NEWSPAPERS, GENTLY DYING

Jay Rosen has pulled together a number of threads and woven them into Laying the Newspaper Gently Down to Die. He examines the idea that the newspaper industry is in harvesting mode: reaping what profits it can as it dies.

Brave would be the media columnist who took a few months to investigate the unannounced liquidation of newspaper properties– what former editor of the Des Moines Register Geneva Overholser calls “the long, steady suffocation of America’s newspapers.” (See her overview here, showing how long the trail of warnings has been.)

This suffocation could not be carried out without some people in the industry knowing, or guessing the truth, and then confirming it for themselves. There, I think, is the nonfiction book someone will write– it would be about those people, and what they did, when they figured out that the patient was being led to a profitable death.

Jay draws on a number of works that I’ve referred to in recent posts, including Philip Meyer’s invaluable book The Vanishing Newspaper and Michael S. Malone’s ABCnews.com column, and his own email correspondence with Craig Newmark of craigslist.

From the diverse threads, Jay comes to this conclusion:

The rest of us, meanwhile, have to do what Meyer said: “Look for ways to keep the spirit and tradition of socially responsible journalism alive until it finds a home in some new media form whose nature we can only guess at today.” (And what Newmark said: “promote work which merges professional and citizen journalism.”) What I like best about this is a distinction Meyer builds in. Journalism is one thing. The media another.

In specific cases, yes, but in general we have no reason to trust the media to bring serious journalism across the great divide, into a new and democratic life on the Web. And so we have to do it ourselves, whatever that means.

Jay’s piece is persuasive, as are the comments from Dan Gillmor, Alan Mutter and almost two dozen others in the afterthought and comment sections.

I want to repeat part of a post from yesterday, when I pointed to Douglas Fisher’s reaction to Malone’s piece on the death of newspapers. While he wrote that he wasn’t buying into the argument yet, he did write:

…I do think it’s interesting how, in less than a year, this possiblity has now burst upon the public consciousness. Certainly, we had all debated it for quite a while (it was January 2000, of course, when Daniel Okrent delivered his famous “The Death of Print?” lecture). I just find it fascinating how these things lurk and lurk and suddenly become the cause of the moment.

Like Douglas (and, I’m sure, Jay), I’ve been hearing the newspapers-are-dying story for almost as long as I’ve been involved as either a reporter, editor or instructor. What’s changed is that the “story” now has a much stronger ring of truth. In The Vanishing Newspaper, Meyer provides a lot of the detail, including how newspapers are struggling to maintain exceedingly high levels of profits while combatting a long-term and continuing decline in circulation. (If you don’t want to read the whole book, Tim Porter at First Draft has an invaluable chapter-by-chapter look at the book.)

Here in Vancouver, in the space of a month, we will have gone from two daily newspapers to five, but the three new ones are all give-aways, heavy on almost brutally short news stories, entertainment and lifestyles, and light on significant journalism. While these new free tabs are protecting the advertising market (four of the newspapers are either owned or co-owned by the same company), they can’t help but hurt the “real” newspapers when it comes to the competition for time.

Then there’s the internet, which has changed the equation dramatically, setting the stage not only for new delivery of media that undercuts the existing model, but removing whatever remaining reasons there were for many of us to read a newspaper every day (or at all). The emergence of new media, such as New West, points to replacements for the daily newspaper.

It feels very much as though newspapers, as we know them, are dying. (See the post below, which reports that the Washington Post, despite a commitment to excellence in journalism, continues to be hit by steep circulation declines.) The rate of major newspaper decline is accelerating, and so is the rate of adoption of new models for the local newspaper in mid-sized cities across the U.S.

The question, ably limned by Jay, Dan Gillmor, Philip Meyer and others, becomes how, while losing the newspaper, we save the newroom.