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Whoops. I forgot to post a QOTD. Here it is…
Are newspapers dead or can they come back from the brink? Explain.
posted by Rich Miller
Friday, Dec 1, 06 @ 10:58 am
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Comment by Punley Deiter Finn Friday, Dec 1, 06 @ 11:12 am
There will always be a place for newpapers, as long as they keep endorsing pols like Blago & Stroger Jr.
Comment by Yo! Friday, Dec 1, 06 @ 11:16 am
Yes, they are dead. Newspapers are expensive, messy and quickly becoming obsolete. My wife and I pondered a subscription to the Trib before we saw the price of one arm, one leg and our puppy.
Comment by Team Sleep Friday, Dec 1, 06 @ 11:20 am
Newspapers will reinvent themselves as online content providers.
Comment by Squideshi Friday, Dec 1, 06 @ 11:43 am
Why buy a newspaper when they put their content online for free?
Comment by Anon Friday, Dec 1, 06 @ 11:47 am
The Trib is for sale. The S-T is too, and circulation plummeted to lower than 350k after the circ. scandal. Have you *seen* a hard copy of the S-T since Mr. Cooke returned from the Big Apple? Egads. Not much there, which is a shame because they’ve got some people who do great work there (see Hired Truck). Peoria and S-JR are on the block. All the old rust-belt ex-Copley papers are up (Aurora, Elgin, Joliet, Waukegan). Circ. is down everywhere, flat for years at Daily Herald in fast-growing suburbia. KC Chronicle got hit with that libel verdict, which will impact bottom line of more successful sister paper NW Herald.
Dead? Not yet. Decaying though. Like a zombie.
Comment by Jacques Strappe Friday, Dec 1, 06 @ 11:48 am
The Economist did a great piece about a month ago on how European papers have done a good job of marrying their hard copy to online editions. It can be done.
Comment by Yellow Dog Democrat Friday, Dec 1, 06 @ 11:51 am
Newspapers weren’t supposed to survive the advent of radio, nor were they going to live long because of TV. They’ll find a way to thrive and prosper in the internet era, as well.
So long as newsrooms remain intact and aren’t hacked to death to appease Wall Street investors, newspapers will continue to play a vital role in society.
I’m really surprised at how slowly newspaper organizations have adapted to the internet and have failed to convince advertisers to buy ads on newspaper websites. I think the message has gotten across to many now, thanks to declining circulation figures. Soon, I hope, we’ll see real advances in the quality of news product that organizations like the Tribune and Sun-Times offer up on their websites. Right now, both papers’ websites are pretty bland.
I think what we may soon see, maybe the next five years, are many of the big-named dailies slashing their newstand and subscription prices to drive up circulation and draw back advertisers. They also should partner up with Google and Yahoo, as many already have, and find out a way to collect a penny or a nickel for every time one of those search engines directs an internet user to a newspaper story.
I look back over the Blagojevich era and the Ryan era before that and remember the huge stories both the Tribune and Sun-Times broke one after another about both corrupt administrations. That’s a big deal to me. A world without those organizations is sad and, in my opinion, very unlikely.
Comment by are you kidding? Friday, Dec 1, 06 @ 11:52 am
Perhaps the question should be reworded to, “Are newspapers dead from the neck up?” The answer, at least as far as the editorial boards at the Chicago Tribune and particularly at the Chicago Sun-Times, is a tragic “YES.”
Comment by Randall Sherman Friday, Dec 1, 06 @ 12:27 pm
They do come in handy when you’re trying to have lunch somewhere and some nearby idiot is pestering you. You can simply say “shush, I’m reading my paper.”
They still suffice as “buzz-off, please” devices.
They’ll survive, because not everyone has computer skills or internet access. And though I think you’d be insane to work on these things (I don’t think I’ve ever once done one myself), but how can people do the crossword puzzles online?
Yes, they’ll survive.
Comment by Angie Friday, Dec 1, 06 @ 12:46 pm
I would like to see newspapers develop more interactive content. You know playing to the hardcopy and internet editions.
Comment by Levois Friday, Dec 1, 06 @ 1:08 pm
Hopefully someone will put the Chicago Reader to sleep soon.
Comment by thomas paine Friday, Dec 1, 06 @ 1:37 pm
It all depends on advertising. If Ad revenue is there, they will continue, as i think ads are more effective in print then through the web or spam. But its a double edged sword, cause you need content to draw advertisers to the papers.
Comment by pickles!! Friday, Dec 1, 06 @ 1:44 pm
From the brink of what? It’s true there are several major metro newspaper that have some issues with ad revenues and circulation. But more adults still read a daily newspaper than any other medium. In many mid-sized communities, more adults read the newspaper than the other media combined.
If you add in the readers newspaper have on the Internet, the newspaper industry may have the largest market share in its history.
Newspapers are selling for 10-15 times earnings, which is a pretty good price.
Do newspapers have to change? Yes. Does the industry have issues that need to be addressed? Yes. But the industry is far from dead.
Comment by Gary Sawyer Friday, Dec 1, 06 @ 1:50 pm
I love to read the papers, but I get tired eyes from reading online because I work with computers 8 hours a day. I hope they stay but I also hope they get over their allegiance to a particular political party and do some hard digging on controversies like the governor’s corruption. Get down in the trenches and dig and talk to the “little” people, not the same old hacks who spew the party line. Be brave.
Comment by Disgusted Friday, Dec 1, 06 @ 1:54 pm
What industry is not changing? Truckers have in-cab faxes and cell phones. Cable, phone systems, satellite are all scrambling to carry data, voice, pictures. Medicine is moving to robotics and extreme specialization. Retailers buy worldwide as a daily practice. Music and movie industry is adjusting to downloads. They all face intense competition/cost pressure and may not be the cash machines they once were. Papers will change and adjust, but they will not go away. They are far from the brink. There is something real about holding the paper and simply scanning/reading for stuff you would never see or bother with on a 16″x16″ or a hard to read 5″x5″ screen. Electronic books were supposed to be the next hot thing and simply never came close to the “experts” projections. There are times to step away from technology and the physical presence of a paper does that. Probably will see more centralization of admin functions like Clear Channel has done. A sad reality is I often read a headline in IE or Netscape then see the exact same story the next morning in the local paper.
Comment by zatoichi Friday, Dec 1, 06 @ 2:14 pm
They’ll survive, and their editorial content will eventually attract on-line revenues to offset some of the losses on the print side. Right now, they’re playing catch up with more nimble and savvy tech players.
Look at all the for-profit web sites dedicated to sports and look at how many more sports-reporting resources the newspapers have. Eventually they’ll catch up and use their advantages to compete on the web.
Plus, lot of us want to hold a paper and browse through the general news. It’s a pain to find every relevant article and access it quickly on a computer or a hand held device.
Pluys,It’s just not the same thing plopping a computer on your lap while you pour that first cup of coffee.
Comment by Northwest Side Friday, Dec 1, 06 @ 3:23 pm
Newspapers will continue to live on perpetually as long as there are advertisers stuffing ten pounds of flyers in them nearly every day. It’s cheap advertising, a good customer base, and great delivery service. How else would we know where the free turkeys are just before Thanksgiving, and who has fertilizer on sale during the grass growing season. There was a time when newspapers added quality to life. You could count on good and informative hometown news. There were some great reporters who were honest, had integrity, and presented stories that had life and interest. Today the headlines are trying to keep up with the sensational magazines and TV news. There is very little to gain from reading the accompanying story, as it is usually old news. Adapt or die. If they would perforate the pages every four inches, it just might add value.
Comment by Justice Friday, Dec 1, 06 @ 3:26 pm
Dead, absolutely not.
Dead in the water and stagnating, absolutely.
Newspapers as they exist today are classic examples of a combination of (a) poor corporate level leadership, (b) journalistic management trained to ‘fight the last war’ (pre Web 1.0, much less Web 2.0), (c) Too many “journalists” and reporter types with a sense of entitlement that doesn’t exist, and finally (d) Business models which are hopelessly outdated and not only have absolutely no way to compete with the likes of craigslist.org
See R.S. Cringley’s 11.23.2006 article on this exact same topic; link is http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2006/pulpit_20061123_001248.html
Add all of those together, and the newspaper biz has a really tough road ahead of them. Not impossible, just a hard, hard path.
The biggest problem to me is the classified advertising issues that the likes of craigslist.org is causing. They are impacting directly into the newspaper’s pocketbook, and it’s probably the most high profit margined portion of most major newspapers.
The newspapers need an alternative, and there’s one available (and it’s doable), but they’re just not ready to discover it yet - it would mean they would have to actually start thinking creatively.
Comment by Judgement Day Is On The Way... Friday, Dec 1, 06 @ 3:38 pm
Disgusted wrote: “I hope they stay but I also hope they get over their allegiance to a particular political party and do some hard digging on controversies like the governor’s corruption.”
They sometimes do. You just have to depend on certain columnists (Rich Miller, for example) to do the digging and serious questioning.
I’m somewhat over the Sun-Times endorsing Rod, but only because they keep putting my university in the news somewhere up front all the time.: )
ST needs more good columnists, though. They don’t run the really really witty writers quite enough, like Jonah Goldberg from National Review, who is around from time to time, but is just such a witty writer that I’d like to see more columns than just the occasional addition.
Comment by Angie Friday, Dec 1, 06 @ 4:27 pm
After being a loyalist to the suntimes for a couple of years, I have completely stopped reading papers. I read the suntimes because I knew the suntimes (liberal to a fault). The journal star and dekalb daily chronicle call something a sportspage that is section D1-D4. That is not a sports page to me. I just read the daily chronicle because I can get it for free, but I would never read it otherwise. If I ever got another subscription to a paper, it would be the CS Monitor (because I have an obsession with foreign affairs and because the paper is very fair to all sides)… but all of their content is available online… so no sense wasting the 2 bucks/week. Oh yeah, and I read the Stark County News (because I am a native of Stark)… Rich, just thought I should plug Nowlan… Do you know if he is writing a new book yet, or is he still pushing The Editor’s Wife?
Comment by Lovie's Leather Friday, Dec 1, 06 @ 10:30 pm
Let’s not kid ourselves: papers exist as a vehicle for advertising first and formost. The news, features, analysis and editorial comes distant second. But advertising to WHOM? The audience for online has different needs and preferences than one that still wants a physical construct in their hands. Probably what’s needed is a completely different and smaller circulated publication for the offline version, sharing a few common elements and sources but otherwise stand-alone, and a concerted migration of advertising to the online, to pay for it all. Because they serve different markets, they are not really cannibalizing each other so much as synergizing, and leveraging the strengths of the things they have in common.
If you put the comics and police blotter sections in the online version, I’d never pick up the actual paper again, there’d be no need, and my paper knows this.
As it is, I scan my local online paper version every day, when it’s suitable to MY schedule, and there it is on my screen, with some of the stories even updated a time or two. Takes me four to twelve minutes, including the editorials. For immediacy, easy updates and the ability to add as many pages of depth and other resources and links as a good telling of the story requires, you can’t beat hypertext and web page delivery.
Where a paper could be strong is in the application of rigorous standards to the information. You’ve gotta love Wikipedia, but because not everything you get out of it is necessarily 100 percent true, it would be dangerous to rely on it for life-altering decisions. Now, add the mythbusting power and resarch of Snopes to Wiki: that’s what trained and credentialed journalists working to the highest standards can deliver: the news with a certain confidence in the quality of the information. News you can make career decisions on. Less Drudge Report, more Depth.
This is one of the things papers still have over the net, yet that’s the very thing the management is cutting corners on: reducing reporting staff, cutting back on beats, making one reporter share the story to many other formats like a cable outlet owned by the chain, but not get paid any extra for it, etc. The papers are eating their seed corn when they employ such false economies.
I think daily papers are going to continue to contract and become ever-more similar to the look of your local weekly Entertainers/Chicago Readers/Illinois Times/ etc.
Skip ahead just a couple years, newer technology could radically change the newspaper experience:
The delivery boy will not be missing your front porch anymore nor will your sports section have dog slobber on it, because you’ll read the E-paper off your phone at the breakfast table.
While you can always pay a premium for hard copy daily delivery, most hard copy or ‘offline’ papers will be point-distributed on-demand from stands, kiosks, vending units, etc. The local gas stations and quickie marts have a newspaper printer/stand just like lottery ticket machines. Hey, is your eyesight getting worse? Pay an extra dime for your version custom-printed in larger type! Or in Spanish!!!
To cut costs, the “news” trucks deliver only ink carts and blank paper stock refills: the kiosks print out limited quantities on the hour based on local demand, the precomposed newspaper is delivered electronically by ‘net like a .pdf file to a local high speed inkjet printer. Or maybe the printers stay in the trucks, or maybe the paper is coated to darken when hit by a laser beam: then you’ve entirely cut out the cost and strategic hassles of the ink and are just paying for the paper substrate…plus that laser-beam flashing across the paper’s literally lighting-fast printing, as fast as web offset was, maybe faster. Who cares if the print fades out after a day, you generally throw the paper out after reading it anyway. Either way, it’s the end of pressmen working out of a cavernous cave feeding massive Heidelberg webs. Almost no waste when papers don’t sell out, conversely, special editions for things like national tragedies or triumphs, sports championships, etc. can get printed to order in any number needed. ON DEMAND. That’s about as close to a physical paper emulating the webpage as you can get!
What? why, yes, I DID drink a lot of coffee tonight, why do you ask? :>)
Comment by Charles Foster Kane, American Saturday, Dec 2, 06 @ 12:33 am
The newspapers are dead as publicly traded companies,but as communications medium, it will live on.
In Illinois, and many other states there are too many competing info sources for newspaper to exert much influence. Most are too busy portraying every little misstep at Watergate.
On the bright side people still get papers for the ads and school lunch menus and maybe the stats from h.s. games.
Comment by Reddbyrd Saturday, Dec 2, 06 @ 11:58 am
The real question is, will net neutrality prevail and protect our access to the marketplace of ideas?
Comment by Squideshi Saturday, Dec 2, 06 @ 9:48 pm
If the media ever figures out that a story needs to be investigated by them there might be hope. If you give a story to the papers today, they want it all neatly wrapped up for them. Also if the papers ever figure out that their point isn’t what we want, we want just the facts.Or better yet when they write a editorial say this is our editorial not how we want the facts to read. The press have lost credit with the people and this is not a good thing.
Comment by The Conservative Monday, Dec 4, 06 @ 7:13 am