For the most part, I agree with Adam's comments (gosh, I hope it's Adam I'm
agreeing with :-)). There are a lot more factors than the internet that
contributed to the decline of newspapers/magazines: 1) circulation among
newspapers & magazines was beginning to decline before the internet; 2) the
career tracks & business models greatly changed. In the old days, business
& editorial were 2 separate departments with a palpable tension between the
two. Now, the lines are blurred--the career paths crossover in ways they
didn't used to & business/marketing influences editorial in degrees that you
wouldn't have seen in the past, and I think this has led to weak journalism
and hence a weak newspaper or magazine--& corporate mergers/takeovers have
obviously made it more difficult to produce quality journalism because of
gradually reduced budgets for both print and photo journalists (read
downsizing/restructuring for bigger profits.). A few days ago, I learned
from a colleague that Northwestern University here in Evanston, Il has
changed the name of their journalism program; it's now called something like
Journalism and Integrated Marketing Communications. When I heard this, it
reminded me of the time I was working in advertising and was in a meeting
with a magazine rep who was telling us about Banner Ads above traditional
magazine departments and columns. I turned to a colleague and said, well,
here begins the erosion of editorial. I find this all really sad. There
was a time when the educated/middle/working class would challenge and object
to maneuvers made by corporate-culture models. Not anymore it seems:
instead of challenging corporate-culture models, accommodations are made to
just--well, just go long. 3) Getting folks to start paying for online
newspaper subscriptions will be really hard--and the industry knows this--&
they are not sure what to do about it.
Cheers, Christine
On Sat, Feb 28, 2009 at 1:34 PM, Mark Roberts <[email protected]> wrote:
[email protected] wrote:
In a message dated 2/28/2009 10:12:43 A.M. Pacific Standard Time,
[email protected] writes:
I still insist on subscribing to the print edition of our local
newspaper. But although everyone *says* they prefer print, there aren't
enough of us who back up these statements with action.
============
I think newspapers and books are two quite different things (you didn't
reply to what I said).
Newspapers are the canary in the coal mine. If people are willing to
abandon
newspapers for the crappy monitor technology we have now, imagine what
will
happen when there are electronic viewing media that are close to the
legibility of a printed page. That's just a few years away.
I disagree. The major factors in the decline of newspapers come down
to news cycle (Internet and TV is faster), Craigslist (which killed
off classifieds, long a major portion of newspaper income), the
effective change of the mainstream media into a mild-left monoculture
(thus reducing their target audience) and the shift from local
newsrooms to wire agencies for much of their content, resulting in a
lack of local news (always the newspapers advantage over TV) combined
with a concentration on news that is best delivered in other ways (and
often heavily slanted due to the wire services reliance on local
stringers often under the thumb of local political powers). Newspapers
are dying because they quit providing a quality product while also
having part of their business model evaporate and annoying a
reasonable portion of the market.
I suspect newspapers will end up mainly online. If the advertising
revenue will support it.
Not all print media is equivalent to all other print media.
In fact, I expect advertising revenue will support books eventually, when
they're in electronic form. I think that stinks, but it's very likely to
happen in order to subsidize the cost of the technology. I hope it's a
short-lived phenomenon.
The only real success in electronic publishing (Baen Books'
Webscriptions service) uses their electronic books to advertise their
dead-tree books. They've seen an overall increase in dead-tree sales
this way.
--
M. Adam Maas
http://www.mawz.ca
Explorations of the City Around Us.
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