misconceptions,about,the,futur DIY 6 misconceptions about the future of newspapers

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Thenewspaper industry is dead. That has become conventional wisdom among theAmerican populace. There arejust two problems with that statement. The newspaper business has had itsobituary written twice before – once during the advent of radio, then a secondtime during the advent of television. Neither proved true. There are stillthousands of newspapers rolling off printing presses to this day. Not onlydid newspapers survive both of those innovations, the business thrived in theiraftermath. It’s still not unusual for newspapers to run enviable profit marginsof 15 percent or higher. Weekly business newspapers have routinely racked upprofit margins greater than 30 percent. Granted,the internet poses the biggest challenge yet to newspapers’ economic viabilitybecause it is a convergent technology capable of integrating and delivering allforms of media. The internet channels audio, video and text. But that’s noreason to count newspapers out. All ofthis had led to many misconceptions about newspapers and their future, and thefalse conclusion that newspapers have no future. Here are six commonmisconceptions, why they are false and why newspapers will continue to be anessential part of our media mix for many decades to come. 1.   Print is dead. Like so many areas of our lives, wewrongly judge the world solely by the American experience. While printcirculation is shrinking in the United States, the story is very different inplaces like India and other countries with emerging economies. According tostatistics published by Voice of America, the daily newspaper count in Indiahas risen to nearly 2,000 with a combined circulation of 80 million copies. Thenumber of dailies has increased by 25 percent in just 10 years. Add weekly andmonthly newspapers and the total is more than 62,000 titles. It’s also importantto remember that print is still a technology with some distinct advantages overelectronic formats. You can read a newspaper or magazine in all kinds of light,and they never run out of battery power or require an electrical outlet. Whenyou’re done reading you can hand your newspaper off to another reader or simplyleave it behind and walk away unencumbered. When’s the last time you sawsomebody leave their Kindle, nook or Apple iPad on a park bench or train seat?2.   The internet will replace newspapers. On the contrary, newspapers areactually one of the primary drivers of internet activity. Google News and YahooNews, two of the biggest news sites on the internet, are simply aggregators ofnewspaper articles. Twitter and other Social Media sites are loaded withreferrals and links to interesting and important newspaper articles. Bloggersuse newspaper stories as grist for their mills. Newspapers themselves have someof the most highly-trafficked venues on the web, including the New York Times,Washington Post and Wall Street Journal sites. Newspapers ink-stainedfingerprints are all over the internet.3.   People don’t read anymore. Another falsehood. Ironically, morepeople are reading newspaper stories than ever before, even as U.S. newspaperssuffer declining print circulation. Young people in particular are readingonline and reading in big numbers. People are glued to their computers andhandheld devices reading aggressively. More people than ever are writing arealso writing. Tens of millions of blogs have been created and millions haveadopted the writing life. Millions of others who don’t have their own blogswrite several times a day on Social Media sites such as Twitter and Facebook.4.   Newspapers can be replaced by bloggers. As I alluded to earlier, manybloggers rely on newspapers and other publications for subject matter. Theywould be out of business without newspapers. Bloggers do almost no reportingbecause news gathering is an expensive and time-consuming activity. Few peoplemake a living wage by blogging and therefore cannot commit the time required todo actual news gathering, writing and editing on a scale or pace thatnewspapers do. Bloggers make many valuable contributions to the nationalconversation and information output, but they are a world away from newspapers.5.   Newspapers don’t get the internet. Newspapers flooded the internet enmasse years ago and are fueling much of its activity. They have made wholesalechanges in accordance with internet culture and have integrated themselves intoTwitter, Facebook and other Social Media sites. Their sites are optimized forsearch engines and they are delivering content through every available channel.Newspapers also maintain many blogs that are exceptional in that they dooriginal reporting. There are even very popular internet-only newspapers likeSalon, Slate and The Daily Beast. Newspapers get it.6.   We don’t need newspapers anymore. We were all taught in school thatnewspapers are indispensable to a democratic form of government. It might soundlike a platitude but it’s true. If newspapers didn’t exist who or what wouldblow the whistle on government malfeasance and corporate corruption? Scandals likeWatergate, Iran-Contra, Enron and Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme are not thestuff of blogs. If the reporting of scandal was to disappear than the instancesof scandal would proliferate. That’s to say nothing about the reporting oflandmark success stories and acts of heroism. What’s more, radio and TVstations rely heavily newspapers for the news they broadcast. History isour guide. We have never entirely given up one medium in favor for another.When radio and TV followed newspapers onto the scene we started getting ournews from all three sources, we didn’t reduce our options by abandoning aparticular medium. We indulge in all of them. There’s nodoubt newspapers will play a diminished role in some ways. It has alreadyhappened. But that’s also been true of network television. ABC, CBS, NBC andFox have all been forced to live with smaller audiences – first because cableTV cannibalized their audience, then when the internet diverted the attentionspan of millions more. The more time people spend on Twitter, Facebook, YouTubeand blogs, the less time they spend watching TV. Newspapershave more readers than ever but fewer paying readers than in the past becausethey are taking advantage of free internet access to their daily news. Like theTV networks, newspapers are learning to deal with this new reality. As mediaoptions multiply the number of people spending time on each medium naturallythins. It’s just a fact of media life. Newspapers will learn to co-exist withtheir media siblings. They’ve done it before.