The End of Newspapers

[Jockey]

I maintain the Internet didn't kill newspapers, it killed their ad revenues.

You forget the 1st rule of everything - it's always about the money.

If the internet killed their ad revenues - then the internet is killing newspapers.

But the orange creep who hates the media is doing his best to unwittingly revive the industry.

[Dr. Blackheart]

You forget the 1st rule of everything - it's always about the money.

If the internet killed their ad revenues - then the internet is killing newspapers.

Which is my point. Newspapers tried to monetize content when they should have monetized advertising. Content draws an audience, advertisers pay for reach. Newspapers thought they were the ad delivery form when they weren't/aren't.

ESPN's problem is no different, nor were Motorola's. Nor BetaMax or IBM PCs. The technology form changed and they were on the wrong end. Reach hasn't gone away. The forms change constantly and so do markets. Businesses who move with reach, win. See Apple, Google, Amazon.

Say what you may, but The Donald knows that too.

[B. McBannerson]

Not at all. I'm saying that "all things Trump" has energized the top newspapers simply because more readers are buying subscriptions, both print and online. The Times did great work on important subjects in 2014 and 2015, too, but not as many people care about famine in Somalia.

And I'm saying there are those that will say "all things Obama" energized newspapers in a different way, to push adoring stories and not punish.  Do you think the media tilts one way or another?  The public has a viewpoint on this and what stories are pursued or published may help to create that perception.  It is as if after a decade or so, journalists decided to be journalists again, but where were they prior?

[PBRme]

And I'm saying there are those that will say "all things Obama" energized newspapers in a different way, to push adoring stories and not punish.  Do you think the media tilts one way or another?  The public has a viewpoint on this and what stories are pursued or published may help to create that perception.  It is as if after a decade or so, journalists decided to be journalists again, but where were they prior?

Lap Dogs?

[MU82]

And I'm saying there are those that will say "all things Obama" energized newspapers in a different way, to push adoring stories and not punish.  Do you think the media tilts one way or another?  The public has a viewpoint on this and what stories are pursued or published may help to create that perception.  It is as if after a decade or so, journalists decided to be journalists again, but where were they prior?

The point was that subscriptions have gone up in the last year, and that largely has been the Orange Syndrome.

I mentioned a few newspapers. Did the WSJ fawn over Obama, too? Did you see the way the Times went after Hillary (and Bill)?

Yes, in general, the newspapers tilt left. I have "admitted" that many times. That's a whole 'nother subject, one that would get even more political than this one has.

[dgies9156]

Newspapers are dying for the same reason domestic passenger railroad died (and I worked in both in my career). Technology outstripped the newspaper's ability to deliver timely content in a user-friendly environment. Few newspapers have figured out how to effectively use the internet.

Though I think many media outlets have lost the objectivity and focus that the professors in the College of Journalism pushed in the 1970s, this is not the reason newspapers died. Rather it comes down to raids on advertising by alternative media and the inability of publishers to spend capital and readers to fully appreciate true investigative journalism/

In Chicago, our local NBC affiliate at 6 p.m., and 10 p.m. has figured it out. Their solution is to find an inoffensive set of anchors (yes, that's you, Lovely Allison), run 10 minutes of public safety news in a 14 minute news hole, have lots of flashing lights, great videos and young, appealing reporters babble about absolutely nothing. It doesn't matter that the news has absolutely no effect on the day-to-day lives of the vast majority of its consumers and it does not matter that there is no real effort to get underneath a problem and promulgate solutions. It's simple journalistic hard candy that makes a viewer almost feel guilty for watching.

To its credit, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel occasionally breaks out of its USA Today corporate mandates and writes about real issues. Their reporting on issues related to the Great Lakes is Pulitzer material. They've done a nice job recently characterizing a third grade class from 1978 and the impact of Milwaukee's urban changes on this class. But a lot of their crap is largely journalistic junk food.

The Chicago Tribune is now a paper that looks more like a circa 1990 Quad City Times than it does the preeminent newspaper in the Midwest. It's really sad what has happened there.

[Jockey]

Newspapers are dying for the same reason domestic passenger railroad died (and I worked in both in my career). Technology outstripped the newspaper's ability to deliver timely content in a user-friendly environment. Few newspapers have figured out how to effectively use the internet.

Very simply put, you couldn't be any more right.

The only reason to buy a newspaper now is for local coverage. You can find better national and world coverage for free online.

[MU82]

One major reason I like reading a newspaper is it organizes the news for me. I sit at breakfast and I read page after page. There is an order to things - national news, local news, business news, op-ed, sports, entertainment, etc. Plus, there will be an article on page 5 or page 15 about something I didn't even know I had interest in until I read it.

I am a consumer of news online, too, of course. But it's all so haphazard there. I'll click on a link, which will lead me to a dozen other links and then more links. I get lost in Linkdom and most of it is crap.

Disclosure: I am both old and old-fashioned. Plus, I'm a former newspaper hack myself, so there is definite bias.

[Tugg Speedman]

Very simply put, you couldn't be any more right.

The only reason to buy a newspaper now is for local coverage. You can find better national and world coverage for free online.

Agreed


When the internet was invented, publishers and editors should have been over the moon with excitement.  It represented a chance to dramatically cut costs of converting all those dead trees into the morning edition and all the effort to get it on your driveway by 5 AM.  That would allow them to spend these savings on huge increases in content (hire more reporters!)

The newspaper industry was in a position to invent social media but their entrenched thinking prevented them from seeing it and it took others to invent it and took their business away.  Ditto taxis, they should have invented Uber but could not see it.  Hotels should have invented Airbnb, Sears and other mall retailers should have invented Amazon, and on and on and on.

[dgies9156]

Agreed


When the internet was invented, publishers and editors should have been over the moon with excitement.  It represented a chance to dramatically cut costs of converting all those dead trees into the morning edition and all the effort to get it on your driveway by 5 AM.  That would allow them to spend these savings on huge increases in content (hire more reporters!)

The newspaper industry was in a position to invent social media but their entrenched thinking prevented them from seeing it and it took others to invent it and took their business away.  Ditto taxis, they should have invented Uber but could not see it.  Hotels should have invented Airbnb, Sears and other mall retailers should have invented Amazon, and on and on and on.

Not really.

Newspapers flourished because of a very large barrier to entry -- the capital cost associated with acquiring a printing press, building a subscriber and advertising base and physically delivering a publication from the point of publication to your front door. While the internet made it possible to have a 24 hour newspaper, it also made it possible for everyone from bloggers to legitimate news organizations to compete for my attention and my business. Publishers knew that from the get-go and struggled once the barriers to entry made it possible for anyone with a pen to be a news organization.

For example, with the exception of the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and USA Today, there really were not national publications. If I wanted to read the Tennessean or the Journal-Sentinel in Chicago, generally I had to order the newspaper and wait two to three days for it to show up in my mailbox. Now, all I have to do is click on a website. Plus, everything from Politico to Slate to Fox News is available to me. And Joe the Blogger who has a druid bent and saves trees can become a news source.

Same with television stations. The barriers to entry were ever more significant. You had an FCC license, a broadcast facility, transmission tower, programming (including a network affiliation) and the goodwill associated with an advertiser base. The capital costs were huge. Now, you can podcast a video on the internet and Bob and Barbie can do the 6 p.m., news naked if they want to.

I had in college (full disclosure: a summer class at a UW-System campus) where a professor asked who was entitled to be considered a newsperson. The answer under the 1st Amendment was everyone. He asked, "who appointed the journalists the fourth estate" in one class and posed the question about the morality of one or more persons having that much unchecked power. My answer should have been, "the publisher's capital appointed us to the fourth estate... and we will exist as long as we make money for the publisher." Well, those days are gone.

As to retail and hotels, long ago both invented their version of the internet. Sears, for example, pioneered mail order. That was their bread and butter for a couple of generations. Sears isn't in trouble because of Amazon. Rather, they're in trouble because of Walmart. Amazon is taking a bite out of Walmart, no doubt. But there always will be a need for brick and mortar. It's how you blend traditional and online that counts.

[Tugg Speedman]

Not really.

Newspapers flourished because of a very large barrier to entry -- the capital cost associated with acquiring a printing press, building a subscriber and advertising base and physically delivering a publication from the point of publication to your front door. While the internet made it possible to have a 24 hour newspaper, it also made it possible for everyone from bloggers to legitimate news organizations to compete for my attention and my business. Publishers knew that from the get-go and struggled once the barriers to entry made it possible for anyone with a pen to be a news organization.

For example, with the exception of the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and USA Today, there really were not national publications. If I wanted to read the Tennessean or the Journal-Sentinel in Chicago, generally I had to order the newspaper and wait two to three days for it to show up in my mailbox. Now, all I have to do is click on a website. Plus, everything from Politico to Slate to Fox News is available to me. And Joe the Blogger who has a druid bent and saves trees can become a news source.

Same with television stations. The barriers to entry were ever more significant. You had an FCC license, a broadcast facility, transmission tower, programming (including a network affiliation) and the goodwill associated with an advertiser base. The capital costs were huge. Now, you can podcast a video on the internet and Bob and Barbie can do the 6 p.m., news naked if they want to.

I had in college (full disclosure: a summer class at a UW-System campus) where a professor asked who was entitled to be considered a newsperson. The answer under the 1st Amendment was everyone. He asked, "who appointed the journalists the fourth estate" in one class and posed the question about the morality of one or more persons having that much unchecked power. My answer should have been, "the publisher's capital appointed us to the fourth estate... and we will exist as long as we make money for the publisher." Well, those days are gone.

As to retail and hotels, long ago both invented their version of the internet. Sears, for example, pioneered mail order. That was their bread and butter for a couple of generations. Sears isn't in trouble because of Amazon. Rather, they're in trouble because of Walmart. Amazon is taking a bite out of Walmart, no doubt. But there always will be a need for brick and mortar. It's how you blend traditional and online that counts.

With all due respect, your response is a perfect illustration of why "legacy" companies fail to adapt.

Newspapers flourished because of a very large barrier to entry -- the capital cost associated with acquiring a printing press, building a subscriber and advertising base and physically delivering a publication from the point of publication to your front door. While the internet made it possible to have a 24 hour newspaper, it also made it possible for everyone from bloggers to legitimate news organizations to compete for my attention and my business. Publishers knew that from the get-go and struggled once the barriers to entry made it possible for anyone with a pen to be a news organization.

Newspapers are in the content creation and content delivery business.  Yes for about a hundred years your post above was how the content was best delivered.

About 1995 they should have started to recognise that an entirely new way to deliver content was coming ... it was called the internet.  Newspapers should have lead in the remaking of their businesses to incorporate these new methods.  They should have invented Facebook and Google.  Instead, they got "stuck" in the "printing press" culture, forgetting they were the original information technology business and their "wealth" and business was transferred to the tech companies like Facebook and Google and they get left in the station without a ride.

Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Microsoft and Google are "platform" companies (my term).  They understand how technology is rendering business models obsolete and move in with the new model and take that business away from legacy companies. 

And it is not just them.  Uber is doing this to taxis (another thread on this) and Tesla is doing to the big 3 automakers.  Amazon is doing it brick & Mortar.  Walmart/Sears/Brick & Mortar failed to understand their business was "goods delivery" and instead though they were in the "real estate" business so they were incapable of recognising the new way to deliver goods.  Walmart should have invented Amazon.  Their biggest failure is they did not.  Now Bezos is worth over $70 billion and most brick & mortar CEOs are just trying to survive.

What needs to be done is a complete re-think of what your business is.  Newspapers are "content creators and delivery companies.  Retailing is "goods creation and delivery."  Then they need to figure out the most effective way to do that and shed the old inefficient way.  Instead, they get stuck in their legacy business and get passed by.

The fear is we are all going to fall into this trap, or already have.

[4everwarriors]

Wonder if da newpapers and passenger railroads will file a class action 'gainst dgies? You know, for draggin' dem down and such, hey?

[dgies9156]

With all due respect, your response is a perfect illustration of why "legacy" companies fail to adapt.

Newspapers flourished because of a very large barrier to entry -- the capital cost associated with acquiring a printing press, building a subscriber and advertising base and physically delivering a publication from the point of publication to your front door. While the internet made it possible to have a 24 hour newspaper, it also made it possible for everyone from bloggers to legitimate news organizations to compete for my attention and my business. Publishers knew that from the get-go and struggled once the barriers to entry made it possible for anyone with a pen to be a news organization.

Newspapers are in the content creation and content delivery business.  Yes for about a hundred years your post above was how the content was best delivered.

About 1995 they should have started to recognise that an entirely new way to deliver content was coming ... it was called the internet.  Newspapers should have lead in the remaking of their businesses to incorporate these new methods.  They should have invented Facebook and Google.  Instead, they got "stuck" in the "printing press" culture, forgetting they were the original information technology business and their "wealth" and business was transferred to the tech companies like Facebook and Google and they get left in the station without a ride.

Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Microsoft and Google are "platform" companies (my term).  They understand how technology is rendering business models obsolete and move in with the new model and take that business away from legacy companies. 

And it is not just them.  Uber is doing this to taxis (another thread on this) and Tesla is doing to the big 3 automakers.  Amazon is doing it brick & Mortar.  Walmart/Sears/Brick & Mortar failed to understand their business was "goods delivery" and instead though they were in the "real estate" business so they were incapable of recognising the new way to deliver goods.  Walmart should have invented Amazon.  Their biggest failure is they did not.  Now Bezos is worth over $70 billion and most brick & mortar CEOs are just trying to survive.

What needs to be done is a complete re-think of what your business is.  Newspapers are "content creators and delivery companies.  Retailing is "goods creation and delivery."  Then they need to figure out the most effective way to do that and shed the old inefficient way.  Instead, they get stuck in their legacy business and get passed by.

The fear is we are all going to fall into this trap, or already have.

Jig,

Respectfully, the problem with your theory is that the market is inelastic when it comes to content quality. It doesn't care.

The Chicago Tribune could have adopted an internet paywall delivery approach in 1997 and it would not have mattered. When Bob and Barbie are doing the news in the buff, or a segment of the market weighs Don the Druid on par with the Tribune --  and Don the Druid is free -- you ain't buying the Tribune. Having reporters around the world, a national sports desk on par with comparatively few, a world class editorial office and outstanding features doesn't have the value it once did.

TV in Chicago figured this out a long time ago. The stations that had Walter Jacobson and Bill Kurtis or Ron Majers and Carol Marin now have lots of cop news, traffic accidents, fires, floods, tornadoes etc. Stuff that looks great on high definition television but would be difficult to replicate on a computer screen. And when you see reporters and anchors, most women are clothed in wardrobes that only marginally maintain modesty.

You can talk about content all you want, but the content newspapers deliver are too often free on the internet. The old saying of the Houston Chronicle, "Written and edited to merit your confidence," is so far in the past to be almost quaint.

[Tugg Speedman]

Jig,

Respectfully, the problem with your theory is that the market is inelastic when it comes to content quality. It doesn't care.

The Chicago Tribune could have adopted an internet paywall delivery approach in 1997 and it would not have mattered. When Bob and Barbie are doing the news in the buff, or a segment of the market weighs Don the Druid on par with the Tribune --  and Don the Druid is free -- you ain't buying the Tribune. Having reporters around the world, a national sports desk on par with comparatively few, a world class editorial office and outstanding features doesn't have the value it once did.

TV in Chicago figured this out a long time ago. The stations that had Walter Jacobson and Bill Kurtis or Ron Majers and Carol Marin now have lots of cop news, traffic accidents, fires, floods, tornadoes etc. Stuff that looks great on high definition television but would be difficult to replicate on a computer screen. And when you see reporters and anchors, most women are clothed in wardrobes that only marginally maintain modesty.

You can talk about content all you want, but the content newspapers deliver are too often free on the internet. The old saying of the Houston Chronicle, "Written and edited to merit your confidence," is so far in the past to be almost quaint.

How does Drudge make $50k a day, every day for years to the point he is nearly a billionaire?

https://www.quora.com/How-much-revenue-does-the-Drudge-Report-generate-in-a-day

http://www.businessinsider.com/drudge-report-is-worth-2012-10

All the guy does is repackage links and that is a billion dollar business?

Newspapers should be Drudge times 20 (or more).

Or ... what do you pay for Facebook?  Answer: nothing.  If so, how are they able to generate $40 billion of revenues this year.  Why can't newspapers do this?

These are examples of the biggest problem in business today ... people with experience that leads them to believe "you cannot do it that way."  Then a couple of millennials with a website and become worth more than the entire newspaper industry.

All the rules have changed.  Fire everyone with experience over 30.  They just get in the way!!!

[mu_hilltopper]

Those are good questions .. made me think.   

I imagine the reason Drudge has more pageviews than the JS Online is because Drudge's audience potential is 350 million people (maybe more, globally.)

JSOnline is 2, maybe 3m, and that's for the ~20th largest metro area in the country.

[dgies9156]

How does Drudge make $50k a day, every day for years to the point he is nearly a billionaire?
Newspapers should be Drudge times 20 (or more).

Matt Drudge is as much a journalist as I am a nuclear physicist.

He's a hack. He's not written and edited to merit confidence. Under the best of circumstances, he is a modern day Drew Pearson who uses technology instead of newsprint to reach readers.

Matt Drudge has no idea who Mike Madigan is or why he has destroyed the State of Illinois' economy. He doesn't cover the crime problem in Chicago, music scene in Nashville, commerce in Atlanta, arts in Birmingham, traffic problems in Los Angeles or life as a gay person in San Francisco. That's the mainstream media.

You want 20 Matt Drudges? Then you better be prepared for the limitations that imposes on your ability as a citizen to understand what is happening in your community, with your government and in the economy. Oh, and that may explain why most Millennials don't have a clue as to the difference between fact and opinion. It also may explain why we had the worst choice for President in any year since the un-indicted co-conspiritor ran for president.

[Tugg Speedman]

Matt Drudge is as much a journalist as I am a nuclear physicist.

He's a hack. He's not written and edited to merit confidence. Under the best of circumstances, he is a modern day Drew Pearson who uses technology instead of newsprint to reach readers.

Matt Drudge has no idea who Mike Madigan is or why he has destroyed the State of Illinois' economy. He doesn't cover the crime problem in Chicago, music scene in Nashville, commerce in Atlanta, arts in Birmingham, traffic problems in Los Angeles or life as a gay person in San Francisco. That's the mainstream media.

You want 20 Matt Drudges? Then you better be prepared for the limitations that imposes on your ability as a citizen to understand what is happening in your community, with your government and in the economy. Oh, and that may explain why most Millennials don't have a clue as to the difference between fact and opinion. It also may explain why we had the worst choice for President in any year since the un-indicted co-conspiritor ran for president.

You missed my point.

Drudge is worth tons of money and all he does is aggregate newspaper links.

So why do the businesses that actually make the context, newspapers, get crumbs and a guy that simply aggregates links on a page makes Master of the Universe money?  The fact that Drudge gets a billion page views a month (seriously!) says the content has tremendous value.  But the newspapers are so bad at understanding the medium that they are giving their money away to a middle-man like Drudge. The reason that are so bad is they do not understand the actual business they are in.  They think it has something to do with dead trees.  It really does not.  They are content creators and they deliver it in the most efficient way possible.

Ditto the want ads.  Monster, Zip, LinkedIn all saw the true value of want ads which newspaper never understood.

Ditto the personal ads, Facebook saw the value in them.

The original information technology, newspapers, were always sitting on a dominate goldmine of information.  And they have allowed others to get rich off their work.

This is the problem with legacy companies.  They define their businesses in restrictive ways and that prevents them from seeing the potential in what they have.  Then someone comes along that "gets it" and takes it away from them.