Recovering Journalist

Looking Back, Looking Forward

There are glimpses of the past and future of the newspaper industry in today's media headlines.

The past: Yet another six-month period of circulation declines, averaging 3.5 percent daily and 4.5 percent Sundays among the nation's top papers, including some real whoppers like a 9.3 percent drop in The New York Times' Sunday circulation. Even people I know who cancel daily newspapers say they'll hang on to the Sunday Times; maybe not so much.

But a few posts away on Romenesko today is a glimpse of the future—or at least one popular future. Today's the day that the Capital Times, in Madison, Wisc., switches to essentially all-online publication, a move it announced a couple months back.

The Cap Times isn't a major newspaper by any stretch, but it's taking the lead in a transition I suspect we'll see more of in the next (very) few years. (In some ways, it's already underway overseas.) Those ongoing declines in circulation and revenue are going to force print newspapers to come to grips with their future, and in many cases, that future will be online. And only online.

More reading: Ken Doctor has a good take on the circulation numbers and what they portend.

Murdoch, Circling The Times

For years, Rupert Murdoch has done battle with The New York Times using the very imperfect weapon that is the New York Post—a classic scrappy tabloid, provocative and fun to read, but no match for the Gray Lady in clout, circulation or ad revenue.

Now, however, Murdoch has re-armed, and the Times should be afraid. Very afraid.

Murdoch's near-deal to buy Newsday for $580 million means that the Australian-turned-American press baron has the Times surrounded and hemmed in in a manner that any military strategist would appreciate.

Assuming the Newsday deal goes through, here's how Murdoch threatens the Times:
• From below, and in New York City, with the New York Post.
• From the side, in the Long Island suburbs—with potential to move elsewhere—with Newsday. Imagine Murdoch dusting off the old New York Newsday plan and giving The Times a real run for its money as the quality local newspaper in New York. Or what if Murdoch decided to expand Newsday beyond L.I. 'burbs and takes it into affluent Connecticut, New Jersey or Westchester, encircling The Times in markets in which it now has hegemony?
• From above, with top-notch financial and national coverage—and national distribution and influence—with The Wall Street Journal. You think the Journal's recent changes and expansion into broader coverage, especially of politics, is designed to increase it appeal to its core business audience? Of course not. It's a direct strike at The Times' strength as the only serious national newspaper.
• Bonus: Murdoch owns a couple of New York City TV stations, as well.

Put all those pieces together, as the savvy Murdoch is doing, and voila, The Times is surrounded. Everywhere it turns, it will see Rupert Murdoch. Checkmate

It's a fascinating scenario, and it still could be derailed by antitrust concerns (doubtful, really) or further deterioration in the advertising market. But if he can get Newsday, Murdoch will have the final weapon for a pincers attack on the nation's premier newspaper, in both its home and national markets.

And at that point, the end game for The Times is....what? Wow, suddenly the unthinkable, selling out to Murdoch, might be the inevitable outcome. This multi-front newspaper war is going to be interesting to watch.

More reading: Veteran media analyst Lauren Rich Fine has a slightly different take on what Murdoch is up to.

And another interesting opinion, from Alan Mutter, who believes the real threat is to the New York Daily News.

Vote of Confidence

In professional sports, the kiss of death for a coach or manager going through a losing streak is when the team owner or general manager comes out with a rah-rah vote of confidence for the beleaguered leader. Phrases like "Joe will always be our manager" or "We have full confidence in Jim" generally presage Joe or Jim's firing, usually within a few days.

And with that preamble, I bring you today's votes of confidence in two big names in the newspaper business: "This company is not for sale," declares New York Times Co. Chairman Arthur Sulzberger. "Don't worry--McClatchy is decidedly not going bankrupt," proclaims McClatchy CEO Gary Pruitt.

OK. We believe you. For now.

How Low Can You Go?

Seen the latest numbers from the newspaper companies? They're pretty heinous. Gannett: Revenue down 10.3 percent overall in the first quarter, with real estate, job and auto classifieds tumbling 26.3 percent, 24.2 percent and 12.8 percent, respectively (that's an 18 percent overall drop in classifieds). The New York Times Co.: Revenue down 6.4 percent in the first quarter; classifieds down 22.6 percent.

Those are big drops, especially in classifieds. Not surprising, but large nonetheless. We all can agree there's a serious problem in the newspaper industry—and it will get worse in the second quarter as the economy worsens—but even more disturbing is industry executives' seeming inability to do anything about it.

Sure, you can argue that there are structural and economic forces beyond the industry's control that are causing these scary declines, but if you really want to get scared, check out this story from Poynter.org, in which four publishers on a panel at last week's industry conference in Washington are asked for an example of radical ideas they've heard recently to transform the business. The response? Crickets, basically. Silence. Well, there was one half-hearted answer about getting newly placed ads into the paper quickly. Oh yeah, that's going to move the needle. Sheesh. That's what passes for big thinking these days?

Look in the mirror, newspaper execs. One of the big problems is you. You're surrounded by dramatic, earth-shattering industry change, your core numbers are dropping by double digits, and you're all still working off the same old, boring playbook. Try something new, people. Roll out some groundbreaking new products, target some attractive audiences, experiment with new technologies, try involving the readers more in content creation. Take a chance, for crying out loud. Roll the dice. It really can't be worse than what's already happening. And who knows--it might work even better!

An Editorial Opinion

Maybet there's a subliminal message in the Pulitzer judges' failure to pick a winner for editorial writing. It's probably unintentional, but perhaps the conclusion that can be drawn is that the unsigned newspaper editorial simply has become an anachronism.

Newspaper editorials made some sense decades ago when papers were run by proprietor/publishers who wanted to advance their personal causes, or when readers had far fewer voices of opinion to help them shape their own views.

But today, most newspapers are corporate-owned and have no proprietary axes to grind, and there's no shortage of opinions for readers to choose from—courtesy of columnists, blogs, TV's talking heads, talk radio, etc. Hell, we're drowning in opinions. In that atmosphere, the stately unsigned newspaper editorial seems superfluous, no matter how well-executed. Ironically, in an era when there seems to be an appetite for opinion, personality-free newspaper editorials seem quaint—and unnecessary.

Moreover, editorials cause problems for the rest of the newspaper. You can explain the separation of editorial opinion-makers from news reporting until you're blue in the face, but readers still believe that the paper's editorial stance drives news coverage (that itself is a throwback to the proprietor/publisher era, when it indeed was true). Even where that separation is most structurally distinct, at the nation's largest papers, there is consistent reader confusion. It's even worse, no doubt, at smaller papers where the line between the editorial page and the news operation is more blurred.

This confusion is most apparent in an election year, when newspaper editorial pages take it upon themselves to endorse candidates—another unfortunate anachronism. It's hard for the average reader to believe that a paper that has endorsed candidate A is capable of objectively covering candidate B. That's just human nature. It's bad enough that critics of mainstream media see bias in every sentence of every story; layering editorial opinion on top of that is just asking for trouble.

There are a handful of papers that have done away with institutionalized editorials—USA Today is perhaps the most notable to eschew them—but it's time for all papers to look hard at this dinosaur. In a time of stringent cost-cutting, the editorial board and its unsigned opinions may be an unaffordable luxury (and I'm not even sure luxury is the right word, for all the damage editorials do to credibility). In a few years, maybe the Pulitzer for editorial writing will finally go the way of this editorial dodo.

It's Not Easy Being Green

One of the complaints you sometimes hear about newspapers has nothing to do with what they say (or don't say) or how well they reach their audiences; it has to do with the paper they're printed on. Clear-cutting forests' worth of trees to crush them up and smear ink on them is less and less politically correct in these increasingly "green" times we live in. Many people who've canceled their newspaper subscriptions complain about papers piling up in a corner, having to be recycled, and have chosen to end their participation in this environmental waste.

There's another industry going through many of the same technological changes as the newspaper business, and it's starting to face a real backlash about wasting dead trees: the Yellow Pages directory business. With thick Yellow Pages (and White Pages) books more and more irrelevant in many households and businesses (sound like anything we know?), there's a growing movement to ban or at least restrict the distribution of phone books. And the directory business is starting to respond, at least paying more lip service to the green movement. One of the leading organizations opposed to Yellow Pages distribution, YellowPagesGoesGreen, says, "Municipalities and local government that provide trash services are extremely concerned about the landfill cost and why they have to absorb the cost of handling the telephone directories."

It's not hard to imagine the same sort of rhetoric directed toward the piles of newspapers that readers put into their recycling bins (at best) every week. Newspaper companies need to be watching this closely. The environmental impact of newspaper printing and distribution has been a ticking time bomb for years, and the rapid growth of interest in all things green could start putting more pressure on the industry in short order. That could lead to more use of recycled papers, smaller papers, or even pressure to switch more quickly and aggressively to online distribution.

Newspapers have been lucky to dodge this bullet so far—largely because their newsrooms, in their aggressive coverage of and editorializing on the environmental movement and the need for things like more fuel-efficient cars and cleaner industrial emissions, have conveniently chosen not to look too closely at their own industry's environmental impact. But the activists are now coming for the phone book business; can increased scrutiny and criticism of newspapers' crushed-dead-tree practices be far behind?

Sports Photos: Developing

Courtesy of Online News Squared, some good news, finally, on (some) progress against the idiotic efforts by sports leagues—especially baseball—to restrict use of photos taken at games:

"Moderate" success in the negotiations between media companies and Major League Baseball over heavy-handed content rights restrictions it wanted to impose via credentials this season. MLB backing down on trying to limit online photo galleries and use of content on sibling web sites, makes things a little bearable.

More details here, from the AP Sports Editors. Good work by the editors who stood up to fight this insanity.

It's the Interactivity, Stupid

Comes now a survey sponsored by Associated Press Managing Editors that contains a couple of interesting conclusions: 1) That newspaper Web editors much prefer user-generated comments and contents that are not anonymous, vs. how non-journalists feel, and 2) that 58 percent of the Web journalists surveyed worry that "letting journalists join online conversations and give personal views would harm journalism," while only 36 percent of readers agree.

Leaving aside the somewhat odd methodology of the survey—which talked to more than 1,200 newspaper print and online journalists but just 500 readers (which seems very low as a sample size)—this study shows that we're making progress in some areas of letting our readers contribute online, but still have lots to learn in other areas.

Let's all agree, please, that pure anonymity in comments is bad. I've written about this before, and a lot of Web journalists agree, as the survey shows. But there are still way too many newspaper Web sites that are sloppy about handling comments, starting with a failure to require registration—which is the first step in combatting anonymity. The result, as one Web editor friend calls it, is "a sewer" in comments (perfect example: the Tribune papers using registration-free Topix as a comments engine).

Look, you're probably never going to fully do away with anonymity in comments—not and get any real participation—but requiring registration at least means that site managers have some idea who's behind specific comments, and can control them appropriately. It's really not that hard—but too many newspaper Web sites still seem to think that anonymity is part of the Web ethos, for some reason, and don't take the proper precautions to register the people they allow to comment on their sites. Result: the aforementioned sewer. It's nice to see that a majority of editors surveyed by the APME agree, though that opinion still doesn't necessarily square with industry practice.

Far more troubling is this notion that journalists shouldn't join online discussions. I've heard this anecdotally recently, as well, from reporters who don't think they should be interacting with readers online. Huh? Sure, I understand the concern about reporters expressing opinions in online forums, comments and discussions. That's probably a realistic—if overblown—concern.

But the best online forums on newspaper Web sites are two-way conversations involving reporters and other journalists interacting with readers, answering questions and generally making themselves available. Just look at WashingtonPost.com's fantastic discussions area for daily examples. Or check out some of the better newspaper blogs, where the authors are regular participants in the comments.

Yes, sometimes these toe the line of allegedly objective journalists expressing opinion (it's not a problem when the participant is a columnist, incidentally). But far more often they enrich the conversation—not to mention the readers' understanding and the reporter's beat—by fomenting a healthy, interesting, helpful dialogue. Oh, and by the way, journalist participation in comments and forums tends to improve the quality of the discussion in general—a factor almost as important as banishing anonymity.

This study shows that we still have a ways to go in understanding how best to deal with the new participatory styles of journalism. Some of these opinions reflect fear of the new, of what it means to interact with the audience. But the upside of doing so is phenomenal, and most journalists I've talked to who've taken the plunge into conversing with their readers have become big fans of the idea. To those 58 percent of newspaper journalists who worry about participation in comments and discussions: Get over it. Fast. You're missing out on an important part of the online revolution that's fundamentally changing our business. A large majority of readers wants you to interact with them. Start doing it.

Oh, and one more way that journalists are still a little disconnected from the Web: The full version of the survey is available only as a PDF download, you know, so it's easier to print out. Hey APME: Why not put it up in HTML so it can be read online?

Readers=Customers

Steve Outing has a good column up about ending his subscription to the Boulder Daily Camera because the paper was a) increasingly irrelevant and b) getting more expensive. Others of us have taken similar steps to stop our print subscriptions over the past few years, but Steve's column has a very telling kicker:

Editor's note: Daily Camera publisher Al Manzi and editor Kevin Kaufman were invited prior to publication to comment publicly on this column, but both declined.

That's not good. A semi-prominent subscriber cancels his subscription in a very public way, and the publisher and editor have nothing to say about it for the record? Not smart. It must be nice to be so cavalier about losing a reader that way. I guess the newspaper business is going so well that publishers can be casual about reader retention.

Now reread those last two sentences and substitute "customer" for "reader." And wonder why any business would let a customer walk. That's how you go out of business. It's why newspapers are going out of business.

Good companies don't let customers get away. They fight to retain every customer, and add more. They're not casual about keeping customers' business. Newspapers don't seem to get that. When I canceled my Washington Post daily subscription a few years ago, the clerk at the other end of the phone said, "OK." There was no effort to get me to stay, no special offers, no questions about why I was canceling, the latest in the list of 200,000 readers the Post has frittered away in the past five years. There was just acceptance that another customer had stopped subscribing. Manzi and Kaufman's acquiescent no comment is tantamount to the same thing.

To the Camera's credit, Outing did get a call from the circulation department asking him to resubscribe—at the same rate. Not exactly a killer sales appeal. I should be getting deluged by the Post, in mail and by phone, with attractive offers to add to my Sunday-only subscription. But it doesn't happen. Instead, every few months, I get a half-hearted call from the Post offering me a free daily paper to go with my Sunday subscription. I say "no," and get no pushback (well, except once when it was suggested that my Post delivery person would appreciate it if I'd subscribe to the daily paper. I still don't understand that pitch).

You simply can't let readers—customers—go quietly. That's a recipe for disaster, in newspapers or any business.