Four smart guys look at the future of newspapers

David Warsh is somewhat optimistic:

Traditional print journalism, rooted in newspapers’ semi-monopolies on advertising and information, has been teasing apart, becoming dis-integrated, for nearly a century ever since the first radio station broadcast the news and accompanied it with “commercials.” The advent of television was another inflection point, but posed no threat to newspapers’ help-wanted and classified advertising; the advent of the Internet has been quite another matter. The best newspapers seem certain to survive the onslaught of the World Wide Web. Probably they will retain their primacy at the top of the explanatory chain their presentation can’t be beat; they come out only once a day; paper-and-ink corporeality means they can’t be changed; and printing presses, delivery networks and reputation all form formidable barriers to entry against competition. But newspapers of the future will be slimmed-down versions of their former selves, web-savvy, their print editions aimed mostly at elites.

Nicholas Carr is more pessimistic:

As soon as a newspaper is unbundled, an intricate and, until now, largely invisible system of subsidization quickly unravels. Classified ads, for instance, can no longer help to underwrite the salaries of investigative journalists or overseas correspondents. Each piece of content has to compete separately, consuming costs and generating revenues in isolation. So if you’re a beleaguered publisher, losing readers and money and facing Wall Street’s wrath, what are you going do as you shift your content online? Hire more investigative journalists? Or publish more articles about consumer electronics? It seems clear that as newspapers adapt to the economics of the Web, they are far more likely to continue to fire reporters than hire new ones.

Speaking before the Online Publishing Association in 2006, the head of the New York Times’s Web operation, Martin Nisenholtz, summed up the dilemma facing newspapers today. He asked the audience a simple question: “How do we create high quality content in a world where advertisers want to pay by the click, and consumers don’t want to pay at all?”

The answer may turn out to be equally simple: We don’t.

R. S. McCain is extremely gloomy:

You can talk about online news until you're blue in the face, but it won't change the fact that Americans now read much less than they once did.

What is happening to newspaper circulation is simply this: As older readers die off, they are not being replaced by younger readers.

The reason for that is that young people -- and by that, I mean, people under 40 -- don't read nearly as much as do their elders. And it has nothing do with print vs. online. If you are under 40 and reading news online, you are an exception, a rarity, among your peers.

Why has the reading habit declined among those under 40? First it was cable TV, then it was the VCR, now the DVD -- and you could add video games to that list -- the increased availability of on-demand video has accustomed young people to process information that way. Just as reading is habit-forming, TV is also habit-forming, and the TV habit has flourished at the expense of reading.

American Digest is as gloomy as McCain, but also wildly happy:

Of course, the real elephant drooling in the room of newspapers like the Seattle Times these days is "the forgotten reader." These are the potential readers who, because of the unremitting liberal tone and slant of the Times in both the news hole and on the editorial page, loathe the Times and the whole sector of Seattle society it represents.

Now you may say, in a town as overwhelmingly liberal as Seattle, "Screw those troglodyte, Republican morons!" Well, you can say that but then you will, sooner or later, fire 200 of your employees. And that will be only the start.

Why? Because in an "overwhelmingly liberal town" you are talking about, at most, around 55% of the potential readership that agrees with you. This means you are leaving about 45% of potential readership out of the equation altogether. King County has about 2 million people. That means that 45% of potential readership is not at all a trivial number, and yet the Seattle Times takes every opportunity to alienate them. Result: Mass sackings and many millions lost.

And yet the Seattle Times, as well as numerous other newspapers now dying in the US, never ever cops to its point of view as the reason why it is failing.

FWIW, I hope Warsh is right, but I fear that McCain is on to something when it comes to the death of reading.

I do disagree with one point he makes:

Having been in the newspaper business since 1986, I have unfortunately had a ringside seat to watch the industry's decline. And the reason I know that liberal bias is not a sufficient explanation for this decline is the fact that small "hometown" newspapers -- which have never reflected the liberalism that plagues the major metro dailies -- have suffered equally, if not worse, from the decline.

I’ve lived in a bunch of different places over the years. Some were liberal communities (Madison, Wisconsin) while others were conservative (Carlisle, Charlotte). In every city and town, however, the local paper was and is more liberal than the community it serves. In Madison, the papers were very liberal, Here in Carlisle the Sentinel is only a little to the left of center. This is a striking stance, though, in a community that voted for Bush 60/40 in two elections.


The fact that newspapers tilt left is not the only reason they are declining. For a large part of the market, however, it is a net negative. It is one more hurdle that they have to clear in order to convince the non-reader to buy their product.

The biggest problem is that technology and social trends have destroyed their raison d’etre. Much of the “news” that fills their pages is not NEW when the reader gets to it. It has been on cable TV, radio and the Internet for hours. The headlines are familiar while the wire copy adds little depth.

A newspaper might have value as a trusted aggregator of stories. It could deliver value by providing more depth than competing media. Both “solutions” run into internal barriers in newspapers, as they exist today. Their liberal tilt undercuts their trustworthiness so that many readers do not trust their news judgment. The endless rounds of cut backs in the newsrooms leave them with few resources to upgrade the quality of their content.

Perhaps their greatest weakness is that there are no great editors trying to create something new and better.

Readers are important, but advertising revenue is the key to newspaper viability. There are two areas the industry could address in order to shore up their long-term position.

1. Develop better online advertising. One reason that web revenue cannot offset losses from the print side is that many advertisers cannot use it for brand marketing. The click-through, direct response model works great for cheap car insurance and male enhancement supplements. It is less effective for cars, beer, clothing, etc. As readers move to the web, some of the biggest advertisers cannot follow: they have to advertise in other venues.


It is incumbent on newspaper publishers to find and promote online advertising method/styles that will work for a wide range of products. Agencies will not do it because they are agnostic when it comes to media platform. If newspapers want better advertising they have to find and promote it on their own.

2. The self-referencing “professionals” in the advertising industry overvalue people like themselves--young, urban, single, childless, iconoclastic. They undervalue those who are different. Advertising spending is shaped by this prejudice. Marketers believe that commercials have to target young, hip influentials while older suburban consumers are a lost cause.

Newspapers and broadcast television are penalized because their readers/viewers are discounted. Agencies expect to pay less to reach an older audience.

There is very little hard data to bolster this advertising conceit. It makes sense for newspapers to attack this idea and demonstrate that their print readership is a valuable target market for a vast array of products.

They cannot expect the advertising industry to do it for them. That runs counter to the industry’s self-image. Further, it would also reveal the fact that the typical agency is a one-trick pony that hasa no idea how to reach people over 40.

See also:

The newspaper: Today and tomorrow

UPDATE: R.S. McCain comments further here.