Newspapers: A New Period of Decline
If you are in the public relations or strategic communications business, as am I, it’s still common to hear clients express a desire to have a story in a newspaper. Stories in newspapers are influential, especially if something favorable is written. But those days are quickly coming to a close. The newspaper business is dying.
Richard Perez-Pena writes in The New York Times today that some major cities in the U.S. may soon be left without a daily newspaper.
Time Magazine online has a grim headline, “The 10 Major Newspapers that Will Either Fold or Go Digital Next.” I read the list in disbelief because the decline of newspapers has occurred seemingly so quickly. The list includes some of America’s finest newspapers -
The Minneapolis Star Tribune.
The Miami Herald
The Philadelphia Daily News
The Boston Globe
The Detroit News
The San Francisco Chronicle
The Chicago Sun-Times
The Fort Worth Star-Tribune
The Cleveland Plain Dealer
New York Daily News
We – nearly all of us – are getting our news from online sources, and major papers have yet to figure out how to generate meaningful revenue from their online sites. All the while, the overhead of printing newspapers has become prohibitive.
As a kid, I earned money delivering The Washington Post, and have loved the feel of holding a newspaper to read it. But today I admit that I read nearly all my news from online sources. Newspapers in this era are going the way of buggy whip manufacturers of old.
Dwindling revenue is slamming major dailies now but expected to surge down to smaller newspapers and weeklies. It’s only a matter of time. Staff cuts at smaller papers are already happening.
So, who do we take our story to when a reporter we have known for years is looking for work, the victim of layoffs? What do we honestly tell those clients who still want a newspaper clip to count and hold in their fingers? Times have changed.
The answer is to learn how to generate a controlled footprint of awareness, greater sustained influence, and our own credible news … online. It’s far more than just having a Web site. It is a change in how leadership reaches out to connect with audiences and buyers, and how we must involve others in the discussion and … listen. It goes to the core of competitive differentiation in today’s world. This is the strategic direction that I advise clients, and that I write about on this blog, and in my books.
For communications professionals, the window of opportunity is open to learn the new styles and techniques of generating news online … but it’s a whole new world where rules of conduct, ethics and openness are still in flux.
Category: Featured, News Media
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Talk to anyone who actually saw a linotype machine, watched huge rolls of paper get unloaded from flatbed trucks down from Canada or some other vestiage of the ink-stained days of old newspapering and they will be quick to tell you the biggest cost — and dollar drain — was production + distribution.
If the remaining press barons would simply grab hold of this amazing opportunity — using “The Internets” — I suspect they’d be a a better mood and place on the dummy-smart-guy scale.
By taking this (much delayed) step we might even see more and better reporting.
Remember, there’s a reason no one asks an ostrich for directions.
I think it’s too late to save the printed product, but the online versions may still survive with the right business model.
I’m old enough to have seen a Linotype machine (father a typesetter), and the decline of printed newspapers has been going on for some time. The digital world means that virtually anything in “hard” news that you read in a paper is long-outdated before it hits your doorstep — not much way to overcome that.
It is amazing how quickly the world has changed. I wonder if our great grandparents felt the same way when automobiles replaced the horse and buggy. Of course, that took decades, not years.
I believe the long-term business model will be that content is delivered online with the convenience of it being delivered to your doorstep on printed form, too. In other words, in 10 years when this has all played out and many of the newspapers have folded, the ambitious online content providers will reverse course and begin offering home delivery for people who want both again.
Of course, that’ll all take about 10 years to play out, but keep an eye on it. You heard it here first.
Technology is helping to shift communications into the future. This progression is an exciting thing to be a part of and just as stated above, i think that newspapers can survive if they switch their focus online. Great post.