By Elliott Brack, editor and publisher | Back a few years ago, I was optimistic about the future of newspapers. Since then, my faith in their future has continually declined. The impact of the Internet has been far worse than I had realized. What you are seeing with the Internet isn’t just affecting newspapers. How about banking? Insurance? Automotive sales? Retail …Walmart is fighting Amazon, etc. etc. etc.
Today many newspapers, particular metropolitan ones, have declined even more than I thought they would. What has disappeared in lineage from many big-city daily newspapers are multiple department store pages, classified advertising (especially real estate, autos for sale and job openings) and a good deal of national advertising.
However, recognize that not all newspapers are as affected as the metro dailies. Smaller community daily newspapers, such as those in Gainesville, Brunswick and LaGrange, continue to prosper.
And the weekly community newspapers are thriving, bustling, finding new income in the form of the advertising circulars, once the domain of the daily newspapers. Most are 100 percent local in news, too, and who can compete with that? Today many weeklies are thick with these supplements, a new revenue stream.
The total of newspaper pages in major dailies has seen a sharp decline in news content. Less advertising means fewer pages, and though the percent of news remains the same (traditional 60 percent ads to news), the number of stories has plummeted. Therefore, what news space remains is more valuable. Some previous features are no longer there.
This fall we are seeing another phenomenon. At one time, the busiest time of the week was between 10 p.m. to midnight, when many high school correspondents were phoning in the results of their football (or basketball) games. With most larger daily newspapers covering a wide area, that included many high schools. At these times, virtually everyone in the newsroom was taking down the rudimentary details of the many high school games, all rushing to meet deadline.
So what’s happened today? Today if you want, on Saturday morning, to read about the Friday football games, about the only way you can do so now is to go to the computer. The game results are not in the Saturday paper.
This gives the newspaper a double whammy. First, it doesn’t have to spend money for the newsprint to cover these games. And more importantly, it means that the overall newspaper deadline can be earlier, and for sure, late games won’t cause missing that press deadline and have its pressmen to work overtime, another savings.
And in some places, there’s not much about high school football in the Sunday paper, either. You are directed to the Internet for these stories. A pity. It’s like newspapers are chasing us away.
Another problem in newspapering today that old-timers must shudder about: some stories are not that…..in that they are advertiser-placed stories, which look like regular news stories, meaning that brings in new (much needed) revenue. The real dilemma here is that this causes more blur between news and advertising, which really becomes an ethical issue for the newspaper. Are they selling out? Boy! Would the old-time editorial writers hop on the newspaper’s ethical decision here!
A further decline. There is no longer a Newspaper Association of America, the trade group that was formed in 1887 to represent newspaper publisher interest. Yep, gone away. Actually, it’s changed its name to—-get this—-News Media Alliance!
While us old print-on-paper guys lament, we have to recognize that yes, we have new media, such as this GwinnettForum we produce. We just miss old-time newspapers!
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