the thing. Not even Frank Magazine. Your piece might get me exercised enough to do something about that one.
I’d add “Thursday Wheels” to the special sections. Between that and “Saturday Homes” America got royally blindsided by the collapses in real estate, structured finance (the “credit crisis”) and the whole auto industry.
Readers of your long post might be fascinated by Ivan Illich’s “Deschooling Society” (1971 - link).
And, finally, a couple of my favorite sites are The Big Picture and Zembla. Who are those other guys?
Bill, great article, but isn’t it possible that in the internet paradigm, general interest news sites are just valueless?
Thanks. Painfully true. Valuable suggestions, but newspapers won’t listen. Any of the decision-makers, who could actually implement change, are only concerned with hanging on for 4 or 5 years, so they can retire. BTW,any examples of a news site getting it right?
I think your article really hits home. Nice job of documenting the state of the industry. However, I disagree that newspaper article headlines should be changed for online editions. I’ve found that some newspapers do this and I have consequently had trouble finding a particular story because the citation I have has a headline/title based on the print version and it’s different online. I think such a practice thus poses problems for anybody who needs to cite a story for their review or research publication, for databases such as Lexis/Nexis containing the story, and for libraries that may need to catalog it. Scholarly citation of web-based documents is difficult enough as it is, and morphing titles certainly won’t make it better. I would liken the effect to that which would happen if it occurred with books and movies.