Could online production save print journalism?
by Kim PearsonBitch magazine is in trouble. The feminist favorite needs $40,000 to stay in print, and they are appealing to readers for help. It's not alone.
In fact, you find yourself around a group of print journalists these days, you're likely to wind up in a conversation about which newspaper's just had a layoff, or which magazine is on the verge of closure. It's old news that many news organizations saw their ad revenues slide as they moved online, and that web-based competitors such Monster.com and Craigslist siphoned off advertisers that had been the lifeblood of print.
But this year has been something special: so many newspapers and magazines are in crisis now that there's even a blog called Newspaper Deathwatch. What's worse, some of the publications that are in critical condition are not only vital to their loyal readers, but to the health of the democracy they serve.Here's the appeal from the folks at Bitch:
One thing Bitch has going for it is a group of supporters who blog, such as Christine C. at PopandPolitics, who urges readers to donate because:
In a sea of mediocre media, Bitch consistently and forcefully rises above the fray.
The folks at the Newark Star-Ledger would likely be thrilled by that kind of grass-roots support, although they need a lot more than $40,000. Check out this excerpt of a memo sent to staffers at the Pulitzer-winning Star-Ledger announcing that because of a failure to reach an agreement with the paper's drivers:
[W}e will be sending formal notices to all employees this week, as required by both federal and New Jersey law, advising you that the Company will be sold, or, failing that, that it will close operations on January 5, 2009.
The Star-Ledger's sister paper, the Times, which serves New Jersey's capital city of Trenton, faces a similar fate. The Bergen Record, another New Jersey paper known for its hard-hitting investigations announced in June that it was closing its headquarters and requiring reporters to work from home with laptops and cell phones. According to an article in the New York Observer last month, Record editor Frank Scandale is worried:
“Can you cover the big stories that really mean something to people—how taxes are spent, projections for jobs, stuff you just need to know if you live here—if you have too few journalists?”
For a number of years, ethnic news organs had been one of the few growth areas in the industry, but there's trouble there too. BlogHer CE Nina Moon directed me to KoreAm.com, a magazine for Korean Americans, which is posting this appeal:
KoreAm is not immune to what’s happening in our industry and this economy. If anything, we are more vulnerable as the betwixt-and-between underdog magazine trying to serve the betwixt-and-between bicultural generations who find exploration of our unique identity and stories worthwhile. If you believe in what this community magazine stands for and the service it provides, you need to support it in concrete ways.
If this was just another industry, we might be content to throw up our hands and accept that the market gives and the market takes away. But journalism is more than just another industry -- its an institution vital to sustaining democratic government. And millions of people will continue to need a physical copy of their news, as opposed to an online product.
If print journalism is to survive, it may have to embrace the online revolution that contributed so heavily to its near-fatal wounds. Don't be surprised if some newspapers and magazines start using a web-based print-on-demand service such as MagCloud to distribute and sell their products.
Here's the way it works, according to their website. A publisher uploads .pdf files of the publication. MagCloud allows subscribers to buy individual stories or subscribe to the whole magazine, then splits the revenue with the magazine publisher. The model is attractive because it eliminates two of the biggest obstacles in print publishing -- the high costs of postage and paper.
I learned about MagCloud via internet strategist Jeremiah Owyang. I don't know many print editors or publishers who know what a web strategist is, or about technologies such as MagCloud. These days, however, they are scrambling to learn.
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Comments
This is Tough
Sadly, I am not sure new media is the answer, either. To be really successful with online advertising, you need the kind of numbers local or niche news just can't support. It's very sad. I'm not sure what will be left of the "news" when all this plays out.
We've been talking about this a lot in Tacoma, with the News Tribune offering buy outs to over half of their staff and cutting back drastically on their print publication. There's a lot of talk that the blogosphere will step in and fill the void, but I am a skeptic. I put a lot of time into my blog but probably only really do a thoroughly researched, journalistic piece about once a month. With revenue in the "hobby" zone, it's very difficult to do much more. For the sake of my family's well being, I need to begin to look at national interest writing more seriously, but I've definitely been going through a grieving process.
Tacoma Mama
All good points
One of the things I'm turning my attention to is the creation of tools that make it easier for bloggers and interested lay people to get access to public records and other documents that would facilitate citizen journalism. I'm also deeply concerned about ensuring that the next generation of online publishers -- today's Myspace kids -- are grounded in media literacy and ethics. I guess you can say that I've accepted that we are going to have a world with fewer paid journalists. The task now is to ensure that the new technologies and business models can become genuine tools for enlarging the public square, instead of devolving into echo chambers for partisan propaganda and narrow interests.
Kim
BlogHer Contributing Editor|Professor Kim|
New Tools Do Help
But I wonder how much they will actually get used. There has to be an external motivation for telling the truth, or at least a balanced look at an issue. A paycheck that is dependent on these standards is a definite source of that motivation.
Oh, that sounds really cynical I know. But really if blogging and citizen journalism is a hobby it is something most people do because they like it, and research doesn't necessarily fit into that picture however easy it may be.
Tacoma Mama
Not the End, A New Beginning
In 2002, I was seated in an editorial meeting at the Trentonian. I had been writing a running commentary for Sunday’s Page 2. It was two days before Christmas and donuts had been cut from the meeting—an indication of the thinning budget. At the same time, the requisition for a badly needed Hispanic reporter was being pulled. Same reason as the donuts. This was not a blip on the local tabloid radar. Across the country, contraction had been underway for over a decade. I was the journalist of the future—no desk, no health benefits, no benefits of any kind, ridiculous pay.
Editors were scared. Two heads of the three-headed hydra were already in force. The price of China-imported ink was rising. The cost of paper—the availability of trees to make paper—put serious strain on the budget. Most recently, the tripling cost of fuel reared the third and most deadly head of the beast, making the ability to drive the newspapers to market unfeasible.
Will all newspapers go under? Nothing will replace the textural experience of a newspaper, magazine, or book in your hands, but in the Information Age, where the key to data is specialization, it is unrealistic to think that one newspaper can be a catchall. The audience is no longer captive.We go to Bloomberg.com for financial news, ESPN.com for sports, and The Food Network.com for recipes. Both local editors have admitted to me that most people now only read the newspaper for sports scores, comics, and coupons, and you can get all of those on-line and sooner than the daily thump at your doorstep. Moreover, each community newspaper does a far better job of covering the minutia of local government and happenings. They are specializing in their communities. Their staffs are sparse but experienced, and their circulations are strong and vital.
Over the years, radio and TV have threatened newspapers, but those news mediums have by and large been reduced to populace sound bites run on twenty-minute loops. Meanwhile, the common Web server has virtually leveled the three-headed economic beast. Without the worries and limitations of ink, paper, and delivery costs, the Web has reinvigorated feature and in-depth reporting. Web reporters have also scooped major news stories. The Web is a landscape of crackpots and whistleblowers, the grist for news mills. Web stories can be so highly specialized that they have enabled journalists to
become experts again—a primary tenant of our field.
As the Information Age expands and the Internet further specializes, Web sites have sprouted up like wildfire, news sites included.This is a product of its technological design—to have no central hub, to invite
portals of data into a heterogeneous fabric. Unfortunately, quality and ethicsare in complete disarray. It is not just yellow journalism. Sloppy, unsourced reporting is distributed with and without malice. A good rumor carries the same weight as a legitimate breaking story. Our job as educators—in all journalism institutions—should be to impose quality and ethics standards and lead the way along the Information Highway.
Stll Really Doesn't Address Monetization
Sure, circulation numbers are good for community papers, and websites are sprouting up like wildfire, but it still doesn't address the need to bring in advertising dollars. Specialization is key in terms of delivering a useful product, but then works against you in smaller numbers and fewer advertisers. My site is highly specialized and generally much appreciated by the community it serves, but that doesn't translate to local businesses knocking down my door, dying to advertise. If I want to actually make money from it I will have to broaden the focus geographically, at the very least, which will somewhat diminish its utility.
Honestly, in order to make decent money from online ads you need Blogher numbers or Dooce numbers, not the 100,000 monthly pageviews I'll probably max out at eventually.
The web is a great opportunity for nationally-focused news and features, but does not provide a real solution for local information sources trying to pay their staff, outside of very large markets.
Tacoma Mama
Kitchen Table Issues
A future without newspapers?
As a former daily newspaper journalist who got laid off this year, I can empathize with all of that. Not a week goes by that I don't read about another paper having layoffs or buyouts. I constantly email my friends still remaining at daily papers to ask "Are you going to be OK?'' in this latest round. It's sad and unfortunate, and I don't see an end in sight _ not with this dismal economy.
No paper out there has figured out the answer. They all tout that online is the future, but none has yet to come up with a way to transfer the serious money they now make (and are losing) from advertising in the printed publication to online.
Will people pay for information online? I have my doubts. They don't even want to pony up 35 cents now for a newspaper; why would they pay some fee for information online when they're apt to find it for free if they look hard enough using Google?
As someone who grew up reading a newspaper at the breakfast table every morning, and cherishing that habit, I fear what the future will bring. Will we no longer have newspapers operating in large numbers of cities across the country? It could come to that. And we all would be poorer for it. I hope some newspaper out there can discover the magic answer to ensure that doesn't happen. I really do.
Hoping for that, too
I'm afraid I am another skeptic, but a hopeful one.
Tacoma Mama
Kitchen Table Issues