Lots is being written these days about the newspaper industry. As I’ve mentioned before I’m very impressed with what the Greensboro News & Record is doing with blogs, posting "Letters to the Editor" online and allowing comments (talk about free entertainment), opening their "pages" to the masses, etc. So when their editor posts something on his blog about the newspaper business I read it, and then start thinking about it.
So after lots of thinking, starting and then deleting lots of posts about it, and finally just deciding I don’t know what I think about it, here’s what I’ve finally come up with about the newspaper business:
- We have to stop thinking of it as the "newspaper" business. In this day and age almost all newspapers are part of a larger media company, and as such the newspapers are really a piece of a media portfolio.
- "Newspaper" is not synonymous "journalism." One component of newspapers is journalism, but a newspaper is really a delivery vehicle for some journalistic pieces, some editorial pieces and (increasingly less) advertising.
- Not all employees of newspaper (media) companies have the same goals. Journalists want one thing, ad reps another, and publishers something else. What they have in common is that they want to stay in business, but they have a hard time agreeing on how to do that.
- Newspaper publishers, or at least their parent companies, need not worry about declining circulation in and of itself. They simply need to take whatever strategic direction allows them to wield the same influence in the community that the newspapers have traditionally enjoyed. In fact I’m sure they would love to trade the capital expense that is the printing press for a bank of ever cheaper servers.
- Journalists shouldn’t care one iota if the newspaper itself survives. What they need to worry about is retaining their influence as the interpreter, the fact checker, the "trusted source." They need to realize that they are just like every other professional out there: their name and reputation means everything. They’ve been losing ground on the "trusted" front, but we still count on journalists to interpret the big stories for us, and we still need their investigative skills and inherent skepticism (at least the good ones).
- To make sure that they don’t lose any more ground in the respectability arena journalists must effectively distance themselves from the columnists and entertainers (Coulter, Will, Cohen) and educate the average consumer on the difference between journalists and the rest.
- Journalists also need to train themselves to utilize the new media that is out there to tell their stories better and more effectively. They need to understand that while the written word is still their most powerful and effective medium, in the future it will be necessary to augment the written word with audio, video, graphics and probably as-yet-unconceived tool.
- The news media industry is going to start resembling the movie industry. By that I mean that instead of the traditional corporate structure where there’s an HQ with publishers, editors, reporters, photographers and graphics people housed together and augmented with a stable of freelancers there will essentially be an HQ with managers. Managers will then pull together their product using a pool of professionals on an as needed basis.
And the pool of professionals will increasingly be working with raw materials supplied by the public, the "citizen journalists" that everyone talks about. (I’ll detail some of my imagined scenarios in a later post). - Editors, writers, photographers, graphics folks (i.e. ‘the talent’) will need to be very entrepreneurial to survive. (Dana Blankenhorn has been saying this for a while). But those that do survive will thrive because they will no longer be beholden to one employer; they can hire themselves out to the highest bidder. **Editors might actually be the managers that I mention in point 7.**
- The news media companies will enjoy ever higher profits. While they’ve lost significant ad revenue to Google and Yahoo! they still have the opportunity to dominate local advertising. I think they’ll figure it out and will do exactly that.
Okay, enough for now. That’s as far as my thinking has gone.
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Befuddled 
Great insights and for much of it I believe that future history will bear you out as being either close to, or perhaps, right on the money.
You’ve stated this so well, Jon. I worry about journalists having to make it as freelancers though. Will their skills be valued? Won’t they give in, as the large media companies have, to the dollars to be made in the Jerry Springer realm instead?
Our country can’t survive without journalism, so I hope that newspeople can find a way to survive economically. You’ve given them some good suggestions. I have none, as I’m flummoxed by what I see as a rapid devaluation of their very valuable skills, training, and years of experience. It troubles me.
Hi Chewie. Thanks for the comment.
You didn’t really say it this way, but I think you would agree that the worry isn’t so much for the journalists as it is for journalism. Journalists’ skills will always be in high demand in business, and believe me I can tell you that they would fit in very well with the members of SCIP (my main client). These are people that do competitive intelligence, spending a lot of time researching and analyzing the world (i.e. marketplace) for their employer. The skills are remarkably similar to those of a good journalist. Imagine the valuable insight that someone like Ed Cone could bring to an organization.
Of course journalists could continue to cover their old beat, almost as a hobby, but why would they risk their day job to break a big story? That is the inherent problem with citizen journalism: the citizen journalists feel, and are, vulnerable to bullying by the subjects of stories who aren’t happy about having their dirty laundry aired. That is why the institution of journalism needs to survive.
But as I wrote in the post I think the media companies will survive, and even better will thrive. That’s because people aren’t losing interest in journalism, just in newspapers. So the good ones will morph into whatever mixture of media works best and continue to break the stories that titilate and captivate. And heck I think there will even be room for in-depth, Watergate style reporting. For that they will need the journalists, and they will need to offer even the freelancers their protection when things get hot in the kitchen. So I think everything will work out fine.
Obviously I’m an optimist!
Jon,
You wrote: “Journalists shouldn’t care one iota if the newspaper itself survives.”
I strongly disagree. There are, at present, some things that newspapers (and newspapers alone) do that other media outlets and individuals cannot or will not do. The best example is the large, costly and time-consuming investigative project, particularly if it involves suing for records or other (again) costly procedures. There are only a handful of non-newspaper organizations that do this type of work on a consistent basis, which of course means that it can be done outside of a newspaper, but in practice it is not, and that should be a concern to citizens who rely on such investigations to uncover corruption, mismanagement of public funds and other topics that too often remain hidden from public view. The time demands and costs of such work make it difficult, but not impossible, to manage under a freelancer type structure that you describe.
Derek,
I agree with you that it is vital that newspapers continue their unique work, and I also agree that in many cases newspapers are the only entities doing the “heavy lifting.” I also agree that the freelancer structure probably won’t support this work (see my earlier comment), so I do think some media entity will continue to exist that upholds what is now the newspapers’ role. It just may not be printed.
Thanks much for your comment.
This is totally conjecture, but what about a two- or three-tiered journalism world?
First tier is for topics that need a stronger corporate backbone to support journalist’s efforts (such as lawyers for free speech issues, a travel budget etc.) Topics under this umbrella would be local, state and national government. Business.
Second tier is the more “freelance” style — niche and features content. Some of this is local (“the NC music scene), but it doesn’t have to be.
Third tier is perhaps organizations like Craigs List and maybe Google — when they get into content publishing in addition to aggregating. Hey, it’s an idea.
For another good newspaper-oriented read, check out the analysis of this tale from the Chicago Tribune. The story it refers to is great as well (my favorite quote “I mean, how many guys of that age ride bicycles with cigars in their hands up and down Grand Avenue?”)
A few bullets to tide you over
Jon Lowder: Who cares if newspapers die? Some really smart stuff in there.