UPDATED W/ Instructive Video: Can the News-Journal…And Newspapers Survive?
As a newspaper junkie, and as one who believes that the Free Press is an essential pillar of a democracy, El Somnambulo is deeply concerned with the dire situation currently facing the industry. While ‘Bulo has been critical of the News-Journal and other media outlets, one has but to only look at how he and others here link to essential stories from…newspapers. Other than Talking Points Memo and a few admirable other sources of original content, the Blogoverse is ill-equipped to take over the newsgathering function from the traditional media.
Here is a clip of Editor & Publisher editor Greg Mitchell discussing the problem and possible fixes on the Rachel Maddow Show.
Please take a look and come back with your thoughts on the plight of newspapers. Can or should they survive? Are there business models which might enable them to survive, such as ‘pay to play’ (no, not that kind, but a modest fee to read articles)?
In the case of the News-Journal, can everyone agree that they need to completely revamp their website? It is one of the least user-friendly newspaper websites out there and one of the most difficult to navigate.
And, is there agreement that newsroom cuts merely hasten the snowball-rolling-downhill effect? Cutting news and editorial staff merely ensures that there will be even less worth reading in the paper or online.
Anyway, this is not designed to be a diss the News-Journal thread, but rather to engender serious discussion on the role of newspapers in a democracy and to identify ways to ensure their viability. What the thread eventually turns into (if anything) is ultimately up to you.
Tags: Delaware
Loudell teased a segment on this topic this morning.
The NJ website is horrible and the Del State News is worse.
There is clearly a place for (a market for) great journalism. I think newspapers are not positioned to be the next venue for great journalism, even if they revise thier websites, because the business model has broken down and they can’t get beyond that.
Geezer said it well in another thread:
Speaking about ‘niche magazines’, did anybody get that glossy ‘Signatures’ w/their morning paper today?
It looks like Delaware Today, and appears to primarily be designed to appeal to the Greenville crowd, or, more broadly, the upscale demographic.
Nice profile of Carla Markell, tho…
I can’t remember where I saw this, but I saw an article which stated that The New York Times could give each subscriber a Kindle for less than it costs the paper to print and deliver the dead trees edition to them.
Dana: Most newspapers barely break even on home delivery. They’re willing to subsidize it to get the circulation figures.
There’s no question “newspapers” would be better off financially delivering news minus the paper. It would allow them to get rid of circulation and printing costs, along with the enormous capital investment in the presses. The trick will be convincing online customers to pay their fair share of the freight.
I firmly believe that’s where news”papers” will be in 10 years. The unknown part is how they’ll get there from here.
Interesting idea for a thread. Thanks ‘Bulo. I don’t have time to watch Greg Mitchell, but I have a few ideas.
The print version has to go away. Most people don’t read it, and it gets ink all over you. I think they need to find a way to deliver original reporting and original content in a timely manner. Like sending it to your cell phone or PDA. I think it will be a combination of advertising (a Google-type model) and subscriptions. Why should I pay a subscription to read AP articles that I could have read the night before? I want local issues covered and in a more timely manner.
A few points:
– TNJ does not control the design of its website. Visit any other Gannett newspaper’s site, and you’ll encounter virtually the same atrocious look and feel (though some have selected even worse color schemes). The local people haven’t had control of the design for several years. All they can do is play around with banners, story placement, etc.
– “Signature” is nothing new; it’s been around for several years. El Som hits the target audience right on the head.
– The State News website will give you all the articles, but for a fee. I’d be very curious to know how that’s going for them, as very few local newspapers have gone with a pay-for model.
P.S. El Som should also go back to Friday’s paper and check page A11 for that housing story that TNJ ignored.
As far as paying for news online, I’m thinking bundles – like cable. I don’t see most people paying for an online subscription to one paper, but maybe if you could pick from a list of papers (think Chinese menu approach) it might work.
There is clearly a place for (a market for) great journalism.
I’m not sure there is a paying market. Look at what is on the best selling book lists. It ain’t great literature.
Once the News Journal is gone there will be money looking for ad space. There are lots of decent freebies being published right now that are perfectly capable of ramping up their reporting capabilities.
With the News Journal out of the way, the second tier of newspapers (Community Pub, etc) are in good position to step up their game, capture the advertising revenue formerly going to the News Journal, and figure out how to make a profit.
What is the second tier of newspapers in Delaware?
Down south, we have the State News, which mainly covers Kent and Dover with a reporting staff of about four. Very little Sussex coverage. It has weeklies in Milford (the Chronicle), Georgetown-Millsboro (the Sussex Post) and Laurel-Seaford-Delmar (the Leader & State Register). Except for Milford, the others are basically one-man-bands for news coverage.
There’s the Morning Star group, which does the Laurel Star and Seaford Star.
There’s the Coastal Point, an independent weekly in the Ocean View-Bethany area.
The Cape Gazette is another independent weekly, covering the Lewes-Rehoboth-Dewey-Milton-Georgetown area. The company also puts out the Delmarva Quarterly and the Beach Paper.
There’s the Dover Post and its family – the Milford Beacon and the Sussex Countian (Georgetown-Millsbor0). They both have 2-3 reporters each. I don’t know much about the Community Pub weeklies or the Smyrna paper they own.
And rounding out the downstate competition, there are two weeklies owned by Gannett but run by the Salisbury paper – the Coast Press, covering Rehoboth. and the Wave, covering Bethany.
What’s it like up north?
The Community News papers with slighly varying editions for their Greenville, Hockessin and Brandywine editions are weeklys (free?) that many times provide better and more frequent coverage of local government news.
Pandora has a good idea for monetizing the web. Access to any newspaper for .25 or so per day. Put together a subscription aggregator that acts like an EZPass, but for cruising newspapers.
I forgot about the weekly Journal, in Harrington, published by INI/State News.
I like the subscription aggregator idea. This is going to take a lot of coordination of the part of media outlets. Do they have an organization like the RIAA? Newspapers should look to the RIAA for what not to do (like sue their customers).
I think there is a paying market for journalism. However, newspapers have to stop trying to be all things to all people. I think we’ll go to user-directed content. For myself, I would like much more info on local politics and elections and less celebrity news. Other people will have different wants.
U.I. & Pandora
You just nailed it. Future news, in whatever form, is going to be more tailored to the user. The Chinese menu idea is brilliant. Thing is, will it be economically feasible.
My “home” screen on Comcast starts my day with tons of stuff they call news that I couldn’t care less about. Now if I could select the content for that screen I’d be willing to pay.
But, of course, I also get about 30 channels on cable that I’ve deleted from the remote because I don’t care. And everytime somebody suggests a chinese menu for cable Comcast goes ballistic. Clearly they can’t make money just selling what people want, they have to tie the other stuff to the package. Seems like a screwed up marketing strategy to me.
I think that professional sports teams should start subsidizing the newspapers. They make billions off of the free publicity. They will be hurt by the loss of local coverage of their products.
What other private companies get whole sections of papers dedicated to their enterprises, for free?
anonone
I’ve heard Al Mascetti say that the whole reason for the Sports section is sports betting. That’s why it’s there for free.
Hi Rebecca,
Well, I read the sports section and I don’t bet on sports, but I may be in a minority; I don’t know.
It seems to me that if sports sells papers and papers sell sports (because of sports betting or not), then there should be some way for the local newspapers to better monetize that relationship, since it doesn’t look like the sports teams are going out of business anytime soon.
My guess is that if newspapers stopped covering sports, they would lose a lot of money but so would the teams that they cover. But that is only a guess.
Rebecca,
You have the question nailed – how much would such an option cost vs. how much are people willing to pay? We need to reconcile these two things.
I think newspapers should possibly look at the iTunes model. iTunes got people to pay for things that they used to get for free. I think people are willing to pay for good quality journalism. The problem is all the other crap journalism that comes with the good journalism.
One of the strengths of traditional media is that its consumers share a common set of information, and thus form a broader community.
A customized model will mean just more fragmentation of American society, particularly along political lines.
It’s already happening anon. Republicans have their own reality and “facts” from Faux News.
I don’t think newspapers should let previous failures deter them (NYT firewall). The NYT made the mistake of putting opinion writers in the paid subscription. If there’s anything you can find for free all over the internet, it’s opinions. They should have put the original reporting behind the firewall (that’s where opinion writers get their info) and put the opinions out for free to generate buzz, IMHO.
anon#19 is right… for me, part of the value of news is knowing what everyone else is reading – that is part of the democratic experience. If I live in a bubble based on my own past consumption, I am not getting the value I want out of the news.
Even if you read a news aggregator like google or yahoo – if you leave your browser cookies on, the site will start targeting stories to you based on what you have clicked on in the past.
While El Somnambulo doesn’t envision the weeklies as stepping in for the daily media, he does admire the job that editors/staff of the various editions of the Community News do. Since they’re not a daily, they do an excellent job of providing context for the stories impacting their region.
They also cover the arts scene as well as, if not better than, the News-Journal. And ‘Bulo is unable to detect any real political bias there. Wasn’t there a weekly paper called the ‘Observer’ that used to do something similar at the national level?
‘Bulo also agrees with UI that he would rather pay for breaking news as opposed to opinion. As a former ‘rasslin’ professional, the Beast Who Slumbers subscribes to Dave Meltzer’s Wrestling Observer for just that reason. Otherwise, how else could he keep up w/the ‘roid busts and premature deaths that litter the profession?
As to the issue of the News-Journal webpage, if it is indeed true that all Gannett papers must use the same format, then Gannett must feel comfortable with the notion of planned obsolescence. How else to explain thumbing their corporate noses at countless tens of thousands of potential eyeballs daily across their spectrum of publications?
“How else to explain thumbing their corporate noses at countless tens of thousands of potential eyeballs daily across their spectrum of publications?”
They just think they’re smarter than everyone else.
‘Bulo
I agree the Community News does a great job covering things like County government. Because Community News is targeted to geographic areas and because that’s what County government impacts, they are a natural fit for this sort of coverage. And it’s all free and delivered to my driveway every Friday. There’s a marketing model that works. Advertising is pricey but not nearly as pricey as the News Journal and the ads are hitting targeted audiences.
It does not address anon 19’s point about the growing division in this nation. That is a valid concern. But, I’m not sure the free-market press can afford to address this.
Meanwhile, technology drives the trend to more and more to the individual media. I have a favorites list, including DL, that I read every morning. Within the favorites there are op-ed writers I read and others I skip. For example, any comments from Protack get scrolled right over. That is noise I don’t have time for. I self-select my news and I don’t think I’m unusual among the group who gets their news on-line.
The one exception for me is BBC news at night. I watch it all because it is high quality. Clearly the BBC could not function in a for-profit framework. We used to have something similar at PBS but BushCo meddled and the quality has slipped. Thank goodness for Friday nights on PBS.
Maybe we do need to bring back the Fairness Doctrine?
One of the strengths of traditional media is that its consumers share a common set of information
I think that this is good, but really you want a media that will shine a light into the workings of the powerful. This takes time and money — things that the current media doesn’t believe that they can spend. Except on Missing White Woman stories. I’ve often said that if the current media types were better educated on the issues (and how stuff in the world works) OR if they’d spend time fact checking what pols and business people say, there would be much less room for the kind of stupidity that some of these folks get away with getting out there.
Great topic, particularly for a newspaper junkie like myself. I’d hate to see the print versions disappear more than they already have, but I’m also a realist.
As for the sports section, there’s only one reason why point spreads run. And why would the NFL require a weekly injury report? That doesn’t help anyone but gamblers and your opponent.
I can’t watch the clip here, but I will check it out tonight.
It is just a 1950’s classroom film about “the pressman” and the vital role he plays in our democracy.
Regarding sports…
I’ve long thought that a weekly newspaper / daily web site devoted to high school sports in Delaware would make a ton of money. You’d have a constantly-refreshed, built-in audience of players, coaches, parents, extended family members … and don’t forget the rabid fans who root, root root for the local team no matter the year.
Or do the bookies cover HS sports, too? 😉
“Ello” does bring up a multitude of great points. One missing was a sense of history.
Newspapers used to be entirely family operations. The lived in that community and they had to establish credibility in that community.
Publishing a lie, then showing up at a cocktail party where it was obvious your piece of news was completely fabricated, .. tended to insure quality of journalism…
Likewise, a toxic plant that was killing YOUR children, WAS a reason to rally the community to do battle against it…
But families tend to lose interest around the fourth generation… They want money but don’t want the grind of the daily decisions required to keep great grandpa’s newspaper afloat.
So they sell out.
From the late eighties through the mid nineties, almost all of the major news outlets became controlled by a board of directors.
Suddenly you couldn’t pummel Exxon… He was on your board. Suddenly you couldn’t bash the Republican. Those on your board supported him.
Your job as a newspaper shifted away from reporting the real news to consumers, to that of reporting increased profits to stockholders.
What was written became important in only how it affected the bottom line of the paper… Great journalism that pissed off advertisers? Let’s skip that. Graphic details of celebrity sex capades. Front page that story!!!
Becoming an apologist for corporate misbehavior, by deflecting, spinning, ignoring, or changing the subject, unfortunately became the modus operanda of what was received, instead of what we wanted to receive: news that affected our lives…
It is this corporate thinking that has brought down all print journalism. Small papers under family guidance, still sell papers by making a difference in their neighborhoods… But as just one example, the above mentioned change in the Delawareonline website, was done because too few advertisements were being clicked under the old arrangement. It was too easy to find what one wanted, and ads were quickly passed over…
Obviously no one considered the loss of readership that would occur from not being able to find a simple news story, would likewise drop the number of hits to each advertisement as well…..
They’re corporate animals. They don’t think like people.
The niche is there. Like every vacuum in nature, something will grow to fill it.
That niche is giving people the news they need to survive…
People will buy it then.
If you check Gannet’s Wilmington News Journal records, you will find that the Bluewater Wind Controversy was very good for them… People were into that story….
If the News Journal were to once again become something to be feared by corporate and governmental types, it could again be solvent.
Continuing it’s service as corporate philosophy’s apologist, is financially non viable.
No one cares.