It's both an exciting and unsettling time to be a newspaper journalist because of such rapid technological changes. Newspapers have always been a children of technology, but change has never been so rapid and accelerating.
I don't agree with the shortsighted and myopic naysayers that claim newspapers are dying. They are changing in many ways, and will continue to do so. You simply can't turn around these days without seeing news items about it. Today for instance, the New York Times is in the news for early buyouts of 30 top editorial people...a cost cutting move. And while metropolitan newspapers face many challengers, they are only a small minority of America's newspapers.
Did you know that Oklahoma alone has almost 200 newspapers, and many of them are doing very well? Most of them are weeklies--serving local communities, but that's another story, which I wrote about in Oklahoma Today and the International Society of Weekly Newspapers Editor's newsletter last year. That's another story.
What follows is a version of part of my monthly column in the Oklahoma Press Association Publisher this month--some random pixels of digital thoughts and information for the New Year.
Several
recent events about media along with more explosions of information put
newspapers and journalism on the front page.
As much as I
like to sit down with a print newspaper, and spend my time thumbing through it,
spending time on what I want, I’m increasingly dependent on digital technology,
even though scrolling through a web site is not really fun nor attention
grabbing. I may spend more time online, but I spend less time on site.
Newspapers have always been children of technology
My column is now a product of digital. Without
OPA's digital service that all papers send copies to, and the ability to reproduce pages, email, and providing links, I couldn't scan copies every month to write my critique. Still it’s interesting to me that one of the most read sites
on the Internet is the Newseum’s daily front pages…people still want to see
print. http://www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages/flash/
Then 60
Minutes recently did a piece on Newhouse newspapers depriving New Orleans of a daily
newspaper. Rejecting a local bid to buy, the company gutted the paper, turned
it to three days a week and said digital was the savior—in a city with more
than 30 percent not online. I’d call it death by greed, demanding obscene profit margins, but they're doing it all wrong. They will continue to make less money.
Evidence of
that can be seen in two places—Orange County, California, and Omaha. Warren
Buffett bought his home town World Herald and is keeping it as a daily, because he cares
about the community, and you can bet he’s still making money, but not with the huge corporate profits others demand.
Then the
Orange County Register was bought, and the new owners are pouring money into
the paper. Apparently the owners know that content sells, and cutting kills
They’ve found digital advertising stagnant and print advertising rising.
Against this
news, I learned that two universities are cutting or changing traditional
“journalism” programs. Emory and the real big dog, Indiana University.
What does the future hold? We have no idea, but yes, it is exciting, and unsettling at the same time.I do know that Dave Rhea, managing editor for digital media at the Journal Record, told my blogging class last year that he considered this a "Golden Age of Journalism." We live and work in interesting times.
