Media consultant Vin Crosbie has created a stir with a thought-provoking two-of-three-parts on the transformation of the newspaper industry.
The short take:
Vin's two pieces so far:
Transforming American Newspapers (Part 1)
Transforming American Newspapers (Part 2)
And the react:
Amy Gahran in Poyntor's E-Media Tidbits: Looking Past the Death of Newspapers
Mark Hamilton's Notes of a Teacher: Watching the demise of the newspaper
Weblog: Opinion: Is the US newspaper situation really that bad?
Prosthetic Device: Why Newspapers are Dying
Jay Small: Link bucket: Catching up
Thoughs of Nigel: Newspapers not in a cyclical crisis but a grave one with fundemental changes happening
Leonard Witt's PJNet: Vin Crosbie on the Imminent Death of Newspapers
If the newspapers won't survive (a more than slightly scary thought to someone who has spent an adult lifetime in the business), will the businesses that ran them evolve into something else or merely die as Crosbie suggests?
The short take:
More than half of the 1,439 daily newspapers in the United States won't exist in print, e-paper, or Web site formats by the end of next decade. They will go out of business. The few national dailies -- namely USA Today, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal -- will have diminished but continuing existences via the Web and e-paper, but not in print. The first dailies to expire will be the regional dailies, which have already begun to implode. Those plus a very many smaller dailies, most of whose circulations are steadily evaporating, will decline to levels at which they will no longer be economically viable to publish daily. Further layoffs of staffs by those newspapers' companies cannot avoid this fate - not so long as daily circulations and readerships continually and increasingly decline. (Layoffs are becoming little more than the remedy of bleeding that was used in attempts to cure ill patients during the 18th Century and cannot restore the industry's health.)But this is one not to skip the long version.
Vin's two pieces so far:
Transforming American Newspapers (Part 1)
Transforming American Newspapers (Part 2)
And the react:
Amy Gahran in Poyntor's E-Media Tidbits: Looking Past the Death of Newspapers
Mark Hamilton's Notes of a Teacher: Watching the demise of the newspaper
Weblog: Opinion: Is the US newspaper situation really that bad?
Prosthetic Device: Why Newspapers are Dying
Jay Small: Link bucket: Catching up
Thoughs of Nigel: Newspapers not in a cyclical crisis but a grave one with fundemental changes happening
Leonard Witt's PJNet: Vin Crosbie on the Imminent Death of Newspapers
If the newspapers won't survive (a more than slightly scary thought to someone who has spent an adult lifetime in the business), will the businesses that ran them evolve into something else or merely die as Crosbie suggests?
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Last year in Nashville at the TPA conference, I brought up that Seymour Hersh had made a statement about the NYT going web only. (This was the day the astronaut was in the diaper and Nicole Smith died so there were other PRESSING matters that day **snark**) because some of the old timers in print told me I didn't know what I was talking about. I showed them the quote.
One man, who will remain nameless, who is a publisher told me I needed to, and I quote "Quit showing my ignorance."
I think we have less than ten years, but of course, I'm ignorant according to those who won't even have a dialog about it.
Sorry to rant. It just still gets me sometime.
I think by now everything that anyone said "naw, that'll never happen" has happened in the newspaper biz, is happening now or everyone can see it will happen -- and soon. These are indeed strange times.