A Question About Newspapers' Future

I ran across the image atop this column and it made me smile. It seems wrong on so many levels. World's Greatest Newspaper Television Podcast? Yet the image is actually an amazing symbol of media transformation over the past century.

Seeing the image reminded me of a recent email exchange from a Canadian journalism professor about the future of newspapers. He asked about a quote he had read where I cited Star Wars. My response is below.

"I haven't seen the article, but I do recognize that statement because I've said it in the past. What I've said is in relation to the future of print media. 'Science fiction is a good predictor of the future, and I don't see anyone in Star Wars reading a newspaper.'  (By the way, you could substitute 'reading a newspaper' with watching TV, listening to a radio, or reading a yellow pages book, and the quote still works). I've also typically noted after making that statement that 'the future' could be 500 years from now, or 100, or 50, but it's certainly not next week. The question is, when will that day come, and how can newspaper companies make the difficult transition from delivering their information a printed form -- which is definitely in decline -- to digital forms entirely?

"I think what you'll eventually see in the Americas is the disappearance of a 'daily' newspaper over the next few years and the closure of many metro or larger newspapers. What's left after 2023 will be small newspapers that publish once a week in smaller markets and two to three times a week in larger ones. Predicting the timing of everything isn't easy, and it opens the door to criticism from those who want to point out how many times the death of newspapers has been predicted. I've found that the inevitability of death becomes debated only when you try to pick a date.

"I also think you have to be careful not to kill a product before its time. From an advertising perspective, print newspapers are powerful, still. They reach a concentrated audiences of more educated, weathier, engaged buyers who are leaning forward, gleaning information from ads and circulars. You don't find people engaged with broadcast media advertising. They're leaning back, not leaning forward, and they're generally there more for the entertainment. Print is a different and quite powerful environment, and I believe it will stay around longer than broadcast media competitors would like you to believe.

"It's important to note that I am talking about print, not about 'newspaper companies.' Some of these companies will collapse under financial pressure and from the inability to see and sieze the new and growing opportunity right in front of them. Others will transform into something else. It's similar to what happened to blacksmiths a century ago. They saw their customers driving automobiles instead of horses and carriages, so they responded by turning their shops into automobile service stations and car dealerships. They weren't necessarily brilliant; they just needed to put food on the table. They went from serving the horse & carriage needs of the community to serving their broader transportation needs. So, successful companies will go from being 'newspaper' companies to 'news & information' companies.

"Newspaper companies actually have a 99-year history of making this type of transformation (as represented in the image above this column). In 1920, the new electronic media that challenged the U.S. newspaper industry took the form of radio. Many of the radio stations were established by newspaper publishers and, in fact, today bear the call letters that reflect the names of their papers. WGN-AM stands for World's Greatest Newspaper. WSBT-AM came from South Bend Tribune, and KCRG-AM was named for the Cedar Rapids Gazette. There are many others. In the late 1940s, the next wave of electronic media was television. The same thing happened. Publishers, who also owned radio stations, secured licenses and started TV stations. They were truly in the 'media' business.

"Today's 'new electronic media' wave poses a different and more complex challenge.  Unlike their heyday in the 20th century, newspapers in the 21st century are in wrenching, secular decline. The companies that own them do not have the money to invest deeply in digital ventures. They invest some, but it's often inadequate. And they rationalize that inadequate investment by diverting the attention of their existing staffs to conduct digital affairs, which is a half-measure. 

"What was so different in the 1900s that newspaper owners invested so heavily and created separate staffs to run their new media ventures? With radio and TV, you needed to invest a lot of money in a transmitter, new audio and video equipment, a tower, and a studio. You even needed a license to get into the business. When the Internet came along, newspaper owners were fooled into thinking that digital media was an incremental add-on to the print product that they could handle internally, and cheaply. Some still believe that, and certainly their brethren in the radio and TV industries are thinking that as well. Those are the ones I worry most about. They are the equivalent of blacksmiths trying to fix automobiles with hammers and tongs instead of investing in wrenches and gas pumps.

"In each of the other waves of electronic distribution in the 1900s, entirely new businesses were created and built around the capabilities and demands that the radio offered in 1920 or TV offered in 1948. And thank God for that wisdom. Think of how radio might have been had craggy newspaper editors been put in charge of radio programming, or if newspaper reporters were forced to write their stories for the paper, then sit in front of a TV camera and read them.

"I believe the future is bright for publishers who possess a broader perspective and the courage to invest real money. I see many Jedi leaders out there, actually, making those investments and plodding through this difficult transition. They're likely to succeed, because they are untethering their growth opportunity from the print business model and its mechanisms and investing in the rapidly-expanding news and information business, which requires broader, different business models.