What Happened to Newspapers?

What Happened to Newspapers?

As a former journalist, I get asked from time to time to explain what happened to newspapers and where journalism is headed.  In that context, a friend recently sent me a book by Joe Strupp called “Killing Journalism: How greed, laziness [and Donald Trump] are destroying news and how we can save it.”

Suffice to say that while the book contains interesting insights, the title is misleading. This sort of sensationalism is exactly what Strupp accuses all too many publications of doing: in fact, it is one of his major themes. Why do it? Because it sells, which brings me to one point readers need to keep in mind: the old Pogo adage of “we have met the enemy and he is us.”


 

But what readers need to keep most in mind is that while quality news is arguably critical to democracy, the public has long been conditioned to believe that news is free or very inexpensive. Subscriptions or newsstand sales covered only a small portion of the costs of newspaper publication when times were good. Advertising was by far the largest source of revenue.  And when TV news first appeared it was totally free, not counting the cost of buying a set and an antenna, which most people did mainly to get entertainment programming.

Disruption

Disruption is a much-discussed concept these days and the tech crowd would have you believe that it was invented in Silicon Valley. Forget it: disruption has been with us in a big way for at least a couple hundred years.  The most notable example is the auto industry which put wagon makers and everything having to do with workhorses totally out of business.  Only one U.S. wagon maker went on to make cars – Studebaker – and that didn’t last long.

But there are many, many other examples: steamships (wooden sailing ships and the huge industry that supported them); diesel locomotives (different companies made steam engines); airplanes (the Pullman Co. and most passenger trains);  Sears Roebuck (local wholesalers); Wallmart (small town, main street businesses) and, of course, Amazon.  The list is much longer, but I’m sure you get the point.

What is changing about disruption is not that it is happening thanks to tech start-ups, but that it is occurring a lot more quickly than before – just as socio/economic changes are accelerating.

The First Wave

In the post-war period (essentially my lifetime), the newspaper industry has experienced two major waves of disruption.  The first occurred back in the late 50s and into the 60s as TV spread to the vast majority of U.S. households.  Network news wiped out a very large number of newspapers, mostly afternoon dailies, but also some morning papers in cities that had more than one.  Somewhat ironically, this left the remainder of the industry more profitable than before.  Many papers became monopolies and there was still a lot of advertising – classified ads, local auto dealer ads, tire ads, big department store spreads, grocery store “sale” ads, etc. – that wasn’t suitable for network TV.

But lots of journalists became unemployed. When I went looking for a news job in New York in 1968, I was told “forget it, journalists are walking the streets.”  Well, I turned out to be lucky.

The Second Wave

The second major wave of disruption arrived and steadily gained force about 10 or 15 years ago when broadband communications technology became widely available and increasingly affordable.  This brought to the fore the World Wide Web, which had been developed earlier, and greatly increased the usage of Craigslist – a really major blow to the newspaper industry. As the public gravitated to digital media, advertisers fled the conventional press, bankrupting many papers and driving others to drastically cut costs (mainly by laying off reporters and editors) to somehow stay afloat.

To put it bluntly, the disruption of the digital information revolution devastated most remaining newspapers and, as Mr. Strupp explains in his book, changed dramatically how news is reported and distributed.  I don’t have any quarrel with him there.  

None of what happened to the newspaper industry is attributable to “greed, laziness and Donald Trump” although Trump and his addiction to Twitter have arguably had a significant impact on how information can be disseminated.

Some Modest Success Stories

Before continuing on to discuss what has happened to journalism (as opposed to the newspaper industry per se) I want to mention three modest success stories.  At the peak of the recent (and arguably ongoing) industry crisis, it appeared possible that all conventional first-class newspapers might disappear, or become faint shadows of their former selves.  But first “The Wall Street Journal,” second “The Washington Post” and third “The New York Times” have at least stabilized and by differing means, actually increased news coverage.  Out on the West Coast, the “Los Angeles Times,” now under new ownership, bears watching.

NYT executive editor Dean Baquet was recently in Seattle and I had an opportunity to talk briefly with him.  I had read earlier that the NYT was eliminating a significant number of editors and I asked him how that had gone.  Very smoothly, he said, explaining that it was the only way that the paper could add more reporters.  During a general Q&A session, Baquet was asked if he had made any mistakes and he said yes. The main one was not covering the country as a whole adequately before the last election and therefore not understanding what had led to Trump’s victory.

I was interested in the move to reduce editors because that was what AP-Dow Jones did when I was the Chief European Correspondent and then Managing Editor.  We needed to move into profitability and hire more reporters, too, and it worked just fine then despite certain qualms when the plan was first announced.

But back to the remaining major newspapers more generally, readership of these publications is very small relative to the population of the country as a whole and probably unlikely to expand much beyond a certain socio/economic class, which is important to remember when moving on.

Disintermediation

The next thing to talk about – another very significant form of disruption – has been disintermediation and again, this is nothing unique with respect to the news business. We’ve heard about this before, particularly with respect to financial services.  But in a number of sectors, technology has managed to eliminate or greatly diminish the role of middle men.

When major daily papers and network television reigned king, the editors and publishers of such outlets were in effect the gate-keepers of news. They evaluated the incoming stream of information, decided what was worthy of publication and ranked it as to how “high up” the story should play.  There was no serious competition although occasionally fringe outlets made a splash. One thinks of I.F. Stone’s newsletter, for instance.

Cable TV came along, but initially at least, it focused on local news that wasn’t covered by the network news broadcasts. It did attract additional advertising away from newspapers, however.

The broadband internet, the almost universal acceptance of (and addiction to) smart phones and the development of a range of different social media sites – most notably Twitter, Facebook and Google – changed all of that.  Suddenly, anyone could be a reporter and/or a disseminator of information and the number of “publications” exploded. I will talk more about this shortly.

The 24-hour News Cycle

One of the biggest changes disintermediation has brought about is the 24-hour news cycle.  Stories no longer stack up for a newspaper or network broadcast deadline and only become available to the public when a newspaper hits the streets or a scheduled broadcast takes place, a system that arguably allowed for better reporting and fact checking (but was occasionally far from perfect nonetheless).

In his book, Joe Strupp complains at length that the 24-hour-news cycle combined with the ease of publication has resulted in a serious decline in the veracity of news. Leaving deliberate disinformation aside, accuracy inevitably suffers in the rush to be “first,” he argues.

I have mixed feelings about that complaint. I spent my entire career as a journalist under intense daily pressure to be first with any news that might affect financial markets and at the same time, totally accurate. Competition from Reuters was intense and performance was constantly monitored. Errors were detected and punished immediately – by irate subscribers who were paying full freight (we carried no ads) for news upon which they could make or lose money.  If Dow Jones said it was true, it had to be true.

Yes, this meant that stories were reported differently than they eventually appeared in the Wall Street Journal where they were replete with interpretative background, good quotes from multiple sources and an exploration of different angles. We had to focus on avoiding at all cost errors of commission.  Errors of omission – sometimes not all aspects of the story were readily available – were arguably inevitable. But this turned out to be not a major problem and we often quickly back-filled important news with more highly developed stories that were called “Amplifiers.”

But once again, gatekeepers with a lot of experience – senior Dow Jones and Reuters editors – constantly monitored the situation even if they in no way looked at every headline or every story before it appeared on the wires. When errors occurred, inquiries took place and occasionally the consequences were serious for the person at fault.  Little or no such monitoring takes place in the world described by Mr. Strupp.

My point is that the 24-hour news cycle in and of itself need not be viewed as a major problem.

The Far Bigger Problem

A far bigger problem is the other aspect of disintermediation – the proliferation of information outlets and how the public often first encounters them: on Facebook, Google, Yahoo and Twitter. Many millions of Americans apparently get their news on Facebook – many times more than those who read the major newspapers mentioned above, and even a lot more than those who watch television despite the popularity of Fox News and MSNBC.

For instance, the Washington Post recently carried an item about studies showing that “digital natives” (aged 18 to 24) want to get their news through the digital platforms that they have “integrated into their lives” as opposed to going to specific news apps, which they apparently rarely do.

The business model of social media is similar to the model of traditional newspapers.  If you can attract readers (users) and find ways of making them visit frequently or stay on-site for significant periods of time, they will see a lot of ads and revenue will flow in as advertisers flock to locations where viewers are concentrated.

Facebook initially sought to do that by providing a convenient way to link up with family and friends while Google did it through the appeal of its search engine.  But as time went by, both determined (as Yahoo arguably had before them) that streams of news would also keep people on-site longer and ads could be both mixed in and targeted based on ever-more-sophisticated user profiles.

But where would this news come from?  Just about anywhere, except, of course from traditional  publications that had erected pay walls as they attempted to find ways of surviving in the new on-line digital world.

As we now know, the accommodating posture of sites like Facebook and Google allowed a host of questionable information providers to masquerade as “news.”  And the public seemed to either welcome it or be relatively unconcerned about what they were seeing.  The fact that it was “free,” and perhaps highly provocative, appeared to matter more than that it was accurate.

And it has made it a lot easier for people to read mainly material they already believe, or material that reinforces what they already believe, than to have to contend with what they don’t want to hear. This has arguably exacerbated the increasingly poisons nature of the U.S. political divide.  

As I write this, Facebook in particular, is making at least some attempt to correct this situation, but at present, it isn’t clear how committed the company is to cleaning up its act or how successful these efforts will be.

The Future

While the overall verdict remains out, it seems likely that as older generations die off, the sight of a person reading a printed newspaper may be as quaint as seeing someone getting around town in a horse and buggy.

Even stand-alone digital news sites may be in danger of eventually disappearing if younger generations insist on getting their information mainly through their preferred social media services and locations.

Facebook, for instance, has enticed some mainstream, conventional news outlets to at least in part distribute their news in this fashion, for a fee.  But will this cost the news outlets advertising revenue that will accrue to Facebook instead of to them, as well as lost pay-wall fees?

Conventional news outlets do, however, understand that they need to be to some extent connected with popular media.  “The New York Times,” “The Washington Post,” “The Wall Street Journal”, “The Seattle Times” and “The LA Times” all allow digital subscribers to sign in via Facebook and Google.  “The Washington Post” (owned by Jeff Bezos)  permits sign-ins through Amazon as well and “The LA Times through” Twitter and Yahoo.

And all the major news sites have tried in one way or another to make themselves at least a bit more like social media through comments and various non-news features and offerings, most notably perhaps, “The Wall Street Journal” where readers are now invited to comment on a particular topic each day and four or five well-argued, polite responses are printed, under the names of those submitting them.

If  the “New York Times,” the “The Wall Street Journal,” the ‘Washington Post,” the “LA Times” and perhaps some others (plus National Public Radio) can survive and prosper in stand-alone digital form, those interested will continue to have reliable, intermediated sources of news, but at a high cost – perhaps significantly higher than was the case previously. Here at home, the “Seattle Times” fortunately remains for the time being a credible paper.

Nonetheless …

But is a significant slice of the public willing to pay something resembling the actual cost of gathering, editing and presenting credible news?

If not, and at this point, it seems highly unlikely across the board, the public may have to replace the role of gatekeepers with a perceived need and ability to personally “curate” sources of information. How might that happen?

Something called media literacy education has been a recognized discipline for years, but arguably now needs to be emphasized and introduced as early as possible in the learning process. Basically, it encourages students to ask questions about what they watch, hear and read. The focus is on identifying authors, purposes and points of view so as to better separate valid information from that meant to be deceptive, or simply worthless.

Local and Community News

Local news, unfortunately, is another story and a very sad one. There, the devastation of newspapers is continuing with reliable, systematic reporting disappearing. Just what this might mean for the functioning of American society and a a reasonable degree of public accountability remains to be seen.

In late 2019, PEN America released a report on what it called the decimation of local journalism, arguing that the demise of local papers that once covered school board and city council meetings have left the citizens of many communities uninformed and disengaged. Since 2004, over 1,800 local news outlets have shut down, the report said.

In many communities, those interested in what is going on are reliant on bloggers or Facebook pages when issues of consequence do manage to get some attention.

Non-Profits?

Mr. Strupp, in the last chapter of his book, believes that non-profit news organizations are the best hope for the future, but he and everyone he quotes admits funding sources for most of them are highly uncertain.  Foundation grants have to date been the biggest source of support. Are we going to have to rely on the one percent to provide the rest of us with reliable news?  (One can, of course, argue “The Washington Post” has already gone that route.)

Alternatively, one can argue that since accurate, balanced news is essential to democracy and, indeed, enjoys special protection in the Constitution, it should never have been a for-profit business in the first place. Still, someone has to pay, and government control of news is even worse than for-profit entities.

Mr. Strupp pretty much concludes his book by quoting Stephen Engleberg, editor in chief of “Pro Publica,” one of the larger non-profit news operations, as saying: “people are still grasping for the notion that journalism is not something that you just kind of get.”

Which brings us back to Pogo.

One Last Topic: “Fake News”

I’d been hoping to avoid this because commenting on it is arguably far more polarizing than most (but not all) of what I have said above.  But in the Trump era, it can’t be ignored.

First, the vast majority of what Trump has labeled fake news is purely and simply inconvenient truth. And fortunately, Trump’s over-use of the fake-news epithet has greatly watered down it’s impact. Startling at first, in large part because of where it was coming from, it is now something to be expected when the president takes to Twitter. All it means is that he, personally, is annoyed by what he has just learned.

But those who support Trump for one reason or another love the term fake news because it serves not only as a thoughtless, lazy means of refuting or disputing inconvenient developments,  but also as a means of totally denigrating them. That seems to be where we are these days.

Ok, that covers the vast majority of fake news, which is to say fake fake news. But what about the rest: is there such a thing as real fake news, even it isn’t a daily occurrence?

Unfortunately there is, and I will give two examples, one blatant, but fortunately not too consequential (for the public), and another that is harder to explain, but vastly more consequential.

The open-and-shut case involved the Washington Post. In 1980 the paper published an article about an eight-year-old heroin addict written by a reporter named Janet Cooke that went on to win a Pulitzer Prize after Post assistant managing editor Bob Woodward (of Watergate fame) submitted it for consideration. Immediately thereafter the Post was forced to admit the story was fraudulent after Cooke admitted she had made it up. That was most certainly fake news.

While the Post tried to maintain that the incident didn’t damage the credibility of any of its other reporting, obviously it did – and perhaps still does. If the gatekeepers aren’t smart enough to double check and catch something completely fabricated, what else are they missing?

The more consequential example of real fake news involved the Washington Post and the New York Times, both of which, in their reporting and elsewhere, signed on to the idea that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, justifying President George W. Bush’s decision to invade the country in the wake of the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon – even though no Iraqis took part in that attack. Both papers later admitted their coverage was at a minimum badly distorted and apologized. In fact, it was outright wrong.

I am poignantly aware of that because at the same time these two influential papers were fueling the flames of war, I drafted a letter signed by myself and five other former Naval officers to the White House arguing that there was no evidence Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and, indeed, it didn’t. During the invasion, U.S. troops simply bypassed Iraq’s old nuclear facility, which, upon later inspection, turned out to be a pile of rusted equipment. One suspects the administration was, in fact, very much aware of that – from Israeli intelligence if from nowhere else. Likewise, no usable chemical weapons were found. The Bush administration's contention was simply a hoax that the Post and the Times bought into for reasons that to this day are not entirely clear.

But I digress.