Newspapers brought on their own woes, media critic says
The Washington Post on Sunday noted the demise of the Rocky Mountain News and used the occasion to offer its readers a primer on the sad state of the newspaper industry.
In an article titled “Under Weight of Its Mistakes, Newspaper Industry Staggers,” media columnist Howard Kurtz summarizes:
Why a once-profitable industry suddenly seems as outmoded as America’s automakers is a tale that involves arrogance, mistakes, eroding trust and the rise of a digital world in which newspapers feel compelled to give away their content.
Later in the article:
At a time when such companies as General Motors, Home Depot and Citigroup are ordering mass layoffs, the loss of 12,000 newspaper jobs last year may seem small. But the industry’s woes — plunging advertising revenue, declining circulation and burgeoning high-tech competition — seem to be worsening by the week. And that has critics questioning why newspaper companies didn’t adapt to the Internet more quickly.
“Years ago,” says Jeff Jarvis, a blogger who has worked for the Chicago Tribune, the San Francisco Examiner and the New York Daily News, “why didn’t we take more aggressive action and use the power of our megaphone to promote the product and change the organization?” The answer is that newspapers were “a cash cow,” he says. “We thought too much about trying to preserve what we had.”
The Washington Post article is among those linked to by Jim Romenesko today in his media newsletter on Poynter.org. A couple others note that newspapers have faced challenges before. From an article on David Warsh’s economicprinciples.com:
1. Newspapers have survived three big challenges to their authority: the rise of general interest magazines from the1890s, of radio news from the 1920s, and television news from the 1950s. Each time newspapers got on top of the competition by entering the new businesses themselves, and by extending their coverage of their rivals’ spheres.
And from a media column — “Problems, promise for papers predicted“ — by Phil Rosenthal on chicagotribune.com:
“There seems to be a growing public and advertiser feeling that newspapers are dying,” the man told the American Newspaper Publishers Association. “It’s only a question of when, not if.”
That’s a sentiment the newspaper industry hears a lot and has heard for a long time, probably well before Ben B. Smylie offered that warning to the publishers in 1982. An exec with a Chicago-based outfit called Keycom, Smylie was encouraging the nation’s newspapers to shift more resources toward “electronic newspapers” available through home computers.
Steve Parker is the deputy managing editor for news, and oversees the Post-Dispatch's front page. STLtoday's online news editors are on his newsroom team. Parker has been at the paper since September 1980. 
Newspapers have brought on their own woes, but not in the way generally imagined. The sphere of the modern newspaper up to about 1990 had been complete, accurate, and relatively unbiased coverage of local, regional and national news. Because of the relatively cheap medium, newspapers had the leisure to examine events and issues from many sides. Newspapers often had strident editorial sides, but they were discrete from the reporting side.
Editorial writers came from the reporter corps, only after a significant inculcation in journalism. The owner or publisher was more than not a newspaperman as well as a business man whose skill lay in coordinating the advertising and editorial sides of the business. Papers and their stances may have been damned, but they were respected at the same time. Even the newspaper chains, with headquarters in some big city, knew that to quell the individual stance of the local paper was to invite financial disaster.
The fall of the paper began when it started to imitate TV coverage. A USA Today style paper alienated as many people as it brought in. Things have deteriorated to the point there is no longer any substantial wall between news and commentary; where news reports, to be “timely,” are incomplete regarding details and unproofed. Local coverage of city hall, local businesses and the police beat are sketchy at best. Commentary and features have crowded out news. And subscribers and advertisers have left in droves, since the paper is not providing the news they want or need.
My town just lost its local paper (which was owned by an out of state conglomerate). We have no area website. How we will watch our city hall, find out about local events, candidates for office, or just plain civic goings on is anyone’s guess at this point. Maybe we will go back to pieces of paper on sticks by the side of the road, or spraypaint on the rock bluff.
Let’s start with the false premise: “once profitable.”
Newspapers in the aggregate are STILL profitable on an operating basis. They’re just not profitable enough to service the debt that’s been loaded on them by the Avista, McClatchy and, yes, Lee folks.
The newspaper business model was predicated on a near-monopoly of local news and advertising. When that monopoly failed, as all monopolies eventually do, there went the business model. It was great while it lasted. But well-run businesses adjust. And the better-run newspapers will.
While I tire of the conservative rant against the MSM, it seems rather straight forward that if you antagonize half your potential market with views opposed to their own they will in time find an alternative. Technology has presented them with that ability.
I don’t think this is entirely the current situation, but it hasn’t helped print journalism at a time when they need every reader they can get.
st. louie mo is correct. The left-leaning (or should I say falling over) papers have antagonzied half of their customers by refusing to report news in an objective and fair manner. The Post Dispatch is one of the worst (Behind the NY Times). I cancelled my subscription last year after seeing the Obama love fest. I will never put another dime in the PD pockets. I occasionally read the paper online, but will NEVER support any company that advertises in the Post.