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Tuesday, November 14, 2006

The Big City Newspaper Death Spiral Continues

I usually begin my rare musings on the newspaper business by saying that I rarely muse on the newspaper business because it's boring "inside baseball" talk and unworthy of wasting much bandwidth. This means of introduction enables me to then proceed to waste bandwidth on boring inside baseball talk on the newspaper business.

I just wanted to make that clear before making an announcement:
Philadelphia's two fine daily newspapers are dying a slow and agonizing death. It may not happen next month or next year, but both are toast. And aside from the people who still work there, ink-stained wretches like myself and nostalgia freaks who collect stuff like old Coca Cola soda fountain signs, there isn't a lot of mourning.

That is because most everyone else is reading blogs, watching Fox News, getting news on satellite radio or their cell phones, or don't give a rat's rectum about what's going on -- whether it's Washington, Warsaw or Walla Walla -- because it's so depressing, boring or both.
Back in May, I blogged about my former incarnation as a reporter and editor for 21 years at the Philadelphia Daily News. The occasion was the sale of the News and its big sister, The Philadelphia Inquirer, by the Knight Ridder newspaper chain to a local investment group.

Because I know that virtually none of you will click on the link above, I'll summarize my musings below:

The Inky covered the world with a savoire-faire that earned it many Pulitzers, while the News covered Philadelphia in a way that was so intimate and so street smart that editors from out-of-town papers flocked to its newsroom to try to understand -- and emulate -- why it had such a deep bond with its readers.

Although advertising revenues and readership were down and the new media was giving this old media fits, both papers made money. In the Inky's case, buckets and buckets of money. But this wasn't enough for a self-aggrandizing asshole by the name of Anthony "Tony" Ridder, chief executive of Knight Ridder, the newspaper chain that owned them.
Back in the day, Knight Ridder was the class of U.S. newspaper chains because of its commitment to excellence. Even in its waning days its reporters were putting out a great product, notably stories on what was really going on in Iraq when the New York Times and other mighty mights were still drinking the White House Kool-Aid.
But at some point the balance between putting out a quality product and getting Knight Ridder's stock price up tipped in the direction of Wall Street. Ridder -- who more than earned my moniker as the Darth Vader of the newspaper industry -- was the tipper in chief.

Ridder eventually put KR on the auction block and the now considerably leaner Inky and anorexic News were "saved" by an investment group led by Brian Tierney, a Philly public relations guy, meaning that the papers would be locally owned for the first time in forever.
That might have seemed like a reason to celebrate and I did . . . for about 30 seconds.
My lack of exuberance stemmed from the fact the buyers had zero publishing experience. And I had no faith in their promise to keep their mitts off of the editorial content, their avowed confidence in the papers' leadership and their stated committment to avoid job cuts.

Damn, I hate to have been right, but six months later here's the sitch in Philadelphia:
Tierney has cut way back on expenses, canned the Inky's publisher and editor and is demanding deep job cuts from already depeleted newsrooms. A strike that would have further accelerated the papers' demise was narrowly averted late last month. (He has kept his mitts off of editorial content. For now.)

The future looks very, very grim, and if anything Tierney and his bean counters will have hastened the papers' demise, not saved them.
* * * * *
This is the part of the movie where I note that the News and Inky, like newspapers in general, have not helped themselves by being painfully slow to embrace new media like the Internet, blogging, video and interactive do-dads.

When I bailed from the News in 2001, the print edition was losing readers, but few of them were being lured to the paper's website although the Internet was The Next Big Thing.

The website was a mess because almost no one except the webmaster -- certainly not the big editors with big offices -- understood its potential as a magnet for keeping readers and attracting new ones, as well as a source of ad revenue. Despite dramatic advances in website design and maintenance, five years later the website is only marginally better.

The website mainly just has more stuff, and that reflects an institutional inability to move away from the old media model to a new one despite the fact that the News has had a proverbial gun to its head for years.
When I asked the webmaster in early September why the link to the News's fabulous Will Bunch, one of the best bloggers anywhere, was so hard to find, he mumbled something to the effect that a new esign template then on order would solve that problem. Well, two months later, there is no new template and Will is still been treated as secret by his own paper.
The situation is, in some respects, worse upstairs at the Inky, which has more resources and reportoriald horsepower it but does even less with it at its website, which still uses the same pedestrian template that Knight Ridder foisted on it years ago. Can you say institution ennui?
To give credit where it's due, there have been improvements at philly.com, an umbrella website for the News and Inky, since I bitched about it two months ago, notably giving bloggers from both papers much better play and dialing back on the play of the boring stuff that is driving readers away from the print editions to begin with.

I do not take credit for this, only note that it's about freaking time.
* * * * *
Besides being inside baseball, my nattering has the unpleasant aspect of kicking good people while they're down, and I would be embarrassed to let my former colleagues in Philly know that I'm delivering another punch to their the gut. (So don't tell them, okay?)

Mind you, the Philadelphia papers are not the only ones looking down the wrong end of the barrel. There are problems aplenty at once mighty big city papers from sea to shining sea, including the Los Angeles Times and Boston Globe, as noted here and here.
And as the aforementioned Mr. Bunch notes, a bad situation is being made worse by the only people who seem interested in bailing out newspapers these days: Self-aggrangizing fat cats who won't keep their mitts off of the editorial content and drop their investments like a hot potato if they don't think they can make a killing.

And I thought Tony Ridder was bad.
(Image from The Economist)
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7 comments:

  1. Anonymous10:52 AM

    In the Philadelphia area, what percentage of white readers subscribe to a newspaper versus what percentage of black readers or Hispanic readers or Asian readers.

    You complain that the newspapers did not embrace new technology. Yet, did the newspapers not realize that when they supported policies that encouraged white flight, increased immigrations, and created failing schools that they were supporting policies that would produce few new newspaper readers?

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  2. Shaun Mullen11:30 AM

    Funny how so many people are named Anonymous.

    Anyhow, he or she (a white male in all likelihood) is on to something, although I would put that something differently.

    Philadelphia remains a very segregated city. There has been substantial black flight, as well as white flight, to the Pennsylvania suburbs and South Jersey because of poor schools and high crime. I don't see immigration as a factor because, like I said, Philadelphia remains a very segregated city and poorer immigrants are ghetto-ized in certain neighborhoods.

    To what extent has flight been a reason for declining newspaper sales?

    I think flight plays a smallish role. The biggest reason for declining readership is changing demographics (of which flight from a paper's home turf is only one of many factors) and the failure of newspapers to remain relevant in a fast changing world.

    Finally, I cannot give you exact numbers by race for the Philadelphia papers, although I do know that the Daily News has traditionally had, by percentage, one of the largest non-white readerships of any major metro daily. Nationally, readership is declining among all races. In 2005, according to The Project for Excellence in Journalism, 53 percent of whites read newspapers, 47 percent of blacks, 44 percent of Asians and 34 of Hispanics. I would suggest that those numbers may be high. When approached by poll takers, some people fudge when asked whether they will vote, whether they read newspapers and do other things stereotypically viewed as being activities of good citizens.

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  3. Anonymous12:26 PM

    Thank you for the answer. I asked the question because, in Washington, DC, the difference between black readership and white readership of the Washington Post is significant but the difference between whites and Hispanics is even greater. When I searched for data on newspaper reading by race (or ethnicity) as a proxy for education, I found that Asian-Americans have a low rate of newspaper readership. You data for Philadelphia seems to confirm the data.

    Did the owner just look at the numbers and realize that there was no growth in analog newspaper circulation.

    I also wonder how the exurbs affect newspaper readership. I have co-workers who complain that the newspaper just is not delivered early enough.

    Has Philadelphia started the experiment with transit based newspapers like the Washington Post was tried with the Washington Express?

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  4. Shaun Mullen12:58 PM

    I interpret readership by ethnic groups as follows: Fewer Asian-Americans read newspapers not because they're less likely to be readers; in fact, Asian-Americans survey much higher on education, literacy and so on. That may be less the case with Hispanics, but that's beside the point. On a percentage basis, the largest growing segment of metro populations are Hispanics, followed by Asian-Americans. Just as fewer whites and blacks are reading newspapers, so too are these new or relatively new arrivals, only on a proportionately higher basis since they didn't grow up in American households where their parents read the papers.

    As to analog circulation, I don't know in general terms. What I do know is in Philadelphia the owners bit off much more than they could chew.

    Few papers are willing to invest in exurban circulation growth. It doesn't pay to put papers in a delivery truck and drive to communities 25, 50 and 75 miles from your printing plant because people who commute by automobile to the big city from that far out or work locally aren't going to buy papers in sufficiently high numbers to cover the driver's salary, health benefits and pension fund, purchase and upkeep of the vehicle, fuel costs, and so on.

    Example: The Des Moines Register, a fine paper until it was taken over by indifferent new owners, used to be available throughout that state although the Register took large financial losses the further it delivered from Des Moines. That didn't matter. What mattered was the Register was Iowa's paper and the old owners were proud of that fact. Today the Register is only available in Des Moines and the near suburbs except my mail subscription.

    (The exceptions are the small handful of national papers -- USA Today, the Wall Street Journal and New York Times -- that print at numerous satellite plans and have many circulation hubs.)

    There has been a transit-based newspaper in Philadelphia for several years. It is a piece of sh*t.

    On the other hand, the Philadelphia Daily News has always been predominately a single-sale (newsstand) paper, while the Inquirer has been a home delivery paper. The News always has been available at bus, subway and train stations and has followed its mass transit commuters as they moved to the suburbs. No matter, the larger demographic factors to which I alluded in my previous comment remain in play: Fewer people are reading newspapers, period.

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  5. sanskritg1:20 PM

    Anonymous said: Asian-Americans have a low rate of newspaper readership.

    I wonder if this is because a greater percentage of Asian-Americans are professionals and their news source may be the Internet.

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  6. Shaun Mullen1:45 PM

    I dunno for sure but suspect that is exactly the reason.

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  7. Shaun Mullen5:38 AM

    Drewcatt:

    You are correct on all counts.

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