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Editorials
Newspapers must save themselves
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6/30/2009 |
Newspaper journalism is an industry with its share of strong opinions and large egos. That’s why it’s a little shocking that so many in the business agree the old newspaper business model based upon advertising and circulation revenue isn’t working, but really don’t know what comes next.
Can community newspapers be salvaged using the nonprofit, tax-exempt model that has worked for public radio and television? After all, many advertisers still believe print gets results. Or has Web-delivered information and communication rendered print journalism the equivalent of the modern buggy whip?
We think it’s too early to say.
As consumers, we often hear our economic comedown was self-induced, the result of too much debt. Those who didn’t take the debt plunge, and who still have jobs, are in relatively better shape.
The same can be said about the newspaper industry, which went through a frenzy of acquisition and consolidation over the last decade. Too much of it was highly leveraged with sale prices based upon unsustainable profit levels. While all newspapers face complex challenges in the current environment, those that entered it with too much debt likely are hurting the worst.
Some already have disappeared, others will, some are doing things they never could have imagined, hoping to find a way to fix the old model, or stumble onto a new one that works.
Did executive editor Rob Karwath — who sits in front of a Web camera weekdays at the Duluth News Tribune for its four minute DNTV Web cast — expect it to come to this?
Get ready for more of these experiments. Some may even work. Knowing that most won’t, the dual objective should be to first do no further harm to the core product.
On their best days, newspapers act as an unregulated public utility that help hold their host communities together. So we all have a stake in the outcome.
But no taxpayer-financed newspaper rescue plan is in the cards. This industry — and each newspaper company — will have to save itself.
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