After reading some posts at the Atlantic and Slate about the impending doom of the newspaper industry, and specifically the ostensibly ill-fated New York Times, I feel I’ve got to come to the defense of the newspaper.
As these two pieces have approached it, you’d think the newspaper, and print media in general, have no merit at all when compared to the web. But this is arguably not true, and a gross simplification of a more complex problem. Sadly, the people who’ve argued the web allows cheaper, faster, more demographically-appealing news coverage are right. But, because they look at consumer trends alone, they’re wrong about the roots of the problem facing papers today.
That is, the web isn’t killing papers with its competitive advantages. The web is killing papers by beating them over the head with their own cockiness. First, newspapers they’re always the purest, best source for news–and this is sometimes true, but more because of the deep pockets of paper financiers than because newspapers employ English majors and journalism grads. To say you need more than a sense of fairness, a knack for clarity, and a smidge of brevity to succeed in the reporting business is only a partial truth: but the flip-side of this expression, the one that says only nimrods work for online outlets, is false. Newspapers employ good purveyors of the written word, and so do web sites.
But the thing that’s killing newspapers right now isn’t a disparity in newsmaking power: In fact, they can get the news to their web sites as fast, or faster, than the most well-informed blog or Slate. Actually the real problem in the paper business lies in the dimishing value of print advertising to potential advertisers. The web has a near-zero production cost when compared to the composing costs of a newspaper. This means advertisers aren’t required to spend as much money on the web to get the same mind share in return, at least in theory.
Furthermore, content management techniques on the web outstrip any current CM thinking in the print periodical industry. The web is a cheaper, faster output mechanism that doesn’t require QuarkXpress or InDesign labor, doesn’t require expensive inks and press upkeep, and doesn’t impose a diesel bill for distribution. Yet these issues alone don’t undermine the success of the newspaper. Remember, newspapers still think they are all-in better than web sites. Cockiness is at the heart of the matter.
The web also empowers the news preferences of the consumer, something newspapers have struggled with. Lifestyle nonsense doesn’t matter to the guy who wants the business section and real estate doesn’t matter to the single twenty-one year-old. The web solves this by putting the end-user in command of his news consumption preferences. Of course, it does so at the expense of the tactile pleasure of handling and reading the news from the printed page. While sentimental, this can’t be over-valued.
That said, it’s easy to pick on papers because of what the’re bad at. But there are still free rags that turn a profit. And there are still monthlies that turn a profit. I write for several of them. There are also small-market dailies that break even or make a small profit by concentrating on the news that is hyperlocal in nature: high school sports, local arts, and the like.
But if the Times and the small-market news shop alike are going to be in business in 10 years, it’s going to have to be online. The boomers will start dying and the diminishing value of print advertising will so burden the print industry that the web will be, for some shops, their only option.
Hopefully, my friends in the print industry recognize this long enough before it happens that survival is still an option. The newspaper industry must first recognize that classified advertising is not the model of the future but of the past. Paying $40 for something you can do on EBay or Craig’s List isn’t going to work any more. Moreover, display advertising can continue to work but only if newspapers learn how to subsidize print production costs using the web. This is a difficult proposition at best, since the web itself has no physical production costs to speak of.
Newspapers: here are your keys to survival. 1. Keep it local. 2. Play the web game and learn how commerce works online. Classified advertising is a dying ilk. 3. If print production and daily delivery remain close to profitable, find out who your customers are. If they’re over 50, by and large, it’s time to move online for good.
I hate to say it. I really do.
