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When writing about the death of daily newspapers, daily newspapers usually like to blame things like the Internet, increasing aliteracy, and a loss of advertising resulting from the latest economic downturn.
The complaints aren't entirely without merit but are generally stated in a way suggesting that America's media giants are merely the victims of terrible external forces, not their own horrible business decisions. Accusing the Internet of pulpicide, though, is a little like giving barbarian invaders full credit for the fall of the Roman Empire.
In the under-regulated communications industry of the post-1980s, gigantic media companies took sovereignty over newspapers, TV stations, and radio stations all across the country and treated them like colonies to be exploited. When greater profits were needed to expand the empire, the colonies were squeezed. More and more content was made with cheap syndicated materials. When that wasn't enough to keep expanding profit margins, the companies took out loans.
Even newspaper chains that have consistently posted healthy operating profits have frozen pensions and laid off staff, while the managerial staff yelps about how difficult things are for newspapers.
It's true, of course, that daily newspaper circulation has been declining for decades and that imploding real estate and automotive markets have delivered a terrible blow. But the primary reason why so many media companies are flailing like speared fish — at a time when the market for useful and informed content is expanding at an incredible rate — is directly related to imperial overreach and crushing debt.
According to an article in a recent edition of Advertising Age, the McClatchy Company, a leading newspaper and Internet publisher, posted a 21 percent operating profit in 2008 but began slashing jobs and benefits across the board in order to manage nearly $2 billion in debt from its top-dollar purchase of the Knight Ridder news service.
Once you get beyond the greed and gluttony, there's a really ugly side to colonialism: a pervasive belief among colonizers that the universe has rewarded their moral, physical, and intellectual superiority with the gift of total domination. This is the imperative behind the continuing American belief in Manifest Destiny, the worldwide tradition of subjugating non-European populations, and modern theories of supply-side economics and corporate welfare. Our corporations conquered a newly devalued world. Our corporate elites have become our nobility, entitled in the truest sense of the word. This is every bit as true in the world of big media as it is in the world of banking and finance.
Newspapers aren't the only media putting out fires in a crumbling empire. Radio has also extended itself beyond sustainability, becoming less local in the process. Syndication poster-boy Rush Limbaugh's recent campaign against "the fairness doctrine" — a doctrine, incidentally, that nobody is trying to reinstate — was a thinly veiled campaign against increased competition and local ownership.
Limbaugh and the giant radio conglomerates he represents aren't as easy to sympathize with as daily newspapers. As badly as they have been exploited, most of our newspapers still have deep roots in their communities. But now the biggest newspapers in Tennessee are sharing content to maximize financial resources. And representatives of America's biggest newspaper chains are meeting with attorneys to figure out how they can test the boundaries of antitrust laws.
The newspaper industry's "failing business model" is repeatedly blamed for all the sturm, drang, and fire-sale transactions. But there are plenty of reasons to believe that local newspapers can turn a profit. Newspaper owners, on the other hand, are often leveraged to the point that turning a profit just isn't good enough anymore.
Times are tough for advertising-supported media, because times are tough all over. The digital barbarians are howling at the gate, and at the moment there's nothing on the horizon to look forward to but the infinite aftermath of postcolonial reconstruction. Chris Davis is a Flyer staff writer and proprietor of the blog the Flypaper Theory.
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Locally owned newspapers have a better chance of surviving. They're able to stay in tune with their audiences and aren't required by some out-of-town corporate serfmaster to fork over all their profits to satisfy shareholder greed.
One need look no further than 495 Union for a most excellent example of just how out of touch a newspaper owned by an outside entity can become.
A newspaper should be about public service, not providing a dividend to some shareholder who couldn't care less what the product is. Most of EW Scripps' stockholders would be just as happy if the company started making widgets, as long as the stock price goes up and they get their cut.
Journalism used to be a public service profession. You had a calling. It was rewarding despite long hours and low pay.
Now it's like being forced to stand on a street corner in a short skirt and skimpy top. And everything you earn goes to your pimp.
Even more than stockholder greed is the need to service debt racked up during the heady days of cheap credit and corporate takeovers.
I grew up with a guy who was the son of a local manufacturer. His father's company had been around for about 40 years when dear old dad retired and handed over the reins to his boy. This was just before the dot.com bubble burst - a previous day of headiness, cheap credit and corporate takeovers. Sonny boy saw all that cash just sitting around, that his dad had built up during flush times to get the company through the hard times, and he took it and started buying up smaller companies hither, thither and yon.
Then the bubble burst, business slacked off, and he could no longer service all the debt he'd accumulated, so he went bankrupt. All this took about 2 years to accomplish, and now the business his father spent his whole life building up is owned by an out-of-town conglomerate.
That's what happened to newspapers that became media companies. There will always be newspapers, and if the recession has a silver lining, hopefully it will be the death of corporate mouthpieces and the return of locally-owned, independent newspapers.
Bring back the Press Scimitar! I'm serious. The morning paper model itself could be part of what's killing them. Who has time anymore to read the morning paper? By the time you get to it in the evening, it's full of news that's already 24 hours old. I bet an afternoon paper, with all the same day's news, would do a lot better in today's environment.
Hadn't thought about that, jeff, but you make a good point about the a.m. vs. afternoon models. the only gamble would be on how much access people have to non-print news outlets during the day.
Jeff, your comment about the morning paper is spot on. We canceled our subscription except for Sunday because it never came in time for us to read it before leaving for work, and we had no interest in it by the time we got home at night. However, pretty soon the Sunday edition will be overshadowed by the weekend USA Today. You can even get most of the Sunday ads and coupons online now.
Not to mention decreasing pertinent content. Maybe if they focused more on local news and less on wasted space full of national and world news that people get everywhere else, they might survive. Although, so often the local news they do print is very repetitive and one-sided.
The most popular edition of the CA (other than Sunday) is the Wednesday Food section, and I saw where they are working to reduce it and are getting pushback from the few readers who are left. Speaking of "sections", how can you call a one-sheet-folded piece of newsprint a "section"?
I remember the Press Scimitar, too, and how my dad would devour it after dinner every night. In its day I seem to remember that it was viewed as being the more liberal of the two papers. Thanks for bringing back those memories.
Plus the Press Scimitar employed paper boys who delivered the paper after school on their bikes. I wanted to be a paper boy, but about the time I was old enough, the paper closed, and who really wanted to get up at four in the morning to fold papers for the Commercial Appeal? Not me.
I have an uncle who worked there. .
Ownership has nothing to do with the ultimate survival of a newspaper. The decline of advertising revenue and "paid" subscriptions cause newspapers to die. They lose ad revenue as businesses discover more cost effective alternatives to advertise their company's products and services. Paid subscriptions aka...circulation.. decline when readers find alternative and more relevant places to find news, classified, op-ed, etc. By teh time you see it in the paper...it old news.
Hey since "proprietor of the blog the Flypaper Theory" is now a part of your official CV, you ever thought about getting this thing organized like I've been badgering your ass to do since day effing one? "You have the keys" is an invitation to license, and I guaran-God-damn-tee you that you don't want me taking exclusive license with "the keys."
Let's all get together and talk this over like adults, hm? That blog has long outgrown its happy-go-lucky origins, and it's way past time we either fertilized the thing or let it die.
Oh, sweet nostalgia. We are already in the post-newspaper age, dudes. Give it another five years and see where we are headed. Most of the folks at the CA will be working at some local blog however, the blog will probably become part of some paid "package" much like cable, where we are charged to get our news and information, unlike now, in the free go-go years. Pretty soon, the internet, like television, will be regulated by the government and parsed into consumer "packages" much like cable TV. Enjoy free access to the NYT and others--while it lasts.
CD - can you point me to the data that says the newspapers are still profitable but the owners need more? I hear/read that a lot. Don't know if I buy that argument. It is pretty easy to blame the media giants, but not sure if I buy that the newspapers were profitable.
Zip, most of the materials I've cited recently are from Advertising Age and subscription only.
http://tinyurl.com/cxtkgq
That link will take you to a list of superb articles exploring problems with contemporary print media business models. One in particular "It's Not Newspapers in Peril; It's Their Owners" lays everything out pretty neatly and includes plenty of facts & figures.
A chart in the March issue showed exactly how circulation declined over the past 20-years---- while the print properties maintained uncommonly large profit margins.
This Molly Ivins piece from 2006 functions as a decent set up for looking at what's happening now though she doesn't get deep into the issue of debt.
http://www.creators.com/opinion/molly-ivin…
The fact that Newspapers have been incredibly profitable even while losing circ and degrading their product is extremely well documented. These just happen to be the couple of links I have at hand at the moment.
Also this from Canada: http://www2.canada.com/windsorstar/news/st…
And this frm CNN:
http://www2.canada.com/windsorstar/news/st…
There's LOTS of stuff that's only a Google away ... shouldn't be hard for you to find more of whatever it is you're looking for.
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