Newspapers are Dead – at least in the U.S.
4 March 2008Tell me your favorite newspaper as a source for independent, objective news. The Wall St. Journal? Not even close. The NY Times? These days, the joke in NYC is seeing how long it will take the Sulzbergers to lose their flagship paper, just as the Bancrofts did with the WSJ. All it takes is a few years of mismanagement, and suddenly – ye gods! – Rupert Murdoch owns you.
This sentence is not proof that the words Murdoch and News can sit comfortably in the same sentence.
It turns out that over half of Americans now turn to foreign newspapers for their news, specifically to the BBC, the Guardian and the Telegraph. I would add the FT to the mix, although it has a US version now, so may be out of the running.
Although most newspapers point to the Web as the source of their operating losses, I have a much better answer: they aren’t worth shit.
When you consider what is going on today with the Government’s war against human rights, the Bill of Rights, the Geneva Convention, etc etc, the ongoing pretend news we get every day on baboon mating rituals in foreign lands, panda deaths vs. new babies, and freak storms anywhere, have led me, in particular, to decide that U.S. newspapers are, as a lot, completely obsolete.
Dean Takahashi, a famous tech reporter, announced today that he is leaving the SJ Mercury, one of the last/best tech-interested newspapers, for a blog. Get in line, seems to be the real answer, since he follows in the footsteps of other great tech reporters from there and elsewhere.
I read newspapers daily, and it is a relatively unhealthy diet, I can tell you, since, at least from my perspective, the purpose is almost exclusively to figure out how much of the news is lies, propaganda, hype, basically untrue statements, misunderstood and misinterpreted science and economics, and just plain opinion.
We have gotten to the point, in the U.S., where you have to unlearn as much from a day’s reading, as you have learned. Crossing that 50/50 barrier would almost suggest, as those 18-25 have already decided, that it just isn’t worth the trouble.
If I feel this way, and read more papers than anyone I know, how must the rest of the world feel?
There are no real investigative reporters any more, at least not working for the Post or the NYTimes; perhaps they are out there blogging somewhere.
In any case, I, too, have given up. Sure, I’ll keep reading them, the way historians might read Mein Kampf – not because they want to, but because they have to. Documenting the decline, as biologists often describe field work.
Long live Rupert. Like Fox News on TV, U.S. newspapers carry the opposite of news, whatever that might be. Breasts on page three, UFOs to follow.
U.S. newspapers are dead dead dead. They just don’t know it yet.
5 Responses to “Newspapers are Dead – at least in the U.S.”
March 10th, 2008 at 7:01 am
It’s not just newspapers that are feeling the pinch:
January 18, 2008 — RETAIL behemoth Wal-Mart is tossing more than 1,000 magazines from the racks in its stores, sending yet another shock wave through the battered publishing industry.
Most of the magazines are small, and more than a few of the victims are titles that have long since stopped publishing, including Child, Celebrity Living, Elle Girl, Teen People, Suede, Shop Etc., Weekend and FHM. However, virtually no major publisher was spared.
Wal-Mart, which released its official purge list on Jan. 15, is believed to be responsible for generating more than 20 percent of all retail magazine sales in the US.
http://www.nypost.com/seven/01182008/business/cleaning_the_racks_368974.htm?page=0
March 13th, 2008 at 1:13 am
Hi Mark,
Here is my late night ramble to add to your post…
I am surprised that it took this long for print media to die here in the USA. How can a business reporter at the Seattle Times keep up with a million business bloggers and video bloggers who are also blasting out a zillion Twitters (micro blogs / SMS)?
Media is now like our nervous system, dynamic, synaptic and on demand. Advertisers are struggling to insert them into this new “dynamic interactions and 3min attention span”.
China had large growth of new print media to fill in niches in the past few years (IDG) and now I bet that blogs and other digital media forms, especially mobile are not taking over….
A key indicator of where we are going is highlighted with the EU decision to let Google assimilate Double Click. Now Google is taking next steps to siphon off more dollars from large global media and ad agencies with rich forms of “display advertising”.
Last May, Google integrated their federated or “Universal Search” with the integration of YouTube, Google Video and other videos into their indexes. You can click and play a video right in the index. Thus, Google is testing the waters how to monetize their YouTube investment. There are a few interesting trends here.
Smart companies will invest in the production of direct response and brand building web videos. These videos have the ability to seed the search index, are bloggable and potentially viral if designed correctly. Make media is the new mantra.
A number of startups, included one by an ex-Googler, focus on “How To Videos”. The ex-Googlers noticed that everyone was typing in “HOW TO….XYZ” and this follows logical natural language search. Thus, how to videos with embedded product placements, overlay ads, contextual placements, etc. are a winning model.
The combination of key word ads, display ads and simply making your own media is a strategy that works in synergy.
The text ads seem to be topping off for now and text ads are hard for companies to create BRAND. I know that a lot of global brands are scrambling to find a way to make their brand relevant in today’s social networked economy.
Of course the real big hit is multimedia hand held computers.
LOOK – It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a GPS, it’s a video/photo camera, it’s a phone, it’s a web browser, it’s an SMS device…. I have had pretty much every “hot” mobile phone and of course a SKYTEL pager since 1989. Starting with my SONY P900 four years ago you could see the landscape really change.
I loved my past Blackberry Pearl, but it took a bath in the puddle, so I picked up the iPhone. Since I was moving, the first thing I noticed is I could actually browse the web. Amazing. I had a Sprint HTC/MSFT “Smart Phone” at it was a piece of shit as a “PHONE” – too many Redmond dorks forgot it was also suppose to make calls.
Some of the new concepts I have is with a device as sexy as an iphone or a newer one with a real GPS — you can almost make some new micro-franchise business models that leverage these devices.
Qik.com lets you shoot videos from Nokia N91. Now we just need our carriers to get some real bandwidth behind the network and the prices for thew new micro LED projectors, OLED, etc.
Ramble Off – Night! Best, Tim
March 27th, 2008 at 8:40 am
A similar situation but with proper statistics to back up your sentiments was found among British newspapers. See review of “Nick Davies: Flat Earth News” in London Review of Books (http://www.lrb.co.uk/v30/n05/lanc01_.html).
I guess the near simultaneous publication dates are a coincidence.
April 15th, 2008 at 5:21 am
Le Monde workers strike over job cuts
By Ben Hall in Paris
Published: April 14 2008
Journalists at Le Monde, the French daily paper, went on strike on Monday to protest against job cuts in a dispute that highlights the dire state of the national newspaper industry.
Readers of the lunchtime daily went without their paper as staff protested against a restructuring in only the second strike in the paper’s 54-year-old history.
Le Monde employees demanded changes to plans to cut 130 jobs, including a quarter of the editorial staff, with some compulsory redundancies. The lossmaking paper’s management says the job cuts are needed if it is to break even by 2010.
The dispute is the culmination of a 20-year industry crisis, during which nearly all of France’s national dailies have sunk further into the red, with shrinking readership, high print and distribution costs and a shortage of advertising.
In spite of large government subsidies for distribution and a favourable tax regime, only two titles – the sports paper L’Equipe and the financial newspaper Les Echos – are profitable.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/682070d6-0a4c-11dd-b5b1-0000779fd2ac.html
I’ve noticed that there have been almost no ads in Le Monde for over 10 years compared to most papers. Amazing it’s taken so long to come to a head. Tim
April 30th, 2008 at 4:36 am
Chicken or egg? Without good editorial papers are not read, circulation slumps, cannot sell ads profitably. Same goes for websites, blogs, of course. Rules of the business called publishing.
Up For Grabs: $42 Billion of Newspaper Ad Revenue
Henry Blodget | April 29, 2008 6:07 AM
How bad are things in the newspaper industry? Don’t ask. After another jarring 3.5% decline over the past six months, print-paper circulation will drop to about 50 million this year–the lowest level since 1946 (62 years ago).
That’s during a period in which the US population has doubled, meaning that per-capita newspaper consumption has been cut in half. For more on this horrorshow, read the latest from the Dean of Newspaper Demise, Alan D. Mutter, at Newsosaur. Just don’t do it if you’ve got friends or family (or money) in the industry.
If your career, portfolio, or fortune isn’t tied to the newspaper business, however, rejoice. The newspaper industry’s loss is your gain!
In ten years, print-paper circulation and ad revenue will likely be a quarter of what it is today, if that.
http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/4/up_for_grabs_42_billion_of_newspaper_ad_revenue