Seems like the demise of newspapers is on people’s minds. I stopped at the Plymouth shop of glass blower Don Schneider, who gave me his take on the Detroit dailies’ apparently unstoppable descent toward doom.
The Free Press and the News have blown it, he told me. Blown it multiple times in their ill-begotten Joint Operating Agreement, forcing a strike from which they never recovered and now downsizing themselves nearly out of existence.
After my talk with Don, I opened an email from a former Free Press colleague who’s still at the paper. She told me how a manager explained that the recent departure of 16 Free Press staffers through buyouts won’t add to the workload of those who remain because Gannett has a plan: The gurus in Virginia who own Michigan’s oldest daily will simply reduce the paper’s size so there’s less copy to write and edit and less space for photos.
Presto — less work! What geniuses! That’s on top of what I estimate as a 35 percent reduction in news space since mid-2005. You can’t help wonder if readers notice.
Of course they do!
People are, generally speaking, pretty doggone smart.
Today, 12-11-07, I opened an email asking if if I’d talk to a group of suburban women who badly want someone in the news industry to explain to them what’s going on with their newspapers. Well, I’m retired from the news biz, but I’m always glad to talk.
It happens that early this year I was asked to speak to a group of community college students about, guess what? “The Future of Newspapers.” I gave the talk at Schoolcraft College. Here, with a few changes, is the speech on “The Future of Newspapers.â€
Man, that’s a killer. Who came up with that topic, anyway? I’d like to meet that person. No, I’d like to…Never mind. I agreed to talk about The Future of Newspapers, so here I am. But wait a minute. What do we mean by newspapers? Are we talking about newspapers that are printed on actual, real, feel-it-and-the-ink-slides-off-on-your-hand paper? Or are we talking about this new-fangled gizmo, the electronic, or digital, whatever – computerized Internet news that has no connection to paper at all?
I’m going to assume we’re talking about both – the whole kit and kaboodle.
Great. Now, who am I to talk about such a weighty topic? What is my expertise? I’m just a beat reporter. Some days, with all these electronic advances, like how do I do this audio and video recording or coping with clogged email, I feel real, real beat.
If we’re talking about the future of newspapers nationwide, or worldwide even, I probably know less than some or maybe even all of you. I’m not taking a class on the topic. To be candid, I’ve never taken any kind of journalism class. So who am I to talk about the future of newspapers?
Well, not having formally studied the topic, it’s possible that I might see things somewhat differently. I do believe that what we are talking about is a very simple thing: How to persuade people to buy newspapers and how to persuade those people and maybe others as well to purchase advertising in our papers. Paper or electronic, it doesn’t matter. Unless we’re being subsidized by some rich foundation, we need to sell papers as the vehicle for the ads that we also sell, and together, that is what ensures that our paychecks don’t bounce.
I know a little something about this. A long time ago, I was editor of a very, very small circulation weekly newspaper. It was called the Journal Era and it circulated with a very weak pulse to begin with in Berrien Springs and Eau Claire, two towns in southwestern Michigan. In 1979, I became editor of the Journal Era. That meant that I reported and wrote all the news, wrote editorials, an occasional column, features; I took the photos and developed the film, printed the negatives, laid out the pages, answered the phone, sold an occasional ad and watched the publishers cull deadwood. What I mean by deadwood is that they were slowly figuring out which subscribers had not paid and were on the mailing list simply to puff up the circulation figures for the former owner so he could defraud the new owners when he sold the paper to them. Gradually, the new publishers discovered that the paper did not have the 2,000 paid subscribers the old owner had touted. It’s a good thing we didn’t know at the outset that only 700 people thought enough of our paper to pay for it.
In little over a year, we had pumped the numbers up to a real 2000 paid subscribers. We had some things going for us. First, we lacked credibility because the former owner had squandered it. This was good. It gave us contrast against the past. As we struggled to regain what the previous owner had frittered away, people slowly realized we were different. We created our own identity. The contrast was dramatic. People came to trust us. Credibility. Very important. Another thing we had going. We were curious. If it seemed interesting to us, we would find out about it and write about it. No matter how goofball the topic. None of us were journalists, so we didn’t know what was the norm for news. We had courage. We investigated and broke stories that made life uncomfortable for some people, including us. We alienated neighbors and big wigs who benefited from secrecy. We had flexibility. We could try something one week, see if it sold papers. If it didn’t, we could stop it pronto, no recriminations, no layoffs.
From 700 to 2000 – that’s a 285 percent increase. Pretty heady. I felt like a real dragon slayer. Now around that time in Detroit, in 1981, the paid daily circulation of the Detroit Free Press was said to be 622,129. I joined the Free Press as a reporter in 1984. I had great ideas about how I could make a difference. Detroit – wow! This was the Great Newspaper War. I sent a memo to the executive editor, Dave Lawrence, outlining my plan for printing the Free Press on the presses of out-state dailies and really eclipsing our arch rival, the Detroit News. I quoted Ulysses Grant on the art of war. Find the enemy, hit him fast and hard and move on. There was bitter rivalry between the News and Free Press in those days. I worked hard to break hot stories. It was not as easy as it was at the weekly, though. It was weird. It was supposed to be war, but it seemed like we pulled our punches. There were committees of editors who could blunt a story or stop it entirely.
By 2007, Free Press circulation was 318,000. That’s a decline of 49 percent from 1981. Man, I feel like a failure. I’m kidding, of course. Back in 1984, I got my audience with the big boss. Dave Lawrence listened politely and explained why each of my ideas was harebrained. Notice, however, that out-state dailies are now printing the Chicago Tribune and New York Times. What if the Free Press had done that back in the eighties? Little did I know that I was tilting against culture. At the Free Press, the state edition was considered a throwaway, of no interest to advertisers. But think of the circulation they could have built. My plan also called for bureaus in towns like Kalamazoo and Grand Rapids. Oh well. There’s not much one person can do as we hear that those kinds of declines are being reflected across the country.
I’m trained as a historian, not as a journalist. So I am loath to predict the future. But I believe that if we look at the past, we can learn some important lessons that may help us understand where we are headed. If we ask the right questions.There is too much generalizing about the future of newspapers. Their general demise is prematurely predicted. The general does not explain the particular, nor does the particular necessarily explain the general. If newspapers are all losing readers, how is it that the Philadelphia Inquirer just reported a circulation increase?
Certainly, the experience in Detroit is unique. In that span of time between 1981 and 2007, we have seen major disruptions. Nothing to do with the Internet. First, there was the Joint Operating Agreement in 1989. Gannett at the News and Knight-Ridder at the Free Press actually had an amazing thing – 40 percent of readers took both papers. And the companies wanted to get rid of the duplicate readers. Circulation declined after the JOA and directly because of the monopoly. Deliberate self-sabotage and incompetent implemention drove readers away. Did I say self-inflicted injury? Just wait. In 1995, the companies provoked a strike. Circulation went down by roughly a third and stayed that way. Self-inflicted. I still find people who refuse after nearly 12 years to re-start the Free Press. Recently, circulation at the Free Press and News has plummeted. The Free Press went from 342,000 readers in January 2006 to 318,000 in January 2007, an eight percent decline. The Detroit News went from 217,000 to 193,000 in the same period, an 11 percent drop. One year!
The JOA and the strike carved huge numbers of readers away. So it would seem. But we have to question everything. Remember that deadwood I mentioned at the Journal Era? When I came to the Free Press in 1984, I was shocked to see the Detroit News telling advertisers it was selling 1,000 copies a day in Berrien County. I knew that was a lie. I used to string for the News, and I couldn’t buy the paper in Berrien Springs. I had to drive to Benton Harbor, where it was sold at one newsstand only. We heard tales of whole semi-loads of the News being dumped daily, of huge quantities of the News being found in ditches. I was sure they were lying about their numbers. I was outraged. In my Ulysses Grant memo to Dave Lawrence, I urged the executive editor to investigate the fraud at the News. A pal at the Free Press laughed at me. He predicted nothing would be done because, he claimed, the Free Press was fudging its numbers, too. This was the Great Newspaper War, remember. Think about this: In 1981, both Detroit papers were claiming a combined circulation on Sunday of more than 1.5 million copies. Today, the lone Sunday paper, the Free Press, claims 631,000 subscribers. A 58 percent loss. Wow. But is it possible that the 1981 figure is bogus? And if those earlier numbers were inflated, that means the decline in circulation now being lamented was not nearly as dramatic as it’s being portrayed. I don’t know. But I think some Ph.D. candidate in history would find a very interesting dissertation topic questioning the very foundation of our fears. What if the baseline for our grief over newspapers’ demise turned out to be a mirage? It’s hard to talk about the future if we’re glimpsing the past through a thicket of misconceptions, misinformation and lies.
Nowadays, it seems that the big downward driving factor for circulation is the Internet. Right? Nobody talks about JOAs or strikes or mendacious circulation claims.
I wonder. Over the past 20 years at the Free Press, I’ve listened to editors lecture us in meeting after meeting on how important it is for us to somehow attract young readers. I know young readers. I have two sons, ages 24 and 27. We don’t have to go after them. They read newspapers. But they don’t subscribe to them. They read them online. Free.
Are we wasting time trying to attract readers we don’t have, never will have or already have on the free Internet while shortchanging readers who are actually paying for the paper? I hear from middle-aged and older people now that they are freeloading online, too. Nobody is forcing newspapers to ramp up the money-losing Internet while undercutting the for-pay product. Let’s not blame the Internet.
It appears to me that newspapers are putting more and more effort and time into online reports. But not only are they getting no reimbursement for the news, they’re having a hard time selling ads online. Nationwide, online advertising accounts for only 5 percent of newspaper ad revenues.
The print papers still produce 95 percent of the revenue, yet readers of the print paper are being shortchanged by increasingly smaller news holes and stories that are hastily reported. I think readers know this. Could a decline in quality explain why people are canceling subscriptions? If so, the fault can’t be the Internet. Once again, self-inflicted harm.
I actually have hope for the future of newspapers. Journalists mostly lack originality. They follow the leader. If the decline is more apparent than real, they are not likely to see it unless somebody at a bigger paper begins to say it. Still, there is a breaking from the ranks. Keep your eyes on the papers that are privately owned. Wall Street has a hand in many of the decisions that are ruining the quality of our news. Some newspaper owners seem to realize this and are taking their papers private. Examples are the Philadelphia Inquirer, Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times. We see new people owning papers. They apparently see that newspapers are able to return 15 to 20 percent on their investment where supermarket chains are lucky to yield 5 percent. To them, the papers look like a good investment.
The future of newspapers, whether paper or digital, may well lie with those owners who are able to fine-tune their operations without bullying from Wall Street and institutional investors. The future of newspapers may be with those editors and publishers who can think independently, separate their decision-making from the pack mentality and find flexibility to experiment and change quickly.One thing is sure. If newspapers are to survive, whether paper or digital, they need to find more good old-fashioned credibility, curiosity and courage. Forget pandering to age groups or other special interests. Good stories appeal to everyone. If they don’t, people will see no reason to pay for them.
Newspapers will survive. I’m not so sure about the owners of newspapers. But in my next post, I’ll explain why I think newspapers — in the broadest sense — will always be with us.
