Let’s Go To The Source

Where do you get your news information … from family, friends, coworkers, newspapers, radio, TV or the Internet? Does it matter? The source really counts and, increasingly, it’s not newspapers.

The number of Americans who say newspapers are an important source of information continues to decline, according to a survey by the The Center for the Digital Future at the USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism.

Some 56 percent of Internet users surveyed agreed with the statement that newspapers were an important or very important source of information, while 68 percent said television was, and 78 percent said the Internet was, according to Mathew Ingram, blogging for gigaom.com.

The findings are part of the Annenberg School’s ongoing Digital Future Project, which has been surveying Americans on their views and behavior related to the Internet for 10 years.

Interestingly, the Annenberg survey also found a growing number of online users do not believe information they find electronically is reliable. A majority of users said less than half of the information they get from the Internet is reliable.

Americans increasingly see the Internet as an important source of information, despite the fact they view much of that information as unreliable, according to Ingram.


Depending on how you feel about Internet users in general, it’s either an example of contradictory behavior, or a sign of healthy skepticism about online media, Ingram writes.

The survey’s findings are perplexing because a large amount of Internet news content can be traced to an original source which, typically, is a newspaper. Still, it’s like the old chicken-or-egg saying – which came first?

Often news breaks online before it appears in print and the electronic version, because of print deadlines, remains fresher with frequent updates. It's now versus yesterday.

One of the things newspaper editors and reporters always pride themselves on is serving as a reliable and credible source of vital information for the public interest in a highly competitive marketplace. This blog’s co-author knows this from 30 years in newspaper newsrooms.

Sometimes it’s sensational news, like corruption at City Hall; sometimes, it’s merely about the fact property taxes are rising yet again. But the news, in dead tree format, is usually about things that matter to you, from the immigration battle in Arizona to parking meter charges in your downtown.

Regardless of whether you agree with a newspaper’s editorial policy, you can be certain any paper worth reading always goes the distance to separate itself from the competition by pursuing stories that really matter to readers. It’s the primary mission.

A secondary mission, especially for most community papers, is to serve as “the paper of record” in documenting key events (fires, accidents, elections) and individuals (profiles, obits, achievements) for historical purposes.

With growing online access to newspaper archives, this witness-to-history service becomes even more important. If it appeared first in newsprint after 1990, chances are it was archived electronically by the paper.

It’s not that newspapers are no longer relevant, but they are stuck in a 20th-century delivery format – print on paper. With rapid advances in technology, especially electronic devices such as the iPad, a faster and more portable format is in high demand by our hurry-up society.

Importance and credibility work in tandem in delivering information, regardless of the format. One only needs to look at the high traffic generated by the websites belonging to The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal to understand the relationship.

Part of the reason viewers flock to NYT and WSJ online is directly connected to the print papers’ branded reputation (political views aside) for being the Source of reliable information. That belief follows to a lesser extent as you move from big-city metros to small-town community papers.

Brick-and-mortar operations for print still play a role in our fast-paced world as the foundation for what we see online. WMB and other blogs rely on information from websites whose quality can vary greatly, depending on the source. Attribution plays a big role at WMB; we make liberal use of links.

JohnDoe.com is not going to carry the same weight as cnn.com, nor is a content mill piece by a “citizen journalist” versus a story written by a Times staffer. Information gathering still requires a consumer-beware attitude, which probably explains some of contradictory findings in the Annenberg survey.

While there are infinitely more choices today for information junkies than before the Internet and cable TV, the fact is we all place value on the source of what we hear and see.

Maybe Brian Williams' take on unemployment figures means more to you than Wolf Blitzer's version of that story? Did they do some direct reporting, or did their researchers do the grunt work? Did they offer attribution for the information? The source always matters.

If newspaper owners and executives are smart street-wise folks, they will find ways to brand their print and online operations as compatible and profitable sources that target key sectors of public interest.

You can’t put the information genie back into the bottle in the Internet Age, but you can make it do your bidding with quality material pushed via varied formats that reach consumers where they live.

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

Gov't Shouldn't Fix Newspapers

The U.S. government seems to be nearly everywhere these days – from health care reforms and tax gimmicks to automaker and bank bailouts. One area that should be off-limits is the newspaper industry.

Simply put, government intervention to prop up newspapers should not be a preferred option under any scenario. Anyone who has studied U.S. history knows the Founding Fathers wanted government and newspapers to operate independently of each other, with the latter in a watchdog role.

So that’s what so disturbing about the U.S. Federal Trade Commission looking for ways to “support the reinvention of journalism,” according a report by The New York Times.

Possible measures to help the troubled U.S. news business include public subsidies, charity and stronger copyright protection. The first two measures should be dropped; the third one merits some consideration.

Nobody can deny that Internet alternatives and the Great Recession have taken a huge bite out of advertising and readership for traditional print newspapers which, for the most part, continue to struggle as they seek viable business models for online publishing.

From 2007 to 2009, newspaper industry revenue fell 30 percent in the United States, though much less internationally. In 2008, advertising contributed 87 percent of newspapers’ revenues in the United States, compared with 53 percent in Germany, 50 percent in Britain and 35 percent in Japan, according to the Times.

Not surprisingly, some 15,000 U.S. journalists were either laid off or bought out by employers as the recession’s grip tightened on American consumers since late 2007. Almost one in five journalists working for American newspapers in 2001 is no longer there, according to a 2009 report by the Pew Research Center, an independent, nonpartisan public opinion research organization that studies attitudes toward politics, the press and public policy issues.

"Newspapers do not expect a whole lot of help from the government," John Sturm, CEO of the Newspaper Association of America, tells Bloomberg Businessweek. "We've never sought or asked for anything like a bailout."

In response to severe financial decline, many papers, especially the bigger metros, shrank the number of pages and sections, increased cover prices, and scaled back reporting.

Pick up your local paper today and it’s sure to be smaller, with less content for your interests than an edition from early 2007. Publishers were forced to dump many things over the side in order to survive. In some cases, what’s left is a mere shell.

Most publishers were content to sit back and let things unfold before the bust, with the notable exception of Gannett Co., America’s largest newspaper publisher, including USA Today.

While the average operating profit in 2009 for most papers was 12 percent, publicly-traded Gannett in the pre-bust days pressed for upper teens, depending on the paper’s market and demographics. Sadly, many of these “boom” profits came at the expense of employees and quality. (Disclosure: I once worked for a Gannett newspaper).

The fact is fewer than half of all American adults now regularly read a daily newspaper. Recession, lifestyle and generational issues all factor into the swift decline of print media. Plus, newspaper executives have a well-earned reputation for making poor or questionable management decisions.

Why would government intervention make a difference?

The one exception for government oversight might be in copyright protection, especially with the Internet changing the rules of the game. Newspapers, the Associated Press, and Google have locked horns over establishing a balance between aggregation of credited content and outright lifting of material.

As Times reporter Eric Pfanner points out: “So far, newspapers have moved only halfheartedly to defend their copyrights online under existing legislation, because they have been held in thrall to the idea that giving away their content would make new revenue appear. Fortunately, this is now being reconsidered.’’

Public subsidies and charity aren’t solutions to what ails the newspaper industry. It’s up to newspaper executives to get beyond the “Chicken Little” stage and embrace changes in all forms which serve older readers while attracting younger ones. They need recognize there’s lots of brain power in the newsrooms, not just in the offices.

News Corp. Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch in December warned against the "heavy hand" of federal intervention, saying newspapers could be harmed by over-regulation or efforts to subsidize the industry, reports Bloomberg Businessweek writer Olga Kharif. WMB agrees with Murdoch, whose Dow Jones & Company, a division of News Corp., publishes The Wall Street Journal.

If the U.S. government crosses the line between it and the Fourth Estate, through financial incentives to bail out a shaken industry, there’s no going back. An independent press, free to criticize, question and report, will be seriously hampered. Whose interests will be served? Not taxpayers, that much is certain.

Imagine if the U.S. government controlled reporting on the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Would the rest of the country fully grasp the scope of the crisis and its impact if it were not for the unfettered media, in all forms? Would we really know how helpless and clueless our big government is to manage affairs right here at home?

Newspapers will survive because most journalists are resilient, determined to get the full story and working to earn the public’s trust – despite stupid decisions by owners and executives, shifting public interest, and competing alternatives.

As someone once said, “The pen is mightier than the sword.” In many ways, that still holds true. Let’s not allow the ink to dry up with yet another “government solution” to a problem that can take care of itself, warts and all.

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