One Paper Towns
This week Seattle joined an increasing number of major cities with a single daily paper. I flew out of Seattle Monday as the staff at the 146 year old Seattle Post-Intelligencer was finishing the final touches on their final print edition. The print paper is ceasing but the business marches on as an online news & info portal. Other papers continue but are being published a few days per week.
St. Louis has been a one paper town since the closure of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat in 1986. Some are predicting many one paper towns will become no paper towns. Ad revenues have fallen drastically over the couple of decades while costs have risen.
Eventually St. Louis will be a no daily paper town. The Post-Dispatch is thinner than before. It may well go to fewer days before ceasing print publication.
Industries change as times change. Cities change as well. A century ago many people needed the afternoon or morning paper to inform them of what happened. That need no longer exists. The need that remains is journalists being around to uncover scandals. The Post-Dispatch following the recent towing scandal is a perfect example. A printed paper is not necessary to uncover these stories. A good business model is.
The Pulitzer family cashed out of the Post-Dispatch at just the right time. Lee Enterprises is now stuck wth massive debt from their 2005 acquisition of Pulitzer, Inc. Newspaper companies all over the country are in trouble.
The question I have is how will a 2-paper town going to a 1-paper town or no paper town impact the civic pride? Will businesss and politicians be able to get away with more with fewer paid journalists on the local beats?
According to Charles Gibson of ABC you are to blame for the newpapers troubles. Which of course is BS.
http://www.journalism20.com/blog/2009/03/18/abcs-gibson-out-of-touch-sends-college-journalists-wrong-message/
I remember the short-lived St. Louis Sun newspaper, however it didn’t even last a year.
It would be terrible if the St. Louis paper of record went under. Going online would then be the only way to know about local politics and events. People without a computer would cut out.
There is some very good writing going on at the Beacon. However, the site still needs work in my opinion. I find it hard to read. If the Post were to go under, one more common experience would be lost as we continue to be able to slice and dice the market. What brings people together? There is so much that separates us the internet now being another.
St. Louis bloggers have shown a great capacity to report on stories before the print or television media.
“St. Louis has been a one paper town since the closure of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat in 1986.”
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What about the St. Louis American? They provide a good alternative view to the Post-Dispatch.
Denver recently became a one-daily-paper town, as well, with the loss of the Rocky Mountain News. The real challenge, for both the print and the electronic media, is on the revenue side. I look at a dozen papers online every day and use Craigslist as my primary source for local classified ads, and I pay none of them anything for their content. Sure, I have to wait for the pop-up ads to load, but I rarely pay any attention to them, since they’re the “price of admission”. Print newspapers are primarily advertising media, with their “news” only being used as a hook to buy them (as in “all the news that fits”). As long as ADVERTISERS find them to be useful, they’ll continue to exist, with delivery timed to meet THEIR needs. It’s no different than the junk mail we all toss – someone thinks it’s worth their money to inflict it on us. Personally, I’m just glad the Suburban Journals have gone to subscriptions – they were more litter than news!