Is it Too Late for Traditional Newspapers?

Author: Matt

25 Feb

Earlier this week, I was once again reminded of the reality facing our “traditional media” landscape as 33 of the top daily newspapers sought out bankruptcy protection.

Among those in the “who’s who” list of papers included The Philadelphia Enquirer, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, and Minneapolis Star Tribune. Honestly, I’m not one bit surprised by this news nor should anyone in the media or PR industry be shocked at these recent events.

Late last year the New York Times published a story entitled, “Newspaper Circulation Continues to Decline Rapidly.” The only positive (neutral) news coming out of last year’s study was the following excerpt:

“The exceptions among the nation’s biggest newspapers were USA Today and The Wall Street Journal, two national papers and the two largest in circulation, which were virtually unchanged, at 2.3 million for USA Today and 2 million for The Journal on weekdays. Neither paper publishes on Sundays. Among more than 100 papers with weekday circulation above 100,000, none had more than a fractional increase.”

Do you think it’s a coincidence that USA Today and The Wall Street Journal are also two of the earliest adopters of a strong online presence? In fact, I remember the exact day (October 17, 2005) when The Wall Street Journal decided to shrink its print edition pushing readers to their website for the most up-to-date news and in-depth stories. I also remember people complaining that the WSJ was moving towards a tabloid format and it was a risky move.

The reality is without an online presence (or focus), these daily newspapers don’t stand a shot. In fact, unless these surviving daily newspapers can dive into the local grassroots journalism to differentiate thier papers…they too will be one of the many newspaper casualties.

What are your thoughts about the future of newspapers? Will we be down to a handful by 2012? Anxiously awaiting your thoughts & perspective!

Filed under: Media Relations

7 Responses for "Is it Too Late for Traditional Newspapers?"

amymengel February 26th, 2009 at 5:49 am 1
An online presence is key, but even some newspapers who have a strong one aren’t surviving. The San Francisco Chronicle runs sfgate.com and despite that being an extremely popular site (something like 80 mil views/month), it looks like Hearst is at the end of it’s rope in trying to keep the Chronicle going.

Newspapers are still asset-intensive businesses – presses, reporters, photographers, ad salesmen, layout designers, delivery. Comprehensive online content can definitely help, but I think we’re going to continue to see newspapers struggle or fold until they can change their business models and adapt their overhead and expenses to reflect declining print subscriptions and print ad revenues.

@amymengel
Chuck Hemann February 27th, 2009 at 6:03 am 2
Matt – this is a great post, and very top of mind for the industry. As I said to you earlier, I think this is a natural part of any recessionary environment. Businesses come and businesses go. It’s part of the evolution of our society. The newspaper biz, unfortunately, is not immune. From everything I’ve heard from peers in the Denver area, the business writing staff for the RM News was FAR superior to the Post’s. That said, we all know that strong writing doesn’t always equal survival in this dog eat dog world. In addition, my sense is that Denver wasn’t nearly big enough to be a two paper town.

Anyway, just my random thoughts.

@chuckhemann
Krista Holloway February 27th, 2009 at 7:10 am 3
What a great and timely post. Ovbviously, a strong online presence is a must for “traditional” media to keep attracting advertisers and readers. With that said, I’m not sure that is the only thing that can keep print media alive. Taking it a step further, there have been a number of publishers that have stopped magazines, as well–Domino, Cottage Living, O at Home. Is it just a dying medium? Are we consuming media differently?

I hear about how many people get their news from online and social media sources.

So, where am I going? At the very least, the traditional print media industry needs to embrace online. I think these publications are still trying to figure out how to make the transition.

@kholloway
Matt February 27th, 2009 at 7:52 pm 4
@Amy – I agree that newspapers are expensive assets as you look at the number of components that go into each. Unfortunately, I don’t think there is a profitable print model as the effectiveness of advertising combine with declining budgets of advertisers doesn’t speak well for their future. SFGate had a huge circulation, but were they really very innovative compared to some of the leaders like WSJ & NYT? Great comments!

@Chuck – Per my comments to Amy, the recession has certainly impacted the downfall of these papers. The thing we have to remember is that newspapers were folding well before any recession. My personal take is that local papers should consolidate and then focus on grassrooots journalism (both online with video & print). Let USA Today & online outlets take care of the national components. Thanks for your tweets & post!

@Krista – You’re very right that print media in general are being effected but I’m still not a believer that “traditional media” will go away (i.e., online takes over completely). Newspapers and magazines alike can learn lessons from the WSJ model when they decided to make their print stories more feature-like with online breaking the timely news stories. You are “dead on” about a move to online however. Thanks for joining the conversation!
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