This week there was yet another ‘It’s The End Of The World’ comment on newspapers — this from Arthur Sulzberger, owner, chairman and publisher of the New York Times:
Given the constant erosion of the printed press, do you see the New York Times still being printed in five years?
“I really don’t know whether we’ll be printing the Times in five years, and you know what? I don’t care either,” he says.
Sulzberger is focusing on how to best manage the transition from print to Internet.
“The Internet is a wonderful place to be, and we’re leading there,” he points out.
The Times, in fact, has doubled its online readership to 1.5 million a day to go along with its 1.1 million subscribers for the print edition.
Sulzberger says the New York Times is on a journey that will conclude the day the company decides to stop printing the paper. That will mark the end of the transition. It’s a long journey, and there will be bumps on the road, says the man at the driving wheel, but he doesn’t see a black void ahead.
The fact is: newpapers are on very hard times. The Times and other papers are seemingly cutting corners. The L.A. Times (my favorite newspaper) seems to be morphing more into my former employer The San Diego Union-Tribune and the San Diego UT, which once prided itself on vigorous zoning coverage, seems to be consolidating at a time when it is offering buyouts to some longtime employees.
Unquestionably, the Internet is having an impact. (Sorry that TMV is putting so many journalists out of work). However, predictions that newspapers will vanish have been around for many years. We’ve told it before and we’ll tell it again:
In 1982, I moved to San Diego from Wichita, Kansas to switch from working for the (now defunct) Knight-Ridder chain to the Copley-owned newspaper here. My former political-science professor invited me to Los Angeles, where he was going to be at a get-together that would include one of the region’s biggest names in journalism education. He wanted to introduce me to one of the country’s top journalism profs.
I like professors (I had, for a period of time at Colgate University, considered becoming one). But when this guy heard I worked for a newspaper and wasn’t 21 years old, he literally looked down his nose and me and said to me with a sneer:
“We give out scholarships and maybe you know of some young journalists that’ll qualify. You don’t. You’re too old. And you’re also a dinosaur. Within five years newspapers in print form will be gone. You’re going to be out of a job.”
He talked about newspapers soon being delivered by being beamed into homes where they would be printed out, or read only on computer. He talked about experiments by newspaper companies using cable technology. This was the era when Knight-Ridder, The Christian Science Monitor and others tinkered with other options but the big stampede to other forms didn’t happen.
Fast foward to 2007. It’s clear that young people are NOT reading newspapers the way they used to (if at all). Even the once sacred comics page has changed. (Get the bull book reprints of Popeye and Dick Tracy and you can see how comics once contained a lot more printed dialogue than they do now).
But lest we forget:
There was a time, shortly before the Internet took off, where some folks wondered if the printed word would survive. But then came the Internet and blogs with their lure of nonstop posts and open comments were people can scream and demonize each other to their heart’s content on a regular basis. How could people refuse THAT? The printed (or cyberspace) word is making a huge comeback, even if magazines seem ill. This year — for the first time ever — I got a Publisher’s Clearinghouse sweepstakes envelope that did not offer a SINGLE magazine — just small, often junky, merchandise items.
But the written word lives and thrives.
And never forget: predictions of a grandiose future don’t always actually materalize.
Look at cable television. When I was at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism going for my masters, one paper I had to write was on the upcoming revolution cable television would bring when it hit the scene. My paper was written during the days of broadcast television, when you had three main networks and limited channels. Cable, it was predicted, would offer all kinds of channels to enrich viewership.
And today? You can choose from 500 channels — 85 percent of them lousy.
Also, look at old films and TV shows (watch The Jetsons sometime) and it’s clear that the vision of the future at a given time is usually a tad more radical than what actually materializes.
Most likely, newspapers will continue to downsize by consolidating and doing away or reducing things such as zoned coverage.
The news hole will continue to shrink due to shrinking readership and ad revenues. Staffs will be trimmed via attrition, buyouts or layoffs.
But there are some thing about newspapers that can’t be duplicated. For instance, did you ever try and read news from a computer while sitting on a toilet?
PREDICTION: It’s highly unlikely that in 2012 the New York Times won’t be available in printed form anymore. Yes, the print edition maybe part of a larger picture where a lot has changed — and weblogs such as this will have to adapt as well. Are readers going (even young ones) going to be increasingly satisfied with weblogs that are usually op-ed pages and/or rants from a partisan viewpoint? Most will be forced to start offering a bit more — such as ORIGINAL reporting.
In other words, don’t go to Vegas and bet that five years from now Maureen Dowd will be emailing bloggers to exchange links, writing “heh” at the end of her sentences, or punching a cash register at Wal Mart.
But, Maureen, if there is a time when you want to exchange links, just drop me a line.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.