Media Musings: Will Internet dethrone newspapers?
Does the American newspaper industry have a future? If so, what will it look like 25 years from now?
Is this just an idle question for a late summer day that might get a discussion under way at a faculty luncheon? No, not really. It is a question studied at major schools of journalism and industry think tanks in the Age of The Internet.
One quick position would be to point out how durable the old girl is. After all, radio, then TV, then the Internet were all going to put her our of existence.
It’s no secret that while TV news is the first source of news, much of its material still comes from newspapers. Wisely, television has pushed more detail about stories onto its Internet sites for viewers to get more detailed information.
The Internet is more troubling to address. There’s little debate left that the nation’s greatest newspaper — the gold standard — is The New York Times. Yes, it’s well known the newspaper has worked through two major crises, but the reason its problems were so widely discussed and reported is because it is the gold standard. Its Web site is wonderful, as well, and the reader can use archives for a modest fee.
But there’s no way at this hour its Internet advertisers are underwriting the massive staff reporting worldwide for the Times. It is correct that if the Times was delivered only by electrons the huge costs of distribution and printing would be gone from the accountants’ records for good. But so too would be the millions of dollars from the income side.
Simply put: Who’s going to pay enough money to keep such a newspaper as the Times thriving? The answer eludes the best of talent.
Now, in fairness, newspapers don’t change easily. They bubble along in the same cultures — now many of them wrapped in a corporate lock step — year after year. Often they talk of new designs, better packaging, and different writing styles, but when the day is done, they are changed only incrementally. In fairness, it is a 500-year-old business.
It’s difficult to believe that one of the most successful innovations has been USA Today, now 25 years old. Built in response to the challenges of the electronic media, USA Today blended sharp, short stories with color and new design approaches to become the nation’s paper for the traveler. It’s now running longer stories and every so often does break a major Washington story, but it’s bread and butter is a fabulous sports section.
But now comes media baron Rupert (newspapers are businesses, period) Murdoch to show us a really interesting idea. He’s allowed The Sunday Times of London to sink $70 million into a new section called “Month” that will never touch paper. On every last Sunday of the month, the Times will include a CD-rom offering its readers a huge read, some 25,000 words of text, movies and music clips and filmed interviews, DVD offers, games and listings.
Every newspaper on the brutally competitive world of British journalism is watching this experiment and admits it is not only clever, but also radically different that anything they have seen.
The American experience has been one of declining circulation for the last 25 years. The major urban newspapers could afford to launch a similar approach. Mid-sized newspapers would probably buy a new service constructed to serve them. Small dailies and weeklies don’t need to worry because they are so local every community reads them, no matter how good or mediocre they are.
But in an age when Japanese teenagers can hold a conference call with three pals on a cell phone, and the nation is gearing up to send movies to cell phones, experiments such as the one underway at The Sunday Times is not only interesting, but vital.
To believe otherwise is not only foolish, but also dangerous.
(Ed Kimbrell is a professor in MTSU’s School of Journalism.)