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The Decline of Newspapers

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The Decline of Newspapers The Decline of Newspapers • Circulation is plummeting • Revenue is crashing • Newsroom employment is down • News media under attack • What are some possible implications • What can be done The best of times for Newspapers • Last half of 20th Century • “Objective” reporting on news pages was the goal • Opinions confined to editorial page, op ed page and sometimes columnists • Readers had a shared understanding of the facts because of the attempt to be objective in reporting. • Not just sources of news, but also key for commerce: Display and classified ads Today’s reality: Circulation is plummeting • Over the past 15 years, more than one in five newspapers papers in the United States has shuttered • Print readers are disappearing even faster than print newspapers, and the pace appears to be accelerating • Over the past 15 years, total weekday circulation — which includes both dailies and weeklies – declined 40 percent, from 122 million to 73 million, for a loss of 49 million • In the last four years alone, newspapers shed 20 million in circulation, an indication that the pace of the downward slide may be increasing Circulation is plummeting • The decline in daily circulation was driven by the largest dailies shedding existing readers, especially those in outlying areas • In 2018, only 53 dailies have a print circulation greater than 100,000, compared with nearly twice that many – 102 dailies – in 2004 • Two-thirds of the 1,283 dailies still publishing have circulations under 15,000. If print circulation continues to drop at current rates, Nicco Mele, director of the Shorenstein Center for Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University, predicts that as many as one-half of the nation’s surviving dailies will no longer be in print by 2021 Circulation is plummeting • In contrast, the decline in weekly readership resulted primarily from the shuttering of 1,700 papers • The average circulation of the country’s surviving 5,829 weeklies is 8,000, roughly the same as it was in 2004 • Print readership for both dallies and weeklies is probably much less than what is reported in industry databases Today: Newspaper revenue is crashing Circulation revenue more or less flat. Traditionally it covered distribution and maybe production costs Today’s reality: Newspaper revenue is crashing • Two types of ads: classified and display • Classified ads were a “license to print money” Very lucrative • Newspaper classified advertising peaked in 2000 at $19.6 billion. In 2012, the most recent year for which data are available from the Newspaper Association of America, classified advertising was $4.6 billion — a drop of about 77 percent • In 2000, classified ads accounted for about 40 percent of newspaper industry ad revenue. In 2012, classifieds made up about 18 percent of the ad revenue in an industry that was barely half the size it had been a decade earlier Major cause if ad decline: Online competition • Research has shown that Craigslist cost the newspaper industry $5.4 billion from 2000-2007 • Google, and Facebook get 75 to 80 percent of online advertising revenue and don’t pay for content • Lower circulation usually means ad lower rates Newsroom employment is falling • Faced with declining revenues, publishers cut newsroom employment to stay in business. • With newspaper websites, deadlines became constant. Reporters forced to do even more with less. • 2016, for the third year in a row, the CareerCast survey of the best and worst jobs in the U.S. reports that a newspaper reporter is the worst career. It pointed to fewer job prospects because of publications closing down, and declining ad revenue providing less money for salaries. Average annual salary for print journalists is $37,200 Situation is made worse by attacks on media “Intimidation and vilification of the press is now a global phenomenon,” the former Fox News anchor Shepard Smith, who quit the network this year after disagreements about its Trump coverage, said at a gala last month. “We don’t have to look far for evidence of that.” On Twitter, President Trump deployed the phrase “fake news” 273 times in 2019 — 50 percent more often than he did in 2018 • To Joel Simon, executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, these rhetorical attacks have rippled outward. Globally, Mr. Simon said in an interview, at least 30 journalists were jailed in 2019 under charges of reporting false news in 2019.The daily White House press briefing was once a ritual of Washington life and, viewed abroad, a potent symbol of accountability in government. In 2017, the Trump administration held about 100 formal briefings; in 2018, that number dropped by roughly half • The 2019 Reporters Without Borders (RSF) Index shows continued deterioration of press freedom in the United States, while its northern neighbor remains ranked close to the top of the Index • Though both nations have historically respected the press, journalists in these countries are being challenged by the very institutions on which they report • While the journalism community grew increasingly wary of the climate of hate targeting the American press since President Trump’s 2016 election, the worst case scenario unfolded on June 28, 2018, when a gunman entered the Capital Gazette newsroom in Annapolis, Maryland, killing four journalists and one other staff member in a targeted attack on a local newspaper the shooter had long held a grudge against The results: “News Deserts” • There are almost 200 of the 3,143 counties in the United States without any paper – weekly or daily – creating a news vacuum for about 3.2 million residents and public officials • An additional 1,449 counties, ranging in size from several hundred residents to more than a million, have only one newspaper, usually a weekly that may struggle to find the resources to cover dozens of other communities in that county, spread out over many miles • And more than 2,000 counties do not have a daily newspaper, which means residents in those counties are mostly reliant on either social media or news outlets in adjacent counties or faraway cities for their daily news feed. These distant news outlets – daily metro newspapers, as well as regional television stations — provide only sporadic coverage • Current Population Survey conducted an analysis between the closure of the Rocky Mountain News, the Seattle Post- Intelligencer Newspaper and a significant decline in civic engagement of citizens in Denver and Seattle. The results suggest that this decline might be attributed to the newspaper closures. “The data from the CPS indicate that civic engagement in Seattle and Denver dropped 30% significantly from 2008 to 2009 The results: People relying on other sources for information • Television and online sights are increasingly information sources. • Digital sources often re-enforce users opinions • Cable television is the same — Fox, CNN, MSNBC • Social media, friends, google alerts What does the future offer? • Quite possible print media is going through what Shumpeter called “creative destruction.” • What will replace print model? • Fragmented media that reinforces a reader’s beliefs • Possibly new online models that don’t have the historic costs of print What does the future offer? • Maybe not-for-profit models like ProPublica • “We rely on reader support, and your donation to ProPublica will help our well-researched, investigative journalism shine a light on corruption and hold those in power accountable.” https:// donate.propublica.org/give/141278/#!/donation/checkout • Possibly new online models that don’t have the historic costs of print.businessman Eric Barnes took note of deep cuts at Gannett’s local paper, the Commercial Appeal, and launched a new, independent website called the Daily Memphian. He brought on some Commercial Appeal journalists, starting with 25 staffers and growing to 35. He hired the executive editor of the Indianapolis Star, one of Gannett’s top papers, to run the site, and he now has 11,000 paying subscribers References 1. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/21/reader-center/local-news-deserts.html 2. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/ghost-papers-and-news-deserts-will-america-ever-get-its-local-news- back/2019/12/25/2f57c7d4-1ddd-11ea-9ddd-3e0321c180e7_story.html 3. https://www.usnewsdeserts.com/reports/expanding-news-desert/loss-of-local-news/loss-newspapers-readers/ 4. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/30/business/media/trump-media-2019.html 5. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/four-new-years-resolutions-for-the-media/2019/12/30/6431c7f4-2b4b-11ea-bcb3- ac6482c4a92f_story.html 6. https://www.journalism.org/fact-sheet/newspapers/ 7. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/07/09/u-s-newsroom-employment-has-dropped-by-a-quarter-since-2008/ 8. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/10/04/newsroom-employees-earn-less-than-other-college-educated-workers-in- u-s/ 9. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_newspapers 10. https://www.poynter.org/reporting-editing/2010/classified-ad-revenue-down-70-percent-in-10-years-with-one-bright-spot/ 11.https://www.minnpost.com/business/2014/02/how-craigslist-killed-newspapers-golden-goose/ 12. https://www.poynter.org/business-work/2019/the-rich-get-richer-local-broadcast-readies-for-a-3-2-billion-political-ad- bonanza-in-2020/.
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