Will digital subscriptions save the newspaper business? They had better. With advertising in a death spiral, publishers have to hope that readers will pick up the slack. Progress has been slow, but it may finally be picking up.
Marc Tracy reports in The New York Times that several newspaper chains, including Lee Enterprises and Gannett, have experienced significant increases in paid digital circulation. The problem is that these increases are spread over many papers, and the situation at any one of them remains dicey.
Even as the local newspaper industry, broadly speaking, has declined, there is still a *lot* of money to be made, and for many papers there is even cause for optimism. I took a look in my final article on the media beat, out today. https://t.co/DApHvltk2l
For instance, Gannett is up 46% over the past year, to 1.5 million paid digital subscriptions — yet it owns about 250 daily papers, including USA Today. Those numbers need to be exponentially greater if Gannett is going to re-establish itself as a lucrative business and actually start adding rather than cutting journalistic resources.
“There’s a big misperception out there that there’s a big hole in local journalism, and I think that narrative’s been created by people who aren’t sitting in local markets,” Gannett chief executive Mike Reed told Tracy. As a longtime reader of Gannett’s (previously GateHouse Media’s) community weeklies, all I’ve got to say is: You’ve got to be kidding.
In order for paid digital to work, you also have to charge enough. To go back to USA Today, I see that the cost is $9.99 a month after the first-year discount expires. That’s not bad, but it’s well behind The Boston Globe’s $30 a month. And the Globe has managed to sell a reported 235,000 digital subscriptions. Of course, the Globe, like most newspapers, offers a huge discount to new subscribers, which means it then has to figure out a way to keep them.
In order to succeed with digital subscriptions, you need good content and good technology. Many of the papers now trying to succeed in the digital space have been cut substantially. And too many newspaper websites are still clunky mish-mashes with pop-ups, pop-unders and other annoyances.
It’s better to grow than to shrink, so in that sense I guess Tracy’s story is good news. But there’s still a long way to go.
Sarah Palin’s bogus libel suit would appear to be enough First Amendment excitement involving The New York Times. But there’s been another important development. A New York state judge’s ruling that the Times could not publish documents it had obtained belonging to the right-wing undercover operation Project Veritas has been stayed by a state appeals court. Michael Grynbaum reports in the Times:
In a decision made public on Thursday, the appeals court said the order would not be enforced until a formal appeal could be heard. The decision means that, for now, The Times can publish certain documents and will not have to turn over or destroy any copies of the documents in its possession.
As I wrote recently, Judge Charles D. Wood had prevented the Times from publishing the documents on the grounds that Project Veritas is in the midst of suing the Times for libel, and that the documents were protected by attorney-client privilege. But the Times has contended that it obtained the documents as a result of its reporting, not from discovery in the legal case, and Veritas has presented no evidence to the contrary — as Wood himself conceded.
Wood’s stunning overreach should have been overturned within hours, and I’m shocked that it’s taken this long. The First Amendment principle that prior restraint should only be exercised in the rarest of circumstances. That’s why the Supreme Court allowed the Times and The Washington Post to publish the Pentagon Papers despite the Nixon administration’s claim that to do so was a serious violation of national security. Wood’s decision in the Project Veritas case reads like a parody.
Here’s what the Times should do next: publish all the documents. Today. And encourage widespread copying. It’s not enough just to push back at Wood. His defiance of constitutionally guaranteed protections for the press needs to be held up to widespread condemnation.
It is the happiest of newspaper cycles. The advertisers supply the money, lots of it (49 pages of ads a day). The newspaper spends the money freely to produce a solid product, employing 198 full-time news staffers and 81 part-timers to fill a 24-page news hole. The high-income audience centered in towns like Ho-Ho-Kus, Wyckoff, Franklin Lakes, and Rivervale buys the newspaper and goes shopping, pleasing the advertisers, who buy more ads.
Earlier this week I had a chance to take part in a panel discussion with some wicked smart people about the future of local news, sponsored by Louisiana State University’s Manship School of Mass Communication. The discussion was moderated by Josh Darr, an assistant professor at LSU and a recent guest on the “What Works” podcast. We were joined by:
Sarabeth Berman, CEO of the American Journalism Project.
Jessica Mahone, research director of the Center for Innovation and Sustainability in Local Media.
Steve Waldman, President and Co-Founder, Report for America.
Hope you’ll give it a look. My apologies in advance for the bad lighting, but you didn’t want to look at me anyway.
The Poynter Institute has published an important story on the difficulty of tracking layoffs of journalists, especially journalists of color. As Kristen Hare writes, very few news organizations let it be known when they’ve eliminated positions. “For an industry that prizes transparency,” she says, “we’re experts at asking for it and rotten at actually offering it.”
She’s right, and it’s something I’ve found pretty frustrating whenever I hear reports that newspapers owned by Gannett or Alden Global Capital have downsized once again. Since many news organizations follow the practice of last hired, first fired, journalists from underrepresented groups tend to be disproportionately affected — but finding out exactly what happened is difficult if not impossible. Hare offers three explanations for why this information is so hard to come by:
“Lack of public notice about who was laid off and where
“A reluctance among some journalists to say anything publicly
“Growing use of nondisclosure agreements that include non-disparagement agreements”
Hare also quotes my Northeastern journalism colleague Meredith Clark, who’s been working with the News Leaders Association to revive its annual survey of newsroom diversity — a survey that was suspended several years ago because so few news organizations were responding. Dr. Clark puts it this way:
The thing is, journalism as an institution, as a business, has a vested interest in continuing to isolate people in terms of their knowledge of what the field actually looks like. And the corporatization of journalism helps with that because it’s easy to say, “Oh, this is a problem for HR,” or, “Oh, because of legal we can’t do this.”
Clark is absolutely right, and it extends well beyond layoff and diversity numbers. I’ve been covering the news media for more than 25 years, and though I’ve found a great deal of openness to the idea that journalists should be as transparent as they expect their sources to be, I’ve encountered plenty of examples of the opposite, too.
Unfortunately, we can’t file public-records requests or demand the right to attend meetings at media outlets. Rather, we have to rely on news executives to do the right thing. If they think government officials should be compelled to release data that casts them in an unfavorable light, then why do they think it ought to be different for media organizations?
Inés San Martín and John Allen join the “What Works” podcast to discuss the founding of Crux, a digital site that covers all things Catholic, and the “corporate resurrection” that took place three days after The Boston Globe shut it down.
Crux quickly partnered with the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic service organization, and now is a hybrid business model combining nonprofit support, crowd-funding and advertising. That means Crux has much in common with digital local news startups.
Inés San Martín
In our weekly Quick Takes, Ellen shares an update on a high-impact investigative project by Sahan Journal, and Dan discusses the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act, which has bipartisan support on Capitol Hill but is not a perfect solution to the local news crisis.
You can listen to our conversation here and subscribe through your favorite podcast app — as long as it isn’t Spotify. Like a number of musicians and podcasters, we’ve pulled our content from the service out of concern over vaccine disinformation being promulgated by Spotify podcast host Joe Rogan.
Cable news is a disgrace, especially during prime time. From 8 to 11 p.m. every Monday through Friday, the three outlets offer nothing but opinionated talk shows, CNN and MSNBC from the left, Fox News from the conspiratorial far right. It is a wasted opportunity.
But now CNN, the original cable news station — the one whose middle name is “news” — has a chance to reinvent itself. Last week CNN Worldwide president Jeff Zucker resigned after company officials learned he was involved romantically with his second-in-command, executive vice president Allison Gollust, who remains at CNN, at least for now.
It seems likely that there’s more to it. By the end of last week, Tatiana Siegel was reporting in Rolling Stone that Zucker and Gollust may have been advising Andrew Cuomo at the same time that the then-New York governor was appearing on Chris Cuomo’s CNN show. More to come, no doubt.
But whatever the reason, now is the perfect time for CNN to try something new. What Zucker was doing certainly wasn’t working. The man who foisted Donald Trump upon the media and political world, first with “The Apprentice” and later with hours upon hours of free air time during the 2016 presidential campaign, presided over a collapse in the ratings as soon as Trump left the White House. So what’s next?
Over the weekend, I asked my followers on social media and got some great responses. CNN employs boatloads of first-rate journalists. Why not let them shine? You’re probably not going to see CNN or its incoming owner, the Discovery network, actually try any of these ideas. And I’ll admit that there’s a retro quality to some of them. My defense is that they hark back to a time when CNN was good. And so it could be again.
Let’s get after it, as Chris Cuomo liked to say.
1. Launch a prime-time newscast. Did you ever realize that there isn’t a single newscast on any of the three cable “news” channels? It’s a pretty incredible omission. An insider once told me that it wouldn’t work because people are immersed in news all day on their phones and their laptops, and they want to watch people talk about it once evening comes along. Well, I don’t buy it.
As recently as 20 years ago, CNN offered a nightly prime-time newscast anchored by Aaron Brown, and MSNBC had one helmed by Brian Williams. Granted, that was before social media, but there’s no reason it can’t work again. The network’s three nightly newscasts all have higher ratings than cable news. Why not go with a solid hour of national and international news on CNN, serious but with more reporting, fewer talking heads and higher production values than the excellent but low-budget “PBS NewsHour”?
Who would anchor the CNN nightly newscast? My choice would be Audie Cornish, who recently left NPR to join CNN+, the digital streaming service that is scheduled to be unveiled this spring. CNN+ may be the future (or not), but the cable channel is the present. Let’s face it: Cable news appeals to older viewers who have no intention of cutting the cord and going with a streaming service. Why not leverage that with something they might actually watch? I’d slot the newscast for 8 p.m.
2. Bring back Larry King. Well, OK, the mainstay of 9 p.m. is no longer available, having died a year ago at the age of 87. And though King had his quirky charms, CNN could certainly find a host who’s better informed and more engaged. I’d suggest Anderson Cooper, one of the smartest and most versatile people at the network. Who better to talk with newsmakers, entertainers, authors and the like?
And by “talk with,” I mean “have a conversation.” When CNN put King out to pasture, they replaced him with Piers Morgan, a noxious Brit who held down the post for a few years in the early 2010s. It didn’t work, and eventually CNN put Chris Cuomo in that time slot as the host of a not-very-good political talk show. An interview program hosted by Cooper would be an ideal replacement.
3. Embrace the world. After a newscast at 8 and an interview show at 9, how about an international report at 10? CNN first earned the respect of viewers with its coverage of the Persian Gulf War in 1991. Even today, CNN International wins kudos for its quality and depth. Yet U.S. viewers rarely get to see any of that coverage.
Now, I realize that international news almost certainly would not be a ratings winner. But CNN’s numbers are already below water. Maybe Zucker’s replacements could figure out a way to slip past MSNBC, but are they really going to challenge Fox? Probably not. The alternative is to embrace quality in the hopes of attracting a prestige audience that will prove enticing to high-end advertisers. Capping the evening with an hour of well-reported international news is just the way to do that.
My first choice as anchor would be Christiane Amanpour, assuming her health would allow it. She’s got the history with CNN — she still holds the title of chief international anchor — and continues to be well liked by viewers.
4. Not so boldly into the future. Maybe I’ll be proven wrong, but CNN+ looks like a looming disaster. I simply can’t picture why anyone, even a cord-cutter, would pay for a streaming service so they can watch Chris Wallace.
Yet CNN is already sitting on a significant digital asset — CNN.com, the top-ranked news website. According to recent figures from Comscore, CNN.com and its apps attracted 143 million unique visitors a month in 2021, putting CNN Digital way ahead of The New York Times (89 million), FoxNews.com and NBCNews.com (about 87 million each) and The Washington Post (82 million).
The danger with CNN+ is that not only will it fail to sign up cable cord-cutters, but that it will harm CNN Digital as well.
CNN Digital isn’t just successful — it’s good, one of the best free national and international news sources available. I’d merge CNN+ into CNN Digital, offering all video programming free to users with a cable TV log-in (as is currently the case) while charging an extra fee to non-cable subscribers who want to watch video. The cable providers will go nuts, but they’re doomed in the long run anyway.
And keep the non-video news free for everyone.
5. Offer some specialized programming. This is a bit of a catch-all. My followers made a lot of good suggestions for shows that might appear weekly or occasionally. Several suggested a program rounding up local news from around the country — a tough sell, but possibly worth doing if it can be demonstrated how it’s broadly relevant. An investigative hour coproduced with the nonprofit news organization ProPublica. The return of “Crossfire” (sorry, but no).
I might want to turn the Friday edition of the Anderson Cooper interview show I’ve suggested into a political roundtable, edgier than PBS’s “Washington Week” but smarter than what’s currently on CNN. No shouting and no Trumpers allowed — although intelligent conservatives would certainly be welcome.
Several people weighed in with suggestions for changes in CNN’s tone and emphasis, which would also be welcome. For instance, Alex Howard, director of the Digital Democracy Project, called for the network to improve its culture, focus on hard news, original reporting and expert analysis, and examine ethics more closely when covering government and corporations.
Jeff Jarvis, a professor at the City University of New York’s Craig Newmark School of Journalism, concluded several ideas about how to improve CNN’s offering with this: “In short, throw the damned deck chairs overboard and ask: Why are we here? What value to we bring to society? Use it as an opportunity to start over.”
The opportunity to start over doesn’t come around very often. CNN’s executives now find themselves with a blank slate. Here’s hoping against hope that they make the best of it.
Yet another small media outlet is coming to Boston — this one owned by the legendary Graham family, the former owners of The Washington Post.
City Cast is hiring a lead producer to oversee a team of three who’ll produce a daily podcast and newsletter in Boston, joining projects that are already up and running in Chicago, Denver, Houston, Salt Lake City and Pittsburgh. The project is expanding to six other cities as well. The journalist behind it is David Plotz, formerly the editor-in-chief of Slate (also owned by Graham Holdings) and former chief executive of Atlas Obscura, who announced his idea for a network of local podcasts in October 2020:
It will combine essential local news with smart, delightful perspective about your community. It will be the passionate, curious, connecting voice of your city and mine — framing and explaining the news and helping make us more informed and more empathetic — and better citizens in small but meaningful ways. [Plotz’s boldface.]
I spent a little time with the Denver and Chicago City Casts this morning, and my first impression was that they are more substantive than Axios Local or certainly 6AM City, which I wrote about recently for GBH News. (And let’s not forget about the specialty state political newsletters from Politico, State House News Service and CommonWealth Magazine.) That said, I’m not sure who the audience for City Cast Boston will be.
In his announcement, Plotz lamented that “where local news is sparse or feeble, communities suffer.” Well, Boston is certainly no news desert, and it’s hard to see how a small podcast is going to do anything about the suburbs, exurbs and satellite cities, where news coverage is truly lacking.
I suspect that City Cast’s target audience are young tech workers, many from out of town, who haven’t yet developed the news habit — in other words, the same people who’ve been targeted by Axios Local and 6AM City.
And maybe it’s time for the city’s major homegrown media outlets — The Boston Globe, of course, but also WBUR Radio, GBH News, CommonWealth and others — to think about why outside media organizations assume those readers are there for the taking.
The Boston Globe’s paid digital circulation keeps growing. According to an email that editor Brian McGrory sent to the staff Friday afternoon and that was passed on by a trusted source, the paper is now at 235,000. I won’t quote the whole thing, but here’s the relevant part:
In the past two months, what David Epstein would call the meteorological winter, we’ve added more than 8,500 new digital subscribers, bringing our total to about 235,000. It’s easy to take this massive achievement for granted, but you need to know, there’s not another major metro paper in the US that’s near this. And we’re retaining our existing subscribers better than any forecast. We’ve also had some of our biggest traffic days since the early pandemic in the past month.
Much of this is a tribute to the good work the Globe is doing. But some of it has to be a consequence of the high cost of a print subscription — a cost that will soon be rising even more. This showed up in my inbox several days ago:
Is the @bostonglobe trying to drive down print circulation to the point at which it can close the Taunton plant and outsource what's left of the print run? This makes you wonder. pic.twitter.com/S6uikXdCdo
I do wonder what the Globe sees as the future of its print edition. As recently as December, the paper reported that 55% of its revenue continues to come from print. I have to assume they have no intention of getting rid of it. But as I tweeted, I’m curious as to whether there’s a deliberate strategy to shrink the print run and move more readers over to digital.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar meets a fan in Iowa. Photo (cc) 2019 by Gage Skidmore.
For years now, news executives have been complaining bitterly that Google and Facebook repurpose their journalism without paying for it. Now it looks like they might have an opportunity to do something about it.
Earlier this week a Senate subcommittee chaired by Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., heard testimony about the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA), sponsored by her and Sen. John Kennedy, R-La. The bill would allow representatives of the news business to bargain collectively over a compensation package with Google and Facebook without running afoul of antitrust laws. If they fall short, an arbitrator would impose a settlement.
“These big tech companies are not friends to journalism,” said Klobuchar, according to an account of the hearing by Gretchen Peck of the trade magazine Editor & Publisher. “They are raking in ad dollars while taking news content, feeding it to their users, and refusing to offer fair compensation.”
There’s no question that the local news ecosystem has fallen apart, and that technology has a lot to do with it. (So do the pernicious effects of corporate and hedge-fund ownership, which has imposed cost-cutting that goes far beyond what’s necessary to run a sustainable business.) But is the JCPA the best way to go about it?
The tech giants themselves have been claiming for years that they provide value to news organizations by sending traffic their way. True, except that the revenues brought in by digital advertising have plummeted over the past two decades. A lawsuit brought by newspaper publishers argues that the reason is Google’s illegal monopoly over digital advertising, cemented by a secret deal with Facebook not to compete.
Though Google and Facebook deny any wrongdoing, the lawsuit strikes me as a more promising strategy than the JCPA, which raises some serious questions about who would benefit. A similar law in Australia has mainly served to further enrich Rupert Murdoch.
Writing at Nieman Lab, Joshua Benton argues, among other things, that simply taxing the technology companies and using the money to fund tax subsidies for local news would be a better solution. Benton cites one provision of the Build Back Better legislation — a payroll tax deduction for hiring and retaining journalists.
In fact, though, the payroll provision is just one of three tax credits included in the Local Journalism Sustainability Act; the others would reward subscribers and advertisers. I have some reservations about using tax credits in a way that would indiscriminately reward hedge-fund owners along with independent operators. But I do think it’s worth a try.
Even though local news needs a lot of help, probably in the form of some public assistance, it strikes me that the Klobuchar-Kennedy proposal is the least attractive of the options now on the table.
