Newspaper print has been fading for some time now, but as of late the print is becoming barely visible.
The days of waking up in the morning and reading the daily paper while you sit at the kitchen table and drink a cup of coffee are long gone. Nowadays it’s easier to grab your laptop or iPhone while on the go and read about the latest news on one of the countless Web sites that offer it for free.
It seems like the decline of the newspaper has been a long-coming, slow-moving train that’s about to hit at any second. With the world turning to online and on-the-go devices for almost every information-gathering activity, including reading the latest news, searching for jobs or finding an apartment, it’s a wonder this didn’t happen sooner.
The light at the end of the tunnel turned dark when many prominent papers began having trouble bringing in ad revenue. No advertiser wants to pay for ad space in a paper that nobody is reading when they can just as easily advertise online, and nobody wants to pay for a paper when they can find the information online for free.
As if it’s not enough that the industry is on its last leg, the newspaper business hasn’t exactly been squeaky-clean as of late:
- The McClatchy Company – the third largest newspaper company in the country – announced its Q1 2009 earnings on April 23. The company reported a net loss of $37.7 million, or 45 cents per share, compared to a net loss of $993,000, or 1 cent per share, during Q1 2008. Further, the company saw its revenue decline by 25.1 percent, coming in at $365.6 million. Advertising revenue came in at $284.7 million, a decrease of 29.5 percent from last year. On top of that, the company was recently threatened to be de-listed from the Stock Exchange because its $45 million market value fell below the $75 million minimum. Aside from owning 30 daily newspapers and 50 non-daily newspapers, McClatchy owns 14.4 percent of CareerBuilder.com and 25.6 percent of Classified Ventures.
- The Boston Globe had received word that The New York Times Company would close the paper unless workers agreed to pay cuts, the cessation of benefits and a contract provision that gives certain employees guaranteed lifetime employment. The Times needed to find $20 million in savings from the Globe. At the beginning of May, the company reached a tentative deal with the Boston Newspaper Guild, which agreed to a substantial pay cut, unpaid furloughs and modifications to lifetime job guarantee provisions. The Globe will be saved for now, but it’s thought the paper could lose $85 million this year.
- In March, The Tribune Company was subpoenaed by the Labor Department because of its employee stock plan. The company disclosed the subpoena in a bankruptcy court filing, saying it had handed over the documents. Questions surrounding the company relate to the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, a law meant to protect retirement plans. That stock plan was an important part of Sam Zell’s $8.2 billion deal – including $13 billion in debt – to purchase the company. Zell intended the stock plan to become the largest owner of the company, meaning it would avoid paying corporate taxes.
- It was reported earlier this year that about 100 staff workers at The Tribune Company petitioned L.A. Times Publisher Eddy Hartenstein, objecting to a large front page ad for the NBC show Southland. The ad includes a column resembling a news article, which some staffers felt was equivalent to “whoring out” the front page and blurring the line between paid and reported content.
And those are just a few examples of the turmoil the newspaper industry as a whole has been facing.
The downward newspaper trend has many people who are used to the tangible item wondering how they will get their information once papers are gone. Who will be there to report the news and show us what jobs, cars and apartments are available? Will traditional reporters be out of work as bloggers (many who get their information from newspapers) take up the helm, or will some new not-yet-thought-of form of media emerge?
One solution to this problem may be the invention of “hyperlocal Web sites.” Several Web start-up companies are creating local news sites that let users find out what’s happening closest to them. These sites often don’t involve traditional journalists, but collect links to articles and blogs and supplement the information with data from local governments and other sources. These sites can inform users about everything from an arrest in the neighborhood to a home for sale to a good restaurant.
The New York Times recently created a list of the most popular hyperlocal sites, which include:
- EveryBlock – This Chicago-based company of six has created hyperlocal sites for 11 cities, which include links to news articles, blog posts, data feeds from city governments, crime reports, restaurant inspections and notices of road construction and film shoots. The company received a $1.1 million grant from the Knight Foundation.
- Outside.in – This site publishes no original content, but gathers articles and blog posts and scans them for geographical cues, such as the name of a restaurant, or indicative words like “at” or “near.” An iPhone application of the site allows users to read articles about events within 1,000 feet of where they are standing. The company, based in Brooklyn, licenses feeds of links from big news sites looking to deepen their local coverage. So far, venture capital firms have invested $7.5 million in the company, hoping it will be able to cut deals with newspapers and have their sales teams sell neighborhood-focused ads for print and the Web.
- Placeblogger – This site aggregates blogs that report on the “lived experience.” It includes blogs that report on local, political and social news, including political issues, community news, restaurant reviews, the music scene, architecture and visual arts. The site uses blogs run by citizen journalists and business owners. The site was founded in 2006 by Lisa Williams, creator of H2oTown, who also is affiliated with the MIT Media Lab. In 2007, Placeblogger received a one-year Knight News Challenge grant to improve the site and continue its mission.
- Patch – Based in New York, this site was founded by AOL Chief Tim Armstrong. Patch hires one reporter from each town, who goes to school board meetings and coffee shops with a camera and laptop. The sites solicit content from readers, as well as articles from other sites, event listings, volunteer opportunities, business directories and lists of local information. The company has created sites for three towns in New Jersey and plans to complete dozens of sites by the end of the year.
So far, the Knight Foundation has backed 35 local Web experiments. And it’s not just readers who are getting in on the online action. Some papers, like the Rocky Mountain News, have simply shut down, while others, like the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, have stopped printing and focused on Web content.
Of course, we’re hoping blogs will stick around to help fill the gaps that newspapers leave behind. Whether or not blogs have a certain lifespan has yet to be seen, and although some sources have touted that blogging is dead, the online medium has done nothing but expand since its inception. Today you can find blogs on every topic, written by any type of person. Companies use blogs to promote their services and products. Individuals use blogs to make their thoughts known. Even the President blogs.
It also will be interesting to see what happens to the next generation of journalists. Will print media still be an option for students? What will become of all the prestigious universities that boast strong journalism schools and employ Pulitzer prize-winning professors who bleed ink? How will they adapt and prepare future writers for a world in which newspapers might not exist.
Whether its blogs, social media or hyperlocal Web sites, it’s imminent that something else will have to move to the forefront sooner rather than later, as the newspaper sees its heyday come to a definitive end.
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May 19th, 2009 at 2:12 am
i won’t miss it
May 20th, 2009 at 12:15 pm
How many of these papers that are in trouble are supported by unions? that’s the major problem. others that have gone under, like the Rocky Mountain News, they were one of two papers in that town. the stronger paper survived.
May 20th, 2009 at 1:53 pm
Jen –
Nice, comprehensive piece on the state of print journalism.
Print newspapers shot themselves in both feet when they decided to give their content away online and lost focus on what their customers wanted. Instead, they measured success by the number of Pulitzer prizes they won.
I hope the industry can turn it around, and save itself. There still are a lot of people like me who love that morning paper and coffee, and I’m not sure bloggers are ready to fill the void that the loss of a local paper would leave.
I’d like to think our journalism schools, like St. Bonaventure, are preparing their students for the future. I have a daughter attending Ithaca’s Park School of Communications, and she tells me they’re being given the skills to leapfrog to alternative media. At the end of the day, we’ll always need people who can communicate, no matter what the medium.
May 21st, 2009 at 5:37 pm
I thought you might appreciate an “open letter ad” NAA recently distributed:
The Reality About Newspapers
In the past two years, the newspaper business has faced unprecedented financial challenges. The economic meltdown and advertising recession have hit our industry hard. But make no mistake about this: newspaper media – print and digital – remains strong and will emerge from the current environment an even stronger multi-platform force.
Here is the reality about newspapers today:
1. Myth: No one reads newspapers anymore.
Reality: More than 104 million adults read a print newspaper every day, more than 115 million on Sundays. That’s more people than watch the Super Bowl (94 million), American Idol (23 million) or that typically watch the late local news (65 million).
2. Myth: Young people no longer read newspapers.
Reality: 61 percent of 18-24 year olds and 25-34 year olds read a newspaper in an average week and 65 percent of them read a newspaper or visited a newspaper website in the past week.
3. Myth: Newspaper readership is tanking.
Reality: Average weekday newspaper readership declined a mere 1.8 percent between 2007 and 2008, and about 7 percent since its peak in 2002. Compare that to the 10 percent decline seen in the prime time TV audience in 2007 alone. Meanwhile, newspapers’ Web audience has grown nearly 75 percent since 2004, to 73 million unique visitors a month.
4. Myth: Many newspapers are going out of business.
Reality: Newspapers, as individual businesses, by and large remain profitable enterprises – with operating margins that Wall Street analysts estimate will generally average in the low to mid teens during 2009. While that may be down from historical highs, such margins would be the envy of many other industries today. As consultant John Morton said in a recent American Journalism Review article, “Overall, the beleaguered newspaper industry’s financial health has been weakened but remains healthy by most measures. In this environment, that is an achievement.”
5. Myth: Newspaper advertising doesn’t work.
Reality: Google’s own research shows that 56 percent of consumers researched or purchased products they saw in a newspaper. Google also says that newspaper advertising reinforces online ads: 52 percent are more likely to buy products if they see it in the paper.
6. Myth: There are no creative options in newspapers.
Reality: Newspaper advertising options have exploded and now include shape and polybag ads, post-it notes, “we prints,” shingle spadeas, scented ads, taste-it ads, glow-in-the-dark, belly bands and temporary tattoos, as well as event and database marketing, behavioral targeting, e-mail blasts, e-newsletters and more.
7. Myth: If newspapers close, you will still be able to get news from other sources.
Reality: Newspapers make a larger investment in journalism than any other medium. Most of the information you read from “aggregators” and other media originated with newspapers. No amount of effort from local bloggers, non-profit news entities or TV news sources could match the depth and breadth of newspaper-produced content.
This is not a portrait of a dying industry. It’s illustrative of transformation. Newspapers are reinventing themselves to focus on serving distinct audiences with a variety of products, and delivering those audiences effectively to advertisers across media channels.
For more on the power of newspaper media, visit http://www.newspapermedia.com.
July 1st, 2009 at 5:35 pm
Great post. As newspapers drift, the local search online is positioning to take the local communities by storm. As mobile communication companies follow the footsteps of the leader iPhone, we should see more people using cellphones to search locally online for services and products.