So, what’s the latest news on the newspaper front this week?
- USA Today is laying off 1000 employees.
- The New York Times is increasing its newsstand price from $1.25 to $1.50.
- The Tribune Company (which owns several dailies, including the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times) reported a $4.5 billion second quarter loss – which is pretty remarkable when you consider that Sam Zell paid $8.2 billion last December to take the company private.
Perhaps the most shocking news is that Portland, Maine, may soon become the first major American city with no daily newspaper. The Portland Press Herald, a 146-year-old newspaper, may shut down.
Today’s Boston Globe reports that finances are so tight and losses so significant that the Press Herald has closed its Augusta bureau. That would be akin to the Chicago Tribune closing its Springfield bureau. The Globe reports that the Press Herald has had four rounds of layoffs in the last 12 months. The owner is looking in vain for a buyer and has said he may have no recourse but to “dismantle” the newspaper operation, according to court papers filed by the publisher. Of course, this may be mere bluster on the part of the paper’s owners, who are in a contract tussle with its unions. But don’t doubt that the death knell is imminent.
People in the Portland area, the Globe reports, are examining their feelings about the paper and its role in their lives. While we may or may not care for our local daily newspaper and its editorial prejudices, some of us cannot imagine starting our day without it.
Yes, I know all about the changing demographics; that fewer young adults read newspapers today than older generations. I know that many people in the all-important 18-35 age group get their news from the Internet and late night comedians like Jay Leno, Jon Stewart and David Letterman. Habits are changing rapidly, and it doesn’t look good for the newspaper industry.
I read four papers each weekday morning: The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Boston Globe and Boston Herald. Each fills a unique role in my day because each covers the news a little differently with a distinct perspective. Were I to lose one or two of them, my day – and life – would change. My newspaper reading habits are already changing, thanks to the Internet. A laptop and WiFi enable me to read the newspapers in the morning and simultaneously surf the web to do deeper research or analysis of something I may have read in one of the papers, or to forward a story of interest to friend or colleague.
But if we are honest with ourselves, we have to conclude that we are seeing the final days of daily newspapers, as we know them. How soon and what becomes of them, no one can say for sure. The fact is, the comfort and familiarity we derive from the physical printed page is being supplanted by electronic news. And that’s where the big money is going.
In Boston, a new company was formed earlier this year that may be breaking new ground in the news business, playing a part in the move to replace newspapers. “Global News Enterprises” is the interim name of the new company that expects to launch a web site early next year dedicated exclusively to international news. It is now hiring correspondents around the world. It will have no physical output like newspapers but will be exclusively web-based.
The founder is Philip Balboni, who made his pile as founder of New England Cable News, a regional version of CNN that, after initial struggles following its 1992 founding, is now making a lot of money for Comcast, its owner. Just as he rode an early wave in the NECN venture, I’d put money on the ultimate success of this one, too.
The fact is, whether we know it or not, we are all adjusting and re-examining our relationship with the printed page. And the money is following – cautiously, but unalterably. Having started my career in newspapers, it saddens me to see them go, but it is, after all, reality.
No comments:
Post a Comment