Fitch Ratings: 'Several cities' could have no daily paper as soon as 2010

Could be right. I HOPE you're right.

 

What if each major metro did this on the same day? This has been raised here before, but what if all the folks in those cities either had to make do with the news organizations that were left -- most likely national or from smaller markets -- or just go without? Wouldn't a pay system benefit all these struggling papers?

Besides maybe Murdoch, who among the newspaper barons (morons?) would break ranks to circumvent the arrangement? And even if someone did, how would he get, for example, NFL Chargers coverage to fans of that team while he's based in Philadelphia? Or coverage of the St. Louis city council when he's located in Atlanta? Are the radio and TV stations in those markets sufficiently staff to provide that sort of coverage? I don't think so. Yet places keep giving away for free what makes them distinctive and what only they are providing.

 

I would think a city that loses it's paper would at least have a Web-only paper take its place. I also could envision that in a city where a paper shut down that perhaps if a local group could buy the press and other assests for say 10 cents on the dollar, a new paper might arise. As for big chains, I think their days are numbered. A possible solution for a city's only newspaper may be to purchased by a local TV station in town and have a combined Web site. That way you could have actual newspaper reporters write stories instead of some TV personality and have quality video from a person schooled in camerawork instead of some high school beat writer being forced to carry around a video camera.

 

This is exactly what will happen, eventually.

I can't imagine a world in which the people of Green Bay to want daily, wall-to-wall coverage of the Packers, or the people of San Antonio of the Spurs, or the people of Oklahoma City of the Sooners.

Even if they wind up having to pay for it.

 

oh right, like tv can't provide the same level of newsgathering as a newspaper?


























(refusing to use the blue font on this one)

 

Combining forces is the way to go. We'll see if it happens.

 

No, not every paper is doomed.

Smaller papers are better insulated than metros. Small towns don't have Web sites competing for readers and, more importantly, ad revenue.

 

what would stop someone from stepping in after a paper folds and launching a new, debt-free, stream-lined version with the same name? i know that when the dallas morning news bought and then shut down the dallas times herald, they kept the name rights for several years but in the case where there no longer is a publication in town, would the name still be protected? if the company doesn't exist anymore, how can the name be off limits?

 

TV and radio stations are hurting as much, and in some cases more, than newspapers.

 

I agree with that. That's where the online journalism model will begin to work better. Maybe before that happens, papers will try the Albuquerque model where non-subscribers have to watch an ad before viewing any story, the same as if you're trying to watch The Office on NBC's site. I'm not sure what success it has, but it might be worth a shot.

 

Here's the thing, there will always be a market for newspapers.
Just as there still was for books after entertainment radio and theatres and television and so forth. What happens is the pie becomes smaller and in theory, this is good so long as each business competes by improving the product rather than making it as cheaply as possible and this is where our entire economic model in North America has failed thus far.

Of course, we're also fucked because so few hands own so much. Another failing of the system, I guess.

I think, if a major urban centre loses its newspaper, you'll see the hole filled by Internet initially, but I bet $20 (Cdn.) another newspaper will start up again, within two years of the closure. If not sooner.

But to survive, it will have to be different, more responsive, more engaging and essentially, a newspaper in a style not often seen, but totally possible.

 

The FCC would have to change its rule against ownership of newspapers and TV stations in the same market.

Dallas and a few other markets were grandfathered in when the rule went into effect (I think in the 60s). Belo owns the DMN and Channel 8.