What happens when your local newspaper disappears?
This is a mirror post of an editorial I wrote for The Exception Magazine (here for post). I enjoyed writing this because it was written for readers instead of for other journalists.
Journalists suddenly noticed their industry looks like all the other ones they write about on Wall Street. Newspapers, such as the Rocky Mountain News, disappeared while others stopped printing or stopped home delivery to stay alive. Almost every large and small newspaper in the country is threatened by the economy in some form or another, meaning cutbacks, furloughs, layoffs and shutdowns are commonplace.
So what does that mean for you, the readers and users of these products?
Plenty of journalists proffer opinions that readers no longer care or no longer read. They blame any number of things: Facebook, video games, young people, old people, deteriorating communities, dirty politics, bias, etc. These are all correct but basically assume readers are stupid and newspaper people are the only ones who “get” the world.
I know, I think it’s offensive how out of touch they are too.
A survey by the Pew Research Centre for the People and the Pressfound that 43 percent of Americans believe civic life would be hurt “a lot” if their local news organization closed down. As usual, journalists see these numbers and say “see, told you so! They hate us because they just don’t care anymore.”
Let’s be more thoughtful for a moment and talk about what that means.
Community life has changed dramatically over the last 20 to 50 years. Before the Internet, a shift in the way people communicate and connect was taking place. The Internet only accelerated it.
In a conference about new forms of journalism, a group of editors suggested partnering with Starbucks to do revive the “town hall” meetings of the 19th century. The idea was to bring people to Starbucks to read the news and participate in community conversations. A student in the audience asked “Why would I go to Starbucks when I can just do it online?”
Great question. Why would someone in 2009 do something from 1809?
Journalists of the civic minded type want something that no longer exists. People don’t like change, journalists hate change. Instead of moving with the community, reader behavior and wants, journalists like to plant their feet in the ground and pull everyone back to them. It’s a tug of war they’re losing.
So the Pew Research question is flawed: Would civic life be hurt if your newspaper shutdown? Well no, because that newspaper isn’t the only place readers find news about their community and interests.
Communities don’t exist in places we can touch anymore, they exist in virtual spaces. Your neighborhood watch group and PTA are of those few physical communities left, but you may communicate with mothers and fathers across the country online. Newspapers don’t offer that form of connection. They simply cannot.
What’s more, newspapers don’t often offer a local connection either. Think about it, where do you learn community’s factoids? If you live in a small town, your newspaper maybe sometimes gets it right and is the center of those ongoing conversations.
But chances are you probably get information from Susie Gossiper and John Tellastory. Or you find out about your community from e-mails, Facebook shared links, local bloggers, the newspaper, during conversations at the store or over the fence with Wilson.
Notice the newspaper was in there, but only slightly.
The problem with newspapers comes from more than the economy. It comes from their disconnection with readers. The news organization that will survive the economy adapted and realized how to stay relevant and necessary. The rest did not.
Newspapers must be a reflection of the community they currently serve, not the community they used to serve. Journalists hold onto things they remember because they don’t spend enough time being part of the community. Those who do, are the ones you probably read everyday. Those who don’t, are the ones you want to write hate mail to – and rightly so.
If newspapers want to live, they must realize they have to be a citizen, an extremely well-informed citizen. Reading a newspaper should be like talking to the smart person in town – not the condescending one, the other guy. More than that, newspapers should be interested in the things we’re interested in and use the same tools as us.
At the same time, I believe we take news for granted. Sometimes news people are like our obnoxious teachers. We don’t like them but we learned something useful in retrospect.
So what happens if your local newspaper shuts down? And what happens if it turns out the newspaper really was relevant? What if Susie Gossiper only participated in the online news forums and John Tellastory really just read the newspaper a lot and now they’re both useless? And what happens if you no longer get Sunday morning coupons?
Well first, it’s a good thing the newspaper finally died since it was taking up so much space in the market. Now something better can take its place. Susie Gossiper will probably run her own forum. If she’s really such a busy body, she’ll make sure everyone knows about it too. John Tellastory will start a blog and mine for information on his own.
But if they’re not reliable, which judging by their names they probably aren’t, all those leftover journalists will start something better too.
In San Francisco, journalists laid off from the San Francisco Chronicle started a Wikipedia modeled site. They want readers to contribute and edit the news in a collaborative environment.
There are hundreds of experiments that could take hours to list and talk about. Oddly, journalists think there is “The Answer” to fixing or saving news and newspapers and any experiment that failed in one place should never be repeated somewhere else.
My journalism cohort Annie Flanzraich and I realized journalism is at a point where a mass media with a mass system of delivery and mass business model will no longer work. Meaning, soon there will be niche products with niche business models for niche audiences.
Hopefully advertisers will do the same, which means the coupons will come to you instead. That’s right, no more paper cuts.
What iTunes did for musicians by allowing anyone to enter the stage to make money, the web has done for journalism. If you want to be a journalist or start an organization because you think you can do it better, you probably not only can do it better, but have nothing standing in your way. Just be prepared to pay for news or better yet, charge for news.
The future of journalism then becomes anything you want. In an era of instant, infinite customizability, who needs an irrelevant newspaper anyway? Of course, if your newspaper is relevant and you’ll miss it when it disappears, feel free to send donations.
I like this, even though it has some flaws.
“These are all correct but basically assume readers are stupid and newspaper people are the only ones who “get” the world.”
You omit the part where the designer Blankmen rushed forward in their capes to say THEY are the ones who TRULY get it, and then they made promises but failed to deliver on any of them. In the process, newsrooms were dumbed down, and credibility was destroyed.
“What iTunes did for musicians by allowing anyone to enter the stage to make money, the web has done for journalism.”
That happened, though, because of court rulings destroying the free model. That hasn’t happened yet in the journalism world.
What would have helped and what still needs to happen is to have strict licensing/credentialing of journalists. This idea usually brings out the whiners who claim this violates the First Amendment, but that’s crazy. The government doesn’t have to do the licensing. Also, as I say on other site, the Bill of Rights does not mean unregulated freedoms. Felons cannot vote or purchase firearms legally. Free speech does not permit someone to yell “Fire!” in a crowded room. Even churches are regulated in some ways, but that doesn’t eliminate freedom of religion.
“Oddly, journalists think there is “The Answer” to fixing or saving news and newspapers and any experiment that failed in one place should never be repeated somewhere else.”
Gee, that’s funny. The design-based approach has failed almost everywhere, yet people cling to it like it’s free bread.