Cheered by the magnificent Pulitzer Prize success of my friends and former Dallas Morning News colleagues, I decided to do something I hadn’t done in a while: go to print journalism analysis sites to see if things might be looking up for the industry.
Big mistake. The advertising collapse hasn’t found bottom yet. (See here also). Philadelphia, my new city, might be the first major city to lose its already-bankrupt daily papers (if San Francisco doesn’t beat us). And I spoke the other day to a journalism school professor I know who is changing careers in part because he can’t in good conscience encourage college students to go into a profession where there aren’t jobs.
Open oven, insert head.
Alan D. Mutter makes a detailed case about how the iPad could be a big boost for print journalism. I usually scoff at predictions that technology will save newspapers, but I’ve got to say, this makes some sense to me. The iPad is a marvelous, marvelous device, the first one I’ve ever seen that makes online newspaper reading a pleasure. I’m not going to make a habit of sitting on my couch with my coffee reading The New York Times on my laptop, which is the main reason why I still get it delivered on dead tree. But the day I buy an iPad — which, having seen and held and surfed with one, I’m sure would make portability and readability of the online newspaper a pleasure — is the day I cancel my NYT home delivery subscription. That would be a disaster in the short term for the Times, but nobody doubts that conventional delivery of the print product is in unstoppable decline. The faster newspapers switch to an excellent iPad version of their product, the better their longterm prospects. At least it seems to me. The real problem, the nearly insurmountable problem, is that customers expect newspapers to give their product away for free on the web. Mutter notes that one newspaper in Texas that put a subscriber firewall up had to abandon the project after its readership declined massively overnight. Still, I would be willing to pay something — and not just a negligible amount — to get The New York Times delivered electronically to my iPad. I doubt that I’m alone.
The thing that kills me, as a lifelong journalist, is how much good, important work will be lost if newspapers and magazines go under. People really don’t grasp what’s at stake. Then again, I don’t subscribe to my local paper, in part because I don’t yet feel invested in this place emotionally, but also because I already have a relationship with the NYT, and spending on a Philly paper would be superfluous (plus, I can read it for free online — like I can read the Times for free too). You see the problem.
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posted April 13, 2010 at 10:27 am
If you, of all people, aren’t subscribing to the local paper, there is literally no hope.
posted April 13, 2010 at 10:55 am
Wow. As someone who bought the Philadephia Inquirer every day when I lived there (as I buy the Dallas Morning News every day now), I’m really upset to hear that the Inquirer and Daily News might go under. The Inquirer, as I recall, did some really great reporting — they used to have Bartlett and Steele, who later moved to Time (and were laid off from Time a few years ago) — and also had some really great columnists — Trudy Rubin, who is still there and is still syndicated, and Steve Lopez, who later moved to LA and wrote the book on which the movie “The Soloist” was based.
I read the NY Times online, but I still buy a daily paper — though I admit that I buy it as much for the comics and the puzzles as for anything else. When things get to the point where you can do crossword puzzles and Sodoku as easily on a screen as you can on paper, that’s when I might think about switching over.
posted April 13, 2010 at 1:37 pm
I already do far more of my news reading online than in print — even for stories by the newspaper I work for.
Can you surf the Web on an iPad? If so, why would you pay the NY Times for an ap when you can just browse nytimes.com? Doesn’t make sense to me.
The real problem is not readership, which remains strong, but the ad rates. The amazing thing is my own employer not only gives away stories on our Web site (which makes a certain business logic — at least in theory) but is even promoting a mobile version of the Web site (for smart phones) that in its fast, stripped-won glory has no advertising at all.
But we’re building audience right now. Seriously, that’s what the editor told me. It’s like Pets.com all over again, only nobody’s showering VC money on us to build it.
posted April 13, 2010 at 1:44 pm
Trotsky, yes, you can surf the web with the iPad. It seems even faster than my laptop (I was in the Apple store over lunch, having to make another visit to check on a problem with my kid’s laptop).
I wouldn’t pay for a NYT online subscription now, Trotsky, but if the Times goes behind a pay firewall, as I think they’re supposed to do next year, I would pay for access provided I could read it on my iPad. I wouldn’t pay for online access right now; the iPad delivery system hits a sweet spot, at least for me.
posted April 13, 2010 at 2:03 pm
One our dailies here in Seattle, the Post-Intelligencer, went online only last year with a skeleton crew. It now basically has morphed into a tabloid with a vigorous discussion board and it is still losing money.
As long as new aggregators suck in the content and display it for free, why bother paying for the dead tree. Plus I am finding focused local/community blogs are doing a better job of informing me of what’s going on then the Local section did before. The real crime is the decline of true investigative reporting ( both domestic and international ) which actually has consequences.
posted April 13, 2010 at 4:57 pm
Well, Rod, I’ll bite: what good and important work will be lost if local newspapers go under?
Will it be public meetings, that are now often televised or recorded? So I won’t have to put up with the long-haired, pseudo-proletarian jerk with the flash camera who arrives late, insists on disrupting the entire meeting because he is from the Press and thus has the right to literally step on my feet without so much as a by-your-leave in order to get to the front row of seats, where he glares at some elderly woman until she lets him sit down in hers?
Will it be the in-depth investigative reporting that somehow never gets around to looking into the business relationships between major land developers, house builders and members of the county commission, at a time when the paper itself is editorializing on the Wonders Of More Growth! Growth! Growth!
Will it be the one-sided coverage of the senior state Senator’s family business in order to slime him as much as possible in the runup to the 2008 election, at a time when the newspaper editor has a great big sign in his front yard promoting the Senator’s opponent? Bonus points if you can guess the party of the incumbent and the party of the challenger (it’s not very difficult)?
Will it be the in-depth reporting on the state government budget process, that can’t even get the names of the committees right, doesn’t bother to explain why there is a shortfall, can’t even come close to the correct numbers?
Rod, the local papers don’t bother to cover local news except for social and cultural events. They can not or will not dig into anything that might upset the local politicians. Their reporters are incapable of understanding basic arithmetic. What is it that is so precious and will be lost?
I think you are looking back in time about 25, 30 years and seeing the newspapers that existed long ago, and in your mind that is what’s going away. Hey, if I could buy the local papers (yes, plural) that I read back in 1980, I’d do it, and I’d be upset if they were going away. But here’s the reality: those newspapers already died. What’s left may have the same name, but it’s a husk, a shell, a kind of zombie.
“Front Page” was a great stage play, and a pretty good movie, but it has nothing to do with any paper I can read today.
posted April 13, 2010 at 7:32 pm
I already get my news by subscription from the web. For example, I subscribe to stratfor. I figure you get what you pay for, especially if it does not accept advertisements. One thing I won’t pay for, though, and it doesn’t matter if it’s electronic or paper, is liberal lefty drivel (or righty drivel for that matter, but the lefty variety seems much more common these days).
posted April 14, 2010 at 4:46 am
I would have to agree that gloom and doom is right. The integrity of the top circulating newspapers is seriously waning as cited by The Committee for Media and Newspaper Integrity.
http://www.newspaperintegrity.com/index
posted April 14, 2010 at 10:26 am
The thing that kills me, as a lifelong journalist, is how much good, important work will be lost if newspapers and magazines go under.
You know, I hear this often, usually spoken by journalists or former journalists, who would seem to be a wee bit biased. But then I look at my most recent local daily, the Washington Post, and I think, why would I pay to subsidize the six figure salaries of Sally Quinn, George Will, Dana Milbank, and Mark Thiessen, to name just a few. Every time I read the WP I run across something by them or a dozen others I could mention and I think that if this is what print journalism has come to, it can’t die soon enough, and the sooner I help it along the better.
And I know the WP has done some good work recently (think Walter Reed). But still.