Rick Raw: Newspapers Drowning in Red Ink–The Death of Print Journalism

By Rick Grant Commentary rickgrant01@comcast.net www.rickatnight.com

It’s no secret that newspapers across the country are drowning in red ink. More significantly, print journalism as a means of getting information is slowly dying. The skyrocketing interest in the Internet is gradually replacing the entire print medium. Information travels at the speed of light across the vast broadband matrix of the World Wide Web creating instant news and, information, and the availability of research on any subject.

According to Michael de la Merced of The New York Times, "The Tribune Co. publisher of the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, and the Baltimore Sun filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Owned by billionaire Sam Zell, the company’s holdings include 23 TV stations, and a dozen newspapers is $13 billion in debt. The venerable New York Times had to borrow $225 million to keep operating for the next few months. Readership is down from 80% in 1970 to 48% in 2008. Zell called his financial problems a ‘perfect storm’ of plunging advertising and declining circulation, coupled with a worldwide credit shortage."

Ultimately, the instrument of death is the plunge in advertising revenues. Likewise, selling advertising on the Internet has not replaced the profits of print advertising. Until a method of ratings is established (like radio) that takes into account more than just clicks, it’s hard to convince prospective advertisers that they are getting their money’s worth of coverage. The idea of selling subscriptions to newspaper websites to access more material and archives has not worked out. It’s a free and free-flowing information super-highway.

In contrast, compared to the Internet, the enormous expense of buying big rolls of paper, printing it as newspapers, and delivering the product to market has risen tenfold. Indeed, the handwriting is on the wall. The viable newspaper business model is rapidly fading into history. The entire newspaper industry is terminally ill.

This new age of Internet dominance, print media’s waning business model, and the recent economic collapse sent an arrow through my financial heart. I was suddenly laid-off from my magazine job. Of course, compared to being a salaried journalist writing for a legitimate printed publication, my present status is like so many out of work journalists--we’re cast into the ocean of Internet anonymity.

Andrew Sullivan in the London Times said, "Newspapers are done for. Print and paper plus delivery by truck are immensely cumbersome and expensive compared with a modem. Some papers like The New York Times and The Washington Post have responded to this new reality with great websites that offer loads of information and entertainment . But online advertising, while growing, simply is not as lucratiove as print ads, nor is it growing fast enough."

Undoubtedly, the recession has advanced the inevitable demise of print media. Consolidation has been a possible savior. But the overhead expensives still eat up profits. The Internet age swept into all media like a plague of locusts. No one could react fast enough. Now, every hack and nut job is a blogger babbler, clogging up the broadband channels with unsubstantiated opinion. Every real journalist has to be fast on the draw to come up with scoops. Internet rumors are rampant with bogus information flying around like debris caught up in a dust devil.

The age of the publishing empires is over. Billionaire publishers are disappearing. They are scaling down their multiple holdings and bleeding red ink. Visionary thinkers are figuring out how to make money on the Internet. But it will never be comparable to the age of print media.

Websites like the Huffington Post are models of future Internet news with investigative journalists on the payroll. Quality writers will always rise to the top among the millions of hack bloggers. It’s a bold new world of fast moving information that renders newspapers old news as soon as they’re printed.
(All quotes from The Week.)