The End Of The Daily Newspaper

[DFW HOYA]

Sadly, here it comes: the Detroit News and Detroit Free Press are ending daily home delivery in an attempt to lower costs. What it will do, of course, is to destroy itself.

In the newspaper business, this is akin to that scene in the various Titanic movies where, after the water has filled the lower decks and the passengers nervously await help on the main deck, the hull of the ship takes that sudden lurch upward before it begins its inevitable slide into the sea.

online.wsj.com/article_email/SB122911296051802459-lMyQjAxMDI4MjE5MjExMTIyWj.html

And in other news, here's a media prediction that the venerable Newsweek magazine will not live to see 2010.

blog.newser.com/post/2008/12/12/Newsweek-Dies.aspx

[Elvado]

Good riddance to that liberal rag if it actually goes...

[DFW HOYA]

Here are the various business models that await a newspaper industry that, like GM and Ford, saw the future and chose to look away.

1. Move to 100% online--lower costs, even less revenues. Currently in place at the Kentucky Post and the Christian Science Monitor, could be the future at the SF Chronicle by next year .

2. Newsstand sales in print, no home delivery, everything else online--might work in New York or Chicago, but nowhere else.

3. Print a Sunday edition, no weekday print, everything else online--keeps what's left of the retaill and "coupon" ad business, but kills circulation and doesn't stop the bleeding.

4. Double the price of home delivery and make it a prestige product--maybe the NY Times or the WPost could do this, but few others could. Would you pay $2.50 a day for the Times or the Post? Some would, most would not.

5. Consolidate papers into statewide products (e.g., Charlotte Observer, Greeensboro N&R, and Raleigh N&O all print basically the same edition)

6. Become a free daily hawked on the streets, everything else online (the Examiner papers are there already).

7. Lock the doors.

Unless you've got an owner that just doesn't care how much it loses (see "Washington Times"), none of these are good options for newspapers' long term future.

As for the newsmagazines, Newsweek is probably gone, US News becomes a brand of specialty publications (America's Best Colleges, etc."), and Time becomes a bi-weekly competing with the Economist.

[theexorcist]

I was in an airport killing time yesterday, and looked at a Time magazine. What a shell of its former self - sixty pages, maybe? And the cover was a fluff piece on lists.

There's a place for the printed word (at least until Kindle V7.0). It's probably not the best place for daily local news, but Newsweek has a business model.

[Nevada Hoya]

As the son of a newspaper man (and consequently went to GU via the wages of such), the future looks indeed bleak for the print versions of the newspapers. There is still enjoyment (at least for me) in reading the local paper at the breakfast table. And there is no substitute for reading the NY Times print version, both daily and Sunday (this includes doing the XWord puzzle, especially on Sundays). My comments are from one who was brought up on the print dailies, so it is hard to me to give it up.

[Bando]

I think newspaper ownership consolidation can work, but I think Tribune Co. did it completely the wrong way. Ideally here's how such a thing should work:

- Consolidate the national and foreign desks, and print its articles in all company papers (with the Tribune Co., this should have stayed with the LA Times. The Baltimore Sun et al. do not need their own national reporters).

- Similarly, leave a few reporters for local sports coverage, but consolidate the rest of national sports. If a team in a company city is in the playoffs, use that paper's coverage in all papers.

- Again, you don't need a separate movie/music/arts reviewer for each paper. The same movies come out all across the country.

- And again, most of your op-ed content can be the same across papers.

- The only thing you don't cut is local coverage, which is your only comparative advantage.

Tribune Co. seemed to be cutting staff and resources to meet each year's revenue projections without having a long-term consolidation strategy. This is a shame, because we lost a great national paper (The LA Times) and a number of great regional papers in the process. As it stands now, there might be a day where the only papers still around are the WaPo, the NY Times, and the WSJ.

[AustinHoya03]

The comment I am about to make won't stop newspapers from dying, and will probably (no, definitely) sound like a curmudgeonly rant. But here it goes anyway:

A big reason newspapers are dying is that few Americans care more about city council meetings or the new exhibit at the local museum than what foreign leader the President mentioned today or what is happening at the Whitney next month when they'll be in NYC on business.

Many of us think we've edified ourselves if we've recently read about the impending rotation of the EU Presidency or the re-politicization of the Balkans. But if you don't have any clue what's going on in your neighborhood or your city, you're a moron.

I'll continue to pay for daily delivery of my local paper (and the Sunday NYT IF THEY WOULD FREAKING DELIVER TO MY HOUSE) for as long as possible, and I'll be happy to pay a higher rate when the morons force prices through the roof.

[theexorcist]

Dec 15, 2008 22:45:44 GMT -5 AustinHoya03 said:

The comment I am about to make won't stop newspapers from dying, and will probably (no, definitely) sound like a curmudgeonly rant. But here it goes anyway:

A big reason newspapers are dying is that few Americans care more about city council meetings or the new exhibit at the local museum than what foreign leader the President mentioned today or what is happening at the Whitney next month when they'll be in NYC on business.

Many of us think we've edified ourselves if we've recently read about the impending rotation of the EU Presidency or the re-politicization of the Balkans. But if you don't have any clue what's going on in your neighborhood or your city, you're a moron.

I'll continue to pay for daily delivery of my local paper (and the Sunday NYT IF THEY WOULD FREAKING DELIVER TO MY HOUSE) for as long as possible, and I'll be happy to pay a higher rate when the morons force prices through the roof.

Bah. The demise of newspapers is about a lot of things, but lack of local coverage, or people's antipathy to it, isn't one of them.

One thing the Post emphasizes constantly, due to reader surveys, is local coverage (as emphasized by the Terps getting mucho play). But someone - maybe the City Paper? - did some article a little while ago about how the Post is constantly getting scooped by smaller, even more local papers on items of interest, and how it's providing them a market. That actually makes a lot of sense - the Northwest Current doesn't have the desk staff to send reporters to Pakistan, but they do have people with a knowledge of the political scene and local issues. And many of those local papers are making a profit.

The larger question, which is a generic one, is how to profit off news on the internet when it's not 1) porn or 2) sports. Figuring this out will allow the future NY Times and Post to evolve into a profitable enterprise.

[The Stig]

The problem is that newspaper websites only get readers because the paper gives them name recognition. If the paper stops circulating, their website just becomes another (unprofitable) face in the crowd.

[AustinHoya03]

Dec 15, 2008 22:57:26 GMT -5 theexorcist said:

But someone - maybe the City Paper? - did some article a little while ago about how the Post is constantly getting scooped by smaller, even more local papers on items of interest, and how it's providing them a market. That actually makes a lot of sense - the Northwest Current doesn't have the desk staff to send reporters to Pakistan, but they do have people with a knowledge of the political scene and local issues. And many of those local papers are making a profit.

"Smaller, even more local papers" abound in the nation's 8th largest metropolitan area. What about us poor schmucks out here in the "real America?" I despise your elite East Coast elitism, sir.

[theexorcist]

Dec 16, 2008 21:34:32 GMT -5 AustinHoya03 said:

Dec 15, 2008 22:57:26 GMT -5 theexorcist said:

But someone - maybe the City Paper? - did some article a little while ago about how the Post is constantly getting scooped by smaller, even more local papers on items of interest, and how it's providing them a market. That actually makes a lot of sense - the Northwest Current doesn't have the desk staff to send reporters to Pakistan, but they do have people with a knowledge of the political scene and local issues. And many of those local papers are making a profit.

"Smaller, even more local papers" abound in the nation's 8th largest metropolitan area. What about us poor schmucks out here in the "real America?" I despise your elite East Coast elitism, sir.

Huh?

Let me put this another way. CNN or Fox News or Kos is going to cover national politics. ESPN, Deadspin and other sites will cover national sports.

But that leaves a big gap - the school board and local politics and Austin Westlake. CNN will not cover the Austin City Council. So what happens?

One theory - with which I disagree - is that no one covers it. Another theory - which the City Paper put very well - is that local papers essentially cede national stories to national outlets and instead focus like a laser on local stories. And people do care about the school board, and will seek out that information, whether it's at the coffeeshop, on a listserv, on a blog, or in a newspaper.

And this doesn't have to be by the printed word. As people get over their concern about the internet, more people will consider blogs to be a legitimate tool for news. This is really important because places that can't support a newspaper can still have a blog due to the lack of capital requirements.

[AustinHoya03]

Dec 16, 2008 22:48:51 GMT -5 theexorcist said:

Huh?

Let me put this another way. CNN or Fox News or Kos is going to cover national politics. ESPN, Deadspin and other sites will cover national sports.

But that leaves a big gap - the school board and local politics and Austin Westlake. CNN will not cover the Austin City Council. So what happens?

One theory - with which I disagree - is that no one covers it. Another theory - which the City Paper put very well - is that local papers essentially cede national stories to national outlets and instead focus like a laser on local stories. And people do care about the school board, and will seek out that information, whether it's at the coffeeshop, on a listserv, on a blog, or in a newspaper.

And this doesn't have to be by the printed word. As people get over their concern about the internet, more people will consider blogs to be a legitimate tool for news. This is really important because places that can't support a newspaper can still have a blog due to the lack of capital requirements.

I don't live in Austin. I am an Austinite in exile in Lubbock.

There is no second-rate competitor newspaper here. There is no free weekly here. There is no free paper outside transit stations. There are no blogs covering local news. There is no listserv covering local news. There is no message board for discussing local politics. There is the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal (which, for the record, is an utter rag). It's owned by a news conglomerate which I am sure is bleeding money at the moment.

If you really think there is an impending explosion of blogs covering Lubbock (or any other city of 100,000-200,000 people), you need to come live out here for a while. In communities like this, the local paper is the only non-coffeshop-counter-type vessel through which news is transmitted to the public.

Your view assumes everyone is as plugged in and blog-happy as you and the rest of the urbanites. I'm sorry to say it, but the blogosphere (or at least, the production end of the blogosphere) has yet to make inroads out here.

ON EDIT: And I also flat-out dispute the notion that everyone is interested in local news. Haven't you ever spoken to an SFS freshman?

[TC]

The scary thing is that there's a trend developing of local papers being outsourced to India. Pasadena Now was outsourced to India this year. Here's Maureen Dowd's take (and if Maureen Dowd gives you epileptic fits, oh well):

www.nytimes.com/2008/11/30/opinion/30dowd.html?em