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March 16, 2009
The Extinction of the American Newspaper?
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer just announced it is now a web-only publication.
Hearst Corp. will run its final printed edition of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer tomorrow and shift the entire publication to the Web after failing to find a buyer for the money-losing newspaper.Unfortunately for the news industry, this is not an isolated story, but a trend. Newspapers are simply not attracting subscribers or advertisers. The main reason for this, I think, is simple - newspapers are a product of the industrial age. Every day, a newspaper takes a huge staff, enormous machines and a lot of money to produce. In an age when news is discovered, analyzed and forgotten in the time it takes to post it in HTML or talk about it on cable, the idea of 'breaking' news on paper hours after it has been thoroughly dissected by the networks and the blogs seems ridiculous.The New York-based publisher sought unsuccessfully to sell the Post-Intelligencer after the daily posted a $14 million loss last year. Hearst may close the San Francisco Chronicle if it can’t negotiate cost-cutting concessions from its unions.
“They are the first major metropolitan newspaper to flip the switch and go online only,” said Ken Doctor, an analyst with Outsell Inc. in Burlingame, California. “This is going to be an important model for people to watch, whether this can survive as a Web-only presence.”
Since December, four newspaper publishers have filed for bankruptcy protection, including Tribune Co. and the owner of the Philadelphia Inquirer. E.W. Scripps Co. last month closed its Rocky Mountain News in Denver after failing to find a buyer and Gannett Co. said it will shutter the Tucson Citizen in Arizona if it can’t sell it by March 21.
In addition, newspapers have alienated half of their audience. Of course, certain attention-seeking columnists have other theories. As if we needed more reason to ignore Kathleen Parker.
Personally, I think the future of newspapers is local. By the time our local paper runs national news headlines, the news in question has already been reported by cable news and digested, analyzed and in some cases deconstructed by blogs and online news outlets. Local news, however, has not. Newspapers that focus on the local may suffer a bit now, but will survive in the end. Those that do not will continue to lose readers.
Posted by slublog at March 16, 2009 11:48 PM
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Comments
I live in an area of small (POP-500-10,000) towns, farms, and public lands. Our newspapers run about eight pages. other than comics, classifieds, crosswords, and a few AP stories, all of our news is local.
Nobody here reads the NYT or the Washington Post. Op-eds are free at the coffee shop.
Posted by: Paul Moore at March 18, 2009 06:26 AM