Too Many People Don't Care If Newspapers Die

In a page-one New York Times story, Richard Pérez-Peña looks at all the reasons why one or more major American cities are likely to be without even a single daily newspaper: plunging ad revenues, burdensome labor contracts, unsustainable debt obligations, competition from nimbler web companies, etc.

Here's another reason for the list: because, obsessed as journalists are with the issue, the average citizen doesn't seem all that concerned with whether newspapers live or die. A poll conducted earlier this month by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press found that only 33 percent of Americans believe they would miss their local paper "a lot" if it were to disappear. Over a quarter of respondents said they'd miss it "not at all," with another 16 percent saying they'd miss it "not much."

When the question was how much the loss of the local paper would hurt civic life, sentiments were somewhat more favorable, with 74 percent of respondents saying "a lot" or "some." Interestingly, the numbers weren't all that much lower among those who described themselves as infrequent newspaper readers, with 30 percent of that group saying the disappearance of the local newspaper would hurt civic life a lot, and 36 percent saying there'd be some impact.

Of course, the real question is whether the people in the poll sample can even adequately imagine what it would mean if the local paper went away. No doubt a lot of them think they would simply rely more on local television and/or radio news, without appreciating how much of that coverage is driven by newspapers.

Comments

[AlexS:]

It would be nice if local papers stuck with local stories, rather than filling it with AP national stories that are available from dozens of other sources. Mostly those AP stories end up being space-fillers. I for one have gotten tired of paying for space-fillers.

Mar 12 04:43 PM

[Refocusing:]

This is an interesting discussion to me. If the papers are so important why are they dying? Wouldn't supply and demand dictate their level of importance? Is social media going to replace "traditional" media?

It is an interesting discussion and 20 years from now it will be interesting to see what the answer really was.

Jeremy @ RefocusingTechnology.c...

Mar 12 04:47 PM

[Mad Hedge F...:]

The economic crisis is accelerating the demise of print journalism, whose migration to the Internet was already well underway as cash hemorrhaging owners desperately take a hatchet to costs. Advertising by car dealers has almost vaporized, and revenues from retailers are off by half. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer is in the process of downsizing from print to online only, and early indications are that 85% of the staff will be laid off. If you extrapolate these figures nationally, 37,000 of the 44,000 full time employed journalists in this country are soon to be fired. Newly laid off investment bankers, brokers, and hedge fund managers hoping to build second careers as writers are jumping out of the frying pan into the fire.

Mar 12 05:50 PM

[NP Refugee:]

Within the news ecosystem, there are many parasites who exist off of newspapers and their editorial departments. People just don't realize the vacuum that will be created. At the same time, newspapers may have to die in order for news to become resurrected in other forms (not unlike the big auto guys). News has become commoditized in many markets, but the source is usually the newspaper. There's not a local radio station who doesn't start their day by opening the newspaper to write their scripts. Same for broadcast TV.

How the news business will be resurrected will make for an interesting case study. There will be winners and losers. I don't believe that the insert business will all go direct mail, either.

Mar 12 06:21 PM

[La Marque:]

Newspapers are going to have to be 'local' only. That's the news part of their business. Nothing wrong with using wire services for national and state news. Features have been cut to the bone. Home delivery is a must for survival in present form. My paper is a countywide paper and is important only in the county. The nearby big city paper is just useless in my county.

If papers go paperless, then daily email notices will have to be utilized and then most subscribers may just ignore them or not spend much time there and not see what advertising the 'paper' has.

Mar 12 07:22 PM

[William Cowie:]

I stopped reading newspapers a few years ago because in my humble (and solo) estimation the quality of their journalism is vastly overrated (mainly by themselves). Rather than digging for real stories, as romaticized in some movies or novels, they for the most part seem to rely on the police scanners for local news and AP (as AlexS noted) for the rest.

I can't find anything in a newspaper that either (a) I haven't read the night before, and/or (b) I care about.

There is another cause, one seemingly guaranteed to rile up intense emotions. The general population does not share most print journalists' predominant liberal bias, which seems de rigeur for credibility among their peers. Of course, journalists and their defenders bristle at such a suggestion. Rather than adopt the heretical notion that the customer may be right, they appear to cling to the notion that they, and only they, are the judge of what is news and what that news really means.

What seems to have happened is something like the following: the more conservative readers tried to point this out to papers. For their effort, they got smartly smacked down by said media for being any number of pejoratives, bigoted, narrow minded, uninformed, take your pick. So the readers simply went away quietly. It took a while for advertisers to notice, but this recession seems to have done the trick.

In the old days, papers relied on the lack of alternative news sources to keep their readers. As the internet evolved, that monopoly vanished. People can now find the news with any slant they prefer - no longer are they handcuffed to the views of whoever happens to be the editor of the local paper.

What astonishes me is how many people are surprised to hear that millions of people get along just fine, thank you very much, without those newspapers.

In England they use newspapers to wrap their fish 'n chips. The real question is: what are they going to use when newspapers are finallly all put out of their misery?

Mar 12 11:51 PM

[Mr Beel:]

What everyone is missing is that without local newspapers there will be no examination or reporting of what is going on in your community, your town, your county. Remember the expression, seeing it in black and white? It meant having the opportunity to examine the information and to respond to it. Was it biased... sometimes... but not as biased as today's blogging.
Why was a free press important to the founders of this country? The free press was an examination in a very local sense of the local events that were affecting the Colonies. Some of our best writers back then were dealing first with the local events and expanding outward from there. Their reporting was a building block of the American Revolution
When the papers disappear, who is going to be paid to go to these school board and selectman's meetings... who is going to air grievances that take place within 10 miles of your home. Certainly not yahoo or microsoft.
The loss of our newspapers is a loss of one of the pillars of our two hundred years of democracy and constant self examination... The type of examination that has shown a light into dark corners and through reporting, allowed us to keep our system of justice by exposing corruption and airing out our dirty laundry before it became putrid. this is just one example.
The loss of our local papers... and it is going to accelerate... is a very big deal that Americans are too lazy to think about... or too uneducated to fathom... take your pick.

Mar 13 07:34 AM

[jay fredric...:]

I predict Google will start buying newspapers in mass. Why? Google needs the news to feed its search engine with credible information. Google will be able to hire thousands of people at one time without having to pay hiring costs. They'll pay with stock, and the bankers that technically own these papers now will be happy to get Google stock instead of hoping for a miraculous turnaround.
Google will also be able to combine their online expertise with paper's own expertise, true synergistic opportunities exist here.
I also see Microsoft getting into this battle to avoid losing ground, for if Google owned a lot of papers, and therefore stories, they'd somehow figure out a way to keep those stories off the Live search engines of Mr. Softie.

chicagocheap.com

Mar 13 08:40 AM

[desicon:]

Coorection. Too many people do not care if NYT and the likes die.

Mar 13 01:04 PM

[Edward Ulys...:]

If you wonder about the real reasons for the planned collapse of the daily newspaper, the commentary was written 2/27/2009 at GreatRedDragon.com
It explains that:
1. There is a sword over every true investigative journalist, and they know it.
2. Common control and ownership of major advertisers are the same folks that control newspapers. Local independent companies have been squeezed out of business.

Mar 13 06:15 PM