The Crisis Management Memo

Newspapers: The Final Edition?

It was with a bit of emotion that I heard about the demise of the Rocky Mountain News this past week. Although I never worked for the News, I had several friends who were reporters and editors there. Most people thought of it as a good newspaper. It had been around since before the Civil War and had survived newspaper wars, the Great Depression and even a flood in 1864 that all but knocked it out of commission.

But Colorado's oldest newspaper, like so many newspapers around the country, had fallen on bad times. Its circulation had peaked at 400,000, but dropped to just over 200,000 by the time it published its final edition.

So Denver joins the league of so many one newspaper towns in America. As a kid, I saw my mother almost cry when her beloved Indianapolis Times folded, leaving only two newspapers to report the news.

I was working for the Franklin (Indiana) Evening Star up to one week before it folded to new competition. I went to work for the competition.

And, I was working at the Cincinnati Enquirer when the Cincinnati Post began its downward spiral, ultimately shutting its doors for good.

But so many of those early newspaper deaths were due to competition from other newspapers, and even television. There were times when we all thought television would certainly be the death of newspapers as we knew them.

But newspapers, overall, survived the threat of television. It was the internet they couldn't compete with.

When the internet started becoming popular, many newspapers weren't sure how to deal with it. Even the television networks were a little slow to recognize there was a new media in town. Ultimately, however, most newspapers, magazines, television networks and their affiliated stations, and even the wire services began putting their news on internet web sites.

At some point not too long ago, the clear line between television and newspaper began to get terribly fuzzy. Television was placing "print" stories on the internet and newspapers were running video on their web sites.

At a crisis news conference in Houston this past summer, a pack of reporters and television videographers were on the scene. One of the videographers, however, was not with a television station. He was with the Houston Chronicle. The internet has become the meeting point between television and newspapers.

With so much news on the internet and available anytime you want it, it is little wonder people began drifting away from the morning newspaper with its early deadlines and often-stale news. There is, of course, the current economic recession which has resulted in cutbacks in advertising and subsequent layoffs in the newsroom. Newspapers not only have less news today, they even have less paper. They are only a pale reflection of what they once were.

When I first got into the newspaper business in what today seems like a lifetime ago, I recall the stories from the older reporters who lamented about the good old days and the Golden Age of newspapers. It was a time when many, if not most, reporters got their education on the job, sometimes working for next to nothing just to get experience so they could be a newspaper reporter. They talked about the competition and those "electrons" from the TV stations. "Those people," I was told back then," "aren't real reporters." The TV reporters retorted back, "Nobody reads newspapers. They get their news from television."

It seems the TV reporters were partly right. People today don't read newspapers, at least not like they used to. As a result, newspapers as we know it, are part of a dying breed of journalism.

When I first went to work for the then fledgling USA Today, there were jokes from other newspaper reporters about USA Today's approach to newspapering. "The McNewspaper," some called it. I was told many times, it wasn't a real newspaper. Real or not, USA Today is one of the few newspapers with a degree of health these days. And even USA Today is not immune to the ravages of the current recession.

So what will be the final chapter of newspapers in America? I have no idea, other than there will be far fewer of them than we have today and the internet will be an even bigger part of the way they deliver news.

But as we turn to the internet for news and move away from the newspapers and their platoons of local, regional and national reporters who have covered the news in this country since the days of the American Revolution, what happens to news? Will those laid off reporters become more bloggers? Will newspapers charge for their internet content? Will consumers be willing to pay for it?

There are a lot of unanswered questions as we watch an American institution going through a major life change. As I look at it from my vantage point, I'm already starting to miss the Rocky Mountain News and all those other great newspapers that preceded it in death.


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1. Comment by hrithik, Apr 10 2011, 04:11 PM

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