Big newspapers != the newspaper industry
Yet another pundit (Megan McArdle, this time) makes a fairly basic mistake when discussing the health of the newspaper industry:
The circulation figures for the top 25 dailies in the US are out, and they’re horrifying. The median decline is well into the teens; only the Wall Street Journal gained (very slightly).
I think we’re witnessing the end of the newspaper business, full stop, not the end of the newspaper business as we know it. The economics just aren’t there.
Maybe, maybe not. (I suspect she’s right, to an extent.) Except, Megan, the top 25 newspapers are not the newspaper industry. In an era where we can get our state, national, international, sports and entertainment news practically anywhere on the Internet, you’re right that there doesn’t seem to be a place for the one-size-fits-all newspaper that tells you about everything from the local school board meeting to what the president ate for breakfast.
Fortunately, that’s not the only sort of newspaper out there. Small newspapers are the majority of papers out there, and while some of them are being dragged under because they’re chained to failing large metro daily dinosaurs, most of them are doing fine.
If, say, the Atlanta Journal Constitution were to go out of business (at least in its current form), it’s unlikely the residents of Atlanta, the suburbs and surrounding towns and cities would say “well, I guess that’s it for news.” It’s also unlikely that local television or radio will take over for everything the paper covers. (Not only is broadcast news not well set up for covering a lot of the kind of stuff print media covers, it’s in worse shape than print journalism; they just don’t talk about it in public the same way as the print folks do.)
Instead, just as new growth springs up in the forest once a mighty tree goes down, new media outlets (some of them “new media,” others print products) will spring up in their place, living off the now freed-up advertising revenue and scooping up many of the now-unemployed AJC veterans.
Truthfully, this isn’t a bad thing. There may be people who don’t get any news from the radio, television or Internet, and rely on their local newspaper for 100 percent of their information, but the four or five of them in the country will adapt.
There is a future in the newspaper industry, just not in the newspaper as a one-stop-news-shopping outlet industry. It would be great if more pundits realized this and helped shift the industry’s focus, rather than insisting that the past model is the only one that matters.
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Yep. You make perfect sense. Now, to which outlets have you submitted this wise and pithy piece? I suspect there is an audience out there that would be comforted or inspired by this.
Comment by Mozzbi — October 31, 2009 @ 0:57