Newspapers are Magnificent, So was Rome
Posted on March 12, 2008 - Filed Under media |
For 30 years pundits have been writing about the demise of the newspaper. And for most of that time, newspapers held their own. Despite challenges from other forms of communication, the old guard families - the Ridders of Knight Ridder, the Chandlers of the Times Mirror, the Bancrofts of Dow Jones, and the Sulzbergers of the New York Times, found a way to keep the medium relevant. Now, that day has past.
There is truly something magnificent about the newspaper that arrives every morning outside my apartment. I’m constantly in awe that so much material can be produced overnight, day after day. But the time has come to realize this printed luxury is no longer a necessity. Less and less, I go to pickup my paper wondering what’s inside its pages, because by the time that paper hits my door I’ve read up on all the latest news my computer. People are no longer folding their New York Times in half, they are scrolling through it on their cell phones. And I’m not the only one doing that.
Editor and Publisher, a media trade paper, announced yesterday that in the last four years the leading US newspapers have collectively lost 1.4 million copies in daily circulation. Since 2000, newspapers account for half of all media jobs (82,800) that have been lost. 25% of all newspapers jobs have vanished since 1990.
As the readers leave the advertisers follow. And therein lies the real problem for newspapers. Who would have thought that a free site like Craigslist would change the face of media. But it has. Do you know anyone in the last 4 years that has taken out a classified ad in a newspaper? Do you know anyone in the last 4 years that has taken out a print-based help wanted ad? This was a critical source of revenue for newspapers and today it is virtually gone. The valuation of newspapers has also gone south, with billions of dollars in market capitalization being eviscerated.
This is not the end for newspapers. It is the end of an era for newspapers — the era of the printed edition. Think of how many millions of dollars would be freed up if newspapers did not go to print. That money could then be used to expand news bureaus , hire more reporters, more researchers, more editors. The idea of expansion today is unfathomable given the fixed costs. But when freed of those costs, newspapers (in their online only incarnation) would be flush with cash to expand and grow.
The future of the industry is online. While print advertising plummets, online it excels. Readership of newspapers falls, while its online counterparts grows. Now the major newspapers are integrating multi-media communications technology - video, audio, text, blogs, user generated comments, and online chats to create, frankly, a better way of understanding the news. The morphing of newspapers to online multi-media news entities is already well underway.
Take this weeks resignation of New York Governor Eliot Spitzer. The news of the scandal was first broken by the Times online. The Times did a fantastic job with its coverage online. Aside from breaking the story, it provided additional context to it all day by adding pdf documents of the federal indictment, audio clips of the reporters discussing the story in depth, video of Spitzer’s statement to the media and blogs for users to comment on the story. In short, the Times showed its teeth not as a newspaper but as a multimedia news entity.
The paper was filled with front page headlines about the Spitzer imbroglio, but all of that content was online as well. In short, the print edition was virtually irrelevant for coverage of this fast developing story. But the Times has demonstrated terrific growth as a news service by adapting and providing a full plate of coverage on their site.
It’s sad to say, but newspapers, as much as I love them, are now relics from an age gone by. Like the grand ancient civilization of Rome, newspapers have had their day, and that day has past. In the not-so-distant future, children will ask about the pages of paper that their parents and grandparents used to pickup and read each day. Then, if they are so inclined, children will go to 555 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC, and like Roman artifacts, they will learn more about newspapers in a museum - the newseum to be exact.
I really don’t know whether we’ll be printing the Times in five years, and you know what? I don’t care either. Does that sound too harsh? Those aren’t my words. They were spoken last year by Arthur Sulzberger, owner, chairman and publisher of the New York Times, where the slogan should now be all the news that’s fit to post. Printing news no longer makes any sense. And we all know it.
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[…] The trend is as their readers leave, the advertisers follow. Therein lies the real problem for newspapers. Who would have thought that a free site like Craigslist would change the face of media. But it has. Can you think of anybody in the last 4 years that has taken out a classified ad in a newspaper? This was a critical source of revenue for newspapers and today it is virtually gone. Read more… […]
I will be teaching a graduate class titled Media Economics in the Media Studies and Film department of the New School this coming semester–similar to a graduate course I taught at the University of Missouri School of Journalism several years ago. In the class I ask students to write a business plan.
I would be interested in cooperating with you examining the type of news business models you describe in this post. Perhaps we could do a joint project of some kind with students in your Entrepreneurial Journalism class.