I'm hearing scuttlebutt that the print journalism industry is on its last legs, that the newspaper will soon become obsolete.
Some blame the failures of mainstream media, and I'll admit there's a point to that. Even when I was in the business, few newspapers could afford to devote a team of reporters -- or even a single staff writer -- to any story that takes more than a few days to develop. The pressure is to fill that news hole now. With the smaller dailies -- where I did most of my best work -- I'd usually have two or three stories per issue. Every day. And newspapers then were reluctant to run anything that might upset one of their advertisers or any of the local power brokers, as advertising revenue is the grease that keeps the presses humming. No industry deliberately craps in its own nest.
But that part is old business. During the most recent elections, mainstream media took a back seat to electronic news -- the web sites, the blogs, and just about anything else that isn't printed on paper.
Much of this is just a shifting of the technology. Last week, the Charleston Post & Courier -- that local newspaper I pick up on the bus every morning for free -- ran two side-by-side, quarter-page house ads in Friday's sports section. Here's part of the copy from one of the ads:
"The Internet is killing the newspaper business?*"
"*Unless you consider that most of the people who go online for news and information go to local newspaper websites."
The other ad claims the Post & Courier, along with its companion site charleston.net, has an audience of 376,400 readers -- the largest in South Carolina.
Readership figures are wholly manufactured, anyway. Generally you can assume that so many people are going to read one copy of a newspaper. Only one newspaper may make it into your household, yet everybody in the house my read it. The kids may battle over the sports section and the comics, but that counts. See?
What I find interesting with this double ad pitch is that the P&C is nodding to the Internet phenomenon. It's as much a part of the newspaper as the copy that rolled off the press this morning.
Although the big guys -- the N.Y. Times, the L.A. Times, the Washington Post, USA Today -- may find themselves losing out to the smaller newspapers. Even with more electronic publishing and shrinking news crews, the small guys will still hang onto their niche for a while longer.
The New York Times will go toes up long before the Posey County (IN) News, the Mohave County (AZ) News, or the Fontana (CA) Herald-News. Folks still like that news-from-home touch, and few are going to do it better than those one-reporter-and-a-few-stringers operations.
The Herald-News, by the way, did shut its doors in 1990, a few months after I left their employ and moved to Arizona. That state of closure lasted maybe a few minutes, as the paper was quickly bought up and resurrected. I have no idea what the actual newspaper looks like, but its Web site is still my main source for news from the town that had been such a big part of my life.
The so-called mainstream media may be in deep stuff here, but expect local reporting to be alive and well.
Some blame the failures of mainstream media, and I'll admit there's a point to that. Even when I was in the business, few newspapers could afford to devote a team of reporters -- or even a single staff writer -- to any story that takes more than a few days to develop. The pressure is to fill that news hole now. With the smaller dailies -- where I did most of my best work -- I'd usually have two or three stories per issue. Every day. And newspapers then were reluctant to run anything that might upset one of their advertisers or any of the local power brokers, as advertising revenue is the grease that keeps the presses humming. No industry deliberately craps in its own nest.
But that part is old business. During the most recent elections, mainstream media took a back seat to electronic news -- the web sites, the blogs, and just about anything else that isn't printed on paper.
Much of this is just a shifting of the technology. Last week, the Charleston Post & Courier -- that local newspaper I pick up on the bus every morning for free -- ran two side-by-side, quarter-page house ads in Friday's sports section. Here's part of the copy from one of the ads:
"The Internet is killing the newspaper business?*"
"*Unless you consider that most of the people who go online for news and information go to local newspaper websites."
The other ad claims the Post & Courier, along with its companion site charleston.net, has an audience of 376,400 readers -- the largest in South Carolina.
Readership figures are wholly manufactured, anyway. Generally you can assume that so many people are going to read one copy of a newspaper. Only one newspaper may make it into your household, yet everybody in the house my read it. The kids may battle over the sports section and the comics, but that counts. See?
What I find interesting with this double ad pitch is that the P&C is nodding to the Internet phenomenon. It's as much a part of the newspaper as the copy that rolled off the press this morning.
Although the big guys -- the N.Y. Times, the L.A. Times, the Washington Post, USA Today -- may find themselves losing out to the smaller newspapers. Even with more electronic publishing and shrinking news crews, the small guys will still hang onto their niche for a while longer.
The New York Times will go toes up long before the Posey County (IN) News, the Mohave County (AZ) News, or the Fontana (CA) Herald-News. Folks still like that news-from-home touch, and few are going to do it better than those one-reporter-and-a-few-stringers operations.
The Herald-News, by the way, did shut its doors in 1990, a few months after I left their employ and moved to Arizona. That state of closure lasted maybe a few minutes, as the paper was quickly bought up and resurrected. I have no idea what the actual newspaper looks like, but its Web site is still my main source for news from the town that had been such a big part of my life.
The so-called mainstream media may be in deep stuff here, but expect local reporting to be alive and well.
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