The endless string of newspaper collapses is threatening to throw me into a depression.
The Rocky Mountain News published its last issue two weeks ago. Both the San Francisco Chronicle and Seattle Post-Intelligencer may close. Earlier this winter the four parent companies of The Chicago Tribune, The LA Times, The Minneapolis Star Tribune, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Philadelphia Daily News and The New Haven Register said they’d be filing for bankruptcy.
As entrenched in new technologies as I am (social media is part of nearly every campaign we create, I’m facebook obsessed, and my iPhone’s become an appendage), I must confess: I’m a gal with a four paper-a-day habit. I love the physical experience of reading the newspapers – seeing the information laid out, sorting through sections. Clearly this proclivity may soon be nothing but nostalgia.
I’m an optimist though, and the reality is I’m much more concerned about the news itself than the paper it’s printed on, so Larry Kramer’s article in The Daily Beast intrigued me.
Kramer argues that the news industry – not the newspaper industry – is viable if the producers of news would listen to their customers and give them what they want.
“And guess what, they want news” – whether it be via “television, newspapers, BlackBerries, cellphones, magazines or web.”
Kramer sees a window of opportunity, “Consumers are just learning all the new ways they can get news and are still figuring out what works best for them. There is still time for those of us in the news industry to work with them and find out at the same time.”
This squares with what our clients at Context-Based Research Group found when they conducted an anthropological study of people’s news consumption habits on behalf of the Consumers are struggling with news fatigue. Interestingly, the research also revealed that they’re yearning for in-depth stories.
Kramer’s article which, interestingly, ultimately endorses a model that resembles a wire-service approach – divorcing news gatherers from news outlets – appealed to me because it takes an action-oriented tone and suggests there’s something that may be done before it’s too late. His call for newspapers to stop doing the Sisyphean task of selling something to people that they refuse to buy sounds right, even to this newspaper addict.
Regardless of what the new model is exactly, it’s clear that finding a new incarnation and proactively implementing it is imperative for us all – news consumers, producers, and communicators alike.