Thursday, May 04, 2006
Hughes: Newspapers not endangered: They have rich well of content to tap
John Huges, a retired editor of the Christian Science Monitor, argues in
this essay that newspaper companies (as distinct from the papers?) are not
an endangered species because they have a rich well of content to tap and
excellent cash positions.
ORIGINAL URL:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0503/p09s01-cojh.html
Commentary > John Hughes
from the May 03, 2006 edition
In the age of the Internet, newspapers are still big business
Newspapers are the Internet's primary suppliers of information.
By John Hughes
The Christian Science Monitor
SEATTLE -- The sun-dappled waters of Puget Sound were calm and sparkling
last week, but a few blocks inland, where editors of America's daily
newspapers were gathered in annual conclave, it sounded like a perfect
storm was besetting their profession.
It's been a tough year for the newspaper business. For many newspapers,
readership is down and advertising is off. Some major newspapers have laid
off staff. American reporters abroad have been killed or held hostage in
Iraq, while at home, some have been threatened with jail for refusing to
disclose their sources. A few journalists have demeaned the principles of
their profession by plagiarizing the work of others or totally
manufacturing interviews and events. When caught, they have been fired.
On top of all this is the fear that a multiplicity of new electronic toys
and gadgets is encouraging a new generation to forsake the printed
newspaper and gather its information via a keyboard and computer screen,
or even a hand-held device prodded with a metal pointer.
Seattle is a center for the development of new technology, and so it was
inevitable that much of this year's convention of the American Society of
Newspaper Editors should be dominated by discussion of whether the
newspaper is mortally threatened by the Web and other pending electronic
developments.
Microsoft's Bill Gates was an invited speaker and cheerfully predicted
that within five years there would be no textbooks in schools - they would
all be replaced by computers. He also told of how he taunted his friend
Warren Buffett, the stock-picking guru, for his ownership of an
encyclopedia company. The only reason to have printed encyclopedias these
days, said Mr. Gates, was because they looked nice on bookshelves and
smelled good.
With the help of Arthur Sulzberger Jr., publisher of The New York Times,
Gates did unveil a new and improved hand-held "e-paper" on which the
content of the Times would be carried and which is undergoing tests.
Earlier versions of such a portable pallet have been tried, but
suggestions that they could eliminate a newspaper's printing and delivery
costs have obviously so far proved invalid. The new device is small and
portable, but Gates was a little vague about what its selling price would
be. Also unclear is what an owner of the device would pay to call up the
pages of the Times on it.
It would be folly for newspaper owners and publishers to ignore such new
technology. But newspaper companies are still much in demand - witness the
billions of dollars paid in recent days for the purchase of the Knight
Ridder newspapers by the McClatchy and Media-News organizations.
While technology may change methods of delivery, as for example online,
there is no content to deliver without a news organization to gather and
edit it. In its annual report on the news media, the Project for
Excellence in Journalism says the "evidence does not support the notion
that newspapers have begun a sudden death spiral."
Internet-only sites like Slate and Salon that have tried to produce
original content have struggled financially, says the report, while those
thriving financially rely almost entirely on the work of others.
Newspapers are the country's biggest news-gathering organizations in most
towns and the Internet's primary suppliers.
The central economic question in journalism, the report concludes,
continues to be how long it will take online journalism to become a major
economic engine, and if it will ever be as big as print or television. "If
the on-line revenues at newspapers continue to grow at the current rate -
an improbable 33 percent a year - they won't reach levels equivalent with
print until 2017 (assuming print grows just 3 percent a year).
Realistically, even with the lower delivery costs, it will be years before
the Internet rivals old media economics."
Two of the most forward-looking experts on the newspaper industry, Scott
Anthony and Clark Gilbert, say that despite the sense of doom and gloom
that pervades, there are signs of hope. Writing in Nieman Reports, the
journal of the prestigious Nieman Foundation for journalists at Harvard,
they say that while newspaper readership is declining, information
consumption is increasing. "Almost every newspaper company has made the
transition to the Web, with their properties attracting new audiences and
new advertisers.
"The newspaper industry has the potential to do some very exciting things
in the coming years. Most companies have good brand reputations, strong
cash positions, and a deep well of content."
All this suggests that the newspaper is far from an endangered species.
. John Hughes, a former editor of the Monitor, is a past president of the
American Society of Newspaper Editors.
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