Newspapers Are Dead, Long Live Newspapers
4&20 blackbirds pointed me to this Pew Research Center study that shows that the internet has taking over the newspaper as a source for national and international news for Americans.
I would agree with 4&20 blackbirds that it was quite a jump there from 2007. However, 4&20 blackbirds writes:
. . . they were better to go to the internet and read the huge variety of sources, with their huge variety of bias’, to figure out for themselves where the truth lie.
and
As for the economy, there were so many related but informational sources (like the stock exchange, or the Federal Reserve, or any source of economic statistics) that no news story could have given a thorough dose of information.
This is where I would disagree. Yes, the internet had a big jump, however it is my belief is that Americans were using AP, Reuters, New York Times, Washington Post and other big city newspapers as their sources for information on the internet. As we have already discussed here at DL, newspapers are learning how to adapt.
I am well aware that many readers of Delaware Liberal will say, “Not me, I look around and google and try to find different sources.” No argument there, however, the Delaware Liberal reader is atypical in regards to internet usage.
My mornings always start with DL, followed by the NYT and then the WaPo. Then I look at the dead-tree version of the WNJ. Obviously, I have a lot more time to spend on this than most people and I do appreciate what a luxury I enjoy. At lunchtime I usually check in with DailyKos and Real Clear Politics. By then my hair is on fire over something. Finally, another visit to DL and then, if I’m not out at a meeting, I finish the day with Keith and Rachael. How much news is too much news????
I read a variety of sources but most people are not information junkies like me. While newspapers are dying, journalism is here to stay and it is just changing forms right now. Hopefully these new media journalists won’t be tied so much to the mistakes of the past (he said/she said “nonbiased” journalism).
Big city papers used to put daily news in the daily edition, and save the feature articles for the Sunday paper. But now, even a daily printing is too slow.
Now the basic model should be: Put the hourly stories on the web, and save the feature articles for the weekly paper.
Without newspapers putting their content on the Internet, there will be very, very little online news for people to read.
The print editions will slowly die. Look at what’s happening in Detroit, where they just dropped home delivery four days a week. But the objective news reporting still needs to come from somewhere. HuffPo and DL don’t cut it – sorry, folks, but you guys know you don’t cover both sides of an issue.
Rebecca should obviously read Common Sense Political Thought first thing every morning, certainly before the Lost Kos! 🙂
I normally pick up a print-edition Philadelphia Inquirer on the way to work, because that’s more convenient for everyone around. But I can get the Inquirer online, for free.
On Christmas Eve, the Inquirer sent me an e-mail, offering to let me pay for something they provide for free. That was kind of them.
newspapers will become exclusively local; it’s the only niche it has left.
Don’t fall into the trap that everything is two-sided or needs “balance”. That’s a crock created by the losers of an argument. You can find the truth if you try hard enough, just don’t expect it to be laid at you feet….and fact doesn’t need fiction to balance it, right?
Dana: You hit the nail on the head. People are using newspapers’ newsgathering operations more, not less — they’ve just gotten into the habit of paying nothing for it.
The problem for newspapers is that, with the dawn of the penny press, they decided to make their money on advertising rather than subscription sales, and that paid handsome dividends for more than a century.
But it means the newspaper serves two separate functions that no long complement each other — delivering information and entertainment to readers, and delivering readers to advertisers. The trouble for media corporations is that online readers don’t shuffle through pages with advertising to reach what they want to read.
Look at the recent layoffs at TNJ. They lopped several reporters, but no editors. Several people from the newsroom, but only the copy editor from the all-but-useless editorial board.
What do you think Delawareans could live without more easily — newsgathering or the tired, establishment-oriented bloviating on the editorial page? Bet most people’s answer is different from Curtis Riddle’s.
Local papers seem perfect for the Talking Points Memo or Huffington Post reporting model –reported blogging that can be updated as the story changes and that can include various multimedia. Comments can also provide additional angles for either reporting or for commentary. National news or international news headlines can be fed directly from the wire services. No idea how you monetize that, though, because the folks who can spend their day doing real reporting will need to be paid for this (as will the wire services, I think).
Thanks for the link!
What I was trying to convey (and I guess I didn’t do such a good job) is that reading many sources – even if they are mainstream – provide the reader some clarity to the issue (whatever it is) through more various veils of bias.
If one relies on just your own local paper, and here in Missoula we only have one, you’ve only got their bias. People head to the internet to not only read alternative or non-mainstream news sources, but to also see what the WaPo or the NYTimes or the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has to say about the same topic.
I just went and had myself a late lunch and bought the local rag, The Missoulian. Most – most of the local news stories were items that I had either (a) already read on their online addition yesterday or (b) in other papers from around the state. In other words, that paper was out-of-date the minute it rolled off the press.
Newspapers and other traditional pulp media sources are falling because of the internet and its ability to provide instant information. How newspapers transition from a model that relies on local advertising and get it into a workable internet model is what I’ve been exploring.
It’s a worthy discussion to have. 4&20 has done a pretty large number of pieces over the last year or so, and we’ve engaged local reporters. It isn’t a discussion that is relative to only Missoula – although we will suffer immensely should Lee Newspapers fail – and one that we bloggers should continue to have.
Von Cracker,
If you don’t make the effort to find out if there is more than one side to a story, then you already have an idea in your mind of what the “truth” is. That in turn makes your “truth” about as accurate as a bank’s balance sheets these days.
There’s a comment at CSPT’s Dec. 24 post that refers to a newspaper that doesn’t put anything online, and has apparently been succeeding. What the excerpt from the NYT story fails to point out is that paper is an alt-weekly, with a heavy focus on entertainment. It has a definite niche. THAT’S why it’s succeeding – not because it’s ignoring the Web.
General-interest newspapers and magazines are all plunging in circulation. You can’t be everything to everybody. Advertisers want to pay for a specific niche, a more targeted audience. That’s what the daily newspaper is going to become – fragmented into geographical or beat-oriented niches.
I could easily see a Delaware HS sports magazine cropping up – a daily web site and weekly newspaper with lots of photos, box scores and names galore. Its readership and advertising would be through the roof. I could see something similar for state politics – think of a Grapevine with a several-person staff, catering to insiders and politics junkies, and going after advertisers who want to do the same. The Delaware Nature Society, Green Delaware and the Sierra Club could front a little seed money to back an environmental newsletter that could steal Jeff Montgomery and Molly Murray away from TNJ. The Cape Gazette, Coastal Point and the Morning Star papers in Seaford and Laurel could all join forces and create a paper that would cover ALL of Sussex County. And the list goes on.
Reporting multiple sides of a story doesn’t mean you get to the truth (obMovie: Rashomon) — but reporting that provides context and/or fact-checking can certainly help to get alot closer to the truth.
David Simon (of The Wire fame) wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post a year ago that makes the case that newspapers (especially regional ones) killed themselves. With a combination of complacency after killing off or buying up rivals and not valuing their own product (especially after the out of town owners showed up), Simon says that the papers themselves started their own death spiral well before the internet showed up — and in ceding so much news territory to glitzier material, the newspapers now have a mush tougher job competing.