I weigh in on this topic with some trepidation.
First, it has been widely written about and discussed for the last month (in particular). Second, I am not a journalist, and I am not part of the newspaper business. Third, it might seem to have tangential relationship to the subject of this blog.
But I weigh in nonetheless. First, I just dumb enough to think I have something to add to the discussion. Second, while not a journalist, I am a life-long consumer of newsprint - sometimes as many as three delivered newspapers every morning. Third, it actually has an important relationship to the subject of this blog.
Of course - being a teacher - I have to start this discussion with a question: What happens if we have no newspapers - no "fourth estate" - in the future?
The answer is: it would not be good. Jefferson's famous quote covers it pretty well: "Where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe." Or, if you prefer: "No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free, no one ever will." (There are plenty more. Jefferson was a big believer in the importance of the press to a healthy republic.)
The point is that having a strong, functioning press that is free to investigate and criticize the government - state, local, or federal - is critical for a nation based on self-governance. If newspapers are going the way of the dinosaur, well, "Houston, we have a problem;" a big problem for the future of our republic. (Of course, any problem involving governance involves the law. But that was probably obvious, right?)
Which is not to say, by the way, that what passes for this vaunted position over the last several decades has not eroded the public trust. The 24-hour cable news cycle is Exhibit 1, but plenty of local news programs - "if it bleeds, it leads" - and even great papers, have abdicated this august responsibility.
The business problems of the print newspaper industry have been well documented. In my own hometown, the Rocky Mountain News closed just 45 days shy of the 150th anniversary of its birth. And it was, overall, a good paper. One of the few remaining two-paper towns (Denver) is now a one-paper town (and the Denver Post is not doing so great, either). Plenty of folks have weighed in, saying that these were business problems - that the management of the papers have made mistakes, and they deserve their fates. Market forces at work, etc.
Perhaps. Certainly, the newspaper industry's blindness to what Craigslist was going to do to their cash cow (Classifieds) was a major misstep, although one has to wonder what they were going to do to get ahead of Craigslist. Were they all supposed to collude (which they are prohibited from doing by antitrust law) to create Craigslist before Craig Newmark? I doubt it. But yes, when you are the market leader, you often are blind to threats from the outside. See: Altavista (Google) or IBM (Microsoft). They made some mistakes. Arguably, their financial model should not have been built on my classic Mustang car listing, but rather on quality news delivery. But this is all in the past. Over. Ship sailed and all that. The question is: what happens now?
And there is much speculation on that point, and much gnashing of teeth. Part of the problem is that they are all available for free online. Yeah, they want you to buy it in print, and have it delivered, but it's all free on their website. OK, which part of that - given the ubiquity of the internet and proliferation of effective mobile reading devices - does not sound like a death rattle?
As an aside, one has to ask - why did they do that? The answer is twofold: they wanted to avoid becoming obsolete, and they thought advertising would cover it. They were mostly right about the first, and mostly (so far) wrong about the second. That is, they did indeed need to provide an online service to their readers (or risk losing them to other outlets), but internet advertising has not covered the cost, and is not likely to do so (at least most of the analysis so far indicates that it will not cover it).
The polyanna response goes something like this: "So what? The internet, blogs, other sources, will cover it. We will just get our news in different ways. Information wants to be free. We don't need old style newspapers killing trees anymore. Good riddance."
The reply to this argument is always, roughly, the same: "What about the Bagdad Bureau?" As in, bloggers and other free sites can not finance a reporter on the ground in Bagdad telling us what is really going on. And right there we have the problem in a nutshell. Because if it is really true that all major news gathering organizations (who can fund the "Bagdad Bureau") are going away, well, then "Houston, we really do have a problem." We will not have a press - of any kind - that can effectively meet Jefferson's imperative for the future health of our republic.
Fortunately, there is a third way. In other words, while it looks like we have a choice between Sylla and Charybdis, in fact, we have a much better choice. Or rather, the market will be providing that choice over the next several years. And there is much speculation about what that will look like.
My view is that it will look something like this: We will still have some print newspapers, but we will also have other news delivery mechanisms, and these will work well and be relatively cheap. But we will have to pay for them.
A case in point is the Washington Post on the Kindle. Another case in point is the New York Times on the Times Reader. Let me explain.
I have previously commented on the "shift" reading a newspaper on the Kindle meant to me. It just works. Not perfectly yet, but it is pretty effective. And once you read a newspaper you have missed for many years on a reading device (I don't care which one), the paper, the ink, the presses, the guy who drives it to your house, the gas he burns to drive it there - I mean, all of that starts to look really dumb. Why are we killing trees and burning gas to bring the paper to my house when I can get it wirelessly while I sleep? (Hint: one of those makes a whole lot more sense than the other). But yes, I am paying for that privilege. I am not reading it on their website, I am reading it on my Kindle. I have to pay for it, and they need to stop giving it way, so we can all pay for the "Bagdad bureau."
Clay Shirky - someone I respect very much - has avoided the opportunity to opine about what the future of newspapers will actually look like. He says, essentially, he doesn't know, and that no one knows. Of course, he is right. But I am not as smart as Clay Shirky, so I will offer this vision:
Fewer newsrooms. That is, there will be a New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, LA Times - pick your favorites. I am not predicting which ones. (The NYTimes is suffering some significant financial issues, so they may not be a survivor). But the point is, we will have some really good ones that will survive. And they will be able to pay for the "Bagdad Bureau."
Stop giving it away. The free websites have to stop. There is much discussion about this, and Steve Brill has the Journalism Online effort underway. The idea there is that newspapers will all subscribe to be paid for "through" the JO site. It remains to be seen if that will be the model, but over time, we have to have some combination of free and paid for online content. Some call this the "freemium" model.
The Rise of Local. Steven Johnson has said that what we need is more "hyperlocal" news. Indeed, he is a founder in outside.in, which is a site dedicated to just that idea. The idea here is that we have national news organizations, we lose the local news that the Rocky Mountain News used to provide before it died. And further, the RMN never did a very good job of that anyway, because what we really want to know is more local - "hyperlocal" - than it could ever provide. So we need hyperlocal news that matters to us - what is happening at the bookstore down the street, the robbery that happened last night two blocks away - that sort of thing. The internet supports and enables just that sort of hyperlocal news delivery in a way we have never had before.
The device. I don't know about you, but I do not want to go downstairs every morning and read the paper on my desktop computer. I don't even want to get my laptop and climb back in bed with it. But the Kindle, which is on my nightstand anyway because I put it down last night while reading a book... well, that's there already...
The Kindle, while both cool and important, is an early machine. Come with me down Futurist Lane... the Kindle of a few years from now (or whatever it will be called, and whoever will make it) will look something like this: It will be larger (Kindle DX is a good announcement), it will be in color (rumors of Apple tablet in 2010), web connected (of course), video enabled (of course), sufficient bandwidth to support video...
Do you remember the Newspaper in the Harry Potter novels - The Daily Prophet? Where the pictures moved? We need a device that embeds color pictures and video in the newspaper "article" we are reading. And that offers wireless delivery while we sleep (Amazon already did that part), and affordable (the units have to be well under $500 and do more than offer news, and $10 a month for the Washington Post is not bad).
If you are really interested in what this might look like, and a subscriber to the NYTimes, you really should check out the new Times Reader app for Mac, PC or Linux. It is a very effective delivery mechanism for news; better in many ways than their (or any newspaper's) website. At least go watch the video - it will give you the idea.
Cripple the online sites. Once we transition to these devices, make the online sites second rate in comparison. Offer some for free, but no video, and only parts of the stories, or whatever. Offer discounts on the device for a two year "newspaper" subscription (already being proposed by several newspapers for the Kindle DX).
Does all of this happen overnight? Of course not. Does it happen without pain and many local newspapers closing (at least closing their print operations)? Of course not. Does the hardware need to catch up? Certainly. But there are good signs on this front - take a look at this site about the rumored Apple tablet coming this fall (others have suggested it will not appear until 2010).
So, in short, I am hopeful for the future of the republic. We will get our news - the news we need to keep our government in check. We will have the important "Bagdad Bureau." We will also have more useful and more customizable and more local news, which, in many ways, will be an improvement. Overall, this should be very good for the republic, since it will "democratize" news, and over time, make it more accessible - and more useful - more alive, more engaging - and more informative, to more citizens. It will not be easy or painless, but in the end, I think Jefferson would approve.
