AJR - June Cox Jay Smith Future Internet

AJR - June/July 2006 Preview<hr>Adapt or Die 05/22/2006 09:10 PM
Print this page
Close Window
AJR Features
From AJR, April/May 2006 issue
June/July 2006 Preview
Adapt or Die
As newspaper companies confront a challenging future, they are increasingly viewing their trademark print product as the
engine driving a diverse “portfolio” that embraces other “platforms” such as Web sites and niche publications. Is this a strategy
for survival?
By Rachel Smolkin
Rachel Smolkin (rsmolkin@ajr.umd.edu) is AJR's managing editor.
F or years, newspapers have treated innovation like a trip to the dentist — a torture to be endured, not
encouraged. True, newspapers finally got around to adding color. They shrank stories, hoping that pithier,
flashier fare would help attract young people who don't like to read. They spruced up the front page by
sprinkling uplifting, maudlin or otherwise titillating features amid the news. But bold new thinking about
the newspaper and a world of opportunities beyond it? Please. Tell the dentist to add a veneer and leave
the rotting core alone.
Now that's all changing, of necessity. Circulation is falling; newsprint costs are rising; retail, auto and
movie advertising is slumping; classified advertising is available free on craigslist and other online
venues. Wall Street's dissatisfaction with newspapers boiled over in November, when money manager
and Knight Ridder shareholder Bruce S. Sherman forced the company to put itself up for sale.
"You look at the choices that face journalists today," says Howard Weaver, vice president for news at
McClatchy, the Sacramento-based newspaper chain that's buying Knight Ridder. "You can give up, you
can hunker down and bleed, or you can fight back. Well, I want to fight back."
At McClatchy and other major newspaper companies, that battle is taking shape as a willingness to
experiment with form. An emerging weltanschauung sees newspapers as the engine driving a myriad of
products — from Web sites to free commuter tabloids to Spanish-language publications — that can lure
additional audience (those folks we used to call readers) and reinvigorate listless advertising.
Such thinking is evolutionary. There has been no easy epiphany, no "EUREKA! THE ANSWER TO MY
PROBLEMS IS TO TRANSFORM MY NEWSPAPER INTO A MULTI-PLATFORM PORTFOLIO!"
But the multiplatform mantra is gaining popularity industry-wide, propelled by a conviction that a
http://ajr.org/article_printable.asp?id=4111 Page 1 of 11
But the multiplatform mantra is gaining popularity industry-wide, propelled by a conviction that a
myopic view of newspapers simply won't work in a fast-changing world.
Newspapers have not exactly been leaders in this tech-driven landscape. In the late 1990s, they were
tentatively dipping their toes into the chilly rapids of cyberspace (see "Fear.com," June 1999); years
later, they still can't quite figure out what to do with the Web or how to make money off the thing. But,
finally, newspapers are starting to see the Internet as central to their future. In 2005, newspaper Internet
advertising topped $2 billion for the first time, a 31 percent increase over 2004, according to the
Newspaper Association of America. Unique visitors to newspaper Web sites jumped 21 percent from
January 2005 to December 2005.
"I think we were slow to catch on," says Jay Smith, president of Cox Newspapers, a chain of 17 daily
and 25 non-daily newspapers. In Atlanta, where Cox is headquartered, its portfolio includes the Atlanta
Journal-Constitution; an array of Web sites (among them ajc.com, ajccars.com, ajcjobs.com and
ajchomefinder.com); two Spanish-language weeklies; and, as of May, Skirt! a free monthly magazine
targeted at women. "I think it's perfectly natural to protect what you have, to think what you have is the
only thing that people want," Smith says. "You look back to the year 2000, and I don't know that
newspapers ever had a better year financially. Those are the times that can lull you into a sense of
complacency. What we've discovered a full five, six years later is that that world doesn't exist anymore."
Smith is the immediate past chairman of the NAA, which describes the emerging philosophy in earnest
language in "The Source: Newspapers by the Numbers", a thumbnail sketch of the changing $59
billion industry. Old-school newspaper aficionados should bring along their decoders: instead of stories
and readers, we now have "content" and "audience"; newspapers and their sister publications are
"products" that together create a "portfolio." And news itself is passé: We're in the information business
now.
"The key to the future of newspapers is the effort to build a broad portfolio of products around the core
product, the traditional newspaper, and to connect with both general and targeted audiences ," "The
Source" declares with generous use of boldface. "Newspapers across the country have established their
presence on the Web and are aggressively developing additional online products. They are launching
niche publications and reaching out to new audiences, particularly minorities. It's all part of a critical
transformation : from newspaper companies to information companies."
Although "convergence" across newspapers, TV and radio has been a cherished industry buzzword for
years, the portfolio approach focuses primarily on the Internet and print rather than on traditional radio
and television (one exception is the Washington Post, which launched programming on a local radio
station in March). Federal Communications Commission rules bar newspapers from owning broadcast
stations in the same market (some arrangements are grandfathered in), and even if they could, TV and
radio face the same competitive pressures and declining audiences that newspapers do. Instead, many
newspapers are enthusiastically adding new audio and video options to their Web sites, from newscasts
to stories to commentary.
Last September, the American Press Institute launched a yearlong initiative dubbed Newspaper Next
aimed at offering newspaper leaders some guidance in this brave new world. The Newspaper Next team
is working with Innosight LLC, a consulting group run by Clayton Christensen, a professor at Harvard
Business School and an expert on how established industries get overtaken by "disruptive innovation."
Stephen Gray, managing director of Newspaper Next, says the newspaper industry is exhibiting classic
signs of an industry shaken by seismic changes, often competition from new technologies. "The
newspaper industry, like others that have experienced this problem, needs to learn some quite
counterintuitive ways of responding," he says. "One of the things we need to be clear about in our
project is the focus of Newspaper Next is how to create innovation outside of our core product. We have
as an industry really little record of innovation."
Gray agrees that newspaper leaders are shifting their approach, and he believes the pace of change is
quickening. "There's definitely an increased tempo," he says. "I think the Knight Ridder tragedy, if you
can use that word, is one of the things that accelerated it. People looked at it and said, 'If it can happen to
Knight Ridder, I better get moving.' Knight Ridder itself had a number of interesting things going on, but
it takes time to get these new things moving to the point that they're generating significant revenue."
And as Bruce Sherman demonstrated so chillingly (see "Sherman's March," February/March),

shareholders may not be willing to wait much longer while newspapers find their footing. "Seeing that
happen was just a real wake-up call not only to publicly traded companies but even to privately held
companies," Gray says. "I'd say broadly across the industry, my impression is that people came away
from it thinking, 'We have to move faster. The wolf is closer to our heels than we thought.'"
Ken Marlin is managing partner of Marlin & Associates, a New York investment banking firm that
specializes in media and technology deals. He compares newspapers' predicament to the demise of the
slide rule: "[O]ne of the fundamental mistakes that a lot of slide rule manufacturers made was in thinking
that people wanted slide rules instead of calculations. The slide rule world got wiped out virtually
overnight by electronic calculators." Marlin says his analogy is imperfect, because newspapers are not in
imminent danger of getting wiped out; he expects them to be around 10 years from now. But the
"newspaper companies, like the slide rule manufacturers, have to either adapt to the new economics or
die."
To adapt, newspapers are, yes, innovating.

At Studio 55, "host" Denise Spidle credits both naplesnews.com and the Naples Daily News of Florida
during her perky, 15-minute newscast. Such rigorous attribution is not only transparent journalism but
also effective marketing: Studio 55 is a video newscast, or "vodcast," produced by E.W. Scripps' Naples
Daily News.
"Potentially we have greater reach with the vodcast than any other product we've ever done," says
President and Publisher John Fish. "The vodcast, from the advertisers' standpoint, is the best multimedia
buy in our area." Spidle's newscast is posted on naplesnews.com each weekday at 4 p.m. and updated at 6
p.m.; it also airs on the local Comcast cable channel. Sponsors' 30-second spots appear in both formats.
The 69,456-circulation Naples Daily News lists sponsors in daily promotions of the vodcast in the paper,
and an assortment of specialty publications, including a Spanish-language weekly and five magazines,
promote the vodcast and its sponsors as well.
Studio 55 was born April 3 into a local broadcast vacuum. Although Fort Myers, 30 miles to the north,
boasts four TV stations, none is based in Naples, the county seat of fast-growing and affluent Collier
County. Fish, who believes video will play an important role in newspapers' future, saw an opportunity.
"I think that the competitive environment that we all find ourselves in, combined with the economic
"I think that the competitive environment that we all find ourselves in, combined with the economic
challenges that we all face, requires that we look at our business in different ways than we have in the
past," he says.
During his year and a half as publisher, Fish has tripled the Daily News' new-media team to 30 people,
including four videographers who produce news and commercials, and has overseen the creation of a
broadcast studio in a building next door to the newsroom. In October, the new-media team launched a
podcast that listeners can access on their computers or download onto their iPods each morning. Like the
vodcast, the podcast showcases the newspapers' reporters and their work. "I've told our staff my goal is to
produce the very best podcast and the very best vodcast of any paper in the country," says Fish, who
expects revenue from the new-media ventures to quadruple from the end of 2004 to this year. "Not only
do we want to be the best new-media operation in the country for any paper our size, we also want to be
the most profitable."
Gannett, the nation's highest-circulation newspaper chain, has moved aggressively during the last six or
seven years to develop a portfolio of "niche content offerings," which totaled 1,006 in mid-April. These
include Spanish-language weeklies, coupon books, 10 weekly city magazines aimed at young people and
"ZIP code" magazines written for and about residents of specific ZIP codes. Many of the non-daily
publications rely heavily on calendar information detailing local happenings.
"What the niche publications do is reach hard-to-get-to audiences for us traditionally, so it provides a
ready vehicle for advertisers that in many cases we haven't had before," says Sue Clark-Johnson,
president of Gannett's newspaper division. As one example, she cites a weekly tab aimed at young
women in Phoenix that fills a void in coverage of Southwest fashion. It's included as an insert in the
Arizona Republic in some areas and also is distributed at outlets frequented by the targeted audience. The
stories, produced by the newspaper's staff, are all local: The tab "does not have fur coats and boots in the
August issue," Clark-Johnson notes. It includes ads from local bead stores and boutiques that have never
advertised in the Arizona Republic.
Even the Associated Press, long known for its meat-and-potatoes approach to news, is spicing up its
menu to serve its clients better in this changing world. "Wherever newspapers go, we want to be in a
position to provide them what they need," says AP President and CEO Tom Curley. He says performing
well on breaking news remains the AP's top priority, but he's trying to add more enterprise and
contextual coverage. "We want to have ownership of the story for longer than the first few hours."
So the AP offers blogs and podcasts. On March 1, it started the AP Online Video Network, which now
produces about 40 stories a day in video form (Microsoft provides the ad support and the video player).
For its debut, the video network provided coverage of New Orleans cleaning up from its first Mardi Gras
since Hurricane Katrina. On April 26, story choices included rising gas prices and White House political
adviser Karl Rove testifying before a grand jury for the fifth time. (To check out how the AP videos are
used, try chron.com or cleveland.com and look under "News Video"; they are also available on other
newspaper and radio Web sites.)
Last fall, the AP also joined the stampede to lasso elusive young readers, launching asap (pronounced a-
s-a-p) to help entertain the under-35 crowd. In late April, asap's contributions included a story about
adults racing plastic tricycles down San Francisco's "crookedest" street and a first-person commentary
from Angie Wagner, the AP's Western regional writer and a stressed-out, sleep-deprived mother of two.
Busy moms also are a focus at the Dallas Morning News, a Belo paper that is fashioning an online, one-
stop resource with local "mom-tested" recommendations on all things parenting, from summer camps to
pediatricians to academic tutors. The early idea for the Master Mom project is to create a rating system
similar to the reader feedback averages on Amazon.com. The format is still taking shape. Would it be
best to segment subjects by neighborhood in a city as a large as Dallas? Should activities be subdivided
by gender and age?
"The idea was really driven from kind of extending our in-depth local coverage to meet audience needs,"
says Jiggs Foster, the paper's marketing director. Staff asked, "What's a need that's unmet in the Dallas
marketplace that we can fulfill?... What is the job that moms need done that's not currently being met by
anybody else?"
API's Newspaper Next is providing free consulting for the Master Mom project, and these are exactly the
kinds of questions that Gray and his team want newspapers to pose. Why? Because the slide rule
analogy, while instructive, overlooks one of the challenges newspapers face: Sometimes competitors
aren't all that obvious. Just as the wolf tricked Little Red Riding Hood by donning her grandmother's cap
and nightgown, so have threats at times seemed innocuous, and certainly irrelevant, to the core business
of newspapers.
Take craigslist, the community space for classifieds from housing to jobs to personals. "That doesn't
even look to us like it has anything to do with newspapers when it comes on the scene, and probably
didn't to Craig Newmark, either," Gray says. (Newmark, who started craigslist in 1995, agrees. "I didn't
have a clue" about his site's impact on the industry, he says. "The effect we've had on news has been
greatly exaggerated, although," he jokes, "it makes a better story that way.")
Newmark "didn't think of himself as being in the newspaper industry," Gray continues. "He looked at the
market and said, 'There are a bunch of people here with jobs they'd like to get done... I'll just make this
and see what happens.' In the early stages, any newspaper person would have looked at it and said, 'Well,
that's interesting, but it doesn't have anything to do with me.' Pretty soon, in some markets, you're seeing
50,000 to 100,000 items advertised... That thing that didn't look initially like it had anything to do with
[newspapers] worked its way into our space."
To help newspapers spot new opportunities in a changing marketplace, Gray and the Innosight
consultants suggest this approach: "People are trying to get certain information jobs done in their lives,"
he says. "What are those jobs? What jobs are very important to them and occur frequently, and they're
really frustrated about the solutions available to them?" As the Morning News team explores its mom-
oriented venture, "they're not even thinking about whether [the moms] read a newspaper," Gray adds.
"It's not really relevant. They're saying, 'We think we can build a significant audience that we know
would be of interest to advertisers.'"
Will any of this work? Will the new print publications and Internet initiatives help convince Wall
Street that newspapers have a plan for the future other than incessant cost-cutting?
"I do think that newspapers have a strong future, and it lies in the fact that they will be or are the last
mass medium in each local market," says Gary Pruitt, the chairman and CEO of McClatchy, which is
gambling $6.5 billion — $4.5 billion plus another $2 billion in assumed debt — on newspapers' future to
gambling $6.5 billion — $4.5 billion plus another $2 billion in assumed debt — on newspapers' future to
buy Knight Ridder. (McClatchy is selling 12 Knight Ridder papers, including the Philadelphia Inquirer
and the San Jose Mercury News.) "That's a good, strong position to be in because we're holding onto our
market better than our local competition. Before, that used to be enough. But it's only the beginning now.
It's no longer sufficient just to have that core daily newspaper; instead, we need to leverage off of it this
whole portfolio of products, including, and most importantly, the leading local Internet site."
In the short run, Pruitt, who outlined the newspaper-as-engine strategy in a March 16 Wall Street Journal
commentary, thinks newspaper companies must do a better job of explaining this strategy to investors.
"The first thing we need to communicate is that newspapers are strong and viable and have good futures,
because I think they are consistently underestimated," he says. "Secondarily, and without taking anything
away from the first point, also articulating that we are not just a newspaper, that in each market we're the
leading local media company, the leading local Internet company," capable of delivering news
continuously. In the long term, he adds, "the proof will be in performance. We're just going to have to
deliver."
Of course, newspapers have been strong performers for a long time — and that's part of the problem,
says Conrad Fink, a professor of newspaper management and strategy at the University of Georgia. In
2004, he says, profits of publicly owned newspaper companies averaged about 20 percent, compared
with an average 11 percent for Fortune 500 companies. "We've been hugely profitable in the past, and
Wall Street only knows one mantra: 'More please, more,'" says Fink, a former Associated Press vice
president. He thinks Sherman's success at strong-arming Knight Ridder shows "we damn well have got
severe problems with investors who in my opinion are completely unreasonable. I do not see that
pressure lessening unless we make some kind of change in investor psychology, which is, of course, a
hell of a challenge."
And because newspapers are reacting to a difficult economic climate, they don't have the luxury of
gently reeducating sanguine investors; instead, they're preoccupied with trying to keep revenue and
profits from sinking further. Edward Atorino, a media analyst at the New York-based brokerage firm
Benchmark Co., says newspapers are trying to change their business plans "in the midst of a very tough
advertising environment." Although ad revenue rose slightly in 2005, it was up less than expected, he
says, and 2006 is off to a disappointing start. "I think they're doing what they can do. It's hard to turn
businesses around on a dime... The business literally fell out of bed a couple years ago, and they reacted
slowly to the Internet."
When newspapers did react to the Web, most gave news away free, turning the journalism business into
a giant philanthropy. "Should they have charged for that like Dow Jones did? It's too late now," Atorino
says. "They're trying to play catch-up, and that's a tough game."
They're also trying to figure out exactly what their mission is in this audience-driven, multiplatform era.
Esther Dyson, editor of Release 1.0, a technology newsletter at CNET Networks, says newspaper
companies need to be clear about what they're trying to accomplish, and they need to do it well. "Are
you a media company, tailoring content to reach an audience and sell ads? Or are you a journalistic
enterprise, focused on finding out and publicizing important truths? If you don't really know what you're
trying to do, then you keep disappointing people who think they understand," she says.
"The whole company doesn't need to do the same thing, but the parts need to understand" their role and
have a business model that supports it. So far, she says of newspaper companies' attempts to capitalize on
the Web, niche publications and other potential moneymakers, "most of them are not crisp enough about
the Web, niche publications and other potential moneymakers, "most of them are not crisp enough about
it."
What, for example, should papers do with their Web sites? Post all the newspaper stories, toss in some
breaking news and spruce it up with a few blogs and podcasts? Try something innovative and completely
different from news as we know it, like the Master Mom project? How should they persuade existing
advertisers to come aboard their Web sites, and attract new advertisers as well?
"From my perspective, newspapers ain't doing too bad on the Internet," says Gordon Borrell, CEO of
Borrell Associates, a media research and consulting firm that tracks Internet advertising revenues for
local Web sites. He says papers have used the last 10 years to bring their print advertisers online, and the
next 10 will be critical to see if papers can expand that ad base and transform their Internet sites into
viable businesses in their own right.
Borrell says newspapers should start by relaxing a little, and realize that readers still prefer the printed
paper for local news. "People don't go to the Internet in huge droves for local school board news or local
crime news," he says. "I think [newspapers] should stop giving that away on the Internet."
But he also believes newspapers need to give their Web operations some independence. If newspaper
companies hope to survive, he says, they have to realize the Internet is a distinct medium, and the
newspaper needs a separate set of very strong managers who can't be distracted by what's going on
online. "They have it married too much in their minds. The newspaper and online in their minds are
Siamese twins."
Borrell suggests thinking of newspaper Web sites in part as a general store for local commerce, and
recommends boston.com (run by the Boston Globe), triangle.com (Raleigh's News & Observer) and
HamptonRoads.com (Norfolk's Virginian-Pilot) as fine examples of this approach. HamptonRoads.com
includes stories, but the information-packed site doesn't look like a newspaper. It features top-rated local
restaurants, daily polls (one in late April asked visitors if Hampton Roads' economy is too dependent on
the military; another asked who should get the next "American Idol" boot), a stock market update and a
local marketplace "DealSpotter" for shoppers, subdivided into categories such as automotive, home and
garden, and apparel and jewelry.
Investment banker Ken Marlin also warns against simply hurling the print edition into cyberspace. "It's
not good enough to take what you have in print form and put it up on the Web," he says. "You have to
take advantage of what the new medium offers and what the new medium allows you to do." While a
newspaper might list Italian restaurants in a neighborhood, its Web site could allow readers to say, "I'm
standing on a corner. Tell me the inexpensive Italian restaurants within half a mile or so and book a
reservation."
The architects of the multiplatform portfolios must think globally, paying attention to viable business
models and detailed audience research and direct-mail programs for advertisers. But at a Newspaper
Next symposium in Washington, D.C., in early February, the first day of a provocative conference about
the future of newspapers didn't include a single word about watchdog journalism or investigative
reporting.
Protecting the unique work that newspapers do will be critical to preserving their value. Doing so will not
be easy. The shifting business model is ushering in dramatic changes for print journalists, making
significant demands on their time, compelling new skills and requiring a new way of thinking about their
jobs.
At the Miami Herald in early April, Executive Editor Tom Fiedler installed a sports-bar-size, flat-screen
monitor outside the newsroom that displays and continuously refreshes MiamiHerald.com. The
homepage is the first thing journalists see when they step off the fifth-floor elevators; newspaper racks
aren't visible until they turn left into the newsroom.
Fiedler followed up this bit of symbolism with an April 12 staff memo laying bare the ramifications of
the multiplatform shift on the newsroom itself. "We are beyond being satisfied with incremental change
and giving polite head nods toward other media platforms," Fielder wrote in the memo, which was
quickly posted and debated on Jim Romenesko's media blog. "We are going to execute fundamental
restructuring to support that pledge. Every job in the newsroom — EVERY JOB — is going to be
redefined to include a web responsibility and, if appropriate, radio. For news gatherers, this means
posting everything we can as soon as we can. It means using the web site to its fullest potential for text,
audio and video. We'll come to appreciate that MiamiHerald.com is not an appendage of the newsroom;
it's a fundamental product of the newsroom."
In an interview two days later, Fiedler said he wants to structure the newsroom toward delivering news
when journalists have it, not toward delivering a morning newspaper. "We're way too comfortable
thinking of ourselves as newspaper people," he says. "We've got to take a step back and shake ourselves
loose of that." He envisions adding a continuous news desk to oversee stories for the Web and
designating a breaking news editor with the authority to dispatch reporters to cover news live, much as
TV news crews do. He expects the newspaper itself will "take on a more historic feel: 'For the record,
this is what's happening.'"
What will all these new obligations mean for the thorough, in-depth reporting that separates newspapers
from their competitors? Will reporters' responsibilities to write for the Web mean they simply don't have
time to make that extra call to the mayor, or the police chief, or the local gadfly — time-consuming
reporting that adds nuance to stories and sometimes changes their direction entirely? "That's a challenge,"
Fiedler says. "I'm determined to overcome that challenge."
In both his memo and in the interview, Fiedler emphasized that he doesn't want to "bleed the newspaper"
to build up the Web site. He says he's looking into adding a few newsroom positions and realizes the
paper probably will need to drop some mundane elements, such as stock tables. "The first concern that
reporters have is, 'Are you in effect going to turn me into a wire service reporter?'" Fiedler says. "One
reporter asked, 'Does this mean we're going to have [story] quotas?' That's not at all what I'm thinking,
and I don't believe that's necessary."
Fiedler also aims to steer clear of the If-It-Bleeds-It-Leads mentality so prevalent in local TV news.
"One of the things I want to avoid is the cheapest and simplest kind of news that we could feed to the
Web page and call it continuous news," such as covering "anything with yellow police tape around it,"
Fiedler says. "I really want us to do the kind of journalism that distinguishes us."
The Miami Herald is among the Knight Ridder papers that McClatchy plans to keep, but when Fiedler
issued his memo, he couldn't discuss newsroom changes with his new bosses because the sale was
pending. (The Justice Department has since changed its regulations to allow such conversations, he says.)
pending. (The Justice Department has since changed its regulations to allow such conversations, he says.)
While the ownership change introduced "a bit of an X factor for us here and for me," Fiedler said in the
interview that he had "to believe that this is a direction that they would want us to move in also."
He's right, if Gary Pruitt's comments are any indication. Pruitt says the multiplatform model demands
more from print journalists because it puts them back in the business of breaking news. "Everything
becomes harder for everybody," Pruitt says. He thinks the best solution is a continuous news desk in the
newsroom that focuses on breaking news. "But then of course there are others doing in-depth,
investigative pieces," he says. "This is not mutually exclusive. We're going to have to do all of it. We
can't abandon one for the other, because that will weaken the core newspaper."
McClatchy's 125,228-circulation News Tribune in Tacoma, Washington, has established a continuous

news desk that is staffed beginning at 6 a.m. and focuses on weather and traffic for early drive-time
reports in addition to breaking news. The paper's Web site (thenewstribune.com) offers a potpourri of
blogs on subjects including sports, real estate, food and fly-fishing, and will soon add a blog on military
affairs and a guide to local online sites. Reporters and photographers also use podcasts to provide
behind-the-scene glimpses into their newsgathering.
At the Washington Post, journalists routinely feed washingtonpost.com with stories, online chats and
blogs. They appear on TV news shows and on Washington Post Radio, an AM-FM station launched
March 30 that's programmed mainly by the Post and owned by Bonneville International Corp. "The jobs
are becoming more versatile," Post Publisher and CEO Bo Jones says of his journalists. (The paper's
Guild chapter, unhappy that some reporters aren't getting paid for the increased workload, in April filed a
complaint with the National Labor Relations Board.) Jones, Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr. and
Managing Editor Philip Bennett are looking at how changes to the newsroom's organizational structure
could better serve the Web as well as the paper. "You don't necessarily have to organize all your
newsroom staff along sections anymore," says Jones, who is also chairman of the NAA. "The sections
that run off the presses aren't always relevant to the Web."
One sure sign that we're in a very different world: Downie, who joined the Post as a summer intern in
1964 and personifies the traditional newspaperman, recently told his staff that the Post needs to become
"platform-agnostic." (Washington City Paper reported this comment and added, "When your 63-year-old
editor starts sounding like Esther Dyson, you know your newsroom is changing.") Downie talks
enthusiastically about the Post's continuous news desk and about working with the Post Co.'s Spanish-
language paper, El Tiempo Latino, to translate more Post stories into Spanish. A few Post reporters have
started using video cameras to capture scenes for washingtonpost.com. Downie sees that practice
expanding "entirely on a voluntary basis" in the future.
The Post, like the rest of the industry, has not been immune to cutbacks. On March 10, the company
announced that it would eliminate about 80 full-time newsroom positions over the next year — about 9
percent of its news staff — through attrition and by offering early retirement. Asked if a willingness to
serve the Post's various platforms helps preserve newsroom slots that might otherwise be lost as
circulation declines, Downie says, "In a general sense that might be the case, but not directly; there's no
direct quid pro quo." But he also says, "Certainly the fact that we are producing content now for many
different platforms means that dollars that are spent in the newsroom" go further.
Philip Meyer, the Knight Chair in Journalism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and
author of "The Vanishing Newspaper: Saving Journalism in the Information Age," is dismayed that
newspapers are increasing workloads instead of increasing staff and ignoring what he sees as an
newspapers are increasing workloads instead of increasing staff and ignoring what he sees as an
opportunity to invest in their futures. "There's a lot more activity on the Internet sites. I'm not sure that's
gotten to the point of creating new content, or new resources are being thrown into it," he says. Instead,
"editors and reporters are supposed to serve the Internet during their coffee breaks."
Will the multiplatform approach inevitably lead us to abandon printed newspapers? In Meyer's view, it
is an excellent transitional model — newspaper readers, like newspaper journalists, hate rapid change —
but not an end point. He says the Internet offers a chance to trade the high costs of ink on paper for a free
distribution system.
"They should start phasing out of it," Meyer, a newspaper veteran, says of the traditional print version. "I
think the newspaper will survive in some form, possibly less than daily. I think people will still want a
print product to carry around with them, but it might be a weekend product." Maybe, Meyer suggests,
readers could pick up newspapers of the future at the train station on their way to work, eliminating
home-delivery costs.
"But the key to it is a stronger journalistic product...and this is what the industry is missing right now,"
Meyer says. "Instead, they're doing the opposite, trying to save their way to prosperity by cutting back on
the product. If they don't take advantage of this opportunity, somebody else is going to do it for them."
A surprisingly similar take on newspapers' future comes from a man with no journalism background but
a strong sense of the Internet's possibilities. "I would be doing whatever I could to make the online
version of the site increasingly compelling; I would be engaging the community more; I would be
investigating delivery of news to mobile devices, particularly cell phones, and paying a lot of attention
to, let's call them electronic ink technologies, including the scrollable displays from companies like
Philips and HP," says craigslist's Craig Newmark. "I love the use of paper, but it's expensive to buy, it's
expensive to print, and it's expensive to deliver."
Newmark reads the print version of the San Francisco Chronicle every day, and he's also started reading
the New York Times more frequently "in part to make Arthur happy" (that would be Times Publisher
Arthur Sulzberger Jr.). He's a fan of bloggers and citizen journalism, but he also describes professional
journalism as "very strong. It involves serious editing, fact-checking, that kind of thing, and I think that
will be the strength that newspapers bring to their electronic media. I do see video and the written word
all converging, delivered electronically, with paper more of an occasional luxury item," Newmark says,
cheerfully advising anybody listening to take his views with a large grain of salt.
But McClatchy's Pruitt doesn't foresee old-fashioned newspapers disappearing anytime soon. "It is likely
that circulation will decline slowly over time, as more audiences become comfortable with the Internet,
but the newspaper will remain viable as print on paper for as far out as we can project at McClatchy," he
says. "Half the people in the United States still read a daily newspaper, and that number is not declining
quickly."
As Pruitt sees it, the multiplatform approach is a way to protect newspapers, not bury them. "Small niche
products or direct-mail programs may seem nitty-gritty or competing at the low end, but it's that kind of
business activity that will sustain the high-end journalism in the core," he says. "I think if you don't
create this portfolio of products, you're probably destined to lose share and be a smaller economic entity,
create this portfolio of products, you're probably destined to lose share and be a smaller economic entity,
which long-term will hurt the potential of what the newspaper and the journalism can be. Can it be a
distraction? Of course, if you let it be. But it can also be the engine that can drive success."
Cox's Jay Smith sees this tumultuous period of transformation as an opportunity for a newspaper
renaissance. "Nothing can motivate you like tough times, but we've also gotten beyond some of our rigid
thinking about what we do and how we must do it," he says. "I don't think I've ever seen a more open
and receptive time in newspapers in the last 40 years."
And Gray, of Newspaper Next, puts the case for innovation this way: "If someone is not reading a
newspaper or not reading a Web site, how are you fulfilling your civic mission? You've got to have some
kind of connection with people in order to fulfill your civic mission. It's up to you to figure out the right
mix. I say let's start the products, let's build the audiences, let's attract the advertisers, and let's remember
who we are."
And who, exactly, are we? In an era when even Len Downie touts platform agnosticism, old newspaper
mores are clearly disappearing. What will replace them? How will we guard newspapers' spirit: their gift
for knitting together disparate threads of a community rather than pandering to divergent demographics,
ages and interests; their commitment to watchdog journalism and to holding the powerful accountable;
their lofty standards of dogged fact-finding and tireless digging?
There's a good reason journalists are so wary of innovation. Daring new experiments intended to save
newspapers must not destroy their souls. They must not turn print journalists into spinning tops, whirling
from podcasts to vodcasts to radio appearances to online chats to blogging, then clutching their video
cameras as they rush to an assignment and, if they get a free second, trying to squeeze in a little
reporting.
It's worth noting — and a hopeful sign — that the Pulitzer Prizes this year honored work that shows
newspapers at their finest and most traditional: the Washington Post's Dana Priest for exposing the CIA's
network of secret prisons abroad; the New York Times' James Risen and Eric Lichtblau for revealing the
National Security Agency's warrantless eavesdropping; Copley News Service and the company's San
Diego Union-Tribune for toppling a corrupt congressman; and the staffs at New Orleans' Times-
Picayune and Gulfport, Mississippi's Sun Herald for valiant reporting on Hurricane Katrina and its
aftermath, when their devastated communities needed them most.
If newspapers abandon the relentless reporting that makes them special, then their future won't be worth
protecting, in any form.

AJR - June Cox Jay Smith Future Internet

Transféré par

Informations du document

Description originale:

Copyright

Formats disponibles

Partager ce document

Partager ou intégrer le document

Options de partage

Avez-vous trouvé ce document utile ?

Ce contenu est-il inapproprié ?

Droits d'auteur :

Formats disponibles

AJR - June Cox Jay Smith Future Internet

Transféré par

Droits d'auteur :

Formats disponibles

AJR - June/July 2006 Preview<hr>Adapt or Die 05/22/2006 09:10 PM

Print this page

From AJR, April/May 2006 issue

June/July 2006 Preview

And as Bruce Sherman demonstrated so chillingly (see "Sherman's March," February/March),

To adapt, newspapers are, yes, innovating.

McClatchy's 125,228-circulation News Tribune in Tacoma, Washington, has established a continuous

Vous aimerez peut-être aussi