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Newspapers Seek Alternatives as Death March Continues

by Bill Dusty

The era of daily print journalism continues to fade as more and more newspapers have opted to shut their doors rather than continue on with the struggle. By now, it seems certain that unless the local advertising problem is solved, nearly all local dailies will be punching their ticket to oblivion.

While it’s true that the Internet has played a big part in the demise of many of the nation’s newspapers, the plunge in local advertising dollars has taken the largest bite out of the dailies’ revenue. Many newspapers have discovered too late that their traditional business model is doomed in this new era of information gathering. Remarkably, though, some print publishers still persist with the smug notion that “only they” can provide the information their community needs. Meanwhile, newsroom cutbacks continue and hundreds of local reporters have been shown the door. Investigative journalism is fast becoming a thing of the past for many print dailies.

The latest daily newspaper to hit the obituaries is the Seattle Port-Intelligencer. It died of natural causes (see symptoms, above). The Seattle PI, however, is looking to extend its after-life by keeping its online entity, seattlepi.com, in operation. From a story on their Web site announcing the change:

The new operation will be more than a newspaper online, Steven Swartz, president of Hearst Newspapers, said. The so-called “community platform” will feature breaking news, columns from prominent Seattle residents, community databases, photo galleries, 150 citizen bloggers and links to other journalistic outlets.

The big question remains: can an online-only newspaper survive – even if it transforms itself into a more expansive information gateway? This remains to be seen. The Christian Science Monitor (CSM) switched to an online-only format for its daily edition just this year (it retained a weekly print edition). But the CSM is largely subsidized by the church that founded it, the Christian Scientists. Independent newspapers will have no such subsidies. Here in Springfield, we have the Republican’s content available online at Masslive.com – a site that offers about the same content that the SeattlePI.com promises to provide. The Republican’s print edition stories are all available online – sometimes being uploaded to the site the evening before the morning edition comes out (thus effectively scooping their own print edition). But could the newspaper survive under its current business model if it had to go all-online? Highly unlikely.

Despite cutbacks and layoffs, the Republican still retains excellent reporters – though the paper appears reluctant to allow them to practice their investigative skills. Most local stories seem to consist of press release write-ups or police blotter reviews – these being far more affordable than paying reporters to do extensive research and legwork on investigative stories. But the community misses out on much that is going on in the city as a result. Meanwhile, although the print edition’s stories are posted online at Masslive, the work done by Masslive’s staff – blogs, videos, photos – goes largely unrecognized in the print edition.

Compensation is another issue that plagues many online news portals. Newspapers, of course, pay their reporters to write stories. But nearly all bloggers – from whatever Web site – write their content for free. This is an attractive option for local newspapers looking for cheap or free content. If a newspaper can find quality bloggers to write local pieces, it can make do with less reporting staff in its print edition – which in many cases these days is being cutback anyway.

Another strategy that has popped up in recent times is the idea of newspapers going non-profit. This would allow revenue from advertising and subscriptions to come in tax-exempt, and would also allow for tax-exempt contributions. Of course, as non-profits, newspapers would no longer be able to endorse political candidates. But that’s a small sacrifice when considering the already failing alternative. And small non-profit ventures could fill the gap oftentimes left by traditional, for-profit newspapers that have emptied their staffs of good investigative reporters, as this CSM story discusses. Of course, in order for the idea to work on a small scale, the paper would necessarily have to be online – the most affordable way to go. But in an era of rabid political ineptitude and wide-ranging social rage over officials who line their pockets with goodies and dole out high-paying positions to friends and relatives, a small, dedicated non-profit online venture could be just what our struggling communities have been hoping for.

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Posted by Bill Dusty on Apr 15th, 2009 and filed under Society. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.