Walking Is Transportation

IT'S THE CONTENT, NOT THE MEANS OF DELIVERY, PART 2

                          Untitled, undated watercolor
by Allen Silberman

THE NEW REPUBLIC's
"MEDIA MISERY INDEX"

In its Wednesday, March 4, 2009 online edition, The New Republic presented its "Media Misery Index," a sobering roundup of statistical indicators of the print news business's decline.

I'm including selections from the NR roundup in this post to indicate not that print is gone, dead, finished, as analog TV signals soon will be; but that the dominance of the digital format in communications is no longer a matter of speculation.

It's a fact.

THE FINDINGS

READERSHIP DOWN
•Percentage of people who get most of their national and international news from the newspaper in 2008, 35%; percentage of people who get most of their national and international news from the Internet in 2008, 40%; percentage of people who got this news from the Internet in 2001, 13%. Source: The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press (PEW).

CIRCULATION DOWN
•Total daily newspaper circulation in 2000, 55,773,000; total daily newspaper circulation in 2007, 50,742,000. Source: Editor & Publisher International Yearbook.

•Decline in the Sunday circulation of The New York Times in the six months ending March 31, 2007: 9.3%. Source: Audit Bureau of Circulations.

ADVERTISING RATE BASE DOWN
•Size of Newsweek's advertising rate base in 2007, 3.1 million; projected size of Newsweek's rate base in January, 2010, 1.5 million. Source: The New York Times, February 8, 2009.

•Amount of total print ad revenue for newspapers was up in the third quarter of 2000, 4.3%; amount print ad revenue for newspapers was down in the third quarter of 2006, 2.6%; amount print ad revenue for newspapers was down in the third quarter of 2007, 9%; amount print ad revenue for newspapers was down in the third quarter of 2008, 19.26%. Source: Newspaper Association of America.

AUTOMOTIVE CLASSIFIED AD REVENUE DOWN
•Total newspaper revenue from automotive classifieds in 2003, $5.2 billion; total newspaper revenue from automotive classifieds in 2007, $3.26 billion. Source: Newspaper Association of America.

STOCK PERFORMANCE DOWN
•Percentage the Dow dropped in 2008, 34%; percentage the Gannett Company's stock dropped in 2008, 79%; percentage the New York Times Company stock fell that same year, 62%; the percentage that the New York Times Company stock has fallen since 2002 (as of the time and date of this compilation), 89%. Source: PEW and the Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ), 2008.

PRINT vs. ONLINE AD REVENUES/PROFITS*
•Percentage of ad revenues traditionally provided by total newspaper ads: 33-50% (source: Erik Sass, MediaDailyNews); percentage of newspaper profits provided by online ad revenue in the third quarter of 2008, 8.4% (source, Newspaper Association of America).

TOTAL NUMBER OF GANNETT NEWSPAPER DIVISION EMPLOYEES DOWN
•Number of employees in the newspaper division of Gannett in 2000, 41,000; approximate number of employees currently in Gannett's newspaper division, 29,000. Source: Media Daily News.

TOTAL NUMBER OF FOREIGN CORRESPONDENTS DOWN
•Number of foreign newspaper correspondents in 2002, 188; number of foreign newspaper corresdpondents in 2006, 141. Source: The Washington Post.

JOURNALISTS REPORTING STAFF CUTBACKS
•Percentage of local print journalists reporting staff cutbacks, 2004-07, 82%; percentage of national print journalists reporting staff cutbacks, 2004-07, 69%. Sources: PEW and PEJ.

____________________________________________

*The gap between print and online ad revenues reported above is, I believe, a temporary phenomenon. It will be resolved, in my opinion, by more effective advertising formats and techniques demanded by the growing global dominance of digital media.

IT'S THE CONTENT, NOT THE MEANS OF DELIVERY, PART 1

Untitled, undated
oil on canvas
by Ted Gostkowski

THE END OF THE PAPER PAPER

This is no time to be a newspaper, even if you have the global reach and influence of The New York Times. With huge losses in readership and revenues, even the national paper of record is having to make changes unimaginable even a few years ago.

Other U.S. papers like The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune and Boston Globe are facing an even starker choice: Go online, or go out of business, as the legendary Rocky Mountain News did just last week. For most newspaper operations, there’s no longer any profit in print.

Which probably means that the devastating job losses in the print news business will continue. And I––a former daily Times subscriber who now reads ‘the paper’ free online––am the reason.

ONLINE RISING

It’s pretty clear where the collapse of print journalism leads. I’m just one of the most of us who will get the bulk of our news from digital sources—on some form of TV or online, through news and news aggregating sites and blogs.

Initial reactions to the daily newspaper implosion have been uniformly downbeat and despairing. Real reporting will become too costly for all but the major players, many observers say, and even what’s left will be significantly less than we’re used to.

Others contend many second-tier news markets will be left without a daily paper––without investigative reporters digging up stories citizens need to stay informed and keep government honest.

COMING (I BELIEVE):
A HIGHLY SEGMENTED ONLINE NEWS MARKETPLACE

The sorry prognostication in the last paragraph seems to suggest that as physical newspapers bite the dust, news readers will content themselves with the (often) overheated drivel on cable TV news. Or keep up to date by consulting considerably scaled-back online versions of traditional print dailies, supplemented by other sources in other media.

I’m not cheerleading for corporate media. But I don’t think serious popular journalism is doomed because of the increasing marginalization of print. Instead, I think serious journalism’s practitioners will ensure success by replicating, adapted to digital formats, the same highly segmented news marketplace that exists in print.

I say that because of

--the tendency of capitalism to see opportunity in catastrophe and adapt accordingly

--the hunger, particularly in major news markets, for serious analysis, in-depth investigative reporting, and global coverage

--the likely gradual acceptance (per cable and other services) of a subscription or fee-for-content arrangement, particularly if advertisers are able to deliver their messages in ways customers don’t think of as interruptions they must endure

--the paid subscriber base that could make online more attractive to prospective advertisers

PART 2 TO FOLLOW.

TAKE 2: LIVING (SOMEWHAT) DIGITALLY

  "Shadows," oil on canvas, 2007
by Karen Roth

In her response to my last post—“Is It Still ‘Print’ If I’m Reading It Online?” of February 17––a longtime friend and neighbor made it clear to me that I hadn’t been. So in this post, I’d like to give clarity another try.

HOW MUCH IS ENOUGH?

Yes, part of what I wrote in my post of February 17 was a lament for the gone worlds of publishing, advertising and, to a lesser extent, branding that I knew. But it was not a call to resurrect those worlds and banish the digital communications technologies that have transformed and/or replaced them. We made that choice long ago.

Here’s the culprit: Violating the most fundamental rule of communications, I buried the point of that earlier post in the next-to-last paragraph, where I asked, How much of the digital communications revolution do I want to admit into my life?

A CRUCIAL DECISION

Deciding how much or how little to become digitally involved is not a small question. It is not simply about the choice of an information delivery system. And it’s not simply about buying this gadget, not that.

Rather it’s the choice—through one’s ownership and use of computers, cell phones, Blackberries and an evolving array of game-changing offshoots––to become part of a globally interconnected digital communications network.

It’s a network whose technologies enable an astounding range of possibilities, but I view it warily. I don’t want the computer and its offshoots to become the platform on which I conduct the greater part of my life.

THANKS, BUT

>>I don’t have a cell phone because (a) I don’t like talking on the phone (e-mail is my salvation) and (b) I don’t want to be reachable all the time.

>>I won’t buy a new digital TV to replace the old one. The only thing I ever watch is the News Hour on 13 and I can see that online. Yield: One less cluttered tabletop.

>>I’ve risked offending friends by declining their invitations to join Facebook and requesting that we communicate by regular e-mail instead. So far, no negative reactions.

In each case, though, as you’ve noticed, I’ve used a computer to solve a digital communications ‘problem.’

TIME AND SPACE FOR SOLITUDE

But there are other problems that are less easily remedied. Detach yourself from a major platform of social and political dialogue like TV, for example, and you lose touch with a key element of popular culture. 

When the conversational references turn to The Simpsons or Beavis ‘n Butthead, I’ll suffer ignorance gladly; but what about stuff that really matters?

On the other hand, there are times when solitude and immersion in a kind of meditative quiet matter more than anything else possibly could. That’s what I’m trying to leave time and space for.