Man, what a difference. From commercial radio I get a few carefully selected facts leavened with hours of pomposity and bombast. From NPR I get a wide and eclectic range of opinions and facts, sometimes on topics I didn’t even know I cared about.

If capitalism is supposed to deliver the news in print, how come it doesn’t work on radio?

And how do they retain First-Amendment independence from government interference when they’re being directly funded by the government?

People don’t want this to happen. But how to prevent it? How to preserve the falls? Nobody can agree. But none of them will not entertain the thought of letting it happen as it would without intervention.

Time passes, conditions change. What is becomes what was. What had once been a natural situation becomes artificial as good-intentioned people erect constructs designed to maintain the ‘natural’. For some will not accept change.

Newspaper managements have failed their duty to accurately characterize their business to their shareholders. Instead they have taken the quick-and-dirty route of milking profits by cheapening the product, and now they’re faced with the consequences.

The public investors aren’t the sole cause of the problem. Grocery chains, companies with normal profits that are a small fraction of what’s currently “expected” from newspapers, are publicly traded. But newspaper managements have been unwilling to level with their investors and say, “This far but no farther. Any more cuts will kill the franchise.”

Investors can understand that when FedEx says “absolutely, positively, get there overnight,” that may mean, on occasion, paying somebody overtime to drive a $35 package 400 miles, because connections got missed. Sure you lose money, but you maintain the standard. (Just don’t let it happen too often!) Those same investors should be able to understand that it takes X reporters to cover a market of Y size. But management has to make the case! It’s always easier to make another cut (or just rely on retirements), and ignore the consequences for another quarter. But now that merry-go-round is coming to a stop. Will any management finally step up? And, given the dire state of the business, would such a management have any credibility?

Profit. Not just revenue. Profit.

It’s just forecast to make less and less over time.

Laurence and John - great thoughts and good points.

Sorry if I’m misunderstood Jeff. From the way I read it, it sounded like a dismissal of the idea…. “yeah it’s ok for Philly… but otherwise… this is a bad idea - lets move on”.

However… your post did spur this great conversation Isn’t getting tax breaks is part of being a non-profit?

What I meant was that papers can be run much more effectively, and that I doubt Jeff would argue with that. So much for the journalist using his writing skill to make a point.

That point is that the cries about the death of newspapers ignore the fact that a lot of their trouble stems from the balance sheet. Yes, people complain about the Judy Millers, etc., and blogs and other media are forcing papers to take a hard look at what they consider news and how they deliver it. But those problems become too much to bear at, say, Knight Ridder, when they affect quarterly profit margins. Left to their own devices, with the kind of staffing their revenues actually would support, papers would do a much better job of providing solid news coverage. Skeletal staffs continually cut to please Wall Street deliver the kind of superficial, slap-dash news that leads to further circulation and advertising losses, which lead to further cuts. You’ve gotta spend it to make it, as they say.

To counter what Joe I. says above, newspapers are not losing money, they’re simply making less of a profit than in the past. I think that at least for the forseeable future, they could make a go of it by letting revenues cover expenses. It’s the expectation that those revenues must climb every quarter that is the problem. Ask any Fortune 500 CEO if he would be happy with the profit margin of almost any newspaper, and I guarantee he’d say yes.

That said, papers do need to be more innovative in the way they deliver news to be more responsive to what the public wants and how they want it. But I’ve said it here before and will again, I would not trade a large-market daily for all of the bloggers in the world. I’m glad they’re there to augment and comment on what I get there, but they cannot yet replace it.

The idea that newspapers have to be around forever is on its face an absolutly intellectually bankrupt position to take. I say fail and something else will fill the need if there is one.

My brother open a coffee shop a block from another indie here in Seattle and guess what, the store closing signs went up on the other one. They were there first but I guess they weren’t needed when my brother opened his….Same goes for newspapers, the ones people LIKE will stay the others go, regardless.

So instead of whining their asses off why don’t the people that want the status quo and people like minded get together and buy the papers themselves (my theory is there are just a few people who care)….Oh I forgot they just want to moan about it and do nothing, and then tell others what to do with it….Well guess what those that do want to do something are going to own things and their ideas will be the ones that prevail.

To those who think government should control them well that just gives a huge incentive for those with power to control government and in turn limit speech.

THE MORE POWER GOVERNMENT HAS THE MORE THE POWERFUL WANT TO GOVERN…..A global fact…Look everywhere. Scary thought. And usually they say the are for the little guy….

I won’t bore others with the details here (it’s a lot of “inside baseball” about marketing dollars and the trends of client spending over the last two decades) but yes I would argue. There are a lot of things that would make the “news business” more effective and it has nothing to do with becoming “a&e” sheets instead of news sources.

I agree they have probably cut all the fat (and even some muscle) out of their budgets. But parsimony is not effectiveness. And you’re right about Wall Street versus privately held companies.

As for the marketplace mattering, of course it does. But would the world be a better place if the marketplace was allowed to continue transforming newspapers into a&e sheets rather than news sources? Yes, you’ll argue that other media forms will fill the gap, and I’ll argue that nothing has surfaced thus far that adequately replaces all that newspapers can offer, but I doubt you’d argue that newspapers can be run more effectively than they are now, and I’d say their Wall Street masters are a big part of the problem.

But I see something else is missing. Before newspapers start “trying things” they should research the business model to see what’s wrong with the news “business.”

Where are the client interviews? Where is the observation of the “long tail?” Where’s the solid data on customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction? Why aren’t these concerned journos listening to the voices of their customers telling their stories?

I say quit asking “experts,” quit navel gazing, quit thinking you understand what been proven through your failure that you don’t understand, and do what Sam Walton advised retailers to do whenever they are confused.

Sam Walton said whenever you are confused go to the store because that’s where the customers are. And the customers have all the answers and all the money.

In fact, counting upon your point of view, it does just the opposite of all these things.

Sorry Jeff. I don’t pretend I have an answer - but being open to this as an idea sounds like a good thing to me. Dave Winer used to talk about something called “stop energy”. This post has it.

This isn’t the time to be shooting down ideas. It is - however - about time people start trying new things - and the time is rapidly passing by. And if some newspapers go non-profit - maybe it will be a good thing to see how it works/doesn’t work.

There are no silver bullets. One size does NOT fit all.

And give tenure to reporters and columnists (I realize the latter basically already has it).

Completely freed from the profit motive and thus accountability to their audience, newspapers should complete their natural transformation into academic journals. And have just as many readers.