The Death of Print Journalism

[Joe Bob]

The End of Print for Newsweek Is on Barry Diller's Horizon - Yahoo! News

Newsweek says soon....

Personally I think it's already here. I actually bought a newspaper last week and it was 20 pages......this from a major daily.

The funny pages will prolly take the biggest hit.

[GH85Carrera]

It is amazing to see newspapers vanish. Our local paper keeps getting smaller.

Some of the problems is the writing itself. They have a headline, and then numeroius paragraphs of fluff before they discuss the main part of the article. They like to bury what little information they have in a long article that is 10 times longer than necessary.

[vash]

how will i light my chimney charcoal starter?

[Joe Bob]

When the LA Herald Examiner went boobs (is this better Z?) up I thought it was tragic....

[Zeke]

Originally Posted by Joe Bob

When the LA Herald Examiner went boobs (is this better Z?) up I thought it was tragic....

Really? I always thought of that as a 2nd rate paper. I know they did have some good columnists and reporters, but they didn't speak to me the way the Times did.

But, you're right about today's paper. The sports page, which I seldom look at, is a fraction of the old days when ALL the scores and results were listed long with the horse race schedule and picks.

Today the sports page reads a little more like a tabloid in it's all of 4 pages.

[sammyg2]

Journalism used to be respectable. Now it's just one great big op-ed for a one-sided agenda.
They could screw up a wet dream.

[Joe Bob]

GoComics.com

[Zeke]

Originally Posted by Joe Bob

GoComics.com

What, no "Mutts?"

[jyl]

High quality newspapers and magazines that have proprietary content, not available through a Reuters feed, are surviving and in some cases thriving. In news, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Economist, and others are examples. Countless magazines focused on special interests - hobbies, fashion, lifestyle - are also still here, some are doing quite well.

Some new publications have emerged that are doing pretty well, and although they publish digitally, the difference between a folded paper you tuck under your arm and an inexpensive e-reader you tuck under your arm will soon be minor. Think of the Huffington Post, for example.

Low quality newspapers and news magazines are not going to make it. The web is full of bloggers who spout off for free and whose blathering is just as suited for lining the cat litter box, if you bothered to print it out. Newsweek has been shrinking in relevance for a long time; I think it will continue to shrink in digital form.

[Rick Lee]

Originally Posted by jyl

High quality newspapers and magazines that have proprietary content, not available through a Reuters feed, are surviving and in some cases thriving. In news, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Economist, and others are examples. Countless magazines focused on special interests - hobbies, fashion, lifestyle - are also still here, some are doing quite well.

If they're thriving, it's only by consolidating staff. Now, instead of having 3-4 reporters for every beat, they have one reporter covering 3-4 beats. The NYT online used to be subscription only, then they changd it. Ditto for WSJ, then they made the Opinion section no sub. required. The WaPo has consolidated a lot. They're all hurting badly and that hurts the AP and Reuters too, since AP's and Reuters's subscription fees are based on members' audience and circulation numbers. As those numbers dwindle, so do their fees and thus their ability to send pool reporters all around the world.

[sammyg2]

NYT sux more than anything, IMHO of course.

[doug_porsche]

Originally Posted by GH85Carrera

Some of the problems is the writing itself. They have a headline, and then numeroius paragraphs of fluff before they discuss the main part of the article. They like to bury what little information they have in a long article that is 10 times longer than necessary.

I have had a similar argument with my father who worked for one of the local TV channels. I have said for years that you only need to watch the first 5 min of the news to get ALL of the news for the day, the remaining 25 minuets are just a video magazine full of special interest fluff stories.

A tragic example was after the Aurora Theater shooting, (A very sad story), the station had a two minuet story where they interviewed somebody who had tickets for that show at the Aurora Theater, but because of a flat tire didn't make it to the theater. Showed video of the car, a beige Buick, and of the tire, yep it looked unusable. Even had an quick section on how disappointed the little brother (20 or so years old) was that because of the flat they were missing the move.

[Joe Bob]

Originally Posted by sammyg2

NYT sux more than anything, IMHO of course.

Ummm, Hello....itz frum New York City.....

[jyl]

Originally Posted by Rick Lee

If they're thriving, it's only by consolidating staff. Now, instead of having 3-4 reporters for every beat, they have one reporter covering 3-4 beats. The NYT online used to be subscription only, then they changd it. Ditto for WSJ, then they made the Opinion section no sub. required. The WaPo has consolidated a lot. They're all hurting badly and that hurts the AP and Reuters too, since AP's and Reuters's subscription fees are based on members' audience and circulation numbers. As those numbers dwindle, so do their fees and thus their ability to send pool reporters all around the world.

Circulation of the top newspapers has stopped declining, in some cases is going up. See below, from 2nd UPDATE: New York Times Circulation Edges Up On WSJ -Audit Bureau - WSJ.com

"Overall newspapers saw increased circulation of their digital editions, suggesting a continuing shift in reading habits. Circulation of Sunday editions, typically more profitable than weekday papers, also increased.

The Wall Street Journal had average weekday circulation of 2.1 million as of March 31, up 0.02% from a year earlier, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations. News Corp. (NWS, NWSA) owns Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal and this newswire.

The New York Times retained the No. 3 rank at 1.6 million weekday papers, an improvement of 73% from a year earlier. The bulk of the growth came from new subscriptions after an online paywall was established at the Times last year. Paid digital subscriptions at the Times and its sister publication, the International Herald Tribune, increased to 454,000, a 16% gain from the prior quarter, the company said last month.

Gannett Co.'s (GCI) USA Today held its second place rank by average weekday circulation with 1.82 million subscribers, down 0.6%. USA Today had been the biggest paper in the U.S. for a decade, but a slump in business travel has meant fewer copies of USA Today were sold to hotels, one of the paper's historic strengths. The Wall Street Journal overtook USA Today by daily average circulation starting in 2009.

Newspapers are struggling to grow as more readers turn to the Internet for news; a trend publishers were in general slow to capitalize on by establishing online paywalls. Newspapers including The Wall Street Journal and Pearson PLC's (PSO, PSON.LN) Financial Times have for years protected their digital content behind paywalls. Gannett introduced paywalls at its local papers earlier this year, while USA Today remains free of charge online.

Analysts remain skeptical that digital growth can make up for the ongoing slide in print edition sales.

"Some companies [such as NYT] have demonstrated that consumers are willing to pay a premium for differentiated content," write J.P. Morgan analysts. But "for the industry overall, the impact of print declines is likely to outweigh any digital benefit for the foreseeable future." "

[strupgolf]

When I do get a copy of the Wall Street Journal, I love it. I read it front to back. That is one good paper. Sad to say, some of the bigger papers are just getting by with fluff.

[Noah930]

Originally Posted by sammyg2

Journalism used to be respectable. Now it's just one great big op-ed for a one-sided agenda.
They could screw up a wet dream.

In the recent past I've subscribed to the LA Times and Boston Globe. For the reasons you cite above, I canceled my subscriptions without regret. There's room for op-ed in the paper, but I don't want the entire frickin' paper to be that.

[widgeon13]

I spent 35 years in the paper industry, believe me people aren't buying paper anymore, at least not made in the USofA.

[gamin]

It's not all because of the internet. A lot of "local" newspapers are anything but local. Here in Raleigh the News & Observer is owned by McClatchy, out of Sacramento I believe. The content is over the top left wing agenda driven and not just the editorial section. I cancelled my subscription years ago. And not only has the page count decreased but they recently reduced the physical size of the pages. Not to wish them any ill will, but they can't close their doors fast enough. Oh, and McClatchy stock is at $1.53. Maybe they will fold up soon.

[cairns]

The Washington Post and the NYT are not thriving. They're in serious trouble. From Wiki:

The New York Times Company, hard-pressed for cash as its shares slid below five dollars per share, suspended its dividend, sold and leased back part of its headquarters, and sold preferred shares to Mexican businessman Carlos Slim in return for a cash infusion. But the credit rating agencies still cut the rating on Times Company's debt to junk status, and the cash crunch at The Times prompted it to threaten to shutter its Boston Globe unless workers made deep concessions.

From Poynter.org:

In the first quarter of 2012, Washington Post print advertising declined 17 percent from the same period in 2011. Circulation fell 9.8 percent daily and 5.2 percent Sunday.

But the bigger disappointment was that digital publishing revenues (including Slate) had decreased 7 percent in a year.

All those totals were among the worst in the industry, as they had been in the second half of 2011. But in the industry too, digital revenue growth had slowed in the first quarter of this year to 1 percent after growing by nearly 11 percent in 2010 and 7 percent in 2011.

I am told that April was another bad month for ad results at the Post and May and June mediocre ones — also typical for the industry.

As is customary for the Post, no detailed explanation has been forthcoming for the poor ad results or how, when and whether they can be fixed. Top executives also declined to respond on the record to details of the negative articles

The Post has been consistently losing money but the company has covered up those losses with gains from Kaplan (a university largely funded by Federal Student loans). But the government has been cracking down on the unsavory practices Kaplan employed and now they're losing money too.

Ironically, the WSJ is thriving. If you read it you'll understand why- the bias is kept on the editorial page and it is extraordinarily rich in useful and interesting information. Today the paper featured an article on an AA gate agent who provides extraordinary service, how Europe's financial crisis is hurting company profits, how Russians sought to enlist children in spy rings, the drought in India, the snow melt in Greenland, Syrian defectors etc. etc.

The Post and Times focus almost exclusively on domestic politics and every section reeks of political bias. Even the Sports section. In contrast to the Post, whose automotive editor thinks a Porsche Turbo has eight cylinders, the WSJ has written numerous articles on F1, has an automotive editor who's pretty darned good and now features a Saturday section with good recipes, book reviews etc.