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A Gem In The Great Debate

root and branch cleansing

So there's a post on Creative Loafing about the newspapers on Tampa Bay, how the Times and Trib are making cuts to continue to breathe in a two-paper market. And most of the discussion is typical. Then there's a post from "Ed":

Happens that I have been reading 19th Century newspapers for a project I’m involved in, and you know what, they’re great. Lotsa news stories and a color newsfeature from time to time but not every day. The other thing that is remarkable is that all this journalism was done without any display ads, and little classified advertisements either. Just 8-pages of news. This changed around World War I with Hearst, Pulitzer, Scripps, etc. fighting it out with scandal sheets and attracting the first display ads from national companies like Sears, and more classified ads selling various medical potions and truss (how did they work?) ads. For the last 40 years or so it’s been more display ads than news, and newspaper owners got filthy rich from their publications. There were Sundays when I broke my arm getting the paper into a wheelbarrow so I could cart it into the house. Hey, so those days now are gone and everyone knows why. Unlike newspapers with their hyped circulation, advertisers know someone sees their Internet ads because of the click-through, plus they know a hell of a lot about the potential customer including his/her name from the cookies. Newspapers can’t compete against that. Craigslist has taken the classified ads for pure economic reasons that it’s free. So where do newspapers go? How about back to their roots and printing news with a business plan that relies on getting money from circulation not from ads. It’s going to mean a lot of editors aren’t going to make $250k annual salaries, and more reporting done under piece work contracts, but there will still be a business there. To get my quarter back, it’s going to have to be real news, not these inane ass-kissing trend stories, or Top Ten in Florida stories, or advertorial features. Real news. If you are a newspaperman, you ought to be cheering for this as the puritans cheered the removal of statues from the churches — it is a real root and branch cleansing that will revolutionize journalism and take it back to its purest form.

This strikes me as a fresh idea, and (biting my tongue) I'm finding it hard to disagree. Someone set me and Ed straight.

Comments

Re: A Gem In The Great Debate

I'm not going to set Ben and Ed straight. Ed is on to something.

One of the things that bedevils the newspaper industry is the failure of newspaper people to realize that the business model we now know (single-newspaper monopolies, huge staffs, several sections) is actually rather new.

Papers have made money in the past on circulation and single-copy sales alone.

Maybe instead of trying to reach everyone in our markets, we might want to aim our product on those out there who are willing to pay for quality reporting and writing.

I don't know if that's an answer. But it's worth considering.

Re: A Gem In The Great Debate

I watched in bewilderment as the newspaper I worked for turned itself inside out in an effort to attract customers who couldn't read, didn't want to read, had no time for reading. Meantime readers went elsewhere and circulation fell.
Newspapers -- and newspaper writers -- have to decide who and where is their audience.

None

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