Newspapers--As Good as Day-Old?

While wandering the streets of New York I saw one traffic accident—a yellow cab rear-ended by a speeding delivery truck—but no celebrities; I was asked for directions twice, but never myself asked (wandering requires no directions); and I twice heard fellow pedestrians mention MySpace, but never, for what it’s worth, facebook.

I was in New York City to attend the Knight Foundation’s Journalism Advisory Committee, a collection of current and former publishers, editors, and reporters (one current, the rest very much former), plus a couple of lawyers and media experts. Almost to a person, they are terrified by the MySpace generation. Why? We don’t buy newspapers.

But why should we?

With the exception of the Wall Street Journal, every newspaper in America, big and small, gives away its product for free online. The New York Times may have TimesSelect, others maybe be similarly experimenting with pay models, but none has worked. The result? Customers, and especially we technophiliac youth, are enjoying their free lunch.

As one well-awarded former editor laid it out, newspapers find themselves caught in a crucible: hard copy circulation is declining and dragging down ad revenue, while website traffic is soaring without accompanying increases in online ad rates. The new is feeding on the old, but does not, as of yet, know how to feed itself.

One latter-day publisher spoke almost sentimentally of days when newspapers held a firm monopoly on ad prices and newspapers were the only place to find classified advertising. But now online listings, such as craigslist and eBay, are robbing the back pages of newspapers. Similarly, blogs and news aggregators compete for readers and website traffic.

So what happens to newspapers as this new group of “media consumers”—or, just as often, “non-consumers”—comes of age? What happens as the generation that doesn’t pay grows up? No one knows.

Virtually everyone in the room had started their careers at a newspaper. Many still worked in the business. Many had never done anything else. As expected, nostalgia flowed throughout the day-and-a-half of meetings. I heard tales of late nights sweating over the light table, blue pencils wielded over hot copy, graphic designers who dealt in razors and glue instead of copy and paste, and many other dusty anachronisms.

Yet, the majority was open to, even eager for suggestions for change. It was armies of reporters, hard-hitting investigative journalism, and ethical conduct in gathering news that they valued. The format? They were flexible. Many said they couldn’t imagine a newspaper-free world, but the deeper fear seemed to be for the loss of an accurate and vigorous press. All the same, neither could they visualize alternatives.

Not a single one of the participants—which included several multi-time Pulitzer winners, the leaders of some of the nation’s largest newspapers, wildly innovative media minds and even one former student of Santa Rosa Junior College—had a clue what was going to happen. No one knows.

If they had speculations, they didn’t voice them. If they had proposals, they didn’t lay them out. Perhaps the ideas have already been mentioned and debated. It’s likely some have already been created and failed. No one knows. And everyone was worried. Well, almost everyone.

The exception was the reporter, who happens to work for a medium—radio—that is not being squeezed by declining circulation and doesn’t have to worry about the flight of classifieds. In fact, one modern development has been a boon to their business: “Longer commutes,” she said with a hint of glee.

What do I think? I think I’ll go into radio.