Paper Tiger Turns Clueless

Imagine we’re in a time machine which took us to 2006, the last full year before the Great Recession started pummeling most hard-working people in this country. Our jobs seemed somewhat secure and our retirement plans within reach.

Few of us suspected in ’06 that industries and paychecks were about to slide to a place the United States hadn’t seen since the 1930s. In the newsroom where I worked, everyone was being asked by upper management about “reinventing” the newspaper, making it more viable for print readers and online viewers.

My recommendation focused on the way people lived, by having the paper embrace the electronic world through portable devices because that business format seemed to be gaining traction among potential readers, especially those under 40 (the parade began with cell phones and laptops, and continues now with Kindle and iPad).

By the time our “reinventing” input was sought, however, it already was too late for much of the newspaper industry (with the notable exception of The Wall Street Journal). We spent the remainder of the time before the bust began in late ’07 debating whether we should charge for online content or provide it for free.

With these events in the rear view mirror, it came as no surprise when the results of a recent poll of newspaper and broadcast news editors concluded American journalism is in decline, and nearly half of them believe their employers will go out of business if they do not find new sources of revenue.

“Among print editors, 18 percent said their papers were actively pursuing the idea of charging readers for access to their Web sites, while 58 percent said it was under consideration,’’ reporter Richard Perez-Pena writes for The New York Times. “Twenty-three percent said they believed that in three years, such subscription fees would be their primary source of online revenue, having overtaken advertising.”

The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism polled members of two industry groups, the American Society of News Editors and the Radio Television Digital News Association. Other poll findings:

•48 percent of the editors who participated said that without a significant new income stream, their organizations could not remain solvent for more than 10 years; 31 percent gave them five years or less.

•58 percent of the editors said journalism was headed in the wrong direction, especially in an era of shrinking newsrooms; 62 percent said the Internet had changed the profession’s fundamental values, with most citing a loosening of standards.


“When asked why the industry was in such trouble, nearly half the editors said that in good times, the demands for profit margins were excessive, while many others said their organizations were too slow to embrace and invest in the Internet,” Perez-Pena reports. “And 30 percent of the print editors said their papers should have begun charging Internet readers long ago.”

Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, captures the irony of the situation – professionals whose jobs depend on anticipating the “what next” of news were caught like deer-in-the-headlights when it came to evolving technology.

“Two years ago, we might have seen a higher number (of editors) saying this was beyond our control,” Rosenstiel says. “I think there’s more awareness of innovative approaches to online business and advertising that they didn’t take but other people did, like Google and Yahoo.”

The seeds of the damage sustained by the newspaper industry in recent years were planted in the mid-1990s, when the Internet began to take hold among American consumers who bought PCs and Macs. The Web’s business model continued to evolve while many newspaper executives turned away and believed, naively, that somehow everything would take care of itself.

It didn’t, and the end result: 5,200 jobs were lost in 2009, or 13,500 positions since 2007, according to the American Society of News Editors in its latest survey of newspaper newsrooms. Still, there is an upside to those disturbing numbers.

“It's a slowing of job loss since 2008, when nearly 6,000 journalists left the industry through buyouts and layoffs,’’
writes Eric Deggans, St. Petersburg Times TV/media critic, in The Feed blog. “According to ASNE, U.S. newsrooms have lost more than 25 percent of their workforce in nine years, declining to levels the industry hasn't seen since the mid-1970s.”

I was among the 6,000 shown the exit door. I had a great 30-year run in a variety of challenging positions, everything from a print reporter to an online editor. Every day was different, never really dull. I miss the people and the stories, both inside and outside the newsroom.

What I don’t miss are the shortsighted newspaper executives who contributed to the mess that became our industry. They lost sight of the “what next” of technology, a pretty basic concept for anyone who wants to stay in business today, and it cost all of us who care about quality journalism in all forms.

As for me, I practice what I preach at writenowworks.com.