On Native Ground
NEWSPAPERS AREN'T DYING, BUT THEY MAY YET COMMIT SUICIDE
by Randolph T. Holhut
American Reporter Correspondent
Dummerston, Vt.
Printable version of this story (Related)
DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- If a casual reader of newspapers spent a few weeks reading Jim Romenesko's Web site of newspaper news and gossip, he would come to the conclusion that print journalism is having a nervous breakdown.
The endless parade of layoffs, buyouts and cutbacks at many
newspapers is depressing. Circulation is steadily declining and fewer and
fewer people read the paper-and-ink version of the news.
But don't believe that it means that newspapers are doomed.
For starters, newspaper profit margins put most other businesses to
shame. On average, a well-run newspaper makes a 20 percent annual profit,
or about double that of the average Fortune 500 company.
Nearly every newspaper in America operates as a monopoly. This is
especially true in smaller markets, such as where I live and work in
southern Vermont.
Television news crews rarely visit my area unless there is a major
event. Radio news barely exists, save for statewide coverage from Vermont
Public Radio and one overworked newsman at our last remaining
independently-owned commercial radio station. There is a lively local
citizens' journalism Website. The public access cable channel tapes the
meetings of the various town boards. But for the most part, people here
still turn to the local newspaper as their primary source of local news.
The monopoly in news also carries over into advertising. In most
places where the newspaper is the only game in town for local news, it is
also the dominant medium for local advertising. Craigslist and Monster.com
don't have a very large presence in Vermont. Ebay is a pain to use if you
don't have broadband Internet service, which is still a rumor in much of
rural America. If you're trying to sell something or looking to buy
something, chances are you're going to use a newspaper.
As fluffy as many newspapers have become, they remain the only news
organizations with the resources to do real reporting. It is well-established
that virtually every other news medium piggybacks on the work of newspapers.
Read the blogs, listen to public radio or watch the nightly news, and you'll
quickly see that much of what they're reporting has its genesis in a story
from The New York Times , The Washington Post , U.S.A Today or one
of the other major newspapers around the country.
Much as people like to gripe about their local newspaper, it is
usually seen as the most trusted source of information available. This
trust and goodwill springs from the established newsgathering
infrastructure. People still depend on newspapers for the depth and breadth
of information that other mediums still can't provide.
Outside of the cities, I believe that newspapers will continue to
thrive. Their monopoly positions ensure that they will be profitable, even
in the face of the Internet. That's because, for all the hype about the
wonders of the Web, most people still prefer to hold a paper-and-ink
summary of the day's news in their hands, to be consumed at one's own
leisure without being tethered to a computer.
This is not to say all is wonderful in newspapering.
The biggest source of problems in the business right now is Wall
Street. When a newspaper becomes a publicly-traded business, it becomes
beholden to shareholders who don't care about what goes in newspapers as
long as a high profit margin can be maintained.
When times get hard and that 20 percent (or in some cases, 30 or
even 40 percent) profit margin can't be achieved, investors demand
cost-cutting. And that is achieved by getting rid of reporters and editors
and putting less news in the paper.
If you wonder why some of the biggest newspapers in the country are
seeing steep declines in circulation, that is the reason why. It's no
different from putting 1.75 quarts of ice cream in a carton and selling it
for the same price that a half-gallon carton used to sell for. Give the
readers less and charge them the same (or sometimes more) for the
newspaper, and the readers will start going elsewhere for news.
No business ever became successful by giving consumers less for
their money. You can't expect people to keep paying for a crappy newspaper
when they can get all the crap they want for free on tv, radio and the Web.
You may achieve profit in the short term, but over time, you will
eventually lose market share and ultimately go out of business.
I've been in journalism a long time, from the last gasp of
typewriters, teletype machines and paste-up, to PCs, T-1 lines and
pagination. And I been hearing talk about the demise of newspapers for
almost as long as I've been in the business. Yet newspapers survive as
highly profitable enterprises.
Despite all the recent scandals, newspapers remain the most trusted
source of news. Certainly, they remain the most comprehensive source of
news. The technology for news gathering and distribution continues to
change, but it still comes down gathering facts, verifying them, arranging
them so that they are accurate, interesting and understandable and getting
that information into the reader's hands - be it on paper or a computer
screen.
The only thing that will kill papers is the greed of the people who
own them. The quest for ever-higher profits leads to watered-down,
cheapened newspapers, a strategy that ultimately comes back to bite those
who think that less is more. Less is always less, and expecting people to
believe otherwise is a good way to run a business into the ground.
Randolph T. Holhut has been a journalist in New England for more
than 25 years. He edited "The George Seldes Reader" (Barricade Books). He
can be reached at randyholhut@yahoo.com.
Copyright 2007 Joe Shea (Related) The American Reporter. All Rights Reserved.
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