Old Media’s Decline
The recent announcement by The Christian Science Monitor that it would cease printing a paper edition and concentrate online is simply another sign that traditional mainstream journalism is crumbling. It’s one subject covered extensively in my new book, The Media Savvy Leader, to be published in early January.
It’s easy to see where the Monitor is headed – toward an attempt to sell online subscriptions to the paper. Other newspapers have tried, and all have failed because there are too many free online news resources. So, I predict the Monitor will ultimately sink within a year.
As the news audience has flocked to online sources in recent years, some mainstream media, like The New York Times, have been grappling with the issue and seeking solutions, while other newspapers, like the Washington Post, remain clueless to the rapidly evolving trend. I highly recommend this story in the Times by David Carr and all the related reader comments.
At the same time, it’s interesting to watch another dinosaur of mainstream media – network and local television news. Traditional television newscasts have used the same formats and formulas for more than four decades. Even though technology has changed during that time, news presentation formats have not been updated one inch, leading to extraordinarily dated news-chuckle-weather-chuckle-sports-chuckle newscast styles. I predict that it will only be a matter of time before TV news, which has been losing audience for years, finally wakes up and goes into panic mode to remain in business.
Filed Under: Featured • News Media
About the Author: David is a veteran communications strategist ... writer ... blogger ... online publisher ... and Emmy Award winning former CBS Network News correspondent. He lives in the Washington, D. C., area, and works worldwide.
David,
Perhaps we’ll soon see storefronts with the sign “Christian Science Online Room.”
I just moved from Tampa back to the Quad Cities, and signs of dying local TV and newspapers are obvious. Pick up the Quad-City Times or Moline Dispatch and they’re so thin they only line a couple of bird cages. Look inside and you see mostly syndicated pieces. What’s the point? I might as well go online. Even the Sunday Chicago Tribune is a shell of its former self, it seems.
In TV, long-time popular local anchors are taking pay cuts or being released when contracts run out at the number one station. At the last place station the anchors are definitely low-budget. I was news director at one of the stations here, and when I left the business 11 years ago, they were headed toward being a “one-man band” shop with no videographers, despite my kicking and screaming. Judging by the news that you see now on all the stations, the trend toward lower viewership is taking a huge toll on the quality of the on-air personnel and the news that we see. When you consider how bad the coverage was even with flush staffing levels, this is even more disturbing.
What’s the answer? I haven’t developed the habit yet of looking at local newspaper or TV websites. How can they be any better than the newspapers or local newscasts? If they keep cutting the staff and the experience levels we’ll just get the same thin, superficial material online as we do offline.