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A comment to last week’s article on the free-fall of the daily newspaper industry made a pretty good point (yes, it can happen). “Demosthenes2” (whoever he is) did not challenge my main thesis that the basis trouble is that newspapers are giving it away free on the web, but he said the problem is even more fundamental – people don’t want newspapers anymore; they get everything on the web and will continue to do so. He adds, rather bluntly, “What will be left to the print market in 20 years? Very little – get used to it.”

In other words, any of us who are holdouts for print are the buggy whip makers of the 21st century. I have to admit he’s got a good point there; the trend is running strong in that direction. But not so fast! We buggy whippers aren’t ready to give up yet.

What I was trying to say last week was to analyze how the downhill slide happened in the present mode — that it was the hubris of the industry in trying to maintain their monopolies that urged them to give out all the freebies. You know, one of the sidelights in all this is that the Really Big Brains have suddenly come out saying, “Yeah, we shouldn’t have been giving all our news away free on the web.” Where have they been?

And here’s a thought (one the Really Big Brains haven’t come out with yet): Admitting how they all got into this mess, and then reversing it, might be the way out.

As a starter, you may have noticed that all the blowups – Denver, Philadelphia, Chicago, Tucson, Seattle, maybe even San Francisco – are big city papers. They are most vulnerable. Less vulnerable are small and medium-size cities (like Richmond). Probably three factors are most significant in this difference: 1) While most big city papers are monopolies (like all daily papers), their competition from other media is more intense than in cities the size of Richmond; 2) I’m not close enough to the business anymore to be absolutely sure, but traditionally, the relative cost of both personnel and newsprint have been higher for larger papers, while their incomes from ads and subscriptions are less, in relation to costs, and 3) To get their mitts onto the big city papers, the national chains went into hock up to their eyebrows (values would keep going up), and now with the serious downturn, they can’t carry the debt load. Add to this, delivery costs are higher in the big cities. Web costs are lower on all these things.

So the web wins? Well, there’s still one BIG problem. No one’s figured out how to get paid for all that dandy news people like to get for free. There have been some interesting ideas lately (about time), but even if some genius comes up with a winner, the answer is still the web rather than print. And some of us old fogies don’t look forward to spending the rest of our lives glued to a computer screen.

As usual, this is running too long. So, if you want to hear some new answers, come back next week for what should be (hopefully) the last in this series.

–Vic Jose

Vic Jose :: Mar.20.2009 :: Uncategorized ::

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