The Newspaper is Dead
In his blog, Jules Crittenden argues, “if you want to save the news industry, post a prize for the person who figures out a new way to finance it, and a cheap way to get reading devices in everyone’s hands. Throwing out the FCC’s cross-ownership ban once and for all might also help, though I suspect that horse is edging for the door if it hasn’t already bolted. How many TV networks want to saddle themselves with pulp anvils at this point?
If government intervention is really necessary, I say we go full Stalin. Round up and shoot a few editors and publishers who insist on producing aggressively boring, unresponsive products with bloated staffs and raging senses of entitlement. The others will notice. But don’t reward people with a 20th-century mentality, 19th-century technology, and no business sense whatsoever.”
Here’s an original idea – go online. (And everybody reading this simultaneously smacks their foreheads and says “well duh!”) For some reason which I cannot fathom, American and Australian media outlets are of some foolish misapprehension that online media = light entertainment, aka “the death of independent journalism.” This just simply isn’t the case.
Newsflash Mr. Crittenden: the forum for accessible digital news already exists. It’s content we should be concerned about. The problem isn’t infrastructure. The infrastructure is already there (in theory): iPhones, PDA’s, Blackberries, home media centres – just four out of a handful of devices that are making news consumption accessible anytime, anywhere. The problem is newspapers dragging their feet. The technology is already here, the “revolution” has already happened, but it would be nice to go to the SMH on my iPhone without it crashing the browser. Newspapers need to invest and overhaul their webpages and portable digital news services and they need to dramatically improve their content. Just because it’s the internet doesn’t mean readers want to have their intelligence insulted.
The rise of the blogosphere hasn’t even peeked yet, but already we have seen that readership trends are changing dramatically: In 2005 the Carnegie Corporation released a report about the changing habits of news consumption and what it means for the future of the news industry. It showed that consumers between the ages of 18-34 increasingly use the internet as their chosen medium for news consumption. At the time the report was released, television was the most utilised source of news but this has since changed. The internet is fast becoming the favored destination of news for young people.
The report showed that 44% of the study’s respondents said they use the internet at least once a day for news, compared to the meager 19% who buy newspapers on a daily basis. A three year projection from the time of the report found that 39% of people expected to increase their use of the internet as a news forum. Only 8% expected to increase their use of newspapers.
The attitude of 18-34 year olds towards newspapers has been described as “alarming” (though unsuprising in my opinion). Only 9% described newspapers as a trustworthy news source. 8% found them useful, and 4% found them “entertaining”. In the years that followed this report, the newspaper was listed as the least preferred choice of local, national, or international news.
Furthermore, why would anyone buy a newspaper or pay for a subscription from a media conglomerate when you can get the same information from your favorite blog writers for free? Moreover, blog writers are as, if not more informative and more independent than most traditional newspapers.
Prediction: media conglomerates will begin capitalizing on blogs. Think about it, most (good) blog writers are already qualified writers, that already have a reader base, and they understand the benefits of internet advertising. Most bloggers have a keen knowledge of internet marketing, they know how to write informative stories that generate revenue at the same time.
I predict media conglomerates will begin paying blog writers, (probably on a cost per click basis) to do what they do already. Obviously there are domain and ownership issues to be worked out e.g – would the previously independently owned blog fall under that media conglomerates ownership? Or will they take a share in revenue?
Still, the future of new media is exciting and nerve racking. Hopefully news outlets will make the right decision. Just because the pulp mill is dead, doesn’t mean that news is, or should be. On the contrary. People are still demanding reliable news sources. As the Y Generation – (the first generation whose internet and computer skills come as naturally as breathing) get older, the demand for reliable digital news sources will increase.
Yes, the newspaper is dead. Great! News outlets are finally recognising dramatic changes in reader trends (changes I might add that Rupert Murdoch pointed out over two years ago). Newspapers and media conglomerates have discovered more than a little late that they are getting left behind – a realisation and an inevitability that economists and media owners realised over fourteen years ago! They predicted that the wood-pulp and printing press would soon become defunct once newspapers discovered how to use the internet. Strangely that never happened, or as Rupert Murdoch put it, the newspapers spent the ensuing years “remarkably, unaccountably complacent, quietly hoping that this thing called the digital revolution would just limp along.”
I hate to point out the obvious but clinging to the past is a futile exercise, and that getting rid of one more outnumbered and outdated news medium, is the only way to ensure a successful future for the news industry.
Though there is still that tiny insignificant matter of the millions of dollars of debt “old media” have found themselves in. I wonder how many years need to go by before the old pulp mill can be considered an antique, (if it isn’t already considered to be an antique). You could sell it to an antiquarian for a mint to settle the debt.
How about this: I will give fifty bucks to the person who comes up with a solution to finance the news industry: to settle all debt, as well as coming up with a lucrative business plan for a complete overhaul of the industry that doesn’t involve government bail outs, and maintains (if not increases) the integrity of news mediums around the country, and around the world. Fifty bucks. Fifty bucks and – instant, infinite, internet fame . You’ll be forever written as “the guy/girl who saved the media industry,” at least on this blog. http://www.anirritatingtruth.blogspot.com
An Irritating Truth
Editors and writers seem to be afflicted with the idea that people are easily bored, so the name of the game is to produce short, pithy articles and attention grabbing headlines. Online readers are supposedly even more flighty, and won’t read anything longer than the length of a single screen.
If that’s true, why are people happy to read long blog posts (like this one), and to trawl through miles and miles of comments, reading each and every one of them?
Newspapers have gone “information lite” in an attempt to hang onto this flighty audience, but it’s backfired. If you ask me, the reason people skim read so much content is that it has no “content” – it is fluff masquerading as news. So much information is stripped from the articles, they are no longer of interest to anyone.
As for the SMH, their stupid pop up ads are a more terrible afflication than a plague of boils. Do they want people to visit their site, or do they want them to swear at it every time they drop in to read something?
Funnily enough, I am now finding that local newspapers can make for the best reading (they actually print interesting stories!) and from what I can tell, most are healthy. Perhaps what we are seeing is the death of the big, expensive to run, self important “national” papers with an “ego”, like the SMH, Age etc.
Boy on a bike
01/04/2009 at 11:53 pm
I hope your predictions about big media conglomerates are right. Unfortunately I don’t think this is the case.
Rupert Murdoch is currently trying to buy the Dow Jones and the New York Times.
NewsCorp has announced job cuts across the board affecting the Courier, The Australian and the Daily Telegraph, which thankfully does show some downgrading but in an attempt to increase revenue and global reach.
Thankfully Murdoch is a self proclaimed media “dinosaur”: “Like many of you in this room, I’m a digital immigrant. I wasn’t weaned on the web, nor coddled on a computer. Instead, I grew up in a highly centralized world where news and information were tightly controlled by a few editors, who deemed to tell us what we could and should know.”
Hopefully Murdoch and all his cronies will fail miserably at digitising and “revolutionising” their papers whose only resort will be to sell it all off to a younger person with sound business mind and practice adept at keeping up to date with new technology. That’s the only way they’re going to be able to compete with new arising forms of news consumption. Besides, where else do they think they’re going to get their retirement funds from? Certainly not from newspapers. Don’t even get me started on the black hole that is superannuation.
Wouldn’t it be exciting if local papers could actually rise to the task of competing with big news businesses? It would be the rebirth of independent journalism and quality reporting.
An Irritating Truth
01/05/2009 at 12:58 am
Oh dear: Hyperlocal Websites will Boom in 2009 as Community Newspapers Fold
http://www.inquisitr.com/14219/hyperlocal-websites-will-boom-in-2009-as-community-newspapers-fold/
An Irritating Truth
01/05/2009 at 11:54 am
Someone else is following this train of thought:
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200901/new-york-times
Boy on a bike
01/07/2009 at 8:14 pm