The death of the P.I. and its "life in death" on the Web is only the second in a trend that will grow. And as the other papers fail into the Web we will hear, again and again, about the Internet, about Craigslist, about The Drudge Report, and a hundred other reasons these papers are dead. What we will never hear is that their editorial policies and news slanting were part and parcel of their demise. We will never hear about the willed insults, slights, and snubbing of fully half of their potential circulation pool. Journalists and editors write a lot about "taking personal responsibility" when it comes to others. You never hear them write that about themselves. There's no mea culpa among liberal newspaper journalists these days. There's only "The Internet ate my newspaper."
Exactly right.
It may comfort the mourners for the dead-tree newspapers to blame the Internet for their troubles but that's self delusion. FM did not kill AM, TV did not kill the movies, and the Internet did not kill newspapers. Newspapers committed suicide.
The US is fairly evenly divided between the Left and the Right - politically - even in Seattle. Sure, the Left may be louder and more articulate, but the rest of us are the ones who buy the groceries, shop for furniture and trade in our cars. And the people who produce newspapers set out deliberately to spit in our eye. Like a battered spouse, we may put up with abuse for a time, but give us an out and we'll take it. And enough people did that so that the economics of putting out a newspaper crossed the line from profitable to unprofitable.
In the comments I read on the Internet about the demise of newspapers. Most are not just the comments of people who have moved from “Brand A” to new and improved “Brand B,” but from people who feel that they have been abused and insulted by “Brand A” over an extended period of time. These are people who have found not just a fresher version of the news and have left the old version behind; these are people who have learned to loathe the old version and are happy about its demise.
The news media seems to be one of the few industries that does not believe that the customer is always right. Like Triumph the insult dog, it revelled in demeaning at least half of its customers. "Triumph" was a piece of comedy; the newspapers took their insults seriously. And their customers reacted appropriately.
There’s a lesson there for those who wish to learn. Apparently they would rather die.
Faster please.
2 comments:
The change at Seattle Post Intelligencer is a good thing for Seattle, and for Hearst. Developing a viable news model for on-line reporting is important to future readers and society. Read more at http://www.ThePhoenixPrinciple.com
Adam,
What could they possible produce that I would be interested in buying? I’m not interested in their opinions, and their opinions (slant/spin/whatever you want to call it) are all over the newspaper, not just the editorial page. The real news I can get from other sources.
Here’s a little secret: the primary value of a modern newspaper is the ads. No, not the value to the paper as the primary source of income, but the primary value to the reader. My wife goes through the local paper to check the sales and clip the coupons and justifies the subscription to me my explaining that the paper saves our family money.
I have a business concept and am looking for funding: a web site with just ads, the electronic version of the ads and newspaper stuffers that are currently delivered to my door. This site would have the ability to allow the reader to search by store, by category, by geography, and any number of other ways of organizing the data. Plus the ability to print scanner readable discount coupons.
Think of the cost saving by not having to physically print the ads. It could save the advertisers literally thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. All it would take is a small staff of website administrators and the newspaper’s laid-off sales force. The profit margins for the web site operators would be huge and revenue could be derived in several ways.
One added psychological benefit: it would kill the newspapers faster.
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