Whither Newspapers?

Eight years after I left newspaper journalism to “join the dark side,” as my former journalist colleagues put it, and become an information officer for a California government agency, I still miss pounding the pavement and pressing phone buttons hunting for a story to fill a slowly shrinking news hole. These days, with newspaper layoffs, pay cuts, furloughs, and newspaper shutdowns or conversions to Web sites, I realize I can’t return to newspapers even if I wanted to.


Over the past several weeks, the Rocky Mountain News folded after nearly 150 years. Last year, according to National Public Radio, it cost its parent company E.W. Scripps Co. $16 million in losses. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer went completely digital and shut down its print edition after 146 years. The Ann Arbor News will stop its presses in July after 174 years and be replaced by a Web-focused community news operation, according to the Associated Press.


The San Francisco Chronicle was perilously close to shutting its doors after losing $1 million or more a week for the past several years. On March 7, members of the Chronicle's unit of the California Media Workers Guild agreed to job and benefit cuts required by management, the San Francisco Business Times reported. The job concessions included cuts regardless of seniority.

There have been layoffs at newspapers nationwide, including The Sacramento Bee, the San Diego Union-Tribune (which Copley Newspapers, its parent company, sold last week), the Los Angeles Times, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The Buffalo News, just to name a few. Gannett Newspapers and MediaNews Group have ordered furloughs for their employees.


The recession is a big factor in newspapers losing money, especially with steep drops in advertising revenue and stores like Circuit City and Mervyns closing their doors. I believe another factor is that newspapers didn't consider their information to be valuable enough to charge Internet users. The Wall Street Journal, for example, requires that its Web site users subscribe to its newspaper. San Francisco-based media analyst Alan D. Mutter wrote in the Los Angeles Times that the WSJ claims more than 1 million paid subscribers to its Web site "(b)y aggregating an audience of business people willing and able to pay to view its content."

The Daily Republic of Fairfield, California, also requires that its Web site visitors subscribe. About 21,000 Solano County residents are willing to pay to find out what's happening in their neighborhood. Online ads help, but information should not be free.

My stance may offend Internet users who have been accustomed to getting their news gratis. I don't know if newspaper companies charge Google for their news. If they don't, they should. If newspapers want to survive, newspaper owners have to get out of the mindset that the horse has left the barn and start charging for content. The horse is still in the barn, but is considering making a run for it.

Writing Diva