I couldn’t even tell you who the advertiser was on yesterday’s front page wrap. I just slip it off and add it to the stack of read or unwanted sections. (I just dug through the stack–it was Safeway. Obviously it didn’t do them any good, I still dug through the glossies to find the Safeway and King Soopers inserts, but the front page (and sometimes sports section) wrap makes no impression on me longer than it takes to get it out of the way.)
Radio and TV are marginally faster, but you have to sit and listen to a bunch of crap you don’t care about until they get to the story you want. No such problem with the newspaper, which is why newspapers did just fine with radio and TV around. The internet, OTOH, is just as fast as radio and TV, and you can pick the story you want, whenever you want, just like a newspaper.
I would disagree with your suggestion that we “need” to know about a Japanese disaster “NOW”. I’m sure that 99.9% of Americans who learned about the disaster right away would have survived just fine if they heard about it the next morning in the paper. However, we can know about things right now, so there’s no particular reason to wait, especially no reason to wait and pay extra money for a physical newspaper to get you news you could read on your phone.
I still get my town newspaper, because they cover things that simply would not be covered without journalists dedicated to town issues. It’s a slim weekly paper, but hits the major points of town issues that do affect my life, and a few days delay in local news isn’t an issue, the point is to learn what is going on.
You’ve summed up not only the problem with the newspaper industry, but with basically every industry in the country.
I have a half-baked theory going on that the supposed “need” for a 24-hour news cycle and instant breaking news is detrimental to our collective ability to consider problems rationally–everything is immediately important right now, there’s no “this is important right now, and this is interesting today or tomorrow”. I wish there were still good newspapers available to me locally–I’m not especially impressed with the local paper here.
There really is no solution. Information printed on paper is, in fact, dying out, and I don’t think it’s entirely a bad thing. What replaces it will probably be better in some respects and not as good in other respects, just like every other trade-off in modern life.
But for those who want to have a newspaper, inserts and wraps and all the other advertising pay the bills. Unless you want to pay $4 for 12 sheets of pure news every day, kwitcherbitchin’. 
Roddy
I’m still old-fashioned enough that my first instinct when job or apartment hunting is to look in the classifieds. Then I say, “Oh, yeah,” and go turn on the computer.
It’s my impression that the lack of classified ads has hurt papers far more than display or insert ads tailing off. Is that wrong?
“…bad subconscious impression…”
shrug Well, I don’t have a bad subconscious impression of Safeway. They’re one of the three grocery stores I shop at.
No, it’s exactly right. Free ads in Craigslist killed off most of classified advertising in newspapers (and now Craig is a featured blogger on our website - makes me puke). We worked hard to keep our classified ads straightforward and clean and accurate. We pursued every complaint and took ads out when they didn’t meet our standards. Ads were actually correctly grouped and sorted, making it easy to find what you wanted (hence the name “classified”).
In return, everyone decided free is better, even though you can’t find what you want, and when you place an ad, within an hour it has fallen so far down the list that no-one ever sees it. Not to mention the sleaze and the scams and the general sense of being at risk just by going on the page.
Sorry, this is a touchy subject for me. You all got what you wanted. I hope you’re happy.
And I am telling you how I really feel!
Roddy
But newspapers didn’t die out when radio or TV appeared - because there’s a difference between a newsflash on the 24hr news channel or 15-min-news radio, and an in-depth report that took a journalist months to assemble by asking sources.
That’s also why TV here has two different kinds of news: evening news, for fast news, and Weltspiegel, Report, Monitor, for in-depth reporting where the journalist can say “I need 1 month more” and the editor says “sure, we’ll use what your colleague finished in your slot this week” because it’s not urgent, but still very important to get the background.
And that’s why newspapers are killing themselves by firing the good journalists in order to cut costs - if the newspaper doesn’t offer good reporting, then there is no reason not to use the web.
But that decision wasn’t made by the buying public, but by a few CEOs. Now they point to declining sales because of the low quality (caused by too many firings) and say “We must fire people to save the papers” and the cycle continues.
And in the online world, there is certainly a demand for edited, quality-researched news even if it means paying an appropriate fee vs. digging through mountains of news of dubious verity. Which is why online newspapers survive and can not only sell subscriptions, but also get advertisers.
True, the big masses of people are more dazzled by “Free” than the quality but that’s not new, quality has always been a consideration for fewer people than price. It’s still a not-neglible market.
What killed the newspaper is the natural human desire to obtain something free, or at a very low cost. Everyone readily goes to the internet for their news & information, and will search for that which is free.
Journalists need to be paid. It’s just a fact of life. Until news operations can figure out how to monetize the internet, the internet will continue to drain news operations dry.
Where I work all the reporters with great resources (the old adage “you’re only as good as your Rolodex” comes to mind) were let go because they could hire 3 young reporters for each vet’s salary. Now management is complaining that our reporters have no sources.
I am not saying the internet is a good thing or a bad thing, and I am certainly not claiming Gannett is a good company (oh hell no!), but the pressures on the industry are enormous and to even still exist in the business now shows at least some talent. I just hope local broadcasting continues long enough for me to retire.
Actually, you’ve detailed most of my gripes about Craigslist. Yeah, it’s free, but I can rarely find what I want without spending a lot of time on it.
I still take a daily paper, and I still enjoy it (Dallas Morning News). I’d even enjoy taking two papers, but the Fort Worth Star-Telegram doesn’t offer value for money. It’s pretty sad when the DALLAS paper has better coverage of Fort Worth issues than the FW paper does, for the most part.
I’ve seen the Dallas Morning News before at least a couple of times (albeit I haven’t been to Dallas, I have seen it other ways-- the ways I remember seeing it are through getting it from the Books-A-Million in Greenville one time, and then having my brother get me one when he came back from Vegas another time). Tell you the truth, the Dallas paper, in the couple of editions that I’ve seen of it in my life, has been very engaging to me, not to mention very, very well laid out and designed. Papers like the Morning News are a sterling example of why I prefer out-of-town, mostly big-city, papers (IOW, it’s not branded “Texas’ Leading Newspaper” for nothing).
The Chronicle of Houston (in the one time I’ve seen it in my life) is another great Lone Star paper.
Newspapers are obsolete, they just haven’t realised it yet.
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They’re slow: I can read about a major story (say, the Japan tsunami) online at 9pm, and get constant, immediate updates all through the night and the rest of the next day. Why would I spend $1.50 the next morning to read information that is already stale, and then get no updates until the next morning?
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They’re wasteful: How many trees are used printing newspapers? How many people just toss them in the trash (or on the street or wherever) when they’re done reading? How much fuel is used by delivery people driving their routes every day?
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They’re out of touch: Editors and writers of opinion pieces are generally older. People in their 20s can’t relate to them.
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They’re expensive: I can get everything I can get in a newspaper online, for free, if I know where to look.
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They’re inconvenient: If I want to take a break from reading a newspaper because something else came up, I need to fold it up and put it away. Then later I need to remember where I left it, and leaf through until I find my place. With the internet I just click on the tab I was using and it’s right where I left it. Plus when I’m done I just close the tab, instead of having to go over to the recycle bin, sigh because some other asshole filled it with crumpled newspapers and now there’s no space, and also I have to empty it every week. Also, if I’m talking to someone a week later and I mention an article I read, it probably still exists online, whereas the chances of either one of us having last week’s newspaper is slim.
I can’t think of a single advantage print newspapers have over getting news online. Other than “well I just like the feel of a newspaper in my hand while I drink my morning coffee.” And if that’s something you would say, then see #3.
I kind of got off track. These are the reasons that print media in general is failing, and why Gannett in particular has gone to shit.
I have to say that I treasure a few newspaper clippings that I’ve held onto over the years. Yeah, I imagine that I could print out an article from the intarwebs, but it’s not quite the same feeling.
I have a sense of risk going to a newspaper’s website. You could get a drive-by malware via the ads running, which were sold by a third-party ad network. Nobody vets those. You’d like to read that classified? Well, you’ll have to login for that. Would you also like to connect your account to Facebook? What about sharing this article on an aggregator?
The Dallas Morning News is terrible, as are all Belo properties.
Well sure, but that’s just emotional momentum. Before the internet, you read a story, and it resonated with you, and so to save it, you cut it out of the newspaper and put it somewhere. Eventually you had a collection, and so you developed an emotional connection with the album/drawer/corkboard/whatever. I’d bet that even now when you read a story online you want to hang on to, you look for a newspaper to cut it out of.
But young people don’t do that anymore. They just bookmark it, and share it on Facebook.
It costs a lot less to buy a newspaper than it does a computer. For one thing.
Over how long? I have no idea what a subscription costs, but lets say it works out to $1 a day, every day, for the newspaper. So $365 a year.
If we’re talking strictly something to read the news with, and absolutely nothing else, then I can get a netbook off of Best Buy for $190. My cell phone company offers an unlimited data add on, with no restrictions on tethering, for $10 a month, so that’s another $120. For a total of $310 in the first year, and $120 every year after.
Even if a newspaper works out to $0.50 per day, I come out ahead in less than 2 years by buying a computer and an internet connection.
And that’s assuming that I don’t already have them. In which case my added cost is zero.
Fake edit: Ooh, ooh, or! I can get an Amazon Kindle for $79, and then just use the web browser with my cell phone’s data plan, for a total cost of $199 in the first year.
Yeah, we get it, you love the Internet. Me too.
You are making a lot of assumptions:
You’re assuming someone has access to get something “off of” Best Buy.
You’re assuming someone has close to $200 to drop in one chunk.
You’re assuming someone knows how to use a netbook.
You’re assuming someone has access to local news for free via the Internet (not every newspaper is online, not every newspaper is free online).
You’re assuming that even if local news is available for free via the Internet, someone knows how to find it.
You’re assuming someone has a cellphone bill that offers a data plan.
First, the major story was the tsunami (March 12, 2011). Then, the major story was the nuclear meltdown (March 13, 2011). The tsunami story was not “stale”; the nuclear meltdown story was not an “update”.
So? Now they’ll just have a PDF of the newspaper like in the tsunami and nuclear meltdown example. Now it’ll be on an IPad. How many IPads will be trashed? How much electricity will be used?
:rolleyes:
:dubious:
Or just remember where you left off. And your example of an article probably still existing online. Probably?! Do I have to mention 1984, hackers, link rot? You think you don’t have last week’s newspaper; you do, in the library, in the archives, ect. This will be moot once the newspaper companies upload a PDF of their newspapers (with backup copies archived for obvious reasons).