Five Key Reasons Why Newspapers Are Failing

Most metros were not unwanted freebies, and most metros had competition.

 

I think a lot of people are cutting out the middle man. Going to city hall sites, looking at documents and press releases on their own, reading team sites for sports coverage, heck most high schools have their own web sites, and state government sites have their own information.
I'm not saying its as good or better, but newspapers use to be the only place you could get information. Agencies used to need papers to get their message out, now hospitals publish free periodicals distributed through the mail, you can join your local school district's facebook page and follow your congressional rep on Twitter.

 

And all that's a scary frickin' thing for democracy, the concept of "we'll trust the source to tell us the truth." Sometimes the source posts truth, sometimes dangerous B.S. And having an independent source that wants to make money by ferreting out the difference should be something to maintain, not scoff at.

 

I'm not scoffing dooley. But I also think if newspapers want to be viewed as a skeptical independent source that they be skeptical and independent. Don't know how many news orgs I see "partnering" with local school districts, hospitals, and cheering every chamber of commerce initiative that comes down the pike.
I don't know if newspapers ever could truly afford to be skeptical and independent, certainly not now.

 

And when the world changes, the innovative company anticipates the change and leads it, thereby making another fortune.
IBM was not making personal computers in the 1890, you know.
I've said this many times: If newspaper companies had a clue, they'd have invented (and owned) Craigslist, EBay, Sportsline, Fandango. And others.
The best part of the "Five Reasons" piece is showing how the fixation on keeping corporate profits high in the 90s killed any incentive for innovation.

 

If newspapers had been smart, they wouldn't have been newspaper companies?

I guess I can agree with that.

 

Well for one, the internet as we knew it 10 years ago is nothing like it is today.

Nobody used Craigslist. No newspapers had good Web sites. They were amateurish at best.

Moreover, we now have a generation of college graduates who are dependent on the interwebs and aren't doing the newspaper thing. Again, this is different than 10 years ago.

 

I just love how the photog's name is Moon Rhythm.

 

And the accompanying photo is by "Moon Rhythm," which I think is one of Frank Zappa's kids ...

 

The biggest mistake is anyone thinking they were "newspaper companies."

They were media companies. Or audience delivery companies. Or advertiser delivery companies. The money is made off of promising advertisers you are going to deliver and certain number and set of eyeballs to them. Ergo, the news product is there to serve that purpose, whether we like to believe it or not.

Anyway, what would have been a better investment for newspapers? Spending a few pennies to start Craiglist (classifieds), Ebay (more classifieds, with a little twist), Fandango (movie listings) and Sportsline (sports aggregation), all of which would not have been a stretch given the skills already in place at newspaper companies? Or what they did, spending billions of dollars on other newspaper companies?

 

They would have been newspaper companies ... and much, much more.
And they'd still be printing money.

 

Your position seems to be that if newspaper companies would have been smart, they would have joined the dot.com startup boom and made lots of money doing something other than being newspapers.

I guess that's true, but it seems to be kind of a pointless point. If GM had been smart, they would have started a software business and become Microsoft. And that's even ignoring the survivor bias. How many newspapers would have gone entirely under after they lost the startup capital on a failed web business? There were a lot more pets.coms than ebays.