Study Finds Newspaper Cuts Hurting Content

Increasing Internet Use By Readers And High Newsprint Costs Are Forcing Industry To Re-Evaluate Writing The News

(AP)  The many and deepening cuts at newspapers across the country are starting to take a toll on their content, according to a study being released Monday.

The challenge newspapers must meet immediately is to find more revenue on the Internet, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism's study, called "The Changing Newsroom: What is Being Gained and What is Being Lost in America's Daily Newspapers."

Newspaper managers need to "find a way to monetize the rapid growth of Web readership before newsroom staff cuts so weaken newspapers that their competitive advantage disappears."

Stories are shorter overall, the study found, and staff coverage tends to focus on local and community news.

"America's newspapers are narrowing their reach and their ambitions and becoming niche reads," the study said.

Even when foreign and national news makes it into the papers, it is being relegated to less prominent pages.

"To make the front page, it has to be a significant development or a story that we can see through Florida eyes," said Sharon Rosenhause, managing editor of the Fort Lauderdale-based South Florida Sun-Sentinel and a longtime newspaper executive.

The reasons for the newsroom cutbacks are well known: Newsprint costs have jumped, and advertising and circulation revenue have quickened their descent this year as advertisers follow readers online. Newspaper Web sites capture only a small fraction of the revenue lost as they sell fewer print ads, which fetch more money.

"The seams and threads are beginning to show in U.S. journalism even though newspapers are by far the greatest source of news," Lou Ureneck, chairman of the journalism department at Boston University, said Friday.

The PEJ study surveyed senior newsroom executives at more than 250 newspapers and interviewed editors at papers in 15 cities to document the way these cuts have affected newsrooms and the quality of their product.

The results show that papers carry fewer stories on foreign and national news and devote less space to business, science and arts reporting, and many have reduced the crossword puzzle and eliminated television and stock listings.

Many editors said they must ask reporters to cover more beats, reducing their ability to produce authoritative stories. Others said, in what may create a vicious circle, that staff cutbacks reduce their ability to shape coverage to fit their communities' needs, and Ureneck said that coverage is shrinking.

"This is a strategic move not driven by lack of demand but (by) a revenue model that is broken," Ureneck said.

Still, 56 percent of the editors surveyed said their news product is better than it was three years ago because coverage is more targeted.

"There's an improvement in enterprise, in investigations and in the coverage of several core beats," the study quoted an unnamed editor of a large metropolitan daily talking about his staff's coverage, not the makeup of the paper overall.

Local news is "very essential" to their product, according to 97 percent of editors surveyed, and they said that's where they're putting a larger share of their shrinking resources.

"They are giving a greater piece of a smaller pie to local news," Ureneck said. That makes sense because where they can "develop the most expertise and strongest bond with readers is covering the local community."

The newsroom is much younger than three years ago, and reporters are more technology savvy and able to meet the demands of print and online stories, according to the study.

Editors once leery of producing content for the Web are increasingly embracing its potential to diversify readership and improve journalism, even if it sometimes saps print resources.

"Editors feel torn between the advantages the Web offers and the energy it consumes to produce material often of limited or even questionable value," the study said.

The Web speeds delivery of news, allows interaction with readers and opens nearly infinite space for news.

"The downside is that is has eroded the advertising base in print publications, and that is by far the main source of revenue to pay for large news staffs," Ureneck said.

Editors see the ability to track readership of any specific story online as an advantage for improving content. It provides an "indisputable link between strong editorial content and the kind of higher readership that attracts advertisers," the study said.

The editors, 97 percent of whom said they are active in trying to develop new revenue streams, can then convince the advertising sales staff to become more targeted in selling to the Web.

Many said, though, that they were uncertain improved editorial content would ensure a bright future - especially since most organizations failed to anticipate the changes that have wracked newsrooms in recent years.

Only 5 percent of the editors surveyed said they were confident they could predict what the newsroom would look like in five years.

"I feel I'm being catapulted into another world, a world I don't really understand," Virginian-Pilot editor Dennis Finley told PEJ. "Things are happening at the speed of light."

The results of the survey, conducted online by Princeton Survey Research Associates International between Jan. 29 and Feb. 29, include responses from over 50 percent of U.S. papers with 100,000 or more in circulation and more than 30 percent of papers with 50,000 to 100,000 in circulation.

[baicas]

I buy a newspaper everyday when I am out and about running errands, and I have to say it comes in handy when I am eating out by myself and don''t want to be bothered, I can sit and eat with it stretch out on the table and relax. I would definitely miss it when and if it disappears.

[deacon20081]

Imagine the Internet being taken over by the Government to stifle free speech....and No News Papers to keep you informed or misinformed even.
Tin cans and string only have a limited useful distance.

[deacon20081]

"Many have reduced the crossword puzzle"
And here I thought it was my eyes.

[rhs648]

Printing the news on paper is a relic of the bygone days...just like dollar-a-gallon gas and phone booths!

Take these dinosaurs out behind the tool shed and put em out of our misery...just like grandpa used to do with the old nag when she broke down and no longer served a purpose.

Posted by DaVicar2

Just suppose that we have the internet and no newspapers. The newspaper suddenly appears and everyone loves this new idea. Just think--something you can carry with you, read at your leisue at the kitchen table, in the bathroom, or wherever you go. People would be fascinated with this new fangled thing called a newspaper. Rather than worry about the internet, newspapers must become more innovative and creative and provide the news in depth and not depend on organizations such as the Associated Press (AP) to provide the news to newspapers. It is difficult to serve two masters. Newspapers should concentrate on what they do best. In other words, put on the blinders and do what you do best and not get bogged down by things that don''t improve your product.