Full Version: Newspapers.....irrelevant?
I subscribe to my local county paper and plan on subscribing to a larger town's paper in a few days. While I enjoy this immensely, the newsprint media is facing decreased circulation & low readership numbers. While I do check the net a lot, I do savor my "old media" reading time.
Questions for debate.
1.)Do you subscribe to a newspaper? Why or why not?
2.)Will newspapers eventually be phased out as "new media" websites and e-zines flourish?
3.)Are there any reasons why we should be worried about declining readership and circulaiton?
Questions for debate.
1.)Do you subscribe to a newspaper? Why or why not?
2.)Will newspapers eventually be phased out as "new media" websites and e-zines flourish?
3.)Are there any reasons why we should be worried about declining readership and circulaiton?
Edited to remove image in accordance with forum Rules.
1.)Do you subscribe to a newspaper? Why or why not?
Yes. I have a long and emotional tie to my local paper, The Fort Worth Star Telegram. I threw the paper while in high school. I literally deposited what Don McLean called “bad news on the doorstep” that February, 1959 morning Buddy, Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper were killed in a plane crash in Clear Lake, Iowa.
My first major in college was journalism, but I changed to political science, history and education.
2.)Will newspapers eventually be phased out as "new media" websites and e-zines flourish?
I hope not. The blogs and 24-hour-a-day cable outlets are instant media. Newspapers with a 24-hour deadline can take more time and perhaps get facts a little straighter. I think print media serves as a good check on other types.
3.)Are there any reasons why we should be worried about declining readership and circulation?
Decreased circulation is just another indication of a “dumbed down” society.
I would hate to lose my home town newspaper and I don’t think that will happen. I take the paper to the coffee shop and read it leisurely every morning. The coffee shop has a computer, but I don’t touch it unless mine is down. I spend enough time behind the 19” screen and like the variation a printed newspaper, conversation with friends and a game of cards provides.
Yes. I have a long and emotional tie to my local paper, The Fort Worth Star Telegram. I threw the paper while in high school. I literally deposited what Don McLean called “bad news on the doorstep” that February, 1959 morning Buddy, Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper were killed in a plane crash in Clear Lake, Iowa.
My first major in college was journalism, but I changed to political science, history and education.
2.)Will newspapers eventually be phased out as "new media" websites and e-zines flourish?
I hope not. The blogs and 24-hour-a-day cable outlets are instant media. Newspapers with a 24-hour deadline can take more time and perhaps get facts a little straighter. I think print media serves as a good check on other types.
3.)Are there any reasons why we should be worried about declining readership and circulation?
Decreased circulation is just another indication of a “dumbed down” society.
I would hate to lose my home town newspaper and I don’t think that will happen. I take the paper to the coffee shop and read it leisurely every morning. The coffee shop has a computer, but I don’t touch it unless mine is down. I spend enough time behind the 19” screen and like the variation a printed newspaper, conversation with friends and a game of cards provides.
1. Our household has subscribed for many years to the Chattanooga Times Free Press. (The reason why this newspaper has an odd title is that, like has happened in so many cities, two newspapers had to merge into one for economic reasons.) I like to read the daily newspaper. It's become something of a ritual around my house, as we sit at the table and look at each section and comment to each other on it. Like any decent newspaper, it offers a lot to interest various readers. I ignore the sports and business sections, but I look forward to reading the comics. And Sunday just wouldn't be the same at our house without the New York Times Sunday Crossword Puzzle and the Double-Acrostic.
I also use it as my main source of local, national, and international news. As far as I am concerned, the computer is for shopping and entertainment; the radio is for music; the television is for old movies; magazines are for entertainment; and the newspaper is for news. I like being able to glance over the headlines, and pick which articles I want to read in detail.
I like the fact that my newspaper, because it is a Frankenstein monster stitched together from two newspapers, offers two editorial sections, one from the left and one from the right. I enjoy getting to know what the Other Side thinks in their own words, so that I know I am not getting a distorted image of their opinions in a funhouse mirror.
No doubt some people, mostly the young, would say that you can get all this stuff off the computer. However, I will never enjoy long sessions of sitting at the computer and reading long blocks of text. I'll keep getting cheap ink on my fingers as long as I am able to do so.
2. Well, if you allow "eventually" to mean centuries, I suppose so. Some day in the far future, newspapers will seem as quaint as a town cryer. But not for a very long time, I suspect. We've been going strong for more than three hundred years now.
A Brief History of Newspapers
3. I'm not sure. It's a complex question, with a lot of factors. Here's a good article which looks at a lot of these factors:
Link
For one, thing, it's not 100% clear if readership is declining as much as circulation is:
It's interesting that one reason for declining circulation is the near-extinction of the afternoon newspaper.
Looking at the many charts in this article, you can see that reading the newspaper is becoming more and more a habit mostly of those with higher income and higher education -- the "cultural elite," if you will. Perhaps I should worry about that.
I also use it as my main source of local, national, and international news. As far as I am concerned, the computer is for shopping and entertainment; the radio is for music; the television is for old movies; magazines are for entertainment; and the newspaper is for news. I like being able to glance over the headlines, and pick which articles I want to read in detail.
I like the fact that my newspaper, because it is a Frankenstein monster stitched together from two newspapers, offers two editorial sections, one from the left and one from the right. I enjoy getting to know what the Other Side thinks in their own words, so that I know I am not getting a distorted image of their opinions in a funhouse mirror.
No doubt some people, mostly the young, would say that you can get all this stuff off the computer. However, I will never enjoy long sessions of sitting at the computer and reading long blocks of text. I'll keep getting cheap ink on my fingers as long as I am able to do so.
2. Well, if you allow "eventually" to mean centuries, I suppose so. Some day in the far future, newspapers will seem as quaint as a town cryer. But not for a very long time, I suspect. We've been going strong for more than three hundred years now.
A Brief History of Newspapers
QUOTE
The first true newspaper in English was the London Gazette of 1666.
3. I'm not sure. It's a complex question, with a lot of factors. Here's a good article which looks at a lot of these factors:
Link
For one, thing, it's not 100% clear if readership is declining as much as circulation is:
QUOTE
Some newspaper companies are now de-emphasizing paid circulation and pushing total readership as more meaningful. Readership helps capture multiple readers in a single household or people reading a copy in public settings like a coffee shop or waiting room. And readership studies can provide advertisers with more detailed information about who reads, what they read and how much time they spend with a newspaper. But the emphasis on readership is also a sign that the circulation story is not a good one.
It's interesting that one reason for declining circulation is the near-extinction of the afternoon newspaper.
QUOTE
By and large, when the afternoon papers that appealed more to working class readers died, those readers stopped reading newspapers.
Looking at the many charts in this article, you can see that reading the newspaper is becoming more and more a habit mostly of those with higher income and higher education -- the "cultural elite," if you will. Perhaps I should worry about that.
1.)Do you subscribe to a newspaper? Why or why not?
No, I don't personally subscribe, but the the dynamics of the newspaper and magazine industry are dramatically different in the UK market. The main difference being that subscriptions are dwarfed by news-stand sales.
Newspapers in particular have vanishingly small subscription sales. The geography makes it more or less unnecessary. Instead people are more likely to place an order with their local newsagent (usually specialist "CTN" stores selling Confectionery, Tobacco & News). This gives the advantage that one can choose to get a paper on, say, a Monday, Saturday and Sunday, rather than every single day.
The smaller size of the UK also means that national newspapers have always had a much more dominant market position relative to local papers, certainly when compared to the USA. The American habit of referring to British papers as "The London Such-&-such" or "the Such-&-such of London" (though you usually only do this if there is a US newspaper of the same name; most of you here call "The Guardian" just that) doesn't ring true here because though the editorial offices and most of the presses are certainly in London, they are no more a local London newspaper than the BBC is a local London broadcaster. London does have it's own local paper - The Evening Standard.
Notwithstanding that, "provincial" Britons (itself a vaguely pejorative term for people who don't live in London) often complain that the so-called "national" newspapers and broadcasters are overly London-focused, especially when it comes to things like theatre or restaurant reviews. That, however, has wider roots in the centralisation of our whole national life on London - the press are just a symptom.
Anyway, I have a paper delivered in this way. Every Saturday I get The Guardian, and on Sundays I get the Observer (from the same publishing stable) and the News of the World (from Murdoch's News International, it's the Sunday sister paper to the weekday Sun. I get this one mostly for entertainment value - it's a celebrity-centred funny paper more than a newspaper, really.)
2.)Will newspapers eventually be phased out as "new media" websites and e-zines flourish?
I worked in the newspaper & magazine distribution industry for 12 years, and rapidly became aware that the imminent death of the newspaper had been predicted since at least the invention of radio. Then again when TV took off. Then again in the face of the internet.
Newspapers have seen circulations in slow decline since their peak in the 1950s and 60s, and these have been pretty much irreversible (despite short and medium term blips and shifts from one title to another) despite the relaunches of broadsheets to tabloid size, the introduction of full colour printing, tv advertising, heavy promotion, and so on.
However, during the same period, profit margins have not appreciably suffered, due to supply chain and technical efficiencies, robust advertising markets, and economies of scale - several competing national newspapers share the same print presses, and the plants produce local papers when not in use overnight for the morning nationals.
The local evening paper (with the notable exception of the Standard has taken a bad beating, but even here, a few companies (e.g. Trinity Mirror, Newsquest and EMAP) have maintained their profitability by buying lots of local papers in different towns aroudn the country. (A US analogy might be someone like ClearChannel.)
At the same time as all of this, the consumer magazine market has seen circulations rocket, fuelled by dynamic new market sectors. Most of these successes have been exported around the world - Maxim and FHM have done very well in the USA, but they are licencesed versions of the UK originals. Get ready for weekly "lads mags" spun off from titles such as Nuts, which were the publishing phenomenon of 2004 over here.
Essentially, the success of the magazine market rests on this innovations and on the fragmentation of established ideas. A magazine succeeds and builds a readership. Several me-toos arrive and also succeed and carve out their own readership. Then they mature and have to compete with one another for readers, with none of them having the same kind of figures as the boom years, although the total across all of them is bigger than the peak. Then they go out of fashion and begin to decline.
Anyway, that's all a really long-winded way of saying that I think newspapers will continue their long slow decline, but I don't think it will be very much affected one way or the other by the rise of blogs and other new media news sources. I don't think that newspaper purchasing and readership are actually all that affected by other news media.
I would take a guess that someone who watches CNN, BBC News 24 or Fox News, posts or reads a regular blog, and checks online news sites is probably more likely to also read a newspaper (beacuse they are news junkies, like most of us here on
) than Joe Schmo who can't be bothered to keep up with the news any more.
I think that is the challenge facing all news sources - I don't think the long slow decline in newspaper circulations correlates to the rise in alternative news sources at all. Instead, I think it correlates much more closely with the long slow decline in electoral turnouts in most mature democracies. Which brings me to...
3.)Are there any reasons why we should be worried about declining readership and circulaiton?
Yes. I think it is a symptom of disengagement with the political process. Which is in turn a symptom of the sluggishness of democratic political systems to keep pace with what is occupying the minds of the population.
Just as a recent example, and because it's fresh in my mind, last weekend, at the afore-mentioned Live 8 concerts, we saw the one of the largest mass demonstrations of political will in human history. OK, so the music was in itself a big draw, but I don't believe that there were very many people who went along to see it who were actiely hostile to the "Make Poverty History" agenda that inspired it.
Traditional politics looks like it may respond positively, and the agenda may be a tad simplistic for political junkies like us (!), but when was the last time anyone in traditional politics in a mature democracy was able to generate this kind of popular support. The Gettysburg Address? VE Day?
I don't think that this is quite as straightforward as the "dumbing down" argument that often gets trotted out - large numbers of people still clearly do care passionately about issues that can only be decribed as political. What they don't seem to care about any more is party politics, and the traditional news media, especially in print, seem to be almost entirely focused on the minutiae of party politics.
Blogs and other online sources in part continue the fragmentation of the news market that was begun by the boom in cable tv stations, following the model of the magazine market. However, they also for the most part reject the conventions of the party political system (the first of which to go always seems to be civility, but there you go) and so to that degree they tap into the zeitgeist.
I don't think newspaper circulations will start to recover until someone invents a cheap portable re-writable electronic "paper" (actually someone's already invented it, but it isn't a commercial go-er yet), but more importantly, until the political system can reinvent itself in a way that engages large numbers of the disaffected.
No, I don't personally subscribe, but the the dynamics of the newspaper and magazine industry are dramatically different in the UK market. The main difference being that subscriptions are dwarfed by news-stand sales.
Newspapers in particular have vanishingly small subscription sales. The geography makes it more or less unnecessary. Instead people are more likely to place an order with their local newsagent (usually specialist "CTN" stores selling Confectionery, Tobacco & News). This gives the advantage that one can choose to get a paper on, say, a Monday, Saturday and Sunday, rather than every single day.
The smaller size of the UK also means that national newspapers have always had a much more dominant market position relative to local papers, certainly when compared to the USA. The American habit of referring to British papers as "The London Such-&-such" or "the Such-&-such of London" (though you usually only do this if there is a US newspaper of the same name; most of you here call "The Guardian" just that) doesn't ring true here because though the editorial offices and most of the presses are certainly in London, they are no more a local London newspaper than the BBC is a local London broadcaster. London does have it's own local paper - The Evening Standard.
Notwithstanding that, "provincial" Britons (itself a vaguely pejorative term for people who don't live in London) often complain that the so-called "national" newspapers and broadcasters are overly London-focused, especially when it comes to things like theatre or restaurant reviews. That, however, has wider roots in the centralisation of our whole national life on London - the press are just a symptom.
Anyway, I have a paper delivered in this way. Every Saturday I get The Guardian, and on Sundays I get the Observer (from the same publishing stable) and the News of the World (from Murdoch's News International, it's the Sunday sister paper to the weekday Sun. I get this one mostly for entertainment value - it's a celebrity-centred funny paper more than a newspaper, really.)
2.)Will newspapers eventually be phased out as "new media" websites and e-zines flourish?
I worked in the newspaper & magazine distribution industry for 12 years, and rapidly became aware that the imminent death of the newspaper had been predicted since at least the invention of radio. Then again when TV took off. Then again in the face of the internet.
Newspapers have seen circulations in slow decline since their peak in the 1950s and 60s, and these have been pretty much irreversible (despite short and medium term blips and shifts from one title to another) despite the relaunches of broadsheets to tabloid size, the introduction of full colour printing, tv advertising, heavy promotion, and so on.
However, during the same period, profit margins have not appreciably suffered, due to supply chain and technical efficiencies, robust advertising markets, and economies of scale - several competing national newspapers share the same print presses, and the plants produce local papers when not in use overnight for the morning nationals.
The local evening paper (with the notable exception of the Standard has taken a bad beating, but even here, a few companies (e.g. Trinity Mirror, Newsquest and EMAP) have maintained their profitability by buying lots of local papers in different towns aroudn the country. (A US analogy might be someone like ClearChannel.)
At the same time as all of this, the consumer magazine market has seen circulations rocket, fuelled by dynamic new market sectors. Most of these successes have been exported around the world - Maxim and FHM have done very well in the USA, but they are licencesed versions of the UK originals. Get ready for weekly "lads mags" spun off from titles such as Nuts, which were the publishing phenomenon of 2004 over here.
Essentially, the success of the magazine market rests on this innovations and on the fragmentation of established ideas. A magazine succeeds and builds a readership. Several me-toos arrive and also succeed and carve out their own readership. Then they mature and have to compete with one another for readers, with none of them having the same kind of figures as the boom years, although the total across all of them is bigger than the peak. Then they go out of fashion and begin to decline.
Anyway, that's all a really long-winded way of saying that I think newspapers will continue their long slow decline, but I don't think it will be very much affected one way or the other by the rise of blogs and other new media news sources. I don't think that newspaper purchasing and readership are actually all that affected by other news media.
I would take a guess that someone who watches CNN, BBC News 24 or Fox News, posts or reads a regular blog, and checks online news sites is probably more likely to also read a newspaper (beacuse they are news junkies, like most of us here on
) than Joe Schmo who can't be bothered to keep up with the news any more. I think that is the challenge facing all news sources - I don't think the long slow decline in newspaper circulations correlates to the rise in alternative news sources at all. Instead, I think it correlates much more closely with the long slow decline in electoral turnouts in most mature democracies. Which brings me to...
3.)Are there any reasons why we should be worried about declining readership and circulaiton?
Yes. I think it is a symptom of disengagement with the political process. Which is in turn a symptom of the sluggishness of democratic political systems to keep pace with what is occupying the minds of the population.
Just as a recent example, and because it's fresh in my mind, last weekend, at the afore-mentioned Live 8 concerts, we saw the one of the largest mass demonstrations of political will in human history. OK, so the music was in itself a big draw, but I don't believe that there were very many people who went along to see it who were actiely hostile to the "Make Poverty History" agenda that inspired it.
Traditional politics looks like it may respond positively, and the agenda may be a tad simplistic for political junkies like us (!), but when was the last time anyone in traditional politics in a mature democracy was able to generate this kind of popular support. The Gettysburg Address? VE Day?
I don't think that this is quite as straightforward as the "dumbing down" argument that often gets trotted out - large numbers of people still clearly do care passionately about issues that can only be decribed as political. What they don't seem to care about any more is party politics, and the traditional news media, especially in print, seem to be almost entirely focused on the minutiae of party politics.
Blogs and other online sources in part continue the fragmentation of the news market that was begun by the boom in cable tv stations, following the model of the magazine market. However, they also for the most part reject the conventions of the party political system (the first of which to go always seems to be civility, but there you go) and so to that degree they tap into the zeitgeist.
I don't think newspaper circulations will start to recover until someone invents a cheap portable re-writable electronic "paper" (actually someone's already invented it, but it isn't a commercial go-er yet), but more importantly, until the political system can reinvent itself in a way that engages large numbers of the disaffected.
1.)Do you subscribe to a newspaper? Why or why not?
Yep, have since I was a teenager, and even while I was abroad, my mom would mail me a saturday paper everyonce in a while- for the local flavor- and that will probably save print for a long time- now I even read my paper on-line sometimes for the links.
2.)Will newspapers eventually be phased out as "new media" websites and e-zines flourish?
Right now, I don't see a local alternative to the newspaper- so, no. Also, the local classified adds have no alternatives either- and not everyone has the net yet!
3.)Are there any reasons why we should be worried about declining readership and circulaiton?
I don't konw- I am sure they will lose continued market share as electronic media is more and more accesable to everyone- but it is sure hard to beat 50 cents for a weekday paper and 1.25 for a sunday paper- instead of a few hun for a computer! LOL
Yep, have since I was a teenager, and even while I was abroad, my mom would mail me a saturday paper everyonce in a while- for the local flavor- and that will probably save print for a long time- now I even read my paper on-line sometimes for the links.
2.)Will newspapers eventually be phased out as "new media" websites and e-zines flourish?
Right now, I don't see a local alternative to the newspaper- so, no. Also, the local classified adds have no alternatives either- and not everyone has the net yet!
3.)Are there any reasons why we should be worried about declining readership and circulaiton?
I don't konw- I am sure they will lose continued market share as electronic media is more and more accesable to everyone- but it is sure hard to beat 50 cents for a weekday paper and 1.25 for a sunday paper- instead of a few hun for a computer! LOL
1.)Do you subscribe to a newspaper? Why or why not?
Yes. Though I am continually disappointed with its quality, especially in comparison to other California papers. I think the best reason to subscribe to a local paper is for the local news. Truth be told, I get most of my national and international news from the Internet and NPR -- but local news is only available in print. The San Diego Union Tribune is a conservative newspaper, and sometimes it's interesting to see how the news is slanted in one way or another by comparison to other news sources. Also, the coupons are a nice fringe benefit.
If I use coupons I can usually pay for the subscription in grocery savings.
2.)Will newspapers eventually be phased out as "new media" websites and e-zines flourish?
I doubt it. The biggest problem with electronic media is that it's not tactile. There seems to be something primal about the way books, magazines, and newspapers make us feel while we're reading them. You can't carry the computer around as easily or tear it up (or use it to clean up various things around the house -- Harry Shearer calls the LA Times, the "LA Dog Trainer"). Maybe there will be an electronic version in some distant future that will have the same "feel" to it.
3.)Are there any reasons why we should be worried about declining readership and circulaiton?
Newspapers are still very influential parts of the culture. The Internet is too fast -- too much Internet material is based on inaccurate or preliminary information. Magazines are too slow. Even the information in weeklies is sometimes rendered irrelevant by the time they come out. Probably the biggest reason to worry is, like Julian says, the disconnection with society in general. Our culture is increasingly fragmented as people specialize in their particular fields. Keeping up with their own field is hard enough without having to keep up with the news in general.
I remember an ad campaign from the San Jose Mercury News when I used to subscribe to that one. It essentially was designed to give "permisson" to its readers to not feel obligated to read the entire paper, "just the parts that interest you." I think that was indicative of how people might have felt there was too much information in a general news source that didn't specifically interest them.
Yes. Though I am continually disappointed with its quality, especially in comparison to other California papers. I think the best reason to subscribe to a local paper is for the local news. Truth be told, I get most of my national and international news from the Internet and NPR -- but local news is only available in print. The San Diego Union Tribune is a conservative newspaper, and sometimes it's interesting to see how the news is slanted in one way or another by comparison to other news sources. Also, the coupons are a nice fringe benefit.
If I use coupons I can usually pay for the subscription in grocery savings.2.)Will newspapers eventually be phased out as "new media" websites and e-zines flourish?
I doubt it. The biggest problem with electronic media is that it's not tactile. There seems to be something primal about the way books, magazines, and newspapers make us feel while we're reading them. You can't carry the computer around as easily or tear it up (or use it to clean up various things around the house -- Harry Shearer calls the LA Times, the "LA Dog Trainer"). Maybe there will be an electronic version in some distant future that will have the same "feel" to it.
3.)Are there any reasons why we should be worried about declining readership and circulaiton?
Newspapers are still very influential parts of the culture. The Internet is too fast -- too much Internet material is based on inaccurate or preliminary information. Magazines are too slow. Even the information in weeklies is sometimes rendered irrelevant by the time they come out. Probably the biggest reason to worry is, like Julian says, the disconnection with society in general. Our culture is increasingly fragmented as people specialize in their particular fields. Keeping up with their own field is hard enough without having to keep up with the news in general.
I remember an ad campaign from the San Jose Mercury News when I used to subscribe to that one. It essentially was designed to give "permisson" to its readers to not feel obligated to read the entire paper, "just the parts that interest you." I think that was indicative of how people might have felt there was too much information in a general news source that didn't specifically interest them.
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