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Over and Done
In explaining his decision to leave the L.A. Times, William Lobdell concisely lays out the basic reasons why so many newspapers are going south. But he gets in a good one with a recent quote from a friend: "Bro, face it -- you guys are the 8-track cassette of news."
"The business model for newspapers is broken," Lobdell writes, "and no one has figured out how to fix it, probably because it can't be fixed. The smaller the newspaper, the longer its life span in print (four exceptions: the New York Times, Wall St. Journal, Washington Post and USA Today). Technology has run laps around the print media -- giving readers instant news, open-source journalism, no barriers to become publishers, and an infinite news hole.
"The idea that your daily news is collected, written, edited, paginated, printed on dead trees, put in a series of trucks and cars and delivered on your driveway -- at least 12 hours stale -- is anachronistic in 2008." Yup, that point has certainly been made.
Then it gets interesting starting with #11, and pretty much stays that way through #42.
Posted by Jeffrey Wells on August 4, 2008 at 9:00 AM
comment #1
Balthazar says ...
As a fellow journalist, I was nodding my head in agreement at almost every one of these comments.
Newspapers might have a terminal illness at this point, but that illness has been exacerbated and sped up by utterly incompetent doctors (publishers, sales directors, editors).
Posted by Balthazar at August 4, 2008 9:37 AM
comment #2
Jay T. says ...
When I started college in 1998 I wanted to study journalism and eventually write for a newspaper... by 1999 it was obvious to me that newspapers were a dying medium, so I immediately changed my plans. It's still shocking to me that it took these institutions so much longer to catch on to reality. They were also WAY behind in terms of building up proper sales teams for the web -- as recent as 2004 thousands of papers were still using a broker to manage their inventory.
Posted by Jay T. at August 4, 2008 10:07 AM
comment #3
George Prager says ...
It has been my experience that the people editors in chiefs of the newspapers do not get the internet yet. They insist that the internet staff do all kinds of stupid shit that does not generate page views. They think the paper should mirror the website in every way possible.
Posted by George Prager at August 4, 2008 10:09 AM
comment #4
Balthazar says ...
Great point made by "Small Business Owner" in the comments section of Lobdell's piece:
....from my perspective, it was going to cost me $500.00, that is five hundred dollars, to post an employment ad for the weekend. an ad with the Times for my beginning business would have been $1,500 to 5,000.00 for just a weekend ad. They didn't want to work with me or waste their time in even trying to put together a new business package. so i didn't advertise with them and when i got bigger, i just refused to bend over. it appears they forgot about alot of business out there, ruled with an iron fist, thought they were the only game in town and like the auto industry became blind... i pay google about $500/month for keywords and have almost tripled my company in one year! The LA times was really foolish and regardless for all their mistakes... Nobody, or not enough... new readers want to turn the page of a dirty paper delivered and thrown by a guy in a car that shouldn't maybe even be on the road, have it hit with sprinklers, dirty and wet and carry this into their homes to read the news that i can get online, world wide, with various views in 10 minutes every day. no recycling and i can even read my hometown paper online without paying a cent.
Posted by Balthazar at August 4, 2008 11:49 AM
comment #5
Josh says ...
Amazing that all the liberal papers like the la times, chi trib, etc are dying.
Posted by Josh at August 4, 2008 11:52 AM
comment #6
dangovich says ...
What the hell am I gonna read in the bathroom?
Posted by dangovich at August 4, 2008 11:54 AM
comment #7
Balthazar says ...
Ideology has nothing to do with it. Right-wing and middle-of the-road papers are equally fucked.
Posted by Balthazar at August 4, 2008 11:58 AM
comment #8
Joe M. says ...
I'm not saying my EXACT device is the answer, but my Amazon Kindle lets me read a variety of newspapers, formatted for easy reading, on a mobile yet decent sized screen. The key is to continue marrying electronics to the ability to do what newspapers let you do: read on a bus, at your kitchen table, on the run, etc. (even most laptops don't easily let you do this). Maybe if devices like the Kindle catch on, newspapers will be saved. They'll just send your "paper" to your device every morning, like I'm getting now. Doesn't completely solve the "out of date" issue, but it eliminates the trees and the truck delivery. I can also surf the net on my Kindle, by the way (and for free, so far), but getting the electronic version of my local paper sent to me nicely formatted and easily navigable is worth the few cents a day Amazon charges me.
Posted by Joe M. at August 4, 2008 1:14 PM
comment #9
hcat says ...
the trib is Chicago's conservative paper (or at least used to be), the Sun-times is seen as the liberal one.
Posted by hcat at August 4, 2008 1:55 PM
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