Journalists are JOURNALISTS

Zeeck misses the point entirely. Blogosphere doesn't need newspapers at all.

Last time I checked, television stations are still making titanic profits -- much more than newspaper companies -- and network news sites will provide all the content blogosphere will ever need.

That's assuming that the bloggers aren't out there actually reporting, which is dead wrong.

 

How do you know so much about my newspaper? ;D

 

I am constantly amazed by the arrogance of editors who blithely dismiss the Internet. Yeah, local newspapers might still own the City Hall beat - that's if they haven't gutted their staffs and/or replaced veteran reporters with kids fresh out of J-school.

But in terms of things like national politics and national sports, though, the Internet has proven a more than viable alternative for news and opinion. Who's building their sections now and actually paying for talent nowadays? Hint: It isn't newspapers, it's websites.

Not saying the 'Net is the be all and end all - it isn't - but any editor who believes that the answer to declining readership, lack of relevance, etc. is to say, "Oh yeah? So, tell me again, how many reporters does Yahoo have at City Hall? How many correspondents from Google are risking their lives in Iraq?" has his head firmly wedged up his rectum.

 

Like some of the actual data you used to reinforce your point that A1 is the most read portion of the paper? Says who? You?

According to internet hits at the past three newspapers I worked at, all in metro areas, sports, op-ed and lifestyles articles got the most hits. We even had a front pager about a high level elected official being indicted and wouldn't you know it the high school playoff gamer got more hits, like a lot more, upward of 10,000 more hits.

What little response there is on front-page stories is that we're biased, and the news stories are untrue because of our bias.

Readers don't read what we think they should 90% of the time. Readers don't consider news what we consider news.

 

So we should just take your word for it?

Look, our sports section gets the most online hits, as well. But that's because alumni of the local university fan out after college, and people come here to read about their school. Online readers are less likely to seek out news on the latest highway construction project.

But if you think that sports and features are more read than A1, you are on some good drugs. Should we just start making sports the A section, I suppose?

Here's a paper's readership survey.

Granted, it's just one chain, I believe, but it's telling.

"General news" = 70 percent
"Sports" = 43 percent

http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=675

 

Knute, that 70/40ish% number is pretty consistent with everything I've ever seen.
With bigger papers with stronger foreign and national coverage, that 70% is even bigger.

One footnote: Sports readers are usually more avid (read more frequently) and loyal.

 

media "lifting" ideas. slippery slope?
jeez, where does "journalism" end and "plagiarism" begin?

 

Probably not. I'm not the type to link to a story to point, sneer and snark. I generally link out to stuff that I find interesting, challenging, thought-provoking, etc. And, occasionally, other bloggers or MSM outlets have linked to me when they like something I've written.

The idea is to send a little traffic flow to people who are putting out good stuff, not to generate revenue. That's what ads are for.

If an outlet wants to charge for content, I'll pay for it for my own consumption. But I'm not going to pay for a link -- it'd be the equivalent of paying to pat someone on the back.

 

Here is an NBA gamer, an AP wire story, packaged on ESPN.com. Hard edition newspapers, even metros can't compete with this.

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/recap?gameId=270403014

This is available maybe an hour after the game. They do the same for baseball. To be honest, there is no reason to ever write the "gamer" for a newspaper anymore. It's a waste of space. How do we compete in this environment is the most important question sports editors of the future is going to wrestle with.

We can't compete with the immediacy of the internet and national outlets like ESPN, Fox, rivals, scout and eventually maxpreps type sights will eat into local coverage. If you are a metro, you can combat that with a website, but even if you have a great website and your reporter is a better writer than the AP slop, you can't compete with ESPN, which has coverage like that for 40 games a day.

If you aren't staffing the game, or you are a smaller paper who doesn't have the resources to run a separate web outfit, you get killed.

An example would be the Yankees. Can't tell you the last time I read a gamer in one of the million papers that cover them. Why? I already saw the highlights, know who won, read the box score, and read the AP's optional before I go to bed.

To continue to write deadline gamers under these conditions is asinine. Everyone 40 and under now goes to the internet. And if you are 30 and under, there is no way you subscribe to a newspaper when you can get it online for free.

What I worry about are papers such as mine though. I am at a 45,000 circ afternoon daily. We aren't relevant anymore unless your reading our high school stuff. Even our college coverage on a very competitive beat is getting killed because of internet sites including rivals and scout. It's not better, but it's first. The big city daily destroys us before our desk guys even get in in the morning.

The competition has websites that break stuff 16 hours before we come out. Stories aren't scoops, a lot of time we had it at the same time. We have an underdeveloped web (editors think it will harm circ), but we don't have the resources to update constantly anyhow. If you can't update constantly, what's the use of a website anyway?

The major metros have the money to build a web infrastructure and can cash in on their reputation (NY Times is the best example).

So how are 45,000 circ afternoon papers supposed to treat national sports and competitive college beats? We can't compete because the web destroys our news cycle on national and regional stories.

We can write better stories, more features, but the basic job of newspapers is to report the news. We can't compete in this setting and are essentially obsolete.

There will always be a need for local news, but if people think that will keep local dailies alive they are nuts. I imagine in the next 10 years we are going to see a bloodbath at daily papers this size and lower.

My paper is doing it right, trying to give you stuff you can't get anywhere else. We are aggressive and tenacious on the town beats, we are very good in prep coverage and go all out covering our college team (literally spare no expense). It's still not enough because our resources are limited technologically and we can't compete in the news cycle anymore.

The answer to go more local sounds great, but I don't think it works. The national and regional stories in your daily is what connects town to town. You have to sell more than local, local, local.

In a sprawling suburban setting, why would Town A care about corruption in Town B 45 miles away? They don't. But Town A wants to know about Town A corruption and Town B corruption in town B. You can't zone 20 editions. What connects these two towns to one local paper is Town A and Town B both want regional, state and and national news. This is what holds the paper together.

When Town A and Town B don't go to our paper for at least some of their regional news (no matter how little), then we start to erode an important reason for purchasing the paper.

National news is an important part of any daily. You have to have it to broaden what your selling. How else are we supposed to connect our circulation area than with national and regional news? Unfortunately, we can't compete with outlets that also gobble up national and regional news. So this is eroding a need for our paper.

I think this local, local, local stuff is nonsense. In most suburban towns, a good weekly can satisfy peoples need for town news.

Where do 50,000 circulation papers fit in the food chain?

 

jfs - Is the answer more analytical coverage? That's what we've tried to go to on our major college beat. Don't just tell what, tell me what it means. I know for a fact that the national sites are about 1/1000th as comprehensive as we are on our local university. Readers notice that.

 

hey ones that charge for their web sites could get away with it. for example if my blog links to a ny times story that's behind their subscription firewall, no one can access the link.

but it would be an interesting case if a newspaper sued a blogger for copyright infringement. i think the defense would be fair use. analyzing it under the four legal tests of fair use (whether the new use is transformative, nature of the copyrighted work, amount of copyrighted work used by alleged infringer and effect on market), i could see it going either way. i'd lean more heavily toward allowing linking because the new use is transformative - it's about mocking or highlighting or pointing to the article; the blog only links to one article or one part of an article, not the entire paper; and most importantly, people who buy newspapers would not necessarily switch to blog reading only, so the newspaper's market share doesn't necessarily suffer because it's linked in a blog.

 

JFS1000

You're post is too long to quote, but I disagree. Mid-sized papers are more stable in my opinion. Your points on the Yankees reinforce the fact big papers are becoming obsolete. However, most places with a population of, say, 200,000 don't have many (if any) competing papers. If they have a local blog or website, they are usually a joke.

Using sports as an example, mid-major universities, semi-pro teams, junior teams, etc. aren't covered by major media outlets (newspapers, TV or the net), but they are followed by and cared about by the locals, so this is why I think mid-sized papers will survive.