Who saved the treees?
The Economist’s cover asks: Who killed the newspapers. The story is a good roundup of what newspapers are facing worldwide — that is, the challenges and the opportunities. And the leader ends hopefully on the latter:
The usefulness of the press goes much wider than investigating abuses or even spreading general news; it lies in holding governments to account—trying them in the court of public opinion. The internet has expanded this court. Anyone looking for information has never been better equipped. People no longer have to trust a handful of national papers or, worse, their local city paper. News-aggregation sites such as Google News draw together sources from around the world. The website of Britain’s Guardian now has nearly half as many readers in America as it does at home.In addition, a new force of “citizen†journalists and bloggers is itching to hold politicians to account. The web has opened the closed world of professional editors and reporters to anyone with a keyboard and an internet connection. Several companies have been chastened by amateur postings—of flames erupting from Dell’s laptops or of cable-TV repairmen asleep on the sofa. Each blogger is capable of bias and slander, but, taken as a group, bloggers offer the searcher after truth boundless material to chew over. Of course, the internet panders to closed minds; but so has much of the press.
For hard-news reporting—as opposed to comment—the results of net journalism have admittedly been limited. Most bloggers operate from their armchairs, not the frontline, and citizen journalists tend to stick to local matters. But it is still early days. New online models will spring up as papers retreat. One non-profit group, NewAssignment.Net, plans to combine the work of amateurs and professionals to produce investigative stories on the internet. Aptly, $10,000 of cash for the project has come from Craig Newmark, of Craigslist, a group of free classified-advertisement websites that has probably done more than anything to destroy newspapers’ income.
In future, argues Carnegie, some high-quality journalism will also be backed by non-profit organisations. Already, a few respected news organisations sustain themselves that way—including the Guardian, the Christian Science Monitor and National Public Radio. An elite group of serious newspapers available everywhere online, independent journalism backed by charities, thousands of fired-up bloggers and well-informed citizen journalists: there is every sign that Arthur Miller’s national conversation will be louder than ever.
Tags: newassignment, newspapers
August 25th, 2006 at 8:41 am
To me this is very depressing. Especially the bit about how people would rather read about ‘how they can get richer’ and ‘what they can do in the evening’ rather than read about international affairs or things that ostensibly don’t concern them. I think you are overly optimistic, living in the blogosphere bubble, if you think that this is good for newspapers or culture at large. Most people out there don’t read blogs, don’t know about ‘citizen media’ and get their news from the mainstream media. I already know it’s bad, but I can’t imagine what our culture will become if it gets worse. This isn’t a simple story about media moves…its a story about culture and the willing way we are ignoring the real world around us in exchange for pleasure and entertainment.
August 25th, 2006 at 9:22 am
Regardless of what began the terminal illness of the newspapers, I am convinced that the actual cause of death will be suicide-by-subsciption walls.
August 25th, 2006 at 11:42 am
This may make you even more discouraged:
The Uninformed Bloc
The blog links to the underlying poll as well.
August 25th, 2006 at 12:58 pm
[...] Both Greenslade and Jarvis agree with the report, which unsurprisingly comments on, as Jarvis mentions, "what newspapers are facing worldwide — that is, the challenges and the opportunities." Greenslade keeps up with his own summary: "Correctly, it points out that newspaper circulations have been falling in the developed world for decades and, again correctly, reports that the fall has grown steeper in recent years due to the popularity of the internet. It also notes that young people show little appetite for newsprint. Hardly ground-breaking stuff, but it's cogently argued." [...]
August 25th, 2006 at 2:27 pm
I suggest The Economist give its reporters pole dancing lessons to entice online readership. Quick. Of all the seemingly zillions of things people link me to and blog about, I can’t recall one single Economist piece in the online mix. I take that back; my folks, who live entirely off the grid, did send me something from The Economist about six months ago. It mentioned that the Internet was catching on with folks around the world. I tried not to snort too loudly, for my folks’ sake.
August 25th, 2006 at 5:35 pm
Who backs “non-profit” NPR? Well, for one, the taxpayers.
There is the occasional blogger who, working for free, gets a scoop or lives a scoop. But, mostly, really good journalism is the work of people who’ve been slaving away to learn how to do it…who’ve gotten their ass kicked, and usually for very low wages, by some reporter pro or editor pro.
Craig Newmark, who’s a nice man I once sat with at an alternative weekly association lunch, is putting $10,000 into this? Wow. So, “journalists” in the future will have to work at ad agencies and blog from 6am to 7am before work. Yeah, that’s where I want my news to come from.
And for the record, I’m a newspaper columnist (advice columnist — but I do tremendous research reading studies and more for my column), and I’m a funded blogger (via Pajamas media). But what I do on my blog is mainly link to and comment on stories and occasionally write about my scoops (how I make telemarketers accountable is both on my blog and in article form in the Hustler that will be out on newsstands September 15). I don’t have time, for the ad revenue I pull in, to spend more than a few hours on it a day. Okay, three hours, I’m a little wacko. But, still. That’s time I’d put toward some other hobby. It’s not a second job — or serious journalism by any means.
P.S. And for the record, my story in Hustler was turned down by LA Times Magazine which had a crack at it first. Not really something there readers would be interested in, a story of how a regular girl gets revenge on telemarketers…and even gets them to pay her for taking her time and hijacking her phone line. And plenty of features editors keep me out of their papers as “not puritanical enough” — so let’s just say I see plenty wrong with old-school media. I just don’t think sending in an army of unpaid or extremely underpaid bloggers is the answer.
August 25th, 2006 at 6:13 pm
It’s 6 p.m. Friday after a long week of threatened tornadoes and hail the size of grapefruit. I am surprised that of all of you, I, an editor at a medium-sized paper with visions of cost cuts dancing in my head, is the upbeat one. I do have to say that when you work in a lively newsroom such as ours, the future doesn’t seem as bleak. We are looking at the great fun and opportunity we are going to have. We spent all week talking about how to reorganize so we can truly be open to the changes around us. I know many other editors of newspapers and newspaper websites who embrace my optimism and are having fun blogging and creating the community conversations our readers/users deserve. I read the Economist story online. I used to read that mag in print. But I did read it and think about it and talk to colleagues about it. As long as this business model holds, the journalism will thrive. We will be prepared for the transition to a new business model, and the few of us left will make sure a legacy of truth telling survives. I also think we all need to lighten up here. Media has almost always been a channel that pulls us in with the fun stuff so we stay for the important stuff. Newspaper editors rarely say this outloud but we all know that since Common Sense, this is how we have built momentum.
August 25th, 2006 at 9:05 pm
From the article Mr. Feinman linked above:
Newspapers in decline because they’ve lost ads to Craig’s List, TV news replaced by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, blogs taking the place of news magazines; add it all up and you have an electorate even more poorly-informed than the current one.
Hooray for progress?
August 25th, 2006 at 11:40 pm
I think Brooklyn Kitchen needs to learn a little history. Big Media didn’t exist, once upon a time– prior to 1900, what news people got was from their rinky-dink (by post-1900 standards) local paper. Yet, in the absence of a Big Media that didn’t exist yet, folks knew what was going on in the world, more or less, and had opinions about how things ought to be. Maybe, just maybe, folks don’t need Big Media, the mouthpiece of the elites, to tell them what to think. I can think very well for myself, thankyouverymuch, and so can most other people. It would also help if Big Education went away, too, but Rome wasn’t built in a day.
August 25th, 2006 at 11:59 pm
Who saved the trees? I did…I stopped reading newspapers when I began working as a cabinetmaker eight years ago and started leaving for work at 5 a.m. But what truly contributed to me not even stopping at the “in”convenience store near work to buy one was the bias that is evident in reporting more and more every year. New reporting has reached the nadir acheived by William Randoph Hurst in the late nineteenth century when he managed to convince America that we must go to war with Spain.
The recent staged and “fauxtography news reporting stemming from the recent conflict in Lebenon (sp? too tired to look it up) is a perfect case in point. Reuters, AP, the BBC and AFP reported only what Hizb’Allah wanted them to publish/print. Instead of digging for answers and seeking the truth, the wire services published, and republshed pictures of the same buildings as being destroyed on different days, the angles merely being different. Another example was showing the same elderly woman in front of two different buildngs and being captioned as standing in front of her destroyed “home”. Where is the credibility? In the dustbin…
This in my opinion is what has contrubuted to the decline in newspaper/news magazine readership…
August 26th, 2006 at 2:04 am
Would someone offer some evidence that people in the past knew more about foreign affairs than they do now?
August 26th, 2006 at 4:58 am
Hi Jeff! Just a couple of days back, my colleagues and I were discussing this topic… Your post is very impressive… In my latest post, there is a reference to you…
August 26th, 2006 at 5:09 am
[...] The Economist starneste numeroase reactii la articolul de fond din aceasta saptamana [eu sunt o mare cititoare a BuzzMachine si a innovationsinnewspapers.com - care a acordat mai mult spatiu acestei probleme] [...]
August 26th, 2006 at 6:27 am
I believe that ignorance of politics and big issues is a consequence of the political bias of mainstream media. This bias has grown progressively worse since the 70s, to the point that newspapers like the New York Times have become essentially worthless as sources of reliable information.
As the mainstream declines and online thrives, the public will become better informed.
August 26th, 2006 at 7:34 am
Hale Adams thinks I need a little history to put Big Media in context. I don’t. I am not saying that Big Media is the only way in which people communicate, but that Big Media has consistently dumbed down the culture and that the decay of newspapers is just another nail in a more literate culture.
Pre-1900 people actually took the time to read, they listened to long lectures, they were culture centered around typography and the written word. Now, we live in the culture of screens, of video, of quick cuts and soundbites and we don’t have the patience for the word that the people of the 19th century did.
Now that media is moving online most people are excited because this can happen outside what they consider the mainstream, but two things are going to happen now. One, the major media players will get smart and reinvest online, the most powerful media players will be the same ones we see today. Two, the Internet will dumb down. It will incorporate video, deprecate the written word, and slowly but surely you’ll see the most popular media become the same stuff we now see on TV…crap journalism and entertianment programing.
Currently, newspapers aren’t all they used to be, but their symbols of a more literate past. And it’s sad to see them go.
August 26th, 2006 at 9:01 am
[...] Meanwhile Jeff Jarvis excerpts from this companion piece in a post titled “Who Saved the Treees?” — and notes that it ends hopefully. This is about change, after all. And change is only a threat if you aren’t willing to change with it. [...]
August 27th, 2006 at 2:36 am
In bold moves aimed at increasing rapport with their readers, newspapers around this great land of ours are announcing, in serial fashion, that they are outsourcing their circulation bidness, so’s nobody from the newspaper has to deal with the old biddy wanting to know why her paperboy keeps throwing the rag in the neighbor’s cage for his pit bulls. Yes, from Chicago to Orlando to Sacramento to lalaland, editors’ memos briskly inform readers of the move, designed to bring the institution and its clients inot an even warmer embrace. So now, instead of talking to some part-time a-hole or his or her voice mail, the constant weader gets to talk to some bird in Kuala Lumpur who has a dodgy British accent, and, one fears, probably at some point will tell you to bugger off, mate…..
August 28th, 2006 at 7:19 pm
[...] SAVING THE TREES– “The Economist’s cover asks: Who killed the newspapers. The story is a good roundup of what newspapers are facing worldwide — that is, the challenges and the opportunities” …. (buzzmachine) [...]
September 1st, 2006 at 6:02 am
[...] Secondo l’Economist (vecchio) l’ultimo giornale potrebbe chiudere i battenti nel 2043 per mancanza di lettori. Potrebbero salvarsi solo la free press tipo Metro e le pubblicazioni come l’Economist setsso, rivolte ad un’elite globale ( insomma FT, WSJ, NYT e poco altro). A scanso di equivoci, l’inchiesta (”The vanishing newspaper“) chiarisce che, per sopravvivere, giornali mainstream come Repubblica o la Stampa per ogni lettore ‘cartaceo’ perso dovranno recuperarne decine online (10, 20 o 100 a seconda del ciclo della pubblicità ), malgrado il costo nettamente inferiore del Web. In tempi di bolla 2.0 mi sembra l’osservazione più giornalistica. Jeff Jervis ragiona su testate eccellenti, come Guardian o il Christian Science Monitor, oggi in forte crescita nell’online: nei prossimi 3-5 anni potranno sfruttare il web per acquisire o consolidare nel mondo uno status ‘glocale’ che oggi non hanno ancora. Forse non solo loro ma, aggiungerei, anche qualche campione del citizen journalism, sul tipo del coreano OhMyNews (che, guarda caso, ha appena aperto anche in Giappone). I più, per non essere cannibalizzati, potrebbero dover ripiegare sulle nicchie e sull’informazione locale (neppure un cattivo business), mooolto prima del mitico 2043. Luca De Biase osserva che “ll giornale non è la sua carta”. Giusto, e infatti da decenni esistono i telegiornali e prima ancora di loro i cinegiornali. Presumibilmente, anche “la carta” nel 2043 non sarà più la carta che conosciamo. Il giornale (cartaceo, tv o online) si identifica piuttosto nel rapporto fiduciario con il lettore, in un mondo finora parimetrato da saperi molto parzialmente condivisi e da comunicazioni fortemente asimmetriche. Nel 2043 sarà ancora così ? Ne dubito. Staremo ancora tutti discutendo di un articolo come questo ? Spero di no. E poi perchè proprio il 2043, con quel tocco da SF Anni Settanta ? [...]
September 5th, 2006 at 5:30 pm
Back on Aug,15, Constance Reader noted on JJ’s site that newspapers seem to be commiting sidewise by subscription walls.
Yeah, and it’s worse than that — I speak of the telephone walls that prevent one from successfully calling up a newspaper and giving them an tip on a good story.
I had, in April, what I giddily considered an important story about dodgy spawning and selling of MySpace by parties that have yet to be named by the natonal media — Andrew and Tiffany Wiederhorn, Portland Ore, and theircohorts Clarence and Joan Coleman, San Leandro, Cal. An L.A. blogger named Trent Lapinksi and me reported in April that the alleged founders of MySpace, Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe, were mere cabin boys put up by the disgraced bizness baddies, the Wiederhorns and the Colemans, who peddled MySpace to Rupert Murdoch of Newscorp in a firesaleclusterfuck reminiscent of the closing of a big con with Newman and Redford bustling about in the wings.
Over five months I have telephoned or otherwise contacted newspapers, mags, blogs, tv stations, in Oregon, California, Maine, Michigan,Massachusetts, Washington state., ashington, D.C., outfits in towns you may not have heard of, from Mississippit to Virgian to the effing Guardian in Old Blighty, blogs including Wonkette, Gawker, E & P, the Poynter people, alleging I had a reasonable story that could be deemd “local” by any area with chldren. There were and are reasons for concerns… the spam-scam-sham history of MySpace warrants concernt, particularly since the current cabinboyleadersofMySpace, Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe, are pliant hirelings of the Colemans and Wiederhorns, thought they unloaded MySpace in a flurry of insider trading and other probaby illegal practices.
Am I whining about a nonstory, are there reason swhy, five months after the Internet had info on the secret owners of MySpace,it has not reached the deadtree press? Yeah, probably many millions of reasons, given the the millions and millions that Murdoch has invested in MySpace, the billions more out there for the scooping. Would a little bad pubs hurt matters for Murdoch? Possibly,but a larger question in my mind is this: Why hasn’t any organ of our free and inquisitive mainstrreamedmia twigged to activity on the Web about what I am taliking about … on the WEB. Gooigle my name and see if I know what I am talking about, because at this point I am beginning to have reservations. alhallowellmacleese
I always gain their confidence by saying I was a retired newspaperman and possibly not a crank; i seldom got to talk to anyone, and when I did I got a nod and a brusj./ I called the Maine newspapers in Brunswick, Lewiston, Bangor, Augusta and Portland, and do not know what they made of my calls. I even called three alternatige newspapers, which, one would think, would be tickled, but theywere not or, if they were, perhaps they are busilyworking on mytip. I called newspapers and tv stations in California, Oregon and Washington state, since the prinicpals int he secret owners of MySpace (ere the Murdorchfiresaleclusterfuck) were int he areas of the princpal owners of MySPace, the disgraced Californians, Clarence B. (Uncle Bud) Coleman and his wife Joan, San Leandro.,the mysterious East Bay, and Andrew Alan Wiederhorn and his wife Tiffany, Portland Ore., all controllers of Fog Cutter Capital Corp. in Portland Ore., a company that., under a different name, was involved int he biggest pension fund scandal ripoff in American history, and is infamous up and down the West Coast as a a dodgy subprime lender or, if you will,a predatory banker.
September 5th, 2006 at 9:09 pm
Bermuda’s newspapers (all three of them) are facing similar pressures. As a result, all are considering charging for access to their online editions, despite having other opportunities for diversification not available to newspapers in the US. I’ve written an in-depth analysis here.