David Lauder may not realize but his piece in today’s Tribune illustrates nicely why newspapers are folding. Here’s a snippet from his piece:
Some 136 newspapers in the United States have closed in the past year, news deserts are expanding and web traffic to the nation’s top newspapers has dropped markedly this decade, according to a report issued Monday that struggles to find hope for the beleaguered news industry.
struggles to find hope for the beleaguered news industry.While entrepreneurs are launching digital news sites, often backed by philanthropies, they haven’t sprouted at a rate that makes up for the losses, the report from Northwestern University said. the report from Northwestern University said.
Taking a step back for an even broader look at the industry is even more troubling. Since 2005, the numbers of newspapers published in the United States has dropped from 7,325 in 2005 to 4,490 now, said the Medill State of Local News report. Daily newspaper circulation that averaged between 50 and 60 million people at the turn of the century now stands at just over 15 million.
An estimated 365,460 people worked at newspapers in 2005, and now that number is down to 91,550, the report said. Two decades ago, 71% of journalists worked at newspapers and now just 29% of the nearly 42,000 working journalists are at newspapers.
He’s just regurgitating Northwestern’s press release. There is no reporting here and precious little value-added.
What use are newspapers that are just passing along press releases or rephrased articles from wire services? The “news deserts” he laments are being created have been mirages for years.
And you don’t need a Medill School of Journalism to teach repeating press releases and adding opinion. It can be done by ChatGPT.
Local papers have always run pieces by national writers or done some of the press release stuff, especially on non-controversial stuff without time urgency. Now that circulation numbers are down so badly papers have few actual writers. If they limit their published paper to just stuff done by their own writers you are going to get just 2 or 3 pages. They need this kind of stuff to pad things so it looks like people are getting something larger than a menu. I think its a real loss but dont see it changing soon.
Steve
Why Newspapers Are Closing
Most people don’t want actual reporting, which often entails uncomfortable truths and challenging preconceptions, preferring comforting untruths and confirmation of prejudices.
There is a need, the local papers can attend the various public meetings and objectively report the goings on, which dry short minutes posted a few weeks to months later to poorly maintained lowest bidder web site don’t do. There is value in knowing who is arrested and for what, whose house burned up, where the fish are biting and the ever popular first kill in deer season (which lately seems to be 10-12 year olds in a Strawberry Shortcake jumper). then there’s high school sports, the youth soccer league scores, where the community dumpster will be, etc. Problem all this requires work which ad sales don’t cover any more. Amateurs try to fill in these gaps but burn out quick.
If there is a solution, let me know.
We used to get the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Columbus Dispatch, and the Mount Vernon News. Now we only get the Mt. Vernon News, the local paper, and only a weekly, exactly for Mr. Moffett’s reasons. I stopped the other subscriptions, because I do not trust those papers to deliver honest news.
There no reason to buy a national newspaper like the WSJ when there is an almost infinity of news sources and opinion on literally every topic possible for free in the internet.
And besides, I can rely on our gracious host to search the NYT and WSJ for me, and to report their recent lunacies and atrocities without me paying for it. For which I am exceedingly grateful.
Thank you Mr. Shuler.
PS. Your need to get out of Chicago and Illinois is increasing.
One of the additional issues is consolidation in the newspaper business. When large newspaper conglomerates acquire small local newspapers, they are strongly motivated to reduce costs to increase their narrow margins. Reporting is one of the first things to go which, ironically, erodes the value of small local newspapers.
The trope in old historical dramas of the town newspaper run by a combination publisher-editor-reporter-printer (with or without an assistant or two) isn’t fictional. That’s the way it used to be. Of course, in those days “news” might have been weeks or even months old. Go back in the archives of the NYT some time to look at the coverage of World War I or the Spanish-American War.
The problem is ultimately similar to several other issues in our society – people want something (or say they want something) but don’t want to pay for it.
I support a few small news organizations, like the Colorado Sun (https://coloradosun.com/), which do excellent work, but I’m the exception. My local paper’s website is unreadable without an ad blocker. I found that if I subscribe, only some of the obtrusive ads go away, so I cancelled. I guess I’m part of the problem, but paying ought to get me an ad-free experience online.
Only the NYT seems to be successful, and while I don’t think figures are published, I’ve read that the games and puzzles are a significant factor driving subscriptions. The NYT buying Wordle ties into that theory.
The unfortunate reality is that the advertising and classified ad model for funding news reporting no longer works, and no one has yet come up with a viable alternative.
Substack is the latest attempt. We’ll need to wait and see whether that subscription model is viable.
It’s a pain for me because, well, I can’t afford the subscriptions I would want. I don’t begrudge the creators their attempt to make money from their writing. I just don’t have the money.
Substack is mostly opinion journalism at this point and most of the successful people there were established prior, which gave them a base readership to build on. I don’t think there are any actual news organizations there anymore. The Free Press sort of is in some cases, but it is mostly opinion. The Dispatch started there, but then they moved off the platform and expanded a great deal and are also mostly opinion.
Opinion is not something we are lacking, the problem is fact base reporting.
I agree with you on the Substack pricing, I can only justify one or two subscriptions. Between those, the NYT, WAPO (which my wife likes) subscriptions plus the Colorado Sun and a small community nonprofit paper, were spending about $70/month just for “news.”
I tried the Free Press for a while. It seemed like largely opinion pieces from the beginning. Also tried All Sides and Ground News for a bit. They offer stories from other sources labeling them as from the right or left. It’s from a fairly broad group of sources. There is some original reporting but not much in depth and little in the way of follow up. Reading those sources you learn stuff like the Repubs love Trump and the Dems hate him. They didnt cost that much but didnt seem like I was gaining much new info.
Steve