One of the reasons the president of Brandeis gave for wanting to close the Rose Art Museum was “light foot traffic.” After exposure/publicity in the Boston Globe, hundreds of people flocked to the Museum the following weekend. This leads me to two points:

1. The Rose has a beautiful and full web presence with up-to-date information. They have an e-newsletter feature that will bring news right to the desktops of anyone who subscribes. The information is available to countless people around the world. But what motivated people to actually visit? Exposure in the newspaper. Granted, it was front page news, but exposure for arts organizations and public events in The Boston Globe remains an critically important driver of attendance and public awareness. Which leads me to point #2.

2. The cut backs in art reporting, event listings, reviews, and features is killing the life blood of many local organizations. To attract “new, young readers” we get a lot of dumbed-down Lindsay Lohan drivel, but when was the last time you saw a review of an exhibition at the Rose? Or a feature on the funky Hull Lifesaving Museum? My point is, with all the information out there on the web, the newspaper still brings organizations and events to “top of mind” awareness–and people respond. It seems to me that the experience at the Rose could clue The Globe and other papers into the fact that people are interested in these organization and will respond when the exposure is there. There has to be a way to spin that into some ad dollars.

It’s a vicious cycle for organizations–less coverage, less public awareness, less visitation, less revenue which could mean doors closing. For papers like the Globe, the more drivel they publish, the more wire service stories the run about restaurants in Montreal at the expense of places local, the more readers feel the paper is less and less relevant to our daily lives. Hence, subscriptions cancelled.

I wrote an editorial on this topic a few months ago for my blog after a family member had been laid off from his job of 30+ years working for the Washington Times. It’s sad but part of the natural evolution of communication. I never would have imagined I’d spend hours reading news from the internet as opposed to reading a paper or running over to the library.

There was a time when we got to work on horse back and used the telegraph to send messages. Only 100 years ago most people in this country did not even have a toilet in the house.

While I am saddened to see these organizations faltering the truth is that the internet has been a force in our lives since the mid 90’s. That’s over ten years and while some news organizations have taken to it most did not understand or deal with the technology very well.

This coupled with the bottom line mentality of the corporations than own them has lead to the point we are at now.

What is amazing is that The New York Times might fold this spring, as they are so far in the red that they might not be able to get financing. Imagine the world without the New York Times.

I think we are on the verge of seeing two new economic models for small hometown papers. This may include community-supported, citizen/volunteer-run small publications (along the lines of community radio) and employee-owned newspapers. It appears that the large nationally-owned stable of small newspapers may not be the norm in the near future, as it is now.

My business partner and I publish six Eastern Iowa weeklies. We’re bullish on the future of our “hyper-local” community newspapers — they are effective, affordable, efficient tools to help small town residents connect with their community.

As long as people in Mount Vernon, Iowa, for instance, care about their community, the Sun newspaper will continue to thrive. The same is true, I believe, for small newspapers in small towns all over Iowa and the nation.

Three comments:
Lindap is right in stating that the paper is our source for art reviews, whatever is happening in the surrounding community. I read the Globe daily for breakfast, and unfortunately, never noticed the Rose Museum reviewed.
The Taunton Gazette is a Gatehouse Media paper, and their emphasis is local, and youth sports, with many photos. The editorial content needs improvement but at at least they trying to sell themselves locally.
My daughter works as multimedia producer for The National, a brand new, successful, newspaper owned by the Abu Dhabi Media company. The culture devours the paper, while they drink their coffee. We read her paper on-line.
We all need the reporting, the news, the photos, and the editorial comment

All the talk about “hyper-local” news editions saving the day doesn’t seem very convincing to me. How exactly is that supposed to work?

One year ago, we were able to buy the New York Times and the Globe and Mail (Toronto) at our local store, which we did faithfully. Now, neither is delivered; we must drive 15 miles to buy the paper. I tried many times to subscribe but they don’t deliver here. The people who deliver papers (rather who DON’T deliver) no longer want to make the effort to bring paper to smaller communities.

I’m a former newspaper reporter and yes, I’ve canceled my subscriptions to the local papers. When I moved to Connecticut in 1977, I subscribed to the Hartford Courant and another local daily, the Middletown Press. Both had strong commitments to local news; the Courant maintained several well-staffed bureaus throughout the region. But I canceled my subscription to the Press in 1987 after a change in ownership was followed by diminished local reporting, and I canceled my subscription to the Courant in 2004, primarily because it too had ceased to be a NEWSpaper. Like so many other publications, it for the most part has abdicated its responsibility for covering local news (the school boards, the planning & zoning commissions) in favor of lifestyle topics (food, sports, and other entertainment). When I realized I was getting far more important local news from the amateurishly written (but free) local weekly, I saw no further need for the Courant. Today the only newspaper that comes to my house on a daily basis is the Wall Street Journal. I wish the Courant could give me a reason to subscribe again, but that seems unlikely to happen.

I read several web sites every day (NY TImes, Wash Post and some others). They are important to me and I am willing to pay. I paid for the Times Select when they charged for it. It’s much cheaper to pay for online access than daily delivery of the paper. I don’t understand people who refuse to pay for all this information. If it all disappears what other options do you have.

Your guest Jay Rosen makes a great point that one of the advantages of the web is that everyone has access to information that used to be published ONLY in the zoned editions. Unfortunately, one of the reasons that zoned editions have been abandoned is that newspapers are cutting staff and no longer cover a lot of the local events and issues.

I was recently laid off from The Providence Journal, (owned by Belo Corp.) along with 30 of my colleagues from the newsroom. More layoffs have been announced. The Journal used to cover this state like a blanket. If newspapers keep cutting staff, how can they hop to retain readership?

Hi, I just called in made the comment about how the regional editions of the Providence Journal (AND PEOPLE’S READING OF THE NEW YORK TIMES ONLY) made local news invisible to people in other regions of the state, including about subjects people might want to be politically or civically active about.

One of the guests correctly stated that we CAN see regionally-local news on the ProJo’s website. The problem is: the paper has so few JOURNALISTS left, that there is virtually NOTHING IN THE REGIONAL SECTIONS on line!! A LOT of important subjects never make it into the public view. Thanks.

Amusing arguments. What I notice is that conservatives find the papers too liberal, and liberals find them too conservative.

Which means that they are getting it just right.

You can’t please all the people all the time. Newspapers should strive to tell the news, and not the opinions of the readers

Just curious if newspapers felt threatened at the advent of radio news, and then TV news? They have certainly survived those onslaughts.

On Sundays, I look forward to the paper. It’s massive and robust and full of goodies. During the winter, I live in St. Petersburg, Florida (instead of NY) and would not, for example, have known about a fabulous Albrecht Durer exhibit without my Sunday paper to point it out. The Sunday paper here is $1. This is a no brainer!

I do not support the idea of papers going online. But how can they survive if people have simply stopped reading?

I depend on the physical newspaper, and refer to it later in the week, whereas I rarely go back to pages of info, or stories online. A recent NYT article was spread out over 12 pages online. That’s a real pain. Not to mention, the motion ads, which are distracting. And then there are the 5-second articles, which are condensed versions of the real story (CNN.com does this) and these are stifled, simplified news bits that do little to stimulate my brain.

I don’t have a solution but shutting our papers is not the answer.

Can you comment on the music-sharing model and whether or not there are parallels to the news industry? As a college student during Napster’s prime, I refuse to pay for any music what so ever. Apple, however was able to establish itself selling a product that had previously been free. It is now leading in the music market and turned it into a profitable segment (which is widely used by my demographic). Is this a recovery model media consortiums can follow? Is it a matter of usability, packaging, and positioning? Is there opportunity for an application linking in local, national, and international news stories from multiple sources? Can this be intuitive to my interests?

Here’s an idea, from France. French President Nicolas Sarkozy is providing free subscriptions to newspapers when youth reach 18. (Sure, this is probably just a band aid, but he’s after the right audience.) Sarkozy also has announced a significant increase in state subsidies of the newspaper industry.

Does our president and Congress need to think about such government intervention in the newspaper industry?

Lets not forget that U.S. newspapers for more than a century were political in orientation, and quite a few survived because they were able to procure government printing contracts and other spoils (such as postmaster positions for a publisher in his hometown).

The Dean of the Columbia University journalism school, Nicholas Lemann, has said that subsidies are inevitable if the news industry is to survive, or words to that effect.

Hi, it’s Christine W. with a second written comment. I just used the search button within the Providence Journal, searching for the most recent news (Jan. or Feb. 2009) about the LNG terminal proposed for Fall River and/or Mount Hope Bay (Mass/RI). There WERE three listings, but the latest was from 2005!

As a third-party supporter and a vocal critic of the duopoly, when it comes to political news, I find both the mainstream newspapers (Boston Globe, NYT, Boston Phoenix) as well as On Point and WBUR incredibly, incredibly biased in their reporting – on those rare occasions when they deign to report on a third party.

I still remember Tom Ashbrook being dismissive (!!!) towards a caller last year and the point he raised – that the Presidential debates need to be open to third party candidates. I was shocked at such behavior by Tom who obviously knows better, but hey, it’s good to see this prejudice among those I held in high esteem. I also remember what Tom said: “If people are interested in third parties, they can go find information on their websites” (or something to that effect) meaning, we won’t cover them.

So that has definitely played a part in why I don’t read/listen as often as I used to. I never had a subscription to a newspaper but have donated money to WBUR once in the past, so maybe my example is not the best to illustrate the point. But why would I give money to a newspaper or a radio if they have such a dismissive attitude towards a different viewpoint and towards those I support, or don’t cover the issues I care for? It’s logic and common sense. If I didn’t care for political issues, then this bias probably wouldn’t be a big factor, but I do, and it is.

Then again, the employees at these institutions probably reflect the mainstream thinking, where prejudice against third-party candidates is internalized and is the normative behavior, so people don’t even see that their words and behavior are prejudiced. Well, at least we’re making some progress – maybe in the near future, this prejudice will also make its way out.

I just read some of the comments after I posted mine. I was wondering if any laid off reporter could share why their newspaper doesn’t cover third parties (assuming they don’t). Is this a directive from the top, or is there some other reason? I’d be interested in knowing. Thanks.

It’s a shame that I screamed to newspaper bosses for years that their product was NEWS and not the newspaper and no one ever listened. I’m sure this happened at newsrooms throughout the U.S. I’m launching http://investigativemommyblogger.com to prove a blog can do what newspapers should have done years ago, and do it right. Newspapers have no one to blame but themselves for their current predicament. What really makes me enraged is all the amazing journalists out there who are either laid off or miserably overworked, and who can’t pursue the great stories they got into journalism to write in the first place.

What will happen if a local newspaper shuts down? Well, that is pretty easy. A web site or blog will take its place (and probably already exists). So then the question becomes: how do we educate those who can instantly publish about transparency, quality, ethics, and so on? How to we educate readers so they recognize quality in a news site?

Oh, and one more point. It is precisely because I have access to the web that I can read different viewpoints which made it possible for me to recognize this bias in mainstream reporting. So is it any wonder that more and more people are shifting to the web as a source of news?

[...] second first hour of On Point looks at the future of newspapers, and ahead of the conversation, here are [...]

I work at one of those dinosaurs and can see many problems.

We are part of one of the media giants. For years we been told to concentrate on local reporting, but also to cut costs. The two seldom co-exist. The drive was also to get free reporting from readers. That worked well in some locations, but not as well for our less internet-savvy populace.

One question compared the news agencies to the iTunes model. This works for music because the government said that music could not be given away. We do still have a First Amendment that allows freedom of the press, so if anyone can post to the web, with or without cost, then anyone should be able to. Unfortunately I don’t think that’s going to work here.

Neither is the French model, particularly appealing. With the cries of socialism arising from the bank bailouts, I suspect this would be much more dangerous, especially if it appears content changes to appease those in governmental control.

We, as newspapers, seem to missing many things. How many times has been noted that internet readers read the major players (NYT, WSJ, etc) and their hometown papers? Unless you’re already in that upper echelon, you’re not likely to break into the stratosphere. Where we can make a difference is reporting locally and advertising globally. Especially in the media conglomerates, the sites can be sold to the national retailers for the eyes that will be on the site from everywhere.

Additionally, the price requested for advertising on these sites has got to grow. The newspapers rarely make enough on subscriptions to deliver the printed paper. The advertisements are the payroll, buildings, presses… Online will have to follow that model rather than hoping that someone will be wiling to pay for the right to read the paper there.

The advertising mix will also have to change. Our business was largely based on classifieds – houses, cars and employment. Automotive has been going down for the past two years and real estate and employment have followed. Sites like craigslist quickly capture the bulk of the cheaper ads that drew people to the paper and they’ve seen the profit in employment as well. Job seekers are much more willing to go online to careerbuilder, monster, or any of the myriad of local sites that take advertising. There they can apply directly without spending anything on postage. They can apply to hundreds of positions every day, including ones they’re really not suited for. On the other side, employers who are still hiring have a much easier time weeding through those applications when the online sites will only send through those that meet the specific criteria or if the only reaction is to hit the delete key.

Back to the corporate bashing, the days of 40-50% profit margins are long gone. Most industries would be ashamed at the margins the media have gotten and many still expect. We as an industry may be able to survive when the realization is that 10-15% is a good sale. But that’s going to be very hard to convince shareholders.

Newspapers undoubtedly have a long way to go and I’m sure we’re going to loose a lot of them along the way. There will be instances where upstart websites will take their place, but how long will it take for them to gain the respect and faith of their constituents that the newspapers have today?

I was listening to the show. 2 things come to my mind.

1. Do the newspapers know their audience/customers anymore? What I mean is that have they conducted research to find which of their readers read which sections of the newspapers – business, local, sports, etc. Simply having circulation does not give them enough information.

2. Having done the research mentioned above, can they re-organize themselves to sell only parts of the paper that their readers want to pay for? That might help them with their costs and allow them to charge more the advertisers who can target better.

That is the convenience of online information sources – you read what you want to read and leave the rest. Conventional newspapers must get innovative and deploy their resources smartly in reporting, printing and distribution.

A dire topic with a possible solution:
The news that newspapers uncover is worth billions to TV and radio shows but no one asks the stations to pay for it.

Why not tax TV and radio, then allocate the revenue to news sources based on how often stories they break are covered on air.

(It’s unrealistic to make TV stations pay any other way, e.g., by bringing them to court; stations would just exaggerate how much of the legwork for any given story they did on their own. But once the tax is in place, the incentives change, and you could probably even elicit the cooperation of stations in tracking what share of the idea for each story came from any given news source.)

I have an idea for a new news business model. What if we take technology from Google, Apple’s iTunes, and even Netflix to create personalized newspapers, iNews. I find most news papers to have too much information and I wonder if others like me would prefer iNews, where you subscribe to a service (=revenue) which begins with the completion of a survey on the type of news stories you are interested in, allows you to select different tiers of service, maybe local news for one rate, add national news for another rate and add international news for another rate (=more revenue). Or there could be different subscription levels for the number of articles you’d like to receive every day, your top 5 recommendations for one rate or if you’re an avid news fan you can sign up for 30 per day! Advertising could then be targeted in correspondence to stories gauging the interests of readers (= even more revenue) much like Google’s advertising model. As a reader uses the service more, and periodically rates articles and requests “more like this one” the iNews would get more intelligent to the readers interests and better target news articles much the way netflix and apple’s iTunes have their recommendations for movies and music. The iNews could come to readers in an email, or through the iPod. Apple could even invent a new gadget (maybe very similar to the Kindle which is for books, although I know nothing else about it…) which could add more incentive for Apple to stage this effort to revitalize the news industry and map a new business model.

Many people may be able to access the world of news for free through the web now, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t willing to pay for it. The trick is giving them something of value as you recover the costs, like focused stories and more efficient transfer of information from those to collect it and write about it, to those who want to know about it.

I think it is important to also bring up the future of journalism education. I am a high school senior planning on pursuing journalism in college. Despite all the word that newspapers are going under and journalists are being laid off by the dozen, I can’t bring myself away from the amazing art that is journalism.

I think most journalists in the field know that newspapers are not going to fulfill the same roles they used to. They know that their traditional teaching techniques must be tweaked, or perhaps overhauled. Most journalism programs today focus on a digital or convergence focus, which I think is a wise move of the future.

After all, if tomorrow’s journalists aren’t prepared for tomorrow, there is no hope for a future journalistic revolution.

That local San Diego site has had success, and God bless them. It’s too bad much of it has to be portrayed at the expense of the local paper, which still churns out some pretty good journalism. http://tinyurl.com/vosd4th

My father was a highly-intelligent, self-made man. Newspapers were an important part of his life. We lived in a small, rural Ohio town. Every morning, The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette was delivered to our door. At lunch, Dad would walk down to the drugstore and pick up a copy of the Chicago Tribune. In the afternoon, the local paper, The Times-Bulletin, was delivered to the door. On Sunday, after church, we stopped at the drugstore to pick up the Sunday versions of the Chicago and Fort Wayne papers. My dad explained that one paper was liberal, one was conservative, the other provided the local news. By having the differing slants, he was able to come up with his own opinion of what was going on in the world.
Later, when I was a young adult, a big treat for me was to pick up the New York Times whenever I could and to get a copy of the local paper whenever we would travel.
I now only subscribe to our local weekly paper. I used to subscribe to the Dayton Daily, but a couple of years ago they appeared to cave under to the complaints about being too liberal. They dumbed down their content and threw out any liberal slant. It is unreadable. Now I get my news from NPR and occasionally pick up a random paper or the Sunday Times or a news magazine. I miss the papers of old. Nothing replaces that tactile sense of holding the paper and reading a well-written article.

Fantastic show on an important topic. One area that gets lost frequently in discussions like this has to do with reading. The guests on your show dealt with questions about content–what will we do without a watch-dog press writing expose stories about the politicians? From this point of view, web newspapers would be OK, if only we can find a way to pay for them.

Yet reading the news on the web and reading it in a good old fashioned newspaper are hardly the same thing. Web reading involves a lot of quick skimming and superficial processing of information. Reading a newspaper requires more concentration and, dare I say it, thinking. Media studies scholars have written on this phenomenon, and as a heavy reader of both online and print newspapers, I can attest to it myself.

We don’t just need more news content; we need more people reading and thinking about stories that matter. Only in that way will we have a truly informed citizenry.

It seems that with the strong news gathering component built into newspapers that they could create a 24×7 live video news desk on their web sites. Video – especially live news video — from trusted sources pays remarkably well with video advertisements. NYT reportedly is receiving $75 per 1000 video impressions (CPMs) from advertisers compared to $1 CPM for a banner advertisement.

Newspapers have every reason to do this:
1) Marketing: they already have invested here and have a large base of loyal customers that turn to their web sites every day for news,
2) Trusted News: trusted and hard working news reporters,
3) Trained Staff: articulate and professionally trained staff for TV anchors and on the street video reporters are already on the payroll(the Boston Globe recently saw one of its best business reporters move over to NECN news desk). These reporters would also economically benefit by the increased on the air exposure.

Live is the key. Live anchors broadcasting 24×7 at the Boston Globe would dramatically increase online viewership in terms of time on the web site and click throughs which would increase advertising rates for video as well as banner ads. These live news anchors would report on the news just like CNN, Fox, or ABC News. Globe reporters on the street would fill in with live breaking news or local investigative reporting. The work it takes to do one written article could be expanded into several hours of video and video interviews.

The WSJ, Washington Post, and NYT have made strong moves into video with short clips by their best reporters; the next evolution is live video with interactive (Skype, Yahoo chat, AIM, Blog) news anchor desks.

[...] inherent in a viral, networked, porrous, low-barriers-to-entry, mixed-up, multimedia public space, spoke with Tom Ashbrook yesterday. Ironic isn’t it that this particular guest and topic came as it did so shortly [...]

[...] cover story this week by Walter Isaacon is headlined, How to save your newspaper… and WBUR radio’s On Point earlier in the week had a program debating the future of publishing. The past year has been particularly difficult for government publications given the perfect storm [...]

[...] Ashbrook, host of NPR’s On Point, conducted a discussion to these points yesterday. Guests included NYU Journalism Professor and blogger Jay Rosen, NPR [...]

Some of the more interesting points were brought up by Donohue and Rosen, the two “non-traditional” members of the discussion. Instead of just discussing the downfall (i.e. reasons for failure) and what will happen next (like Ashbrook did and Folkenflik to a lesser extent), these two are actually picking up the slack where newspapers have fallen off. The time for talking about this passed a long while ago and while newspapers and traditional journalists continue to talk about it, others are doing what is needed to fill in the gaps. As with any transition, it is messy and not always pleasant, but newspapers in their current form cannot survive. The reasons are too numerous to mention here.

There definitely needs to be some sort of micro-payment system in place, perhaps when the government finally forces the net tax on us. I can not subscrib to all the e-mags on line, too much to read and too much money, but if they charge a penny an article that may be reasonable, any thing more I do not think I would be willing to pay. Besides, if millions of views pay a penny an article would start to add up. If you charge more I believe you would end up with the same amount because less people would actually ‘buy’ the article. They still have the ads space to work with, and more devices like, the kindle, will help with the transformation from hard copy to e-mags.

[...] a fantastic radio interview on the topic. By the way, for those who don’t listen to NPR’s On Point with Tom Ashbrook, I [...]

don’t worry about it, move on. nytimes getting heavily into the web to survive – why aren’t others doing the same?

[...] http://www.onpointradio.org/shows/2009/02/the-future-of-the-news/ [...]