America's Doomed Small Newspapers

Bill Wyman’s 9,000-word, two-part magnum opus laying out five reasons why newspapers are failing is a must-read — or at least the first three reasons are; the final two are a little weaker.

The first part, on how consumers have never paid for news, is the clearest exegesis I’ve yet seen of the truism that newspapers don’t sell news, they sell readers. The second part delivers some much-needed home truths about how most newspapers really aren’t that great to begin with. And the third part explains why the Gawker version of a Washington Post (WPO) story is nearly always going to be much more fun to read than the original newspaper article.

Wyman doesn’t pretend to have solutions to these problems; most likely there aren’t any. He does provide a list of suggestions, at the end, for newspaper owners; they’re all good ideas, but they’re by no means sufficient to turn around the imploded economics of local newspaper publishing, and I think he implicitly overstates how effective they can be.

Wyman has provided a good analysis of why newspapers are doomed; the weakness in his article comes towards the end, when he hints that this state of affairs might have been avoided, or maybe even could still be avoided. The biggest newspapers in the land can and probably will pursue a successful last-man-standing strategy. But among the thousand-plus smaller newspapers, the number with a rosy long-term future is pretty much zero.

Comments

[Leftfield:]

One of the smaller set has been considered for a bailout in CT, the New Britain Herald. Must involve a combination of their support of incumbents and as a possible warmup to saving the big-government-loyal, PC Hartford Courant.
I'm guessing the exploding budget deficits gave the idea a merciful death. Even the ever-wasteful political class here has it's limits.

Aug 13 02:53 PM

[TinyTim:]

Wyman makes some good points. My hometown newspaper's website (Gannet) sucks just as he describes.

I see the same issues with local broadcast TV news and expect a flop there in the near future.

It's not real apparent that news stations are putting a lot of money in their operations (other than for cute newsreaders). Their niche of local news is the same being covered by the daily newspapers. The quality of both is poor.

More in depth and controversial local coverage is provided by the alternative press, unfortunately not available in any but the larger cities and around college towns. The local news is covered best by the weekly and semiweekly papers. Interestingly, these and the alt papers are usually free. All revenue is from advertising.

That leaves four or five daily's nationwide surviving on the subscription model for international and major national news. Not a desirable oligarchy.

Aug 13 03:37 PM

[Alan Young:]

Good article, and good suggestions. Bottom line: advertisers no longer support the papers, so the papers will have to get over being enslaved to advertisers, and start generating REAL content. It's not that hard--look at all the content generated on the web. Good content will get readership back, and advertising will follow.

Well, it *might* work.

Aug 13 03:55 PM

[Roger Knights:]

Here's an off-the-wall idea that some paper should try: Print a Sunday-size comics section (not in color though) every day. If it contained about 250+ daily comics it would be worth the price of the paper in itself to people who otherwise wouldn't buy it. Those comics wouldn't cost the paper much if it were a member of a chain and if the chain bought all of a comics syndicate's offerings at a bulk-rate discount. (It would be quite a laugh if this saved the NYT! (Crazier things have happened, after all.))

Another little thing papers could do to make themselves more lovable would be to restore the dateline (only this time use the date of publication and include an abbreviation of the paper's name). This would make life less tedious for article-clippers.

Aug 13 04:48 PM

[Alex Filonov:]

Depends on your definition of small. Once I moved in my current area, I started receiving two local papers for free. I think free distribution model for local papers might work. But if you are talking about papers serving big areas, metro areas for example, their future is dim unless they can switch to different business model.

Aug 14 01:31 PM

[Jimbo:]

For several years, I have been subscribing, and reading , two daily papers. One is published in a small city of about 20,000 but actually covers two counties, one of which is semi-rural. The second paper belongs to a large national chain and is in an urban area of a least a million. I have read these papers for more than 30 years.What really frosts my behind is that both papers pretend to cover controversy evenly when they are relentlessly left of center. Both papers have published several photographs and articles about he political crisis in Honduras, BUT ONLY FROM THE VIEWPOINT OF OUSTED PRESIDENT ZELAYA. There is NO recognition of the positions of the Honduran Congress and Supreme Court. Not only is the "free press" biased in favor of the liberals and left in this country, but they promote the left overseas as well. My subscription to the smaller daily is now up and I am considering dropping it. Newspapers seem to have the attitude that they can take any biased position and you have no choice because they are a monopoly. But the monopoly has been broken by the Inter net. Newspapers will never rtecover their former stsus unless they can discover intellectual honesty !!

Aug 14 02:11 PM

[Joe:]

A good article in any case. To some extent the whole concept of
newspapers seems to fall apart. They are just not making sense
anymore in a number of ways, neither to consumers - who want
news -, nor to many advertisers. One aspect surprising me at
present is that many advertisers cut down on their ad spending
but seldom would one read comments or whatever from businesses explaining those cuts, or menitoning their
experiences. They just cut down, throw out whatever without discussing anything with the cut-off media. That silence is
fascinating.
And the media are making matters worse for themselves. They
are short of dictating businesses how and how much they
must advertise without any consideration at all whether that
makes sense, pays off. In everyday conversations in which the
media are getting mentioned it is getting ever more obvious
that they are simply not taken serious at all but rather have to
face a growing contempt from all sides, consumers and
businesses.
The song parody "Mad Avenue Blues" might be right on target.
www.youtube.com/watch?...

Aug 14 02:18 PM

[Larrysyr:]

Newspapers are failing because they are too wedded to their delivery medium (paper), rather than their true functions (delivery of information, including advertising). I can't think of anything delivered in my local paper that can't be transmitted over the web faster, cheaper, and even more effectively.

Since I grew up reading newspapers, this development fills me with some nostalgic sadness, but I can't truly say that it's necessarily a bad thing. Newspapers are suffering from economic selection as surely as dinosaurs suffered from natural selection.

There will always be a demand for information, but there is no need for paper and ink any more.

Aug 14 02:53 PM

[FullMetalPh...:]

Strangely enough smaller independent publications will survive this mass extinction much better than small and large corporate papers. In the 80's & 90's corporate papers made sense because they pool their vast resources and make small individual papers stronger as a whole.
Today the opposite is true. The corporations are draining and cannibalizing the smaller papers in order to survive as a corporate entity at the cost of local and community journalism.
I have watched Lee Enterprises shut down 6 of 8 local papers and publications including a Spanish newspaper in a community in which 53% of the population was Hispanic. 4 communities lost all local coverage of their communities and government.
What appears to be surviving is the smaller independent papers that are not suffering the large debt of the public corporations. They seem to be more nimble an able take greater advantage of things like the web, and to adjust their economic models easier than their corporate counter parts.

Aug 23 03:11 PM