Wash. Post columnist: Time to shut down the small papers

Winning an award doesn't make someone any better or any worse than someone who hasn't. It doesn't make him any more of an expert on the profession than a "random SportsJournalists.com poster."

Pearlstein is wrong about getting rid of the small paper regardless of whether he has a Pulitzer or not.

 

The small dailies and weeklies will stay in business because people want to know what is going on with city councils and school districts.

If they focus on what they are good at, they will have a market.

 

Steven Pearlstein is not a BAD economics writer. But he won a Pulitzer because he works for the Washington Post. Period, not because he "called" the financial crisis. A dozen blogger-economists, minimum, were there long before he was. His opinion in this case is wholly mistaken, possibly because he is one of many who do not realize the ways in which the newspaper business is different from other businesses.

 

Anyway

Most Americans DO live in metropolitan areas.

So I think what this fella is trying to get at is not that we need to kill small papers just for the sake of killing them. Or in service of bigger papers. He's saying rather that something like 1500 small papers are out there reinventing the wheel every day. That's fantastically inefficient. For them all. And for their readers. Certainly local news still needs to be gathered and distributed in each of those places, but why spend any time and effort at that local level trying to provide national and international news?

I think he's picturing a streamlined - and probably electronic - version of a regional hub operation that gathers and streams (or prints) relevant regional, national and international news, sends it down the line to the local outlet (paper or photons), and receives in return the newsgathering from that local delivery point.

Every Bugtussle needs its own news, certainly, and local advertising. But the effort and expense of having 1500 separate papers being run by scores of different companies is again, terrifically inefficient.

 

How is that business model different from the fantastically successful newspaper chain, except for the mythical savings from "the Internet"?

 

I'm thinking of a place he can stick that Pulitzer.

 

Just forward all the calls about the lack of local coverage to this guy.

 

Rural weeklies are the cockroach of the industry, and I mean that in the most flattering possible way. They are so hyperlocal they fly right alongside the internet because the internet doesn't cover town council meetings where the mayor shows up in a pair of jeans. Many of them are not only surviving but thriving. Unfortunately, they don't employ enough people to be the safety net for the industry. But you can bet your last buck they'll be around long-term.

 

I disagree with almost everything he said, but I am not optimistic about the future of small dailies. And it has nothing to do with the news product. I think we're going to see continued consolidation of retailers and banks and auto dealers and the continued dying-out of independent local businesses that tend to advertise in local papers. I look at the county seat where I grew up, and the reason why the small daily is so thin is because half the stores have been croaked by Wal-Mart. I'm pretty sure e-commerce may strangle the rest. I found myself doing it today while I got in a couple hours of Christmas shopping downtown. The little shop had a nice little gift but was out of another variation that would have been slightly cooler, and I found myself thinking, "I bet I could get the other one online ... wait a minute, what the fuck am I doing? It defeats the entire reason for shopping downtown in the first place." I don't think under-30Ks are a good gamble five years from now.

 

Hi Michael -

As cryptic as that little excerpt was, I'm not sure exactly what he means when he says "economy of scale." My guess, though, would be something on a much larger scale than historic newspaper chains, or traditional wire services.

Picture half a dozen big regional newsgathering operations, no more, distributed from our six largest cities. They constitute the Times/Post/Tribune/Bugle consortium. That consortium maintains a global network of bureaus. And oversees a network of satellite newsgathering outposts in every town in America that currently has a newspaper.

Their product - tailored to each market - posts electronically around the clock. To your Kindle, or other subscription electronic reader. In places where a paper product is still viable, there's a remote printing plant that spits out hardcopies X to suit demand. The local newsgathering operation fits its local news and advertising into an online template provided by that mothership, and/or prints out copies to meet local demand.

I think that's what he's picturing.

 

Yes, and your local TV station should quit doing newscasts so more people will watch Katie Couric.

 

Pearlstein's vision, like so many other "newspaper of the future" visions, omits one tiny detail. Revenue. Where's it coming from? Internet advertising is no longer new (it's starting to take it in the shorts in the recession, too) and so far, nobody's come up with a way to make it lucrative enough to support major newsgathering organizations. In my day job, I read advertising industry trade pubs, and the deal is ALL advertising is swirling down the chute and the mass media they support with it. Newspapers just happen to be further down the tube.
Either Google is going to buy all newspapers (and why?) or there's only one business model left. Charge for all information on all platforms. Customers won't like it. But if they want information, they have to understand that it costs money to gather, analyze, report, and collate.