Category: Media

A terrifying story about the newspaper business

Outside Bagel World in Peabody
Outside Bagel World in Peabody

There’s an absolutely terrifying story about the newspaper business making the rounds today, and it’s not the one about print circulation falling another 10.6 percent. That’s hardly a surprise, given the continued rush to online — pushed along by papers like the Boston Globe and the Boston Herald raising the price of their print editions.

No, the truly ugly news is a story in the New York Times by Stephanie Clifford, who reports that companies increasingly see newspaper Web sites as a place for premium, special-event advertising, but not for everyday ads. For the latter, they use online networks, which cost a fraction of what newspapers charge.

According to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, the Globe’s daily circulation fell 18.4 percent, and now stands at 264,105. On Sunday, it’s fallen by 16.9 percent, to 418,529. In its heyday, the Globe’s Monday-through-Saturday circulation was more than 500,000, and on Sundays it was north of 800,000.

The Monday-through-Saturday Herald stands at 138,260, down 17.5 percent. The circulation of the Sunday Herald dropped 5 percent, to 95,635.

If you had told me five years ago what the print circulation of the Globe and the Herald would be today, I’d like to think I would have been entirely unsurprised. On the other hand, I know I would have been shocked that advertising revenues had not followed from print to online.

If the eventual end of the recession doesn’t provide some relief to the beleaguered newspaper business, you really have to wonder how this will all end.

Even George Will is appalled by Cheney

Thought you might enjoy George Will’s response on “This Week” when George Stephanopoulos asked him about Dick Cheney’s accusation that President Obama, by taking his time before deciding on a strategy in Afghanistan, is “dithering while America’s armed forces are in danger.” Here’s how Will began:

A bit of dithering might have been in order before we went into Iraq in pursuit of nonexistent weapons of mass destruction. For a representative of the Bush administration to accuse someone of taking too much time is missing the point. We have much more to fear in this town from hasty than from slow government action.

Good stuff, although a few caveats are in order. First, though Will is a conservative, he’s not a neoconservative, and he’s been notably less enthusiastic about foreign adverturism over the years than his neobrethren. Second, he came out against the war in Afghanistan weeks ago. Third, Will has never been much taken with the Bush clan or its minions.

But still. With the war-mongering Laura Ingraham fulminating on the same set today (and when is she going to enlist?), it was heartening to hear a sane conservative call out Cheney’s posturing for what it is.

The New York Times’ non-profit partners

What should we think about a partnership the New York Times has announced with a Chicago non-profit news organization that will supply two pages of news each week for the Times’ new Chicago edition?

On the one hand, the Times, a for-profit enterprise, is using material from a non-profit in order to take business away from two other for-profit enterprises, the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times. (Earlier, a similar arrangement was announced for a San Francisco edition of the Times.)

I’m a huge fan of non-profit journalism, but this strikes me as raising the specter of unfair competition. The non-profit, after all, enjoys certain tax advantages not available to a for-profit.

On the other hand, no one objects when for-profit newspapers run material from non-profit news organizations such as the Christian Science Monitor. My gut tells me this is different, but I can’t explain why.

We’re all debating whether for-profit newspapers can or should take the non-profit route. At least in a small way, the Times is now doing exactly that through the back door.

Dancing on the newspaper business’ grave

Former Wall Street bad boy Henry Blodget takes a look at the state of the newspaper business and asks an impolite question: So what? Blodget writes:

“Journalism” is alive and well, as evidenced by the still-robust health of companies like Bloomberg and Reuters, the survival of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and other great news organizations, the hyper-growth of online news and commentary sites, and the rise of social media.

Interestingly, Blodget’s provocation coincides with news that conditions are improving at the New York Times Co., which, despite its financial woes, is almost certain to be one of the winners in the emerging media landscape.

And I don’t think anyone would disagree with Blodget’s assessment that “society doesn’t need hundreds of White House reporters.” Back in the day, many of us used to argue that at least a few newspapers ought to have the guts to leave the White House to the AP and instead dig into the undercovered federal agencies. It never happened, and the moment has long since passed.

But I can’t be as cavalier as Blodget. If major metropolitan newspapers like the Boston Globe, the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Miami Herald can’t reinvent themselves as robust local-news operations, or somehow be replaced, then democratic self-government will suffer.

As you know, I’ve been paying a lot of attention to the New Haven Independent, a non-profit news site that stands as an interesting model of where local journalism may be headed. The local daily, the New Haven Register, is owned by the Journal Register Co., which is bankrupt. [Correction: The company emerged from bankruptcy in August.] The Register still does good work, but the Independent focuses more closely on the city, on urban issues and on community-building.

But the Independent employs just four full-timers, plus another two at an affiliate site. And it may never get much bigger than that.

I have very little nostalgia for the newspaper business, and I’m excited and energized about what’s taking place at the grassroots. But if we lose the capacity to throw bodies at certain kinds of complicated stories, especially local stories, then we’ll have lost a lot. (Via Jack Shafer’s Twitter feed.)

Calling all NU journalism majors

If You're A Journalism Major, You Have a Choice

View more documents from lisawilliams.

If you are a journalism major at a university other than Northeastern, please look the other way for a moment.

Placeblogger is looking for two interns at its office in Cambridge. Headed by Lisa Williams, the project tracks local blogs across the country and around the world. It’s cutting-edge stuff, and you’ll learn a lot about the future of journalism.

Check out the slideshow. And just do it.

Steamed Brauchli

Washington Post executive editor Marcus Brauchli emerged from the salon debacle unscathed. But now that he’s admitted he knew all along that the salons were intended as off-the-record fundraisers, it’s time to demand that he and publisher Katharine Weymouth come clean on what they knew and when they knew it.

Or so I argue in the Guardian.

Paid content, free alternatives

Boston Herald publisher Pat Purcell is the latest to argue that newspaper owners need to get together and agree to start charging for online content. And as I’ve said before, I’m not philosophically opposed. But it’s not going to work.

Let’s say every newspaper began charging for Web-site access tomorrow. By the end of the day, anyone could put together about a half-dozen bookmarks giving them at least 75 percent to 80 percent of what they were getting from newspapers, provided by news organizations that are free and will almost certainly remain so.

Here are just a few top-of-my-head alternatives. I’m leaving out a lot more than I’m including.

Consider, too, that many of these sites would beef up if newspapers were to withdraw from the free Web. Nothing remains static, especially when a business opportunity beckons.

There is no pot of paid-content gold at the end of the online rainbow.

More: Steve Buttry made similar points back in June.

Tax incentives, yes. Government subsidies, no.

Len Downie
Len Downie

Len Downie, former executive editor of the Washington Post, and Michael Schudson of Columbia University will release a report tomorrow that calls, among other things, for direct government funding of local journalism. Rick Edmonds of the Poynter Institute says such funding could amount to $500 million a year.

Despite Downie’s sterling credentials — and he’s looking better every day — I suspect this isn’t going anywhere, nor should it. True, Downie and Schudson try to draw parallels to existing models such as the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities in order to make their proposed Fund for Local Journalism seem less exotic. But it still amounts to a direct government bailout for the news business, which would severely compromise journalism’s ability to act as a watchdog on government.

Indirect government subsidies in the form of non-profit status and the tax incentives that go with that status make much more sense. Not that every news organization should go non-profit. But many non-profit news organizations are already doing good work, including public radio and television (which, alas, do receive some direct government funding) and community Web sites such as Voice of San Diego, MinnPost and the New Haven Independent.

If legislation is needed to bring non-profit news more into the mainstream, that might not be a bad idea. But when government starts writing checks, it will, inevitably, demand to have some say in what it’s paying for.

Chest-hair battle rages on

Boston Herald media reporter Jessica Heslam says Platinum Equity chairman Tom Gores does too have chest hair, and that the print version of the photo she and Boston University’s Tom Fiedler saw in the Boston Globe recently makes that clear. She writes:

Kennedy … has posted what appears to be the Internet version of the Gores photo on his blog. But if you still read a newspaper the good-old-fashioned way, like Boston University journalism honcho Tom Fiedler and I do, you’ll see that his black chest hair is very prominent.

I will have to take Heslam’s word for it. She’s right in saying I did not see the print version of the Globe. A quick survey of Google Images this morning does not settle the issue. In any case, Gores will not be the next publisher of the Boston Globe, so this hairy issue will have to remain unresolved.

Balloon dad hits the 14:59 mark

Richard_Heene_20091017Yes, we should all be skeptical about checkbook journalism, and Gawker is right up front about having paid Robert Thomas, a former friend and would-be business associate of balloon dad Richard Heene (photo).

But if Thomas can be trusted, the picture he paints of Heene is devastating. Thomas portrays Heene as an increasingly paranoid, frantic man who believes shape-shifting reptiles are running the government and who would do anything to get on television.

The two had even talked about perpetrating a hoax with the balloon, Thomas claims, though getting one of the kids involved was supposedly not part of the original plan.

This story in the Denver Post only adds to the sense that it’s all about to fall apart.

Photo of Heene is from his MySpace profile.