Newspapers RIP?

The world isn't ending, so take off your sandwich board. :

Plenty of us still make a decent living reporting, writing, editing and designing. Maybe not for newspapers, and maybe not in this specific economic downturn, but even despite those factors, what you say isn't necessarily true for everybody.

I'm really sick of these generalities being accepted as gospel. Journalism is not going away. Newspapers might be. There is a difference.

 

I think that's what isn't being understood here. It may be happening to some people. It's NOT happening to other people.

 

Shottie, the ratio tilts heavier and heavier towards "some people" every single day.

I'm glad you personally haven't been hammered yet, but you can't blame other people for steeling themselves for what feels inevitable.

 

Mike Vaccaro wrote the following in his December 14 column in the New York Post

The work that Vaccaro praised is the kind of work that guarantees that while our industry morphs from the printed product to the 'net, there will be a need for professional writers, editors, photographers and layout people.

 

Steeling yourself is one thing, Beej. Ranting about buggy whips and fedoras is quite another.

Of course, I do hope those of us still making a decent living (in newspapers or otherwise) realize the possibility of being out on our asses in the near-future and have some sort of backup plan, if the need arises. That is a reality no one can deny. It's hit too close to home too many times recently. I know that.

But the world is not ending. The world is changing. If that makes some people miserable, so be it. Some of us aren't so pessimistic.

 

You can't blame people, though, if they're feeling apoclyptic (sp).

I don't doubt there will ALWAYS be a need for people who can gather the news, write it, edit it, design it, distribute it, etc. I have SERIOUS doubts that the bastards that run big media give a shit about doing it the right way [/Larry Brown] and will continue to look to do it on the cheap until they realize that they can get just as many eyeballs to the site with "citizen journalism" as the real thing.

You know as well as I do how much the powers that be love "comments." They'll get more people to the site with an anything goes, Wild Wild West vibe in which everyone comments on the news (or what they think is the news) but nobody actually reports on it.

I often fear it's not pessimism but realism to harbor such worries.

 

If you can stay positive, buckweaver, good for you.

I am trying hard to see--or even imagine--the light at the end of the tunnel. Really, I am.

Maybe it is there ...

 

First of all, Buck, I wasn't ranting. That's your word, and you're not being honest if you characterize my offering that way.

Second of all, what's this guy ...



... doing dissing my discussion of fedoras?

Third, I'll frame my point this way: I wasn't talking about the glacier-like evolution of this business and where our particular careers are headed. You make a nice living in journalism now? Swell. You might even be able to hang onto your job until you retire. But I'm suggesting we jump ahead 25 years and think about what the business will look like then.

Will there be fewer places paying people like us to practice journalism? Will they be paying fewer of us? Will they be paying those people less money to do so?

I maintain that the answers to all three questions are "yes." Resoundingly and significantly so.

Quibble about my pessimism if you like, but I don't see any direction other than down. To a pie that is shrinking, capable of feeding fewer journalists and providing much less sustenance. Not making any "absolute" claims here, in terms of no one hanging onto a job or feeling professional satisfaction. But I think the odds are getting longer and longer against that, and the atmosphere that permeates newsrooms and the business now is dousing a lot of flames even before the people are dumped.

 

hard not to be pessimistic when 21,000 newspaper industry jobs were lost this year

 

That's what she said.

We get closer to death every day, too. I don't spend a huge amount of my waking hours contemplating it.

 

i hate that sketch

 

The metaphor does work, though, because people quit riding trains but they didn't stop travelling. There was a need to transport people and goods from A to B and trains simply stopped being the most efficient way to do that. It's the same with newspapers, there's always going to be a need for information, but newspapers aren't the only ways to stay informed about the world anymore.

If newspapers go print-only then people will just go to cnn.com or some other website. It's a pipe dream to think newspapers can just jam their heads in the sand and forget technology exists. Newspaper websites are successful, it's the print part of the business--the ink, paper, and trucks--that are the albatross hanging around the industry's neck.

Newspapers aren't going anywhere, but the ones we have now definitely might. A far more likely scenario than anything I've heard suggested is that a lot of mid-size locals will shut down and people will start new papers to fill the gap--papers that are too small to be held by Wall Street's leash. What profit margins are the big papers (and even the mid-size locals) turning in? 10%? And they're dying because they aren't making 20% like they were when they had a monopoly on information? Most retail businesses survive on 2% or less profit margins, especially in this economy.

The industry may have to shrink considerably to survive, and the days of 20% returns are never coming back, but a future where all but the most essential beats are cut, the profit margins hover around 5 or 6 percent, and papers focus more on local coverage is definitely still in the cards.

Unfortunately that kind of change takes time and we all have to put food on the table in the meantime.