I received some more great comments from readers over the weekend that I wanted to share with you here. Thanks to everyone for writing in and enjoy!

—

The newspaper industry is in trouble for myriad reasons. It is not clear to me that daily newspapers will survive in large or mid-sized markets with a few exceptions. It is clear to me that the demand for accurate information will continue, but a new profit-model will have to emerge.

The largest problem facing newspapers right now are in what I think is the proper order:

** Collapsing ad revenues, especially in employment, real estate and auto categories set off by one of the worst post-World War II recessions.
One cannot have housing starts slump by two-thirds, auto sales (whether General Motors, Ford, Toyota or Honda) fall by more than a third from 2008 levels and still have a growing economy. Add to that the shock of crude oil hitting $147 a barrel and gasoline topping $4 a gallon last summer.

** A collapse in display advertising as those advertisers weathering the recession choose to communicate directly with readers either through the Web or the mail.

** A paradigm shift in the delivery mechanism of news that is affecting not just newspapers but radio and television as well.
The Internet has made not only more information possible. It also allows the reader to do his own filtering of the information he deems credible. Thus, alienated readers can ignore the daily newspaper. One result: Left-wing and right-wing readers can simply ignore what anyone else is saying. It also allows some of the most vile myths and untruths to move around without challenge.

** The large numbers of young readers who do not read newspapers because they don’t find newspapers relevant to their own lives. Nor, for that matter, do they find telephone books useful. They can get everything via their laptops and, soon, their smart phones.

** The fact that most women in the United States and other developed economies now work outside the home. That deprives newspapers of what was a core audience. They stopped reading newspapers because they don’t have time, either.

The emergence of the Web and related technologies took the newspaper industry by surprise, much as the emergence of airlines destroyed the passenger business of American railroads.

Top managements of major newspaper chains were not trained to search out technologies that would replace expensive investments in printing presses and production systems in newsrooms and advertising departments. The New York Times (not the company) actually was an exception to the rule. The same surprise afflicted broadcasting operations, which is why local news on air (on television or radio) is also a shrinking business.

Moreover, the managements of many newspaper companies overpaid for acquisitions or used precious cash to pay for expensive stock buybacks — decisions made at the behest of investment bankers and short-sighted stockholders. Or they sold their companies to operators who did not know how newspapers work and who had borrowed far too much money to make the deals.

At the same time, credibility is a problem for managements with their employees when they continue to flog the idea that the business is sinking when, in many cases (Gannett for one), the cash flow is still quite positive.

The recession is the biggest short-term problem that newspapers face. However, the change in the technology paradigm both in terms of delivery of news and how news is consumed is enormously profound. Even when the economy moves into recovery — probably next year–the challenge for all news organizations will be to find new business models that will generate the revenue necessary to pay for the expense of news gathering.

C. B.

—

As a former stockholder of, and subscriber to, the New York Times I would like to correct what I see as a misconception to your analysis of the problems of the large city newspapers.  In one word they dumbed-down. I cheated on the one word but I couldn’t think of a one word substitute to use.  When I started reading the NYT in 1935 at eight I struggled using a dictionary to understand what I was reading.   And,  had to follow some convoluted reasoning and sentence structure.   One day 40 years later I was reading my morning paper and I reminisced about the old days and I made a discovery. The sentences were five to eight words long and if there was more than 1 polysyllabic word in a paragraph I couldn’t find it.  When speaking to my few surviving friends I was surprised at the unanimity of the opinions.  They don’t specify the same problems but everything from the crossword puzzle to the front page comes under attack.
Stupidity is the general opinion.

Sincerely,
S. W.

—

I am puzzled at the frame of reference.  Yes large dailys have been disappearing.  That is sad and a loss to our society.  Small locals and specialty magazines will survive.  It’s not the same, you say.  True.  How will national stories be covered?  By electronic media.  Perhaps by USA Today.  Not as good?  Agreed, but there it is.  But all those who eschew the NY times because there is a liberal bias are the type of people who just want to have their way and don’t want to hear about the other side of the story.  The kind of people who just had their way when we trusted industry to regulate itself and consequently put America in a financial crisis that we may never recover.  So part of that legacy is people cutting back on their newspapers.  But part of the reason large dailies are disappearing is that they insisted on covering the individual crime, ignoring the major crimes and trends which are significant.

Blaming it on unions is surely an easy out; scapegoating. The smarmy tricks of the NYT management and ownership illustrate why unions came into being; a way for ordinary people to fight the monumental greed, meglomania, and lack of morals and ethics of the super rich.  Our schools have done a disservice by downplaying the class system in this country.  Our newspapers, likewise.

The one thing which I have not seen is any concern over the loss of a platform for cartoons.  Nash brought down Boss Tweed with just cartoons.
G.R.

—

If the newspaper industry is to make any money it must do what it did in the past, dig into every thing.  The paper must become the trusted source of information not just not a three day old rewrite of the Internet.  The newspaper must, on the Internet are not, give the customer new reliable information that you can not get any where else.  Years ago the newspaper was something you had to read each morning seven days a week, today it is something that you put in the trash and hope you did not pay for.  For the newspaper to be any thing other than a waste of time, we will have to hear arguments on what paper is best.  These augments will have to be at the level of what ball team is best, to put life back into the paper.  I miss the paper and do my reading on the Internet but it would be nice to have a “paper.”

P.J.