Can Anything Save Newspapers?

Maybe it’s me: I’m the jinx. Every paper I ever worked for has now folded or faced mortal danger: the Addison (Ill.) Herald-Register (folded), the Detroit Free Press (came close and might as well fold), Chicago Today (which had no tomorrow), the San Francisco Examiner (no longer a real paper), the New York Daily News (resurrected from death), and the Chicago Tribune (now kneecapped). Three of them were owned by Tribune Company, a company I never did much like working for.

After Sam Zell shocked former news machers at Foursquare in his interview with Joanne Lipman - “he didn’t say the word journalism once,” one huffed - I told them, as I’ve blogged here before, that Zell might not be the disrupter you choose, but he’s the disrupter the industry has. Name three others, I challenged them.

Zell asked the right questions - about cost structure, ego, lazy ad sales, bad business practices. The first problem was that he asked them 13 years too late (see Clay Shirky, below). The second problem is that he had no answers, or the answers he had were uninformed. And the problem for the industry is that Zell is all it had to offer as a savior - and that’s saying a mouthful.

What genius has stepped up to rescue sacred journalism’s business? Philadelphia and Minneapolis are disasters. McClatchy keeps arguing, with ear plugs well stuffed and blinders tight, that the problems in the industry are not fundamental but cyclical (as Dave Morgan said to that at my New Business Models for News Summit, “bullshit”). Hearst has stumbled for two generations. Media News is still trying to make its business by cutting. The New York Times Company (NYT), for all its vaunted leadership, is in many quarters shockingly incompetent (see: Boston). Gannett (GCI) is as good as it gets in terms of innovation but it didn’t exactly start with pillars of the craft.

No, Rupert Murdoch is now the great shining hope of journalism. Ain’t that a mouthful of irony? After I left the Tribune and Murdoch bought the Sun-Times, a friend went over to work there and his Tribune colleagues sat shiva for him, as if he’d died. Another colleague who went to the National Enquirer was treated with less disdain. But now Murdoch is the one mogul with brains willing to invest in journalism. But note well that he’s investing in national journalism (and has long acknowledged that the local NY Post is just a bully pulpit).

Such is the stewardship of American journalism. And I won’t spare departments below the executive floor. To my peril, I’ve held journalists responsible for not innovating these last 13 years. Ad sales departments did nothing but take orders and had no courage to reinvent models or cannibalize before being cannibalized. Circulation departments did their best to torpedo the internet. Marketing departments never understood the value of journalism in the communities. Unions milked the cow with no-show jobs and waste. Analysts and institutional owners and reporters who covered the industry never asked the hard questions.

It’s not as if the incumbents’ predecessors were much better. As Andrew Ross Sorkin pointed out the other day, it was Tribune’s former management that made money making this bad deal with Zell, screwing employees. No, it was the predecessors at all these companies who blew the chance to transform and grow journalism for the digital age.

When the history of newspapers is written - it’s about time to, as they’re about to become history - their golden age will probably be pegged between about 1975 (post Watergate, after TV had killed off multiple papers markets leaving monopolies, when cash was flush and was used to feed Pulitzer ego) to 1995 (when the internet earthquake hit and nobody saw the tsunami). But it was - and the Times pegs this more recently - a bubble, a false economy. If there was a golden age of newspapers, I say it was probably two to four decades before that, when cities had many papers, many voices, many views, and papers still spoke for and with the people.

Sound familiar? That’s where we’re headed again with the internet: many voices, many views, and now it’s the people talking.

I asked someone the other day what drastic step a newspaper could take today to stave off utter disaster and death. He laughed at me. Some are looking at stopping publishing a day or two (which is just stupid: news never happens on Mondays?). They can’t sell any assets when no one values them and even suckers can’t borrow money to buy them. Another round of huge cutbacks with no strategy for transformation only damages the product and brand. No, I fear it’s too late.

What saddens me even more is that we are not seeing investment step into the vacuum. I know people who’ve worked on businesses to try to create new, online local news operations but they can’t get funding. I have no doubt that there is a sustainable business in local news. The problem is that, at least for the present, the current and former owners of local news ruined it. Thanks to them, news has cooties.

Comments

[chris ronk:]

You know, it's OK for these papers to fail. They had their time and now it's over. There will come a time when the Internet is no longer viable and there will be something else.

I do believe that words will continue to be important to us in one form or another.

2008 Dec 10 12:28 PM

[desicon:]

Before one examines the financial viability of a business enterprise it is important to understand what value the enterprise deliver to its customers. What does modern day newspaper offer? Blatently biased news coverage. In this youtube era where one can see the raw footage and make up their own mind, it is astonishing to see biased news coverage by newspapers. Clearly there is no need to buy newspaper for news, advertisements are easily accessed in the Internet and nothing intellectullay stimulating to read. Except for the old habit of taking the newspaper to the toilet it has no value.

2008 Dec 10 12:55 PM

[NP Refugee:]

You've hit the nail squarely on the head.

I've heard the cyclical thing for so long it makes me want to hurl. Maybe cycle is sort of like a death spiral. Dave Morgan is one of the smartest people I've ever known, too. He knows what he's talking about.

When was the last time a reporter got out of their chair to go do an interview--look the person in the face? Lazy.

Point is, their model is dead. Why even have reporters come in? With today's technology, they should be in the community reporting. News flash: you can email your story to the copy editor. Get out in the community, for heaven's sake. There should be no reason for a reporter to come in unless there's a meeting. Reporters should be paid based on production in specific categories. Problem is, unions (see US Automakers) are geared toward minimum production for maximum pay. Guess what? The golden goose is on life support.

And I agree that the salespeople don't know how to sell. They wait for the phone to ring. No cold calling, no spec, no needs assessment.

The only hope for these guys is to take them all private, lower the price to whatever it takes to regain circulation, and then understand that they can't report as though everyone lives 3 blocks from the downtown metro center. And quit reporting yesterday's events as though we all live in a cave. Providing context and applying meaning should be a newspaper's pursuit. They'll never win on breaking news, so they should stop insulting the reader.

Lastly, they have got to reestablish the relationship between the carrier and the customer. I believe history will show that carriers' anonymity will be a contributing factor to newspapers' demise. Why would any business make its most critical link the weakest. Were it me, I'd reinvigorate the relationship between the carrier and the customer. Leaving a message on a recording when my paper is wet is not going to keep my business. Get the carriers digitally connected so they can serve their customers. We used to before the cyber age; technology should make it easier. They certainly don't have SO many customers these days that they can't provide a little personal attention.

Even Newspaper Next guys are getting frustrated trying to teach the old dog to do a trick. Lying on the floor waiting to be fed is not working.

2008 Dec 10 01:16 PM

[hierofalcon:]

There are certainly some cyclical problems - house and auto ads spring to mind.

The real problem is that someone sold a couple of big names on providing free content on the internet with the hope of some web based advertizing dollars. If not totally free, then just for the cost of an on-line registration. The advertizing dollars from the web barely pay for the web presence, let alone the journalists that provide the news that people come to the site to read. For most smaller papers, it doesn't even cover the web costs. Yet the content is there and is free for browsing any time any person wants to look, 24/7.

Unfortunately, I don't see much of a way out. Band together to abolish free content so you can get subscription fees coming in (either web based or print) and the anti monopoly people will be all over you. Leave everything free and only a couple major organizations will be left with no local news at all. Even with fee based web content, most of it will flow to major papers hurting smaller community papers.

As a middle aged person who works on a computer all day long, I can't imagine trying to read the news on a computer - headlines and an occasional article are fine from Google News, but for real news I much prefer the printed paper at night. As for TV news - bah! Sound bites R Us isn't real news. I want to be able to read what I want and skip what I want without having talking heads repeating the same story every 15 minutes.

The real question is how to make news relevant to the younger generation. We've lost a generation that cares about what happens around them. That they have the attention span of a gnat just aggravates the problem.

The internet without the journalism backing of print media and TV media isn't worth much as a news source. Yes, it's fun to blog - at times. But like it or not, the major journalism sources (whether TV based or print based) provide good content for the net. Lose that and you've lost a lot of value. If I'm looking for reliable information about some headline - I pick the names I know and trust and not joes-blogging-news-liv...

The trouble is that the major TV based sources (CNN and the like) are only focused on big events and don't really care about local news. Kill off print, as one poster suggested, and you lose much of what keeps a community bound together. You may rely on TV news, but it is in just as much trouble as print news. Local news is going away there too without some drastic changes. As more lawsuits crop up against web sites of independent bloggers or advertizers over what content they post, this may drastically change the landscape for the free world of the competition. There is value in that stodgy old editor that is only beginning to be seen by the do everything online crowd.

Many of the items mentioned by former insider are correct. I'm not as convinced the carrier interface is all that important. Getting the paper to me by the same time is important, but face contact really doesn't matter to me. I'm not particularly a union fan and I'm sure those rate high in the problems to be solved department.

As a newspaper stockholder, I wish I had better answers.

2008 Dec 10 04:13 PM

[notsosmart:]

its like the buggywhip-no need for it anymore.whats the big deal.when something no longer serves a purpose or is needed it goes away.anybody miss the coal fired steam engine?hard rubber tires?etc.i haent bothered with the ny times since they endorsed castro in the eisenhower years. i managed ok.

2008 Dec 11 10:45 AM

[NP Refugee:]

The answer is, as you said, to band together.

If they could ever agree (and they can't) the newspaper companies would turn off Google, Y! (although the consortium makes that difficult) and MSN and start their own news search engine. Sell the same contextual ads that Google is selling to make most of their bucks. The big con was that the newspapers are dependent on Google. I think it's the other way around.

Imagine what that revenue split would look like.




On Dec 10 04:13 PM hierofalcon wrote:

> There are certainly some cyclical problems - house and auto ads spring
> to mind.
>
> The real problem is that someone sold a couple of big names on providing
> free content on the internet with the hope of some web based advertizing
> dollars. If not totally free, then just for the cost of an on-line
> registration. The advertizing dollars from the web barely pay for
> the web presence, let alone the journalists that provide the news
> that people come to the site to read. For most smaller papers, it
> doesn't even cover the web costs. Yet the content is there and is
> free for browsing any time any person wants to look, 24/7.
>
> Unfortunately, I don't see much of a way out. Band together to abolish
> free content so you can get subscription fees coming in (either web
> based or print) and the anti monopoly people will be all over you.
> Leave everything free and only a couple major organizations will
> be left with no local news at all. Even with fee based web content,
> most of it will flow to major papers hurting smaller community papers.
>
>
> As a middle aged person who works on a computer all day long, I can't
> imagine trying to read the news on a computer - headlines and an
> occasional article are fine from Google News, but for real news I
> much prefer the printed paper at night. As for TV news - bah! Sound
> bites R Us isn't real news. I want to be able to read what I want
> and skip what I want without having talking heads repeating the same
> story every 15 minutes.
>
> The real question is how to make news relevant to the younger generation.
> We've lost a generation that cares about what happens around them.
> That they have the attention span of a gnat just aggravates the problem.
>
>
> The internet without the journalism backing of print media and TV
> media isn't worth much as a news source. Yes, it's fun to blog -
> at times. But like it or not, the major journalism sources (whether
> TV based or print based) provide good content for the net. Lose that
> and you've lost a lot of value. If I'm looking for reliable information
> about some headline - I pick the names I know and trust and not joes-blogging-news-liv...
>
>
> The trouble is that the major TV based sources (CNN and the like)
> are only focused on big events and don't really care about local
> news. Kill off print, as one poster suggested, and you lose much
> of what keeps a community bound together. You may rely on TV news,
> but it is in just as much trouble as print news. Local news is going
> away there too without some drastic changes. As more lawsuits crop
> up against web sites of independent bloggers or advertizers over
> what content they post, this may drastically change the landscape
> for the free world of the competition. There is value in that stodgy
> old editor that is only beginning to be seen by the do everything
> online crowd.
>
> Many of the items mentioned by former insider are correct. I'm not
> as convinced the carrier interface is all that important. Getting
> the paper to me by the same time is important, but face contact really
> doesn't matter to me. I'm not particularly a union fan and I'm sure
> those rate high in the problems to be solved department.
>
> As a newspaper stockholder, I wish I had better answers.

2008 Dec 11 02:13 PM

[Tampa Gman:]

I enjoyed this article and it is one that we will see variations of for quite awhile. I think what has happened is that when the first newspapers began giving their content away for free over the internet, they showed that their product had no value.

If it is free, then allegedly, it is not worth anything and the consumer has no investment besides time. I am one of the cavemen out there that loves nothing better than reading the newspaper during lunch and I am still a subscriber.

I do check out 4-5 nationwide and local papers on a daily basis if not more. If I had the time or energy, I would read as many as I could all over the world.

This is a situation that probably cannot be reversed. The first paper to start charging for online content will be ridiculed and ignored.

2008 Dec 13 03:56 AM

[hankscott:]

Indeed it is like the buggy whip situation. Buggy whip manufacturers went out of business because they didn't understand they business they were in. They weren't in the buggy whip business, they were in the acceleration business. If they'd understood that, they would have started making accelerators for the newest form of conveyance (the automobile), and probably they'd be sitting around waiting for Congress to bail them out, but that's another story.

Newspaper publishers aren't in the news business. I know that sounds radical. But they really are intermediators whose business is assembling an audience for advertisers. They assemble an affluent and well-educated (albeit declining) audience by providing daily news on print. The question today is what new methods can they develop to aggregate audiences that aren't interested in print, or aren't interested in daily news.

Newspaper companies have assets -- relationships with advertisers, skilled staffers, powerful brands. So they need to learn to use those assets to aggregate audiences other than those who want to read news daily on paper. Which is not to say they shouldn't address that audience as well -- it's still more attractive in many ways than the mindless hordes who get their news from blogs about "Gossip Girl" etc.


On Dec 11 10:45 AM notsosmart wrote:

> its like the buggywhip-no need for it anymore.whats the big deal.when
> something no longer serves a purpose or is needed it goes away.anybody
> miss the coal fired steam engine?hard rubber tires?etc.i haent bothered
> with the ny times since they endorsed castro in the eisenhower years.
> i managed ok.

2008 Dec 14 06:44 PM

[mattjh:]

No need for "it" anymore? I'm sorry to tell you but Newspapers and "quality news content" are virtually synonymous. Are you saying you do not need quality news content anymore? Are you saying that society has no concern or need for the in-depth, investigative reporting of events and things that will impact our lives both locally and nationally? When newspapers organizations die the professionals that create the news content no longer have the ability to do so at a sustained level because their support and revenue is gone?

Where will you get your news and information then? From some Blogger News site where the content source is questionable and the people creating the content most likely are getting little or no remuneration- yeah that's a good model of sustainability.


On Dec 11 10:45 AM notsosmart wrote:

> its like the buggywhip-no need for it anymore.whats the big deal.when
> something no longer serves a purpose or is needed it goes away.anybody
> miss the coal fired steam engine?hard rubber tires?etc.i haent bothered
> with the ny times since they endorsed castro in the eisenhower years.
> i managed ok.

Jan 17 10:31 AM