Michael Malone of ABC and Pajamas Media writes, “The last two weeks saw what may prove to be the tipping point in the history of newspapers”:
The Rocky Mountain News became the first major U.S. newspaper to close in the face of declining circulation and revenues created by competition from the digital media. Close on its heels may be the equally venerable San Francisco Chronicle, which announced that it would soon be seeking a buyer . . .and failing that, may go out of business.
This bad news is just the latest in what has been a long, sad downward spiral by the newspaper industry through most of this decade. The newspaper industry gave up denying that anything was wrong about five years ago, abandoned the fantasy that this was a temporary setback two years ago, and now – like a terminal patient completing the Kubler-Ross cycle – has all-but resigned itself to imminent oblivion.
And, if things keep going the way they have, that’s a pretty accurate prognosis.
Which is why Clay Shirky has one another essay in a similar vein, titled “Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable.” It’s a lengthy piece, but here’s a sample:
We’re collectively living through 1500, when it’s easier to see what’s broken than what will replace it. The internet turns 40 this fall. Access by the general public is less than half that age. Web use, as a normal part of life for a majority of the developed world, is less than half that age. We just got here. Even the revolutionaries can’t predict what will happen.
Imagine, in 1996, asking some net-savvy soul to expound on the potential of craigslist, then a year old and not yet incorporated. The answer you’d almost certainly have gotten would be extrapolation: “Mailing lists can be powerful tools”, “Social effects are intertwining with digital networks”, blah blah blah. What no one would have told you, could have told you, was what actually happened: craiglist became a critical piece of infrastructure. Not the idea of craigslist, or the business model, or even the software driving it. Craigslist itself spread to cover hundreds of cities and has become a part of public consciousness about what is now possible. Experiments are only revealed in retrospect to be turning points.
In craigslist’s gradual shift from ‘interesting if minor’ to ‘essential and transformative’, there is one possible answer to the question “If the old model is broken, what will work in its place?” The answer is: Nothing will work, but everything might. Now is the time for experiments, lots and lots of experiments, each of which will seem as minor at launch as craigslist did, as Wikipedia did, as octavo volumes did.
Journalism has always been subsidized. Sometimes it’s been Wal-Mart and the kid with the bike. Sometimes it’s been Richard Mellon Scaife. Increasingly, it’s you and me, donating our time. The list of models that are obviously working today, like Consumer Reports and NPR, like ProPublica and WikiLeaks, can’t be expanded to cover any general case, but then nothing is going to cover the general case.
Additionally, just to point out how demassified mass media now is, I found Shirky’s Blog post via a Twitter feed set up by the Free Republic Internet forum, all of which illustrates just how far beyond the mid-20th century model of centralized wire services like Reuters and A.P. feeding mass media such as TV and newspapers the state of news has become.
Michael Malone posits one possible future for newspapers in such a world:
First of all: Don’t try to preserve what you were. It’s now too late. Look instead to what you must be in ten years, and get there in five. And for the next two years, do whatever it takes to survive.
What does that mean? Well, surprisingly it means: Forget computers. Newspapers have already lost that battle. Instead, move on – and target the next platform. My gut tells me that the future of news delivery is to e-Books, like Kindle, and even more, Smart Phones. So rebuild your paper for those platforms – automatic downloading of the daily news directly to e-books, and powerful new navigation and social networking (i.e., story reporting and sharing) tools for the phone.
It also means a new business model. The blogosphere has made one major mistake: it has yet to create a truly viable revenue model. And that represents a huge opportunity. Advertisers are still wary of the Web because they don’t see yet a vehicle that produces strong, verifiable results. That’s also the reason why (besides all of that capital equipment, like presses and buildings) that newspapers didn’t just migrate to the Web two years ago – it would have led to massive revenue losses. But newspapers have now taken those losses anyway, so accept the inevitable. A revenue model will emerge for the Web, so take your lumps now, shrink to 10 -20 percent of your original size, sell the buildings and presses, move exclusively to the Web, and get ready for the market to take off.
And, as long as you are thinking outside of the box, go all of the way. Why doesn’t a consortium of newspapers buy Craigslist, leave it intact, and divvy up the ads by region? Why not team up with the largest local TV station and become its integrated video-print website? Or better yet, buy one of those emerging Web aggregators – the Huffington Post, Pajamas Media, etc. – and embed yourselves within them. They’re going to be your future competitors anyway, so co-opt them now.
Finally, figure out a way to hang on to all of that reporting talent you have so indifferently tossed away. Turn them into contractors for a couple of stories per month, or put them on retainer. But don’t lose them – because five years from now there will be land rush on reporting talent to fill the new ‘newspapers’. So tie them up now.
In the end, it’s all about surviving short term, and starting over under the new rules long term. We will always need newspapers because we need news. But as to what form this transformed medium will take is as yet unknown. But we do have some ideas – and it is those ideas that America’s dying newspapers should now embrace, not wistful dreams of the past.
We do need news, but if it seems like we’re getting so little of it from newspapers, perhaps it’s because of how insular and reactionary they’ve become, Rod Dreher writes:
I never have taken Dowd seriously — she’s the best example I can think of re: the danger of being all style, no substance; she simply has no core beliefs, and is little more than a gossip columnist, though a gifted writer of prose — and Rich, while energetic, is utterly predictable. Herbert is a one-note drone, as Packer said. Agree with them or not, you at least get the idea that Brooks and Krugman are trying to deal with the world as it is, in a real way.
But listen, could there be any columnist of his stature more irrelevant today than Thomas Friedman? He’s just phoning it in now. The current crisis is a direct and devastating challenge to the worldview he’s been propagating for years, and you’d think he’d have something thoughtful to say about it. He has declined as suddenly and as profoundly as the markets. You get the idea that he’s built his entire reputation on flattering elites. I don’t mean to suggest at all that Friedman is cynical — he really does believe this stuff — but that he has become popular because he made himself into a gifted publicist for a worldview that went hand-in-glove with the views of international elites, in whose circles he traveled and was feted. And now he’s really got nothing to say to us.
Of course, providing sclerotic opinions to a sclerotic readership has long been the Times’ modus operandi. Sports journalist Steve Czaban suggests, why not go all the way?
Stop the madness. Just print the paper. Get out of the internet. Keep your core readers, and grow the next generation. Make no apologies. Chalk it up to an experiment tried, and a lesson learned.
You know, once upon a time, McDonalds experimented with selling a “McPizza.” I kid you not. They got smart, and stopped that pretty quickly.
Slim down your journalistic approach to suit this new sustainable reality. Close down far flung foreign offices that track the regional conflicts in East Krapistan. Let an international service do that. Besides, those low level conflicts have been going on forever, and rarely if ever affect your actual readers. You are not National Geographic. Get back to what matters in your hometown.
Newspapers have a tremendous edge over every other quasi-journalistic website out there. It’s called “printing presses.” No website would open a print version of their “newspaper” and invest in printers, ink, delivery trucks, and the like.
This is your world. Live in it. Dominate it.
Setting aside all of the “global warming” and “sustainable growth” handwringing that one hopes such a proposal would likely cause the new puritans in the papers’ ivory towers (especially when they run “articles” such as this), that’s exactly what the classic EPIC 2014 video proposed a few years ago–let the Times go paper only–at least until its luddite readership joins them in the mausoleum.
Update: If you’re unfamiliar with the title, I’ve been using the “Red Queen’s Race” moniker for the old media death watch for a couple of years now–including in a recent Silicon Graffiti video which explains the origins of the phrase right at the top of the clip:
Update: Welcome Professor Reynolds’ readers–and check out this Pew Research item that Glenn links to, titled, “Stop the Presses? Many Americans Wouldn’t Care a Lot if Local Papers Folded.” (Just check out the comments immediately under this post for confirmation.)
As Mark Steyn explains in his speech to the editorial board of the Hillsdale Collegian, at least in the post-WWII era, newspapers have cared far more about their advertisers than their readers–and the readers, whether they’ve started their own blogs or not, know it.
Hmmmm.
Frankly I think the best model is the tip jar. A system where a button is available at the end of each article so if the reader is satisfied with the product a click would deposit $0.25 into an account or transfer that sum from a pre-established account.
I read any amount of online dross not worth the time of discarding and there’s nothing that’ll force me to pay for that crud.
But I have read interesting, informative and useful articles that I would have rewarded the author if I can and have when possible.
Sorry, but nothing will bring me back to Pravda. And I grew up reading WaPo and the NYTs. Information is power and I hold my information brokers to the same standard I would a stock broker. There have been too many “enrons” in the print media for me to ever trust them again. I hope Pravda dies a slow and painful death.
Clay Shirky is a classic example of today’s faux journalist.
Is he serious?
“Print media does much of society’s heavy journalistic lifting, from flooding the zone — covering every angle of a huge story — to the daily grind of attending the City Council meeting, just in case.”
After two straight years of the disgusting pandering we saw during the during the recent campaign? We were treated to stories about Governor Palin’s wardrobe while the corruption at every level of the Obama campaign was snickered at; his social and political associations were ignored; Candidate John Edwards’ dalliances were knowingly covered up, then ignored; Nicole Smith was put on the front page for months on end; the biggest spending legislation in the history of the world became law before anyone had even read it and no one in the press even blinked an eye; all of this and endlessly more, and this guy thinks the print media does “society’s heavy journalistic lifting!”
“The list of models that are obviously working today, like Consumer Reports and NPR . . . . “
NPR! Consumer Reports! Two organizations that owe their very existence to legislation and tax laws and would change immediately or disappear if the laws were changed.
“If you want to know why newspapers are in such trouble, the most salient fact is this: Printing presses are terrifically expensive to set up and to run.”
Printing has never been more available, accessible, or cheaper. Walk through any – any – city, town, village, grocery store, rest stop, gas station, or college campus and pick up a handful of local tabloids, neighborhood sheets, and newsletters. Almost every one of them has more content than the local Gannett chain paper.
With apologies to the author who I cannot remember, a column was written five or six months ago in which he lamented cancelling his NYT subscription because it was full of opinion and no facts. Therein lies the problem; Albany, Chicago, Washington, DC, the UN, ACORN and a whole lot of other places are full of crooks, scoundrels, and fools, the media knows it, we know it, we know the media knows it, and the media knows we know they know — AND THEY DON’T CARE. If they did care, they’d report it and sell out every day.
Shirky’s not a journalist, he’s preparing his case for a bailout. He knows it, we know it, he knows we . . . oh, never mind.
I stopped taking my paper because the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel could not be trusted to tell me that my governor was screwing me. I would just wake up groggy with a quarter in my hand. Who needs a no news newspaper.
A real newspaper with real reporters would actually give the public the information they need to know — why is it that the only place I get real information about Sen. Dodd’s cozy Irish cottage is on the web? Why is it that there has been no systematic investigation by a reputable reporter into the whole Fannie/Freddy mess, which would be then put out by the AP? Because the newspapers in this country are driven by ideology and not by a desire to print actual facts. They will not survive in their current form, and will eventually become the print versions of MSNBC — little read, with little impact.
My local paper had a kiosk at the grocery today, giving away free copies and soliciting subscriptions. When asked, I told the man inside that I did not subscribe. He asked me, what would it take to get me to subscribe? I smiled and said “facts” and walked away.
The commenters from #3-#8 al make valid points… yet I think you all are missing something.
I believe that prior to Edward R. Murrow and CBS reporting of WWII, nearly all news organizations were TOTALLY biased. You had competing newspapers in cities and these papers had a strong viewpoint and their viewpoints were basically at war with each other. People bought into a viewpoint and bought those papers.
Objective news was a phenomenon from about 1940-1970. During this very short period, a news organization found to be deliberately suppressing part of the story, and being deceitful, would have been ashamed; they couldn’t have done it. Most newspapers were in fact liberal in viewpoint, but by God, they TRIED to be fair.
After 1970, the model began to decay. I believe we have reached its death with the latest campaign, as most newspapers abandoned any remaining pretense at impartiality and threw themselves whole-hog into deliberate, complete support of the Obama campaign.
So in my opinion, we are back to pre-1940 news, which means: completely biased, deliberately completely biased.
And newspapers WILL die, because we can get our bias on the internet for free.
Mike,
I would put the era of “objectivity” as lasting from the rise of the first radio networks in the 1920s, until the successive arrival, beginning in the late 1980s and continuing to this day, of Rush, Fox News, Drudge, the Blogosphere and its spin-offs (such as PJTV), but you’re right–we are moving back to the pre-WWII-forms of openly biased media. Though during the transition phase we’re in, not all publishers or journalists are willing to announce their biases, even though it’s obvious to most readers where various journalistic outlets stand.
I tried to provide snapshots of both the birth of mass media, and the birth of its successor forms in my “Atlas Mugged” article a couple of years ago.
Here are my questions every time this subject comes up:
How much of a loss would this really be?
If you know which way a paper’s coverage is slanted, you already know what’s going to be in it.
So why read it?
There’s nothing in it you can’t get elsewhere, without the socialist commentary, and for free. And really, if you wants facts, as I do, you won’t find them in a newspaper. Or a news magazine, for that matter.
I say let them fail. They betrayed the standards of journalism and made themselves irrelevant. So it’s time to die. I won’t miss them, and one of my degrees was in journalism.
Ed.
I agree that the genesis of objective journalism dates back to the post WWI era when clearly biased journalism started to compete with more objective newspapers and radio stations (often owned by newspaper establishments). More nimble and less-biased journalist quickly squeezed slanted publishers like William Randolph Hearst. Ironically, it was the Ochs-owned New York Times which emerged as the winner as readers gravitated toward more open, more objective journalism. To wit:
“In 1932, a former New York Times reporter writing for Vanity Fair had left open the question as to whether journalism in the years to come would follow the Ochs style of professed objectivity or the Hearst style of outspoken advocacy. By the end of the decade, the question had been decisively answered. While the New York Times had grown steadily in circulation and revenues, the Hearst morning papers had not. Hearst, unlike his colleagues in publishing, had not learned that in mass circulation journalism it was best to disguise one’s political opinions.
David Nasaw
“The Chief. The Life of William Randolph Hearst”
The downfall of modern journalism can be traced to Watergate. Once journalist saw they could not only report news but influence outcomes (in effect be part of the story) that set the stage for a whole generation of journalist who were out to mold the world in their image rather than report the news. This is not a defense of what Richard Nixon did or did not do but rather what journalism has or has not become.
I think that we may see a shakeout from the standpoint of size, i.e., large city versus small town, with the small town newspapers surviving while the others don’t. For example, my hometown newspaper (Daily Journal) delivers local news and sports in depth, keeping its readership well informed of local events and problems. The larger, nearby Indianapolis Star is now owned by Gannett and is just like its parent’s USA Today — pablum for the masses and treated as such. There is nothing in the Star that is better reported, analyzed and explained than on the ‘Net. We simply don’t need the Star (or any other such entity). The internet has so much more to offer and people who are interested in finding out facts and making their own analyses and judgments know that. It is similar to watching the dinosaurs slowly die out and fossilizing. For many big city newspapers, the strategy seems to be to burn through the cash until insolvency, hoping for a miracle such as a private benefactor or, more likely, a federal government bailout.
Personally, I’m waiting for someone to remember that newspapers, like radio, and TV (and one day, the internet) are a directed advertising medium. A Constortium of newspaper, radio, TV, and internet, directing it’s message to a pre-determined audience could succeed precisely because it is biased. The multiple platforms would increase the efficiency of each advertising dollar.
If, according to #s9 and 10, above, we’re back to partisan-aligned media — like Guardian-vs.-Telegraph in the UK or Col. McCormick’s Tribune-vs.-FDR, then maybe there just isn’t a market for leftist-partisan-aligned media. They can’t produce anything a sustaining audience wants to buy.
I mean, look at Air America vs. Any-Conservative-Radio-Host — is Mike Gallagher having to buy his airtime?
ObamaIsTheNewHitler writes of newspapers: “There’s nothing in it you can’t get elsewhere”
Sigh.
Do you know WHY you can “get it elsewhere”? Because the news was gathered, distilled and thrust into the public consciousness by some journalistic enterprise, most likely a newspaper. THAT’S how it ends up “elsewhere.”
I don’t understand why people have such difficulty with this concept. One of the most startling revelations from the past couple of years — illuminated time and again by discussions like this very thread — has been the public’s vast ignorance about the process behind the news. It’s as if people think that all these stories, all these things they know about current events, are just already sitting there somehow. They seem to think the news just “exists,” and happens to get printed on paper or talked about on the radio or presented on a website.
In other words, they take the whole thing for granted. They take for granted that they know what the president did yesterday, or that a plane crashed somewhere, or that so-and-so was traded by such-and-such team, or that this intrusive new tax is being implemented, or that so-and-so performer is coming in concert — all this stuff we know about the day-to-day world around us. They don’t seem to realize HOW they know all this stuff. And that’s a really weird disconnect, being so clueless about the way all this random reality gets turned into hard information and eventually winds its way into your own consciousness.
Every newsgathering outlet should simultaneously shut down for a week. Maybe people would finally start to get it.
“Every newsgathering outlet should simultaneously shut down for a week. Maybe people would finally start to get it.”
Yes please. Shut down for a week. See what happens.
What you’re missing is that none of your points matter when the brokers of information are dishonest and corrupt. I’d be better off reading fiction. Case in point: Iraq War coverage from Yon and Totten beat down all the misinformation peddled by the MSM. Another is the outright dishonesty of the media during Katrina, weaving fictional accounts into their stories to provoke outrage. We even have clips of them “working up” their outrage before the news camera, like an actress trying to get into character. What a farce.
And Ed, read Kathleen Parker in Sunday’s WAPO editorial page. Its quite hysterical. See, its not the newspaper’s fault, its us stupid proles who don’t know what we need to know, and “fearmongers” like yourself “stoking ignorance”. Priceless.
Of course Michael Yon’s work has been wonderful. But you really think that wins you the argument? All you did was prove my point: We rely on professional newsgatherers for what we know about the world. Michael Yon is a professional newsgatherer. He’s part of the very media system I’m describing.
I don’t know why the whole media thing is such a blind spot for my fellow conservatives. It’s the one arena where rational judgment and analysis seems to go out the window. For starters, “the media” isn’t monolithic or predestined. It’s simply an arbitrary collection of human beings who are out rounding up information about the world. You or I could easily have chosen to be one of them. “The media” wasn’t dishonest about Katrina — some number of those human beings were. You and I wouldn’t have been like that … yet we’d still be sitting here staring at the death of journalism.
And there’s another big (huge) mistake conservatives make in these discussions: viewing everything through the lens of politics. Most news isn’t political. That just happens to be your thing. It’s your frame on the world. And while there is certainly leftist bias in the political coverage at many major news outlets, political coverage simply isn’t the biggest thing that’s at stake here.
That’s why this is such a red herring: “the brokers of information are dishonest and corrupt.” Even granting that point, you’re referring to a small SLIVER of what will disappear with professional journalism’s demise. A train is running off the tracks, right into our own house, and all you can do is gleefully applaud because you always hated the way that one engineer wore his cap. It’s such a glaring, misguided focus.
As a conservative, I’m not unhappy, in some generic sense, about the end of left-wing bias. But I certainly never wanted its end to come because the whole, entire apparatus collapsed. It’s a baby/bathwater thing.
I just went and read the Kathleen Parker column you referenced.
I don’t like the gratuitous jab at Limbaugh, but she’s otherwise right: What we’re going to lose with the death of professional journalism — especially local journalism — is the apolitical, “boots on the ground” reporting we today take for granted.
She’s essentially making the same point I am (just a bit more clearly and succinctly — I guess that’s why she gets paid to do this and I don’t): Most news isn’t political, and gleeful conservatives don’t seem to grasp the extent of what we’re about to lose.
I live in a place (Detroit) where one of the local papers just singlehandedly brought down a corrupt mayor. I don’t want that to go away. I don’t know why anyone would want that to go away. All because you dislike what some million-dollar TV airhead once said about Katrina? I mean, do you even realize how irrelevant that kind of stuff is to the actual situation here?