Posted on 10/31/2006 4:27:46 AM PST by abb
Here's a story of a bunch of saurians standing around watching a bright light in the sky...
http://prsa.org/pfNews.cfm?pNewsID=643
The paper chase: What lies ahead? Panel examines the future of newspapers Oct.26, 2006
Copyright © 2006 PRSA. All rights reserved.
The following discussion appears in the fall issue of The Strategist.
Newspapers are under siege from a number of fronts, including industry consolidation, Wall Street’s demand for ever-higher profits, the explosion of blogs and other Web-based information channels and the rise of ethnic media in response to changing population demographics that render the very concept of “mainstream journalism” obsolete.
What lies ahead for newspapers? And what will it mean for journalism, public relations and democracy itself? On Sept. 21, The Strategist hosted a roundtable in San Francisco to discuss the ongoing challenges facing the newspaper industry. Peter Magnani, a senior PR executive with Bank of America, moderated the distinguished panel. More than 70 members of PRSA’s San Francisco Chapter were among those in attendance in the Carnelian Room on the 52nd floor of the Bank of America building that morning to get the lowdown on the future of newspapers.
What follows are edited highlights from the 75-minute discussion. — John Elsasser
Editor’s note: On Oct. 20, hours before our press date, we learned that one of our panelists, Chris Lopez, editor of the Contra Costa Times, was reportedly let go because his position became redundant after the paper’s merger with MediaNews in August. MediaNews officials cited economic pressure felt by the newspaper industry as a reason for Lopez’s departure. He thus became an example of the very pressures the panelists were talking about.
Peter Magnani: Newspapers are fighting for survival on just about every front here in the San Francisco Bay Area as well as the rest of the country. I’ll ask Chris to start. Do newspapers have a future, and does it even matter?
Chris Lopez, editor, Contra Costa Times: I’ll go with this theory that I do in my own daily work. I’m going to subscribe to the theory that newspapers are dying and we’re on our deathbed — I’m walking dead myself as a newspaper journalist. So what I do is first mourn the fact that I’m dying. Then I get over that emotional shock. I still have time to celebrate this print product that I put out every day. So I’m going to celebrate it with my work, and I’m going to celebrate it with my journalism as long as they let me keep doing it.
Gary Thompson, APR, executive vice president and general manager of the West Coast office of Schwartz Communications: I’ve seen the demographics indicating that the average age of the newspaper reader is 55. When I did an informal survey of our agency, most of the people age 55-plus said, “Yes, newspapers are going away.” For the younger people, 75 percent of those I surveyed read a newspaper. These are men and women who are under the age of 35, and they read papers regularly. I love some of their comments [from the survey]: “I love a hard copy paper I can read every night on the bus.” Over and over people said newspapers provide more in-depth local coverage than anything else they can get their hands on online. Every single person said they spend time with the newspaper every weekend — when they have the time. So for these individuals, it’s not going away.
Magnani: We used to hear concerns here in the Bay Area — and this is happening elsewhere in the country — about a newspaper monopoly. Here, we had the Chronicle and the Examiner bound together in a joint-operating agreement. People were concerned that San Francisco was essentially becoming a one-newspaper town. Right now, those seem like the good old days. Now you’ve got the Chronicle owned by the Hearst Corporation from New York. What’s left of the Examiner has become a tabloid throwaway that’s owned by an entrepreneur in Omaha, Neb., and everything else in the Bay Area is owned by Denver-based MediaNews.
Given increasing absentee ownership and consolidation of multiple publications owned by one individual or conglomerate, what are the consequences for local coverage? Where does that leave readers?
Dan Neuharth, Ph.D., award-winning journalist: I take issue with the premise of consolidation. The newspaper business started consolidating into fewer and fewer hands in the 1970s, then big time in the 1980s and 1990s. But look at what happened this year: The second biggest, by circulation, newspaper chain in the country, Knight Ridder, sold itself. Two thirds of it went to McClatchy, and parts of it went here; some went to local owners in Philadelphia. (Editor’s note: The expanded McClatchy Company will have 32 daily newspapers and 50 nondailies after the planned sale of 12 Knight Ridder papers. McClatchy's dailies will have a combined daily circulation of about 3.2 million, making it the nation’s second-largest newspaper company measured by daily circulation.)
The concentration of the press in fewer hands has probably gone as far as it’s going to go. Now it’s lateral. What that means to readers comes down to who’s the editor and what’s his or her budget. One of the most fascinating dramas being played out now is at the Los Angeles Times, where the editor and the publisher said to the mother ship of the Tribune Company [on Sept. 14], “We’re not going to cut the news product anymore.” (Editor’s note: The publisher at the Times, Jeffrey Johnson, was forced to resign on Oct. 5.)
Magnani: Gary, are you seeing any impact in terms of PR practice in either consolidation or just expense accounts for newspapers?
Thompson: Well, not so much in newspapers, but in trade publications where one story might run in five different outlets that are owned by the same publisher. There’s an advantage to that in getting your story out. But in terms of newspapers, we’re seeing smaller news holes. A lot more stories are syndicated throughout the ownership. You used to be dealing with several journalists who had different opinions and represented different targets. Today, you are often working with one journalist who’s getting the story out in several outlets. That’s limiting in terms of the number of different stories you can place.
Lopez: Consolidation is going to shake out in many different ways and in many different forms, though. You walk around the East Bay, and there are ethnic publications that are just growing and growing. Local community weekly publications are a growing part of the industry. Maybe big mainstream newspapers, like the Los Angeles Times, the Chronicle and the San Jose Mercury News, are going to keep having to [reduce] costs, but there are still going to be a lot of newspapers out there in different forms. It’s a healthy industry.
Magnani: Kevin conducted a landmark survey in 2005 for New American Media that showed the striking impact of ethnic media in the United States. According to the survey, 45 percent of African-American, Hispanic, Latino, Native-American and Arab-American adults prefer ethnic print and broadcast media to so-called mainstream media counterparts. What is your perspective on the ethnic media?
Kevin Weston, editor in chief of Youth Outlook: I happen to be part of two sectors that are growing — ethnic media and youth-oriented media. I have a different perspective on newspapers. What will be the mainstream in the next 10 years? In California, perhaps the Spanish-language press will emerge as the mainstream.
Technology, youth and ethnicity are driving what we’re going to see in newspapers in the next 10 years. People want local news, and they want it from many different perspectives. So there’s room at the table for everyone.
Magnani: The one thing that newspapers seem to be able to agree on is that a large part of their future lies in their online presence. We see papers rushing to create Web strategies and expand their basic print product. But then we hear doubters saying, “Well, the more successful you are with the Web site, the more successfully you compete with your core print product, the worse that is for your newspaper.”
If newspapers do succeed in striking and then maintaining a good balance between their print and online product, what might that look like? If the balance does tip in favor of online, as many people seem to think it does, what’s the implication for newspapers?
Neuharth: In 1972, three-quarters of 30-somethings read a paper every day. Today, it’s one out of three. The average age [of the newspaper reader] is 55, so it’s our parents, aunts and uncles, and grandparents who are reading newspapers.
But what young people like about media are all the things that newspapers don’t have. They like interactivity. They like the fact that it’s customizable. They like the fact that it’s easy and fun, that it’s instant. Instant gratification is big with people under 30. Well, a newspaper is not customizable. The news is 12-hours old. It’s not personalizable. There’s not a sense of community like on MySpace. So newspaper publishers are scared.
I agree with what Chris said, that it’s still a healthy industry despite the fact that 30 years ago there were 61 million newspapers printed daily while today there are 54 million. In that same time, the country has gone from 216 million to 300 million people. How did the country get 84 million people and lose 7 million copies every day? Well, some of them have gone online, or they’ve gone to radio or cable. Online is going to be the savior of newspaper companies, not a competitor.
Thompson: I agree with that. What newspapers are doing is merely extending how they produce the news. As we have less time, we’re more mobile — wireless everything is out there. You can receive your news in different ways. You can tailor your news now. But does that take away from the newspaper publishing operation, or are they merely getting smart in extending that?
By the way, this is all about advertising dollars. Let’s remember that all of these mediums survive based on what corporations are willing to put into these publications. It doesn’t make any difference what the form is as long as you’re reaching the audience [advertisers] want to reach.
Magnani: You mention a problem that newspaper companies might face as they continue with the online strategy. Financial success on the Web is a high-volume business. It depends on huge volumes of viewership and page views. An industry leader with an excellent Web site like The New York Times has 500 million page views per month, which is a healthy number. On the other hand, MySpace has 29 billion page hits per month. So the numbers don’t seem to support that there’s financial salvation for newspapers.
Thompson: Rupert Murdoch bought MySpace, but how much news is on MySpace?
Magnani: So what does all this mean for newspapers?
Lopez: What you’re going to see is a partnership created between new and old media companies. Yahoo! will partner with newspapers in a certain way when it comes to the Web and in print. Same with Google, Microsoft and Craigslist. All these types of companies are already in partnership discussions with old media.
Yahoo! got hammered [during the third week of September] by Wall Street when its advertising revenues didn’t meet expectations, and the price of that stock dropped. So you’re going to even see new media technology companies having to form partnerships with old media because newspapers are cash cows. They generate a lot of money. These business guys know that. They’re smart, and they’re figuring out how to form partnerships. Newspapers may eventually be owned by new technology, but they’ll still exist.
Weston: With the changes that we’re all talking about, ethnic media outlets are going through exactly the same thing, except that because it’s print and local, people still access it. It’s a trust factor. The San Francisco Sun-Reporter, which is the leading black newspaper in San Francisco, has been around for 60 years. So that’s 60 years of trust that they’ve built up with the community.
Thompson: One of the most important words you used was trust. We represent a lot of corporations that are looking to reach early adopters and late adopters from a marketing perspective. That means reaching out to communities outside the West or the East Coasts, reaching people outside large geographic communities. The research we’ve done [in those areas] said that the No. 1 source of trusted news is the newspaper. From a health care perspective, we’re reaching out through newspapers because they’re highly trusted.
In addition, when you get outside of the coasts and the major geographic areas, they’re a lot like the Bay Area. People are still used to getting their news a certain way. We had a campaign for online banking, and we were trying to get people in Middle America and the South to use online banking. How did we reach them? Through 20 newspapers in those local markets. And trust was the big issue there.
Magnani: Given all the pressures, can journalism survive without newspapers, and can America survive without journalism?
Lopez: Well, if there weren’t any newspapers, I don’t know what I would listen to on the morning radio shows or watch on the morning TV programs. I personally think — and obviously I’m biased cause I’ve been doing this my whole life — professional journalists are important to society by keeping us informed and being watchdogs of agencies and government at all levels. So yes, definitely professional journalists, and newspaper journalists have a role to play and will continue to play a role.
Thompson: Journalism keeps my industry alive.
Magnani: Is that true? You need journalism, but do you need newspapers?
Thompson: Newspapers in what form? If you’re talking about print form, then probably not. Will there be print versions [of newspapers] 10 years from now? I don’t know, but there’d better be journalism.
I’ve been in the business 35 years. When I started out, you had to explain to people what public relations was. What changed? What changed was the fact that consumers recognized they could go to a journalist and get their side of the story told versus government, versus major corporations. Journalism provides not only an investigative opportunity, but one that represents the community. As you become a parent and your concerns move beyond yourself, journalism becomes critically important in terms of providing not only news, but change — significant change to the social environment.
Weston: You can tell stories in multiple ways, which resonates with young people who like to be able to see, touch and hear things that are happening. Newspapers have been slow to recognize that. The Washington Post and The New York Times do a pretty good job at the multimedia game.
I think that the business has to change in that way, that the folks who are actually doing journalism, the kind of journalism that we need, are going to have to be able to do it in a way that makes sense for the Web.
Thompson: I’m seeing journalists blogging. I’m seeing publications doing podcasts. From our perspective, [blogging] provides an interesting approach because we’re no longer selling the story idea just to the editor. It’s covered in the blog first and then picked up by the blogger reporting in the paper. It’s a whole different way of getting into news outlets, and it provides the reporter with two things: One, with another outlet and, two, one less minute of time in the day. It’s a lot harder to interact with everyone. The reporter’s job is a thankless job in many respects, underpaid and absolutely overtaxed at this point, especially as large conglomerates reduce the number of reporters in the marketplace.
Lopez: There’s a lot of stress in newsrooms as we shrink — and we’ve been shrinking for the last few years. There’s a lot of stress because we’re learning new skills. You can’t survive in my shop right now if you can’t collect audio with the story or you can’t produce Flash presentations. One of the coolest journalists we have in my newsroom right now is a kid named Mark Luckie, who is a graduate student at the University of California Berkeley journalism program. He comes in and puts together the most interesting multimedia segments for our work. So you’re seeing that type of skill coming into newsrooms, and then you’re seeing old people like me having to learn those types of skills.
I started a blog 18 months ago that I do every morning at ContraCostaTimes.com. I don’t know if anybody reads it, but I still do it. We have all kinds of different skills in our newsroom that we didn’t have two years ago or three years ago. I recently put in a capital request for video cameras so we can start to produce video segments on our Web site. You’re going to start to see a lot of newspaper Web sites going to video.
Magnani: How do you reconcile just writing as a blogger to whoever’s out there every morning versus your traditional role as a journalist?
Lopez: I have to make sure that I have much more of a conversation, an engagement, with the people who are either reading our Web or print product. I’m trying to create engagement and transparency of what I think, why I made a certain decision that appeared on the front page, what someone called and said on my voice mail. Frankly, I sometimes get in trouble for what I put in my blog. But it’s something that I’m learning; it’s all part of trying to be transparent, having a conversation and engaging the readership.
Magnani: The August issue of Vanity Fair had an article by Michael Wolff called “Panic on 43rd Street” about problems at The New York Times, which are similar to the ones we’re talking about here. Wolff suggests that the current weakness of newspapers financially might be increasing their vulnerability to political manipulation. He writes, “During the Bush years, the entire media have been so much easier to threaten because every company is under such relentless shareholder, financial, advertiser and interest-group pressures — media organizations will do anything not to have politicians and prosecutors sniping at them, too.”
I’m wondering if you’ve experienced that kind of intimidation or implied intimidation, if it’s infringing on the traditional role of newspapers to be watchdogs for government and other parts of our society, and how it may be affecting what’s going on.
Lopez: The intimidation comes from the readership that has a very specific mind-set. Anytime I say something about the president in my blog, I guarantee that it will generate comments about me being too liberal — I’m the liberal media. I’m bad; slap my hand because we published a story about the president. People have specific mind-sets when it comes to their politics these days.
But I get it both ways too. I’ve had democrats — very strong democrats — come into my office and yell at me for being too soft on the president in the newspaper. All you do is listen to them. Do they have a valid point? Were we off base on a headline? Did we misplace a story? So you hear what they have to say, and then you’ve got to make a call. We make calls every day about what types of stories we put in the newspaper, where they appear. You can’t be intimidated to the point where you’re not going to print stories in the newspaper or online.
Neuharth: I’m much more worried about Wall Street than the government. Half of the circulation of newspapers in this country is owned by publicly traded companies. Wall Street is like a teenager — it’s all about me, and I want it all now. It’s about profits, and that doesn’t square very well with the ongoing duty and responsibility of newspapers or journalism to let us know what we need to know.
Newspapers make huge amounts of money. On average, 20 cents on the dollar is their profit. Few industries make that much. Smart owners will say to their investors on Wall Street, “We’re not going to make that kind of money now. We’re not going to make it for at least 10 years. We’re going to take those profits, and we’re going to put them into our future. We’re not going to cut back our staffs.” Because what newspapers have more than any other media are reporters. What newspapers can offer that nobody else can is depth. Newspapers can cover more and provide you with more information about [a topic]. Thoroughness is one of the last things that newspapers have a lock on. If you get rid of that because you’ve got to please Wall Street, then you’re in trouble.
However, I don’t know how many owners will be able to say to Wall Street, “If you don’t like our profit margins that are now going to be 10 percent, go buy someone else’s stock.” But that’s what they need to do and then beef up their Web sites.
Magnani: Let’s say Wall Street was satisfied with an 18 percent profit margin, Al Gore had never invented the Internet and none of these other pressures existed. However, you still have that study by the American Society of Newspaper Editors that shows that the average age of a newspaper reader is 55. What do newspapers need to be doing to recapture that younger readership that’s going to sustain newspaper journalism going forward?
Weston: Everywhere I go I’m asked that question when I sit with publishers and the editors from the mainstream and ethnic press. It’s the same problem — readership getting older. Young people read Youth Outlook because they see themselves in it. That is the main hump that the mainstream press has to get over. How do they do it? They should engage more young people. There has to be more investment in the idea of media as youth development. That’s a leap that a lot of mainstream papers won’t make because they don’t know how to deal with young people.
Lopez: He’s absolutely right. Youth want to see themselves in the newspaper, and it’s our responsibility to make sure that happens. We do it in a variety of forms. In 2002, we created a series in the newspaper called “Reality High.” We placed a reporter and a photographer in a high school for a full year and let them tell the daily life of high school students through the kids. We’re doing the same thing right now in a middle school. It even gets more basic than that. Prep sports, youth sports — kids love to see their pictures in the newspaper.
Magnani: Given everything we’ve talked about, what do you think print journalism is going to look like 10 years from now?
Thompson: [Journalism is] going to have many different forms of media as people continue to be mobile.You’re going to have the opportunity to get information any way you want.
I hope journalism is alive and well. If it isn’t, we’ll be living in a different kind of state. That’s not a state I want to live in. Journalism keeps us free. It allows for democracy. It provides a voice that is clearly necessary for us to live the lives we live today.
Lopez: Partnerships between old and new media. You’ll continue to see newspaper companies getting their cost structures in line so that they will thrive. You’ll still get that newspaper on your doorstep every morning if that’s what you prefer, but you can also get information through multiple ways on Web sites and information delivered to you any way you want it.
Weston: Multimedia, multilingual, intergenerational, super local with an eye toward international.
Neuharth: I don’t know. I don’t think any of us knows. The place to look is the major metro papers. They’re the canaries in the coal mine. Those are the ones that have the biggest costs and the most competition, and they’re feeling the squeeze. So what’s going to happen to newspapers as a whole is going to happen to them first.
The question is, Is this an analogy to what happened to the railroads? It used to be if you wanted to travel you traveled by railroads, and the railroad titans thought of themselves as railroad companies rather than transportation companies. That’s why we don’t fly Union Pacific; we fly United.
Whether newspaper owners will think of themselves as providers of information in whatever form, which they’re beginning to do, is the question.
Meet the panel
Chris Lopez was the editor of Contra Costa Times newspapers until Oct. 20. He joined the Times in 2000 after seven years at the Denver Post, where he was part of a team that won the Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the Columbine High School shootings in 1999. At the Post, he also covered other high-profile crime stories such as the murders of JonBenet Ramsey and Matthew Shepard. Under his leadership, the Contra Costa Times has been named the best California newspaper in its circulation category of 200,000 and below in three out of the last four years.
Dan Neuharth, Ph.D., is an award-winning journalist who has worked both sides of the media, as interviewer and interviewee. He has been a reporter for print, broadcast and online media, covered the media business for USA Today, hosted a radio talk show for KSDO-AM in San Diego, and taught journalism at the university level. He has a master’s in journalism from Northwestern University and a doctoral degree in clinical psychology. He is the son of USA Today founder and former Gannett Co. CEO Al Neuharth.
Gary Thompson, APR, is executive vice president and general manager of the West Coast office of Schwartz Communications, a PR firm in San Francisco and Boston with 200 employees and 170 clients, mainly in the health care and technology fields. During his 30-year career with some of the nation’s top PR firms, he has directed the planning and execution of more than 100 major consumer, corporate, crisis communications and government relations campaigns for client companies.
Kevin Weston is editor in chief of Youth Outlook, an award-winning literary journal of youth life in the San Francisco Bay area featuring in-depth reporting that chronicles the world through the eyes and voices of people between the ages of 14 and 25. He is also director of multimedia communications for New America Media (NAM), the country’s first and largest national collaboration of ethnic news organizations.
Peter Magnani (moderator) is senior vice president and director of West Region communications for Bank of America, where he has served in a variety of PR roles over the last 25 years, supporting the company’s businesses and geographic regions, and planning and executing a wide range of financial, corporate, executive and crisis communications programs. A former journalist and occasional stringer and freelance writer for local and national publications, he has taught journalism and public relations in the San Francisco and San Mateo community college districts and at Golden Gate University.
more...
http://www.medialifemagazine.com/artman/publish/article_8237.asp
Big dailies take
record circulation hits
The Los Angeles Times leads list, off 8 percent
By Lisa Snedeker
Oct 31, 2006
The newspaper business, once a lush contributor to Tribune Co. profits, is now on its sell list, following the sale of the corporate jet a few weeks back.
One only has to look at the latest newspaper circulation data, released yesterday by the Audit Bureau of Circulations, to understand why.
America's newspaper circulation woes are worsening, with many showing record losses over the past six months. And the biggest losses by far are at the nation's largest papers, led by the Tribune-owned Los Angeles Times, which fell a record 8 percent for the period ended Sept. 30, to 775,766.
The nation's dailies averaged a decline of 2.8 percent over the period, up from 2.5 percent reported in May for the prior six-month period. That's alarming enough, coming after years in which papers saw six-month declines in the 1 percent range.
But the big papers took the brunt of the hit. Of the top 20, only two, the New York Post and the New York Daily News, posted criculation gains, with the Post up 5.3 percent, to 704,011, finally overtaking the News, which was up 1 percent, to 693,382.
Besides Los Angeles, other big-paper declines include The New York Times, down 3.5 percent, to 1,086,798, Newsday, off 4.9 percent, to 413,579, the Boston Globe, off 6.7 percent, to 386,415, and the Philadelphia Inquirer, off 7.5 percent, to 330,622.
Some of the slide may be attributed to papers trimming circulation in their outer distribution regions to save on costs. But the bulk of it surely is the continuing migration of readers to the internet and other media choices.
These declines will predictably lead to declines in advertising. With fewer readers, the papers will become that much less attractive to advertisers seeking to reach large audiences, and other media will become that much more attractive.
The sharper 2.8 percent circulation decline is consistent with a number of forecasts of accelerating flight of daily newspaper readers, and it comes at a time when papers across the country are experimenting with every imaginable way to stem that flight, with much of it taking place on papers' internet sites. But whether any of this works is still very unclear, and meanwhile layoffs of employees, especially editorial staffers, continue apace.
The one bright note in the ABC data is the gains at the New York Post and Daily News, the fruit of an otherwise bitter circulation battle going on for years.
The Post's gains push it to fifth place among the nation's largest papers, and ahead of not just the News but the The Washington Post in daily circulation.
Staffers are delighted.
"We've been looking forward to this day for a while," Keith Kelly tells Media Life. Kelly covers media for the Post and once worked at the News.
Kelly attributes the circulation spike to a sustained effort to upgrade the Post's editorial. As of late yesterday afternoon, Kelly reports the champagne had not yet begun to flow in the newsroom, but he quipped, "I'm sure Des O'Brien will be putting a few extra bartenders tonight at Langan's," referring to a favorite Post watering hole.
Among the 21 papers with circulations between 250,000 and 500,000, the average decline was 4.1 percent.
For the entire 770 newspapers tracked by ABC, total circulation fell to 43,741,174 from 44,996,002, or 2.8 percent, as compared to the same six-month period a year earlier.
Sunday circulation numbers were even worse. The average circulation for the 619 newspapers reporting for comparable periods was down 3.4 percent, or 47,564,150 from 49,240,886, over the same period a year ago.
Tribune-owned newspapers were among the biggest losers. The 11 papers include, besides the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, Newsday, Baltimore Sun, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Orlando Sentinel and Hartford Courant.
The Baltimore Sun declined by 4.4 percent, to 236,172 daily, and Sundays fell from 418,670 to 380,701, a 9 percent drop. The Hartford Courant's daily circulation dropped 3.9, to 179,066, while Sunday was off by 1.5 percent, to 264,539. The Chicago Tribune showed only slight declines with daily numbers dropping 1.7 percent, to 576,132, and Sunday falling 1.3 percent to 937,907.
Other heavy losses were reported at the Miami Herald, where daily circulation dropped 8.8 percent and Sunday fell 9.1 percent.
"The larger newspapers did post large declines. This was particularly true on Sunday, but while one may at first conclude this is a difference in consumer preferences, for example, readers choosing the web over print, I believe the numbers we are seeing are based on new marketing strategies," said John Murray, vice president of circulation for the Newspaper Association of America.
He says larger papers are now hunkering down and focusing on their highest readership areas that are most relevant to advertisers rather than continuing to spread their coverage far and wide and thin.
He predicts that the strategy will translate into more stable circulation numbers by the next reporting period.
"I would say this is a realignment in what's important, and what is important is holding onto sales and even growing those that have the highest readership value and provide the greatest value to advertisers."
Magnani: Given everything we’ve talked about, what do you think print journalism is going to look like 10 years from now?
Thompson: [Journalism is] going to have many different forms of media as people continue to be mobile.You’re going to have the opportunity to get information any way you want. I hope journalism is alive and well. If it isn’t, we’ll be living in a different kind of state. That’s not a state I want to live in. Journalism keeps us free. It allows for democracy. It provides a voice that is clearly necessary for us to live the lives we live today.
It is the soldier, not the reporter,
Who has given us freedom of the press.
It is the soldier, not the poet,
Who has given us freedom of speech.
It is the soldier, not the campus organizer,
Who has given us the freedom to demonstrate.
It is the soldier,
Who salutes the flag,
Who serves beneath the flag,
And whose coffin is draped by the flag,
Who allows the protester to burn the flag.
Admiral Jeremiah Denton
There, fixed. The Repulsive hasn't been anything like its old Pulliam self since it was sold to Gannett and put Keven Willey (Nappy's best gal-pal) in charge.
Great post!
TUESDAY'S LETTERS: Readers Weigh in on Circ Declines at Major Papers
By E&P Staff
Published: October 31, 2006 12:15 PM ET
NEW YORKIn today's letters, readers weigh in on circulation declines at major newspapers, and speculate as to why.
***
Circulation Falls and Falls -- but Why?
With all the confusion and headlines concerning circulation declines, I believe that the primary question is not being addressed. The question that is posed endlessly is "is circulation declining?" to which the answer is "yes". The bigger question is "are newspapers losing their relevance?" to which the answer is "no" considering the shift to multimedia delivery of its content. The real question should be "to which audience(s) are newspapers still relevant?".
Consumers clearly still rely on newspapers, whether printed or online (which meets the relevance question). Local and national advertisers, however, are finding other means of reaching their targeted consumers. Therefore, the angst over declining circulation obscures the point in today's marketplace. Without increasing appeal to advertisers, newspapers have a dark outlook. So, the question becomes "in a world where electronic delivery is at least as important as print, how do newspapers increase their appeal to advertisers?" It would be very helpful to me if Editor&Publisher would address this question consistently and thoroughly.
Joe Mynatt
Charlotte, N.C.
In your article yesterday, you attributed the continued slide in newspaper readership to "the effects of the Internet," with no discussion of other reasons. I, for one, have cancelled my subscriptions to three daily newspapers (one local, two national) in the last six months. I did so for one reason -- the content. When I want "news," I simply want facts ... the unvarnished, complete accounting of the event. I find it offensive when news articles go beyond those basics and attempt to instill in readers how to feel, who to blame, and other editorial "asides" that are purportedly objective. I am smart enough to draw my own conclusions.
I also grew tired of the shameless devices used by major papers in their clumsy attempts to further a particular viewpoint. Statements such as, "some experts think," or "most agree" or "recent studies have shown" frequently lack any details as to who the "experts" are, their qualifications, their affiliations, etc. A "startling new study" might merit the front page of every major newspaper, without anyone taking the time to point out that the underlying research is not sound. Very seldom are readers directed to where they can review the underlying study or research it its entirety.
What the Internet has done is empower the masses to conduct their own research. Ten years ago if a particular newspaper wanted to, for example, selectively includes or omits relevant facts in a specific story in an effort to lead readers to a particular conclusion, they could get away with it. Now, the facts are available. A newspaper may still try to selectively report only certain stories, or report half-truths about the ones on which they do cover, but they do so at the peril of being exposed. That is the point where I have arrived ... I'm tired of the editorial games and biases that pervade most major papers. I choose to no longer pay for what essentially amounts to being manipulated.
So, I suppose your basic assertion that the Internet is responsible for declining newspaper subscriptions is factually correct, but to ignore the dynamics of why is a gross oversimplification. It is not like readers are presented two, equal choices: either read a daily newspaper or use the internet for news, and the internet has eked ahead. Instead, I feel as though what the internet has done is gradually expose most newspapers for what they really are. Readers like me are now aware and have acted accordingly.
Anyway, I appreciate your time. I simply wanted you to know why some readers have stopped subscribing. To chalk mine up to "the Internet" is a huge oversimplification and just not accurate. If my local daily had any modicum of impartiality, I would still be a subscriber, even with the internet in existence.
Gregory S. Mihaly
Houston, Texas
You referenced the Baltimore Sun in your recent article with this quote, "While daily circulation stabilized compared to past reporting periods at The Sun in Baltimore, down 4.4% to 236,172, Sunday took a massive hit. Circulation on that day dropped 9% to 380,701."
Just so you'll know, we have tried every technique we can think of to CANCEL our subscription to the Baltimore Sun, and guess what? It keeps coming. We are not paying for the newspaper and haven't paid for it for over two years. A year or so ago, it started coming three days a week as part of a promotion with our local community paper, but we canceled that newspaper also when the publisher said that we couldn't separate the two. We are convinced that they are falsely keeping their distribution numbers up by refusing to cancel subscriptions! We are considering standing on the curb at 5 a.m. to tell the delivery man to stop leaving our papers.
Do you know who audits the Baltimore Sun's circulation? We would like to inform them of our situation.
Craig Price
I just read your article "Analysis: Why Circulation Keeps Heading South." The progression away from print and towards the Web as a prime source for information is one dynamic in the decline of newspaper readership.
But it is also true that consolidation in media ownership and a more marketing-centric approach to newspaper content also serve to devalue newspapers. It could be that I am romanticizing the recent past, but there are some things newspapers can do better than other media that it seems like they are doing less of. Long-form, thoughtful reporting is hard to read on-line. In my own hands-on experience with newspapers, many papers seem to be doing less of this because it is first of all expensive and second of all runs counter to a philosophy of "breaking" news and appealing to the prurient interest of readers.
Newspapers likely build and market their online presences to both consumers and advertisers, but also rebuilt their images as impartial participants in society, where one could go for information and analysis unbesmirched by our flash-over-substance media environment.
The tactile experience of reading a newspaper is sublime, inimitable experience. This experience -- and the depth of understanding that is possible to convey in print -- will keep newspapers in the black if they are marketed as virtues rather than forgotten.
The virtue of substance can be leveraged online as well. Article archives are the killer application for newspapers online, and papers do well to offer this information for free. But deeper dives into data behind stories, or deeper search functionality, I believe will prove to be value-addes services that the information-hungry will happily pay for, or see as excellent value-adds for print subscriptions.
Charles Rathmann
Milwaukee, Wis.
For the Record
Just wanted to drop you a quick note to let you know that we appreciated the mention in the article: Hat's Off! Circ Gains Reported by Smaller Papers in Today's FAS-FAX Published: October 30, 2006. I also wanted to point out that the name of our paper was incorrect. [Editor: This has since been corrected.] I am aware that most of those listed were done by (city -- state -- name) but in our case the city was incorrect. We should have been listed as Bridgeport (CT) CT Post or at least Bridgeport (CT) Post. Fairfield is one of the counties we serve and/or one of the towns in our market area but not our "home" town.
I realize this may seem like a very small issue but to all of us at the Connecticut Post in Bridgeport, CT it was a little disappointing not to be recognized correctly.
Andy McCallihan
Connecticut Post
Director of Circulation
E&P Staff (letters@editorandpublisher.com)
Links referenced within this article
circulation declines
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003316429
recent article
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003316421
Analysis: Why Circulation Keeps Heading South
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003316825
Hat's Off! Circ Gains Reported by Smaller Papers
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003316770
letters@editorandpublisher.com
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/mailto:letters@editorandpublisher.com">http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/mailto:letters@editorandpublisher.com
Find this article at:
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003317739
Dallas Morning News circulation was not listed, but it is DOWN 13%!
Ah yes the Sunday circulation for the LA times is down a bit less than the other days. That would be those who get it for the TV guide and comics.
http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=50548&art_type=10
Black, White And Web All Over: Print Circ Dives, But Online Papers Prosper
by Erik Sass, Thursday, Nov 2, 2006 8:00 AM ET
JUST WHEN IT LOOKED LIKE it couldn't get any worse for the nation's big daily newspapers, the hits just keep on coming. During the six months ending this September, total daily circulation sank 2.8%, compared to the same period last year. Sunday circ dropped 3.4%. The silver lining: newspaper Web sites are prospering.
Although small, these figures are noticeable print increases from the last FAS-FAX report, which covered the six-month period up to March 2006, and showed daily circulation sinking 2.5% from last year, and Sunday circulation down 3.1%.
In light of the accelerating rate of decline, media buyers and planners agreed that the print industry is losing ground--fast. Scott Kruse, executive vice president and director of print media for MediaCom, noted: "It's discouraging, but it's likely to continue." He added that newspapers are on a "slippery slope" in terms of audience retention, suggesting that losses may accelerate in coming years.
Ken Doctor, an analyst with Outsell, Inc. who advises the newspaper industry, agreed: "It's just a raft of bad numbers for the whole week. There's no question the decline is getting steeper." According to Doctor, "The most troubling thing is the 3.2% decline on Sunday, because Sunday tends to be the bellwether for advertising revenue."
In the current environment, size is no guarantee of success. High-volume papers are the most vulnerable. According to a new report by Merrill Lynch newspaper maven Lauren Rich Fine released Tuesday, performance varied by size, with larger newspapers doing worse. While papers with circulation between 40,000 and 100,000 posted daily and Sunday declines of 2.4% and 2.8%, respectively, "papers with 100,000-500,000 in circulation were hit hard with 3.6% and 4.2% declines."
The rate of growth in newspapers' online properties, however, is accelerating, according to monthly measurements of third-quarter results compiled by Nielsen//NetRatings and released by the Newspaper Association of America (NAA). The growth rates are especially impressive, given newspaper Web sites' already large base audience.
NAA figures for July, August and September 2006 showed respective growth rates of 26.9%, 22.1% and 22.8%, compared to the same months last year, for an average 23.9% quarterly growth rate. That's almost double the average percentage growth rate last year, when July, August and September 2005 registered 8.2%, 15.7%, and 15.8% growth over the same months in 2004--a quarterly average of 13.3%.
While online readers aren't monetized at nearly the same rate print readers are, the clear popularity of newspaper Web sites holds out promise for the industry during a time of transition. But problems remain. According to Kruse, newspapers need to do more in bundling online sales with print. "It's been very siloed on the selling front, and they're figuring out how they can sell it better," he says. "But they also need to figure out how to aggregate the data across the newspaper and online sites."
Meanwhile, Doctor added, "they need to get a heck of a lot more traffic to those sites to come anywhere near balancing the losses they're getting on the print products." Overall, however, Doctor was pessimistic for the short term: "Newspapers are one of things that are clearly in decline in this business cycle. The nice word for it is 'mature,' but it's clearly in decline." As a result, Doctor said, "there's not much they can do in 2007 to reverse this trend."
Quagmire!
Pray for W and Our Troops
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