Newspapers' Woes Worsening

Rocky Mountain News Is Latest Casualty, S.F. Chronicle May Be Next; What Are Implications For Nation Of Industry's Problems?

(CBS)  The venerable Rocky Mountain News published its final edition Friday, just two months shy of its 150th anniversary.

Colorado's oldest paper is just the latest to succumb to severe, industry-wide financial pressure stemming from declining ad revenue and circulation.

Other high profile publications, including the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the Tucson Citizen, and, perhaps most importantly - because its home is already a one-newspaper town - the San Francisco Chronicle. Thirty-three U.S. papers have filed for bankruptcy protection.

What does it all mean for the nation, and where is the trend headed?

The demise of the Rocky Mountain News is, says Columbia Journalism Review Executive Editor Mike Hoyt, "quite sad." He told Early Show Saturday Edition co-anchor Erica Hill it not only cost many people their jobs, it's "a voice lost. Newspapers are very tied in with the community, and "The Rocky" had a personality. It's a big loss.

"I'm sure the Denver Post will pick up a few staffers and will profit economically, and it will help them in the short-run," he said. "But in the long run, it's bad for the city."

When a city only has one paper, Hoyt said, "you lose competition, and you lose the edge, and you lose energy. Competition is good. It sharpens the news gathering, and the investigative reporting."

Should the Chronicle fail as well, it would be "a big blow," Hoyt observed to CBS News.

"Now, in cities like San Francisco and Chicago, there are alternative newspapers, and there are online papers - small ones, but many of them, and they have their niches, whether it's political junkies or sports fans, whatever. Would all those outlets add up to something approximating a newspaper? It's a good question, but I'd doubt it.

"The daily newspaper in a major metropolitan market is the voice of a city. It provides a civic forum that everyone can relate to and come together to talk about. And it can take on complicated problems, and be a watchdog for the community." He adds, “You need big institutions to cover big problems and big situations.”

Even surviving papers are suffering staff cuts. Hoyt says the CJR puts the number at more than 12,500 editorial jobs cut since January 2007.

That is, he says, "a tremendous amount. And it hurts the caliber of reporting. You just can't keep cutting without hurting the effectiveness of a newspaper. And if newspapers go under, you lose the transparency of government. Journalists are the watchdogs, and being able to shine a spotlight on corruption or scandal is vital to our democracy."

Newspapers are, he says, feeling the impact of the recession on their ad-based bottom lines. “Meanwhile, there’s a longer-term shift toward the Web, and newspapers were slow to wake up to it. They’re wide awake now. The problem is, there’s not much money there. Web advertising is climbing, but it’s not climbing fast enough. The amount of money they get is not enough.”

A complicating factor is papers offering their content on their Web sites - content they might want to charge for, but that people are used to getting for free. "About ten years ago," Hoyt says, "newspapers around the country made what amounts to an historic mistake. They believed it would be wrong to charge extra for online customers, and thought they could rely on advertisers for all their revenue.”

Now, he adds, the consensus is shifting. “You can sort of feel it moving toward, ‘Maybe we should sell our content.’ It’s an unknown (whether that could work). Content’s gotta be good enough to buy.”

The New York Times had been charging for online access to its columnists, but has stopped that, for now at least. Newsday is reportedly readying to charge readers for online content. If it catches on, it would create a model. But the jury's still out on whether people will pay for something they're used to getting for free. In the meantime, they have to hope the money will come from more traditional sources.

Still, Hoyt says he's "actually optimistic" about the future of papers. "And the biggest reason is - we're based at the Columbia School of Journalism, and there are a lot of young people there who are committed to solid journalism. And they're eager to learn and even re-invent the craft. ... There are students who still believe in newspapers and want to work there. And the recession won't last forever. People will buy cars and refrigerators again, and when they do, advertising will pick up, and advertisers will spend again and newspapers will be healthier. There will always be a need for newspapers."

[bodymindsoul]

To Whom It Should Concern,

Many may agree that negative news result in more viewers, therefore more money! However when negative news begins to serve as primary news, many of us begin to believe life has absolutely NO HOPE. You may ask, what does this have to do with the YOU? ......

The news originated to report stories (negative or positive) as to the facts?...Now we report not just the facts, but personal opinions, (some false opinions). Ex:.

Banks are not loaning money?..FALSE
Many jobs are loss????.TRUE but many are gained
Our country is in the worst recession in our history?May be true but what does this information do for us?.

Since when does news reporting become bias with no responsibility to the outcome that burdens our American growth?? We, as a nation, unfortunately, have in the past, fed on the negative issues incorporating $$$$$$ for the broadcasters, therefore ignoring what the effects of the story may cause. Is this not what got us into this mess to begin with (greed)???? Choosing by choice the story in which you provide to the public is responsibility and with responsibility comes common sense as to the effects of the outcome?I ask you this question?.

How much of this negative feed back is going to help our nation???
Negative reporting causes NEGATIVE OUTCOME..
? Stocks will continue to fall
? Businesses growth continues weakening loosing more jobs
? Confidence in our nation diminishes collapsing the economy
? Anger and hostile behaviors form creating crime rates to rise
? Mental and physical health deteriorates

Honestly, what kind of impact do we think negative information creates?????

What is so embracing is?That we, the people, allow the news to have so much influence over our nation!

Many of us ask you this?STOP WITH ALL THE NEGATIVE PUBLICITY?everyone IS A WARE OF THE ECONOMY STATUS, I mean, the news wont lets us forget. Report more POSITIVE news, and watch the economy turn for the positive?I dare you!! Until it is turn for the more positive, many of us will stand together, turning off our television and stopping the reading of the news papers!!

[hedlinoos]

where do all these almighty righties come from? I can't believe the imbalance of commentary on the reaction to the loss of newspapers to our country. One: the calling of names to suggest a given newspaper is pro-liberal is simply reckless. What ever became of searching for facts? Perhaps that's why the righties don't like newspapers; YOU HAVE TO READ THEM! These lemmings will find themselves marching into a sea of informational conformity, counting off the cadence of the biggest mouth in the world, Rush Limbaugh. How come he remindsme of Adolph Hitler?

[IReadItAll]

The loss of these newspapers is tragic. Newspapers have served an important and useful role in their communities.
The article said:
"you lose the transparency of government. Journalists are the watchdogs, and being able to shine a spotlight on corruption or scandal is vital to our democracy."

Sadly, editors have sided with the corrupt and scandalous. the newspaper's "voice" has become untrustworthy. The watchdogs have become lapdogs. What was a thriving industry has been done in by the ideology of editors and owners.

Hard working journalists turn in balanced stories, only to see them edited to carry water for cynical politicians whose misdeeds are edited out to remain unremarked and overlooked.

Editorial boards have ruined their own industry. They will never face up to their own culpability. They blame it on the internet and pretend they are the victims of fate. Sadly it was their own reporting and tone that drove their readers away and onto the WWW to begin with. Sad. Very, very sad.

[nh4ronpaul]

One more liberal communist propaganda rag down, a zillion more to go. Can't wait to see these purveyors of the new world order lies go down in flames.... Yeah! It's a GOOD thing!

[swin5]

What would really be a blessing would be if the internet would cause the demise of these asinine local TV so-called newscasts. One local station, KDKA Channel 2 in Pittsburgh, has a full 3 hours of local news before Katie comes on with the national newscast at 7 p.m. Oh, I'm sorry, did I say NEWS? I meant to say 3 hours of commercials, opinion, banter, and fluff. I'm sure those of you living in other large cities can give your own examples. Needless to say, I don't watch the local news. The local TV station websites are a joke too - I listen to one of the local all-news radio stations - best way to go, with no bias toward stories with a visual impact. And no fluff.

[swin5]

Maybe newspapers are the voice of a community, but here in Pittsburgh the largest newspaper is just the mouth of a corruption-riddled Democratic political machine.

I worked for a small newspaper printing company many years ago when I was in college. We printed about 85,000 copies of a local church-oriented paper and also J. C. Penney ad inserts that would go into local small town newspapers. Even with this small a run, I was amazed at the number of 800 lb newsprint rolls we would go through. When I thought about how many papers a big city newspaper printed, and how many big cities there were, I began to realize how big an impact the whole industry was having on our forest resources. When linotype machines were replaced by the offset printing process, I witnessed a lot of job cuts. However, we can't ruin our environment or deplete our resources just to maintain jobs - any technological development that will get the free press and printed word to more people, at less cost to the reader and to the environment, has to be encouraged and embraced.

[quapawsix]

Why should I buy a paper when I can get the news from the internet. I'm already paying for the internet and besides the Newspapers are out dated platform for getting the news. If they are going to survive may be they should adapt to the Internet.

[hetup-2009]

I agree with the majority here, I dropped my newspaper subscription because of the method of reporting. A newspaper should not have a "personality", it should report the truth and not just a collection of words. So go ahead and die newspaper, flop around too before you go.

[budmag06]

Gee, I wonder why? Could it be that newspapers spew out hatred and support our socialist president? They will all fall starting with that Obama propaganda machine, the Times.

[Newster1]

Newspapers - like many TV networks - no longer even pretend to have objectivity. In the era of 24/7 news cycles"

The right wing rags all love to use stories that quote anonymous people who;

"...spoke on condition of anonmidity because he was not authorized to speak to the media"

Really gives ya confidence getting news from anonymous unauthorized people eh?

[Newster1]

8) Newspapers are always the last place to find national news. In general they would do better I believe if they dropped national news and concentrated on state and local news. My family goes first to the internet to find national news, which makes what the newspapers report seem like old news all the time, while at the same time state and local news is chronically under reported.

9) Newspapers are not as useful as they would be if they reported before events, instead of right after the event. By this I mean when annual festivals, etc. are upcoming, that is the time to print the story about last year's festival along with dates and times for this year's event.. Knowing something I didn't go to was a good event to go to, means nothing immediately after an event
==

Exactly right, you notice you hear stories on the radio, like Paul Harvey died, and almost immediately it's HERE on CBS's web site and in Google's news, you'll have to wait till tomorrow to read it in the print paper- a day later, why bother when it's here!
Google news scans 5,000 news sources around the world and you can subscribe free to get emails by keywords etc for stories that come up in those 5,000 sources and then read them.

[Newster1]

The suck-up performance of the mainstream media during the most recent presidential election amounts to a gross dereliction of duty. Good riddance to every one of them that goes down. There are plenty of better practitioners that are ready to step in and fill the void.
Posted by UpajOs

Like WHAT? the christian "SCIENCE" monitor perhaps?

[platteman]

I quit watching 60 minutes when they ran piece after piece against George W. Bush. I also hope the LA times goes by the wayside, along with the wall street journal. Now if they could get the Traverse City Retched Eagle to go out of business along with some other of the liberal rrags that exist today.

We don't need no stinking newspapers anyway. All they are good for is lining the bottom of bird cages and stuff to put on the floor for puppies to pea on.

[whitemale08]

I love how junkyard dogs like Druggie Limbaugh dedicated all day today his failed phylosphy of 'tax cuts for the rich' and 'trickle-down' voodoo economic nonsense as if we want to go back to that garbage.

Get a clue neo-frauds...

We finally have a President who cares about the 'middle-class' and that's not going to change you idiots.

You hate welfare and taxes, then stop the Wall Street parasites that ship our jobs overseas for the sake of profit under 'globalization'.

[Meg003]

For years I wrote the newspapers to which I subscribed and asked for honest journalism rather than stories in which the editor had told the reporter, "Here is the story. Go find something to justify it." Finally I cancelled my subscriptions. The left-wing liberal newspaper owners have brought about their own demise by pushing an agenda of socialism and anti-Americanism instead of seeking and reporting the news.

[emperorlotku]

The newspaper in Dayton, Ohio ( The Dayton Daily News), commonly known as the Dayton Workers Manifesto, is a fluff newspaper where you'll learn more about the daily activities of Paris Hilton and Lindsey Lohan than serious news. The sad part of all news media nowadays is that reporters think they should influence the news, they are the news, and are so ego driven that their opinions should taint all the stories they report . Opinions are for the oped sections of the newspapers, not the news items themselves. Our newspaper reporters at the Dayton Daily News can't stick to who, what, where when and why. They have all gone to the Joseph Stalin School of Socialist Journalism where they were taught to only present one viewpoint. Any real reporting is purchased from network news where the reporter is capable of sticking to the facts and the truth. I can see why newspapers are folding up. They haven't been newspapers for years, can't remain centrist in their reporting, and don't have any credibility any more. Why would customers continue to pay for garbage reporting and why would advertisers pay to place ads in apaper with declining viewership?

[jeffvolvo]

Anything neg with Obama's name they won't let into this forum

[jeffvolvo]

Don?t worry newspapers! B.O. will save you. He needs you to spew his messages across the nation and world. All you have to do is kissy, kissy, Not be like those terrible talk radio host shows that he will abolish..

[jeffvolvo]

Don?t worry newspapers! B.O. will save you. He needs you to spew his messages across the nation and world. All you have to do is kissy, kissy, Not be like those terrible talk radio host shows that he will abolish..

[honestindividual]

I've lived in the greater LA area for 47 years; I used to read both the LA Times and the LA Herald Examiner. The latter paper was a "Hearst" vehicle, very far right, and the Times was a more professional, middle of the road vehicle with a far larger circulation. The H-E eventually went out of business, and the Times started moving to the left. In recent years, the Times essentially quit reporting real news and became a fluff piece and advertising vehicle for the far left, show business flacks, and jewish interests. It is now close to ruin, laying people off left and right, with vastly diminished circulation...who cares? It is totally flaky, irrelevant, and obnoxious, and deserves to fail. By the way, CBS has suffered from the same problems for years now; I remember when "60 Minutes" was an honest journal. Too bad, but good riddance.