DISQUS

Daniel Gibbons · 11 months ago

What strikes me about all of these discussions is that they are, understandably I suppose, so US-centric. UK newspapers, as I understand it, are far less precarious than their US counterparts, because they are and always have been relatively less dependent on advertising. The most recent circulation figures I could find show a modest decline for most UK papers from late '07 to late '08 but nothing cataclysmic.

I'm speculating here, but perhaps it's because, love them or hate them, the UK papers have always been a bit more blog-like in their approach. That is, they are opinionated, outspoken, take a moral and ideological stance, and are unafraid of upsetting, for example, the Prime Minister's handlers, in the same way that US papers generally act in a subservient way to the White House, etc.

mathewi · 11 months ago

That's an interesting point, Daniel -- I don't know enough about UK papers to know whether that's true, but it's an interesting theory.

ZooLoo · 11 months ago

As a former journalist, I watched coworker after coworker get laid off and magazine after magazine shut down. We finally had to really focus on our online sites, SEO, keyword discovery and our content aggregation, which made our online numbers skyrocket. Our reader were receiving up-to-date info almost immediately after it broke, making them better informed and making us industry leaders. I definitely agree with you that the forcing of industrial media to make the move to online is absolutely producing better journalism. Excellent post.

mathewi · 11 months ago

Thanks, Rebecca.

simon · 11 months ago

Back in 1960 when marketing was the new big thing, Theodore Levitt wrote his classic piece in HBR: "Marketing Myopia". In it he used the example of the decline of the railroads and their failure to realise they are in the transportation business not the business of railroads.

The fixation on the "death of newspapers" represents a similarly myopic view. As long as newspaper organizations focus on defending their newspapers rather than defining their real business, they are doomed to be replaced by those that do.

Not suggesting it's easy or simple. Nonetheless, it's the critical issue to those companies' survival.

mathewi · 11 months ago

I couldn't agree more -- the focus on the "paper" part of the equation
is no different than the railways' focus on the "rail" part of their
business. There are other similarities as well -- high fixed costs for
infrastructure, for example :-)

Brian Frank · 11 months ago

Two things that stood out most for me in the Atlantic article were a) Hirschorn's suggestion that we underestimate the possibility of an instantaneous crash (as we saw happen to investment banks... oh those black swans) and b) newspapers have "trained" readers to undervalue journalists and "undermined the perceived value of serious newspaper journalism," so the papers' profit centres (and therefore business models) consist of content people enjoy a lot when it's there but "isn’t the sort of thing you miss when it’s gone."

Now that I'm writing it out like this I wonder how much of an analogy there is between the news industry and the banking industry -- both shifting too far away from their core businesses and getting too bloated with stuff derived and repackaged.

mathewi · 11 months ago

That's a good point, Brian. Those two parts hit me as well. Thanks for the comment.

Michael Becker · 11 months ago

The thing that struck me about the article was Hirshorn noting the flattening of news. He points out that the story that came to him via Google Alerts could have come from any news source. Globalization and the incessant reposting of news has removed all of the voice from most of the traditional news articles we read. It's sad.

I read his ending optimistically. He's saying that we might just get something better than we have now if we don't cling to the dead-tree distribution system that we have now. We might just get deeper insight from communities of journalists working together on topics they're passionate about and hitting those topics from every conceivable angle. Combined with a healthy dose of link journalism, this could do much for readers -- provided they have the time to look at it; there would be a lot out there to read (there already is).

mathewi · 11 months ago

I agree completely, Michael.

jay · 11 months ago

I think the extinction of the newspaper is also becoming an enviromental issue due to the large amount of paper wasted every day

Andy Lax · 11 months ago

Hi Mathew,

Thanks for highlighting an extremely interesting an important development. While many newspapers and
magazines will fold, I still don't believe that the written word will disappear. Printed media will have to adapt
to changes (e.g., offering more creative, useful content, building a stronger base of local advertisers, offering
concomitant online sites to access information, etc.).

I, like many others, still prefer reading from something physical and tangible that I can hold in my hand, than
accessing info via a screen. Millions of people use public transportation, too, and must rely on a more "mobile
source" of information -- the antiquated newspaper and/or magazine.