Print critics have been predicting the burial of print newspapers for many years now; in fact, the chairman of Tribune Company, Sam Zell, said this week that home delivery of newspapers will soon become a thing of the past, with papers being replaced by "PDFs."
One could be forgiven for questioning whether he knows what a PDF is, but it is true that the print news business has undergone traumatic downsizings, bankruptcies, layoffs, rising prices, audience losses, and hemorrhaging advertising revenue, and that it's been a tough haul for many if not most newspaper companies. They might be showing some success at reinventing themselves; a number of these large papers, including San Francisco's own Chronicle, are surprising people by reporting that they're back in the black, even as the larger economy continues to struggle. Still, it's probably a safe bet that papers will continue innovating and experimenting, until they come up with a stable new business model.
The evolution of news media has been a long-standing object of The Commonwealth Club's attention. The Club most recently delved into the effects of the decline of traditional news media -- primarily print newspapers, but also some television and radio news -- and its effect on California governance. After all, if one of the roles of journalists is to shine a light of public knowledge onto the workings of public institutions, then what will happen with fewer reporters digging into government lobbying relationships, contract negotiations, and legislation writing?
An expert panel explored this topic February 19 at The Club's San Francisco headquarters. Watch the video above.
We all know that media is changing. Many journalists see that technology is a double-edged sword, streaming important news to us faster than ever before, while also cutting away at trustworthy, ethically obtained news stories.
As technology continues to affect the dependability of our information, media ethics will be at the forefront of the conversation. Since the process of gathering, writing and publishing information now takes only minutes, and as the competition to get the story out seconds before your competitors intensifies, is it necessary to relax accepted journalistic standards?The South Carolina newspaper The State recently published e-mails, which it obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, between a number of different media outlets and the office of Gov. Mark Sanford. The e-mails contain what is best described as “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” negotiating.
Washington Times Radio staffer Joseph Deoudes wrote Gov. Sanford’s communications director Joel Sawyer promising Gov. Sanford would “be on friendly ground” if he chose to speak on Washington Times Radio. WACH morning anchor Tim Miller promised not to “bash” Gov. Sanford like other media organizations might be apt to do. And ABC News Senior White House Correspondent Jake Tapper sent e-mails to Sawyer saying negative things about NBC’s coverage of Gov. Sanford’s affair, implying that ABC would not project such a disapproving point of view on the subject.
Many journalists and citizens alike have objected to these actions, because they inhibit the public’s access to unbiased information. But many media organizations have argued that these days it’s not so much about getting the news right, but getting the news first.
At a recent Commonwealth Club event on the terrible status of newspapers, Phil Bronstein, Executive Vice President and Editor at Large of the San Francisco Chronicle, talked about how sources have now become citizen journalists. “ You cannot ignore, nor should you ignore, the ubiquity of the public, the access to information that the public has that professional journalists often don’t have,” said Bronstein.
Some news organizations today point out the fact that the same technology that increases the pressure to publish stories first -- and leads to more relaxed vetting of information -- is also increasing the ability of citizens to fact check the information of news stories themselves. People on all sides of the news, from journalists to readers, are having time cut in half: Journalists have half the time they used to, to check the facts. Readers only need half the time they used to, to point out errors.
So maybe our next step is to have journalist print a story as fast as possible and leave it up to the public to check the facts. But then what really is the point of journalism? Perhaps people could just pass around information themselves by writing their own news stories on their own blogs, allowing stories to be as subjective as they want, leaving it up to others to find out what is truth, what is exaggeration and what are simply lies. But there still is one major advantage that real media organizations have over all us bloggers: their legitimacy. As Bronstein pointed out, holding people and organizations accountable is simply not something that bloggers can do with the expediency of legitimate news organizations.
On August 19, The Club will host an event called Predicting the Future of Media. Panelists -- including representatives from YouTube, the Associated Press and the Center for Investigative Reporting -- will discuss what traditional media will have to do to stay in the game while new media keeps changing the rules.
The once most trusted man in America famously said about journalists, “Our job is only to hold up the mirror -- to tell and show the public what has happened.” Many would argue against a change to Walter Cronkite’s standard of journalism without a long hard look at what it will mean for our proud history of freedom of press.
Consider this: A Time Magazine online poll published today shows Jon Stewart as the new most trusted newscaster in America, winning with 44 percent. In second place was Brian Williams with 29 percent, third place went to Charlie Gibson with 19 percent and in fourth place was Katie Couric with 7 percent. This poll is quite telling, because out of all these newscasters, Stewart is the only one whose show, “The Daily Show,” is broadcast on Comedy Central.
A comedian as the new Walter Cronkite? In a way, it makes sense that people would trust a man whose job it is to make fun of people. Unlike the press who embarrassed themselves over the Sanford affair, he is probably less likely to promise any corporation or political party or person “friendly ground” for an interview or agree to allow only positive framing of an issue. Friendly ground and positive framing don’t make for lots of laughter, after all – as Jim Cramer found out when he got a very unfriendly grilling by Stewart earlier this year. And when we are faced with the behavior of the media in Sanford affair, which many have publicly denounced, people might well conclude that it seems smarter to trust a guy who appears to not owe anything to anyone.
Film industry billionaire David Geffen wants to buy The New York Times. Not a copy here or there; not subscribe so it’ll be delivered to his doorstep every morning. No, Geffen wants to buy The New York Times Company.
That may seem like an odd thing for a successful businessman to desire. With print news organizations suffering from a mix of economic crisis, the loss of their cash-cow classified advertising business, and some poor decision-making, we’ve already seen some major changes in the newspaper landscape in this country, and we can expect to see some more. The Tribune Company, owners of the Chicago Tribune and more recently (and controversially) of the Los Angeles Times, filed for bankruptcy after it was bought in a debt-laden deal by real estate billionaire Sam Zell. The San Francisco Chronicle reportedly just barely escaped being closed or sold for parts, and the Boston Globe is losing more than $80 million a year.
Huge debt overloads, depressed advertising revenue, and still largely unproven online revenue models have driven a number of papers to the brink of insolvency. Newspapers were traditionally very profitable ventures, and in turn they play crucial roles in informing, uncovering, entertaining, and occasionally provoking citizens. Is the for-profit life of papers over? Can citizens get the news and critical information they need from the new wave of journalism ventures?
One such is the brand new East Bay Citizen, a news blog created and just launched by Steven Tavares, a Commonwealth Club intern who has contributed to this blog. It takes its inspiration from the idea that hyperlocal news is not covered well by the aging and money-losing giant news organizations. Tavares predicts the growth of many very localized news sources to fill in the gap.
But Times is a different animal, a local newspaper that has become a national and even international news brand. What can be done with it?
Geffen is planning to turn The New York Times into a nonprofit news organization, according to a report in Newsweek. The idea has been implemented elsewhere, such as the St. Petersburg Times in Florida, which has been run by a nonprofit for decades. Newsweek says that its sources tell it that Geffen "envisions himself as the next Nelson Poynter, the late proprietor of the St. Petersburg Times and a legend in journalistic circles for his fierce independence. The Florida newspaper ... is the widely recognized prototype of the nonprofit structure that is now generating growing interest in some quarters of an industry facing an existential crisis. Poynter, who died in 1978, willed his control to the nonprofit and highly influential Poynter Institute, viewing the mechanism as the optimal way of preserving the St. Petersburg Times' independence and local ownership. Today, under the complex ownership structure, the St. Petersburg Times operates in many respects like a for-profit newspaper."
Would it work for The New York Times? First of all, Geffen's not even assured of gaining control. He failed in a bid to buy a minority interest in the company. And The Financial Times' John Gapper urgesThe New York Times' Ochs-Sulzberger family, which controls ownership of the firm, not to sell until they've returned it to profitability.
But the effort is likely to be watched intently, including by northern Californians.
"Here in the Bay Area, a group led by investor Warren Hellman and attorney Bill Coblentz has been discussing how to preserve the Chronicle by changing its business model," Commonwealth Club President and CEO Dr. Gloria Duffy wrote in her May 2009 InSight column in The Commonwealth magazine. "Active consideration has been taking place in the philanthropic community about what donors can do to help preserve media capabilities to inform the public about important societal issues."
"I would make an appeal, to every philanthropy at all levels, and lay it all on the line," journalism legend Jim Lehrer told Duffy during an April 5, 2009, Commonwealth Club program in Lafayette. "This is important. And I would try to figure out a way to create a serious nonprofit major news-gathering organization for everybody. In other words, you would do the Walter Reed [Army Hospital] story, but you wouldn't do it just for the Washington Post -- anybody could run it." He went on to describe a news service that would be available to everybody at no cost. It would have to be constructed in a way that "it has the trust of everybody. But it would have to be serious; you'd have to be willing to break some china every once in a while. Or otherwise, forget it."
Perhaps Geffen and Lehrer will sit down together to discuss the future of news. In the meantime, you can watch the entire Lehrer-Duffy conversation here:
The San Francisco Chronicle may have escaped the grave, but there's still a painful downsizing taking place at the city's major print news outlet. The online news site San Francisco Sentinel is publishing online a list of what it says are the first batch of Chronicle employees to accept a voluntary exit deal.
The list includes some names and news beats that are likely to interest long-time Chronicle readers.
For more background on the Chronicle's troubles, see here.
The US economy is still suffering, and some serious strategic and structural changes are needed in business and government to address the underlying causes of the crisis.
But in the spirit of FDR’s comment about fearing fear itself, I believe the US media is making this crisis far worse than it needs to be. As the headlines and newscasters scream the latest bad news – job losses, stock market plunges, poor corporate results – investors’ jitters increase. They shun the markets, which dries up the capital available to companies, which reduces their operations, which leads to layoffs, which leads to foreclosures and falling consumer spending, which drags down the banks, which . . . you get the picture. It becomes a self-perpetuating negative cycle, which our national leadership is struggling to turn around by pumping bailout money into the damaged economic sectors.
But it seems to me that this cycle of doubt itself, rather than fundamentals of the economy, is partly to blame for the dizzying decline in the market averages and the associated fallout. The media reports the economic news that fuels this downward cycle. And I believe there is more here than just the media acting as the bearer of genuine bad news. So let’s take a hard look at what is going on in the media today and how that affects news reporting.
As we know, the traditional media is highly threatened now, because its historic business model, based on advertising, has been blown to smithereens by the internet. Few newspapers and not many radio or television operations have successfully made the transition to the Internet era. We have a front row seat for this sorry spectacle here in the Bay Area, as San Francisco’s only daily newspaper, The Chronicle, dies a slow death. The Rocky Mountain News ceased publication in February, and both the LA Times and New York Times are wobbling.
As the classic media fights for its life, publishers, editors and reporters grasp at hyperbolic subjects and viewpoints they hope will command attention, in a struggle to retain readership and viewership and to continue to attract advertising dollars. Bad news has long been known to draw more attention than positive stories, so it’s not surprising that a concentration on bad economic news would dominate the media right now.
But there are degrees in the extent of negative focus. At the moment, editorial decisions are being made in favor of covering bad economic news at the expense of other important topics, concentrating media coverage obsessively on negative stories about the economy. For example, last month a TV editor scrapped a story for which I was to be interviewed on some important good news - a potential US-Russian deal to work together on stopping Iran’s nuclear program and to cancel the missile defense plan for Eastern Europe - to instead report on the latest US government support for the insurance company AIG. Those micro-level editorial decisions being made throughout the media are what in the aggregate are producing the unitary focus on economic bad news.
No one, least of all I, would argue for media happy talk about the economic crisis. The real underlying factors behind the crisis – the long neglect of a prudent energy policy, the need to rethink the criteria for extending credit to homebuyers, for example – need to be reported in full, and the media should help to surface new directions and policies to put our economy on a sustainable growth path.
But this constant yammer of the latest declines on Wall Street and how Joe Public feels about the disaster surrounding us is simple fear-mongering, which leads to bearish behavior by investors and shoppers. I am afraid that the media’s own perceived interests, at this time when their backs are against the wall, may not be serving public needs as they once did when they could be counted on for more fair and balanced coverage.
This points up the importance of reading, watching and listening critically to what the media is currently reporting, discounting the crisis tone and looking more at the fundamentals of the economy. As President Obama said in his inaugural address, “our workers are no less productive today than when this crisis began. Our minds are no less inventive, our goods and services no less needed than they were last week or last month or last year. Our capacity remains undiminished.”
We are experiencing a crisis of confidence, and I fear that the media are fanning the flames in an effort to save their own skins. The ironic thing is that media perceptions of their own interests may be shortsighted. The economic downturn may finally demolish many media companies, whose business fundamentals are weak, along with all the other individuals, companies and other organizations that are being so negatively affected.
San Francisco might not be left without a major daily paper after all, if a tentative deal between the paper's owner and its largest union holds. As reported in today's Chronicle, the deal involves wage and benefit cuts, increased work hours, and a reduction in the work force of about 150.
As noted on The Commonwealth Club's blog here, paper owner Hearst was threatening to close or sell the paper if it couldn't get major concessions within a matter of weeks. Hearst also owns the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which is facing its own death spiral. Media observers had questioned whether San Francisco would earn the dubious distinction of becoming the first major city without a major daily newspaper. (San Francisco continues to have the free daily Examiner.)
The Chronicle notes that Hearst still has to negotiate with its other large union, the Teamsters.
In the meantime, you might want to check out the blog of Chronicle editor-at-large (and frequent Commonwealth Club event moderator) Phil Bronstein, who recently wrote about the messy newspaper industry. "The speed of technology has stunned a lot of people, along with quick-changing consumer habits. The economy sucks more than ever before in our lifetimes," Bronstein writes. "Even while slamming ourselves for being too complacent, we're also just shell-shocked by what's been happening."
In 2007, UC Berkeley Professor of Journalism William Drummond challenged a Commonwealth Club panel on journalism with this: "It's always been a great puzzlement to me [that] in an area where people are intelligent, affluent, sophisticated -- how come even now, how the LA Times is still a major newspaper of considerable import, and San Francisco has never produced that kind of product?"
If that was a long-standing question of Bay Area media watchers for years, the answer is not likely to become any easier now. The San Francisco Chronicle could be sold or even closed if owner Hearst Corp. is unable to get significant cuts to operating costs in the next few weeks. Yes, weeks -- not months, not years. The cuts might be unachievable; some estimates are that the company would have to cut as much as 47 percent of staff.
But others are suggesting that San Francisco could soon become the first major U.S. city without a paid daily newspaper (we do have, of course, the free daily SF Examiner and a number of local news and opinion blogs, in addition to broadcast media). Even if the paper survives, if it loses so much of its staff, will it be able to cover the city and region the way it historically has? (Hearst's Seattle Post-Intelligencer is also facing a Chronicle-like end.)
With losses of $50 million a year, and more predicted for 2009, the Chronicle was in serious trouble even before the economy went off a cliff in 2008. (For a good overview of the challenges facing newspapers and other local traditional media, listen to audio of Professor Drummond's Sept. 27, 2009, Commonwealth Club panel discussion, "The State of Journalism," with industry pros Leslie Griffith, Robert Rosenthal, Kevin Keeshan, and Steve Wright.)
If we are about to enter a post-Chronicle era, that does not mean there is less news to report and be interpreted. The Commonwealth Club hosts a wide range of speeches and panel discussions by newsmakers, and this blog is just one effort we undertake to try to get this news out into the public consciousness, making connections between speakers here with timely issues in the news.
There are also, of course, many blogs, written by everyone from teenagers to laid-off newspaper reporters, and these blogs do everything from highlighting important news that is overlooked by the major media, to pushing partisan agendas. We will likely see a continued multiplication in blogs covering our local scene, and we will likely see some aggregation of blogs into super-blogs (hyperblogs? can we coin a term here?) like Huffington Post. Michael Kinsley, former editor of The New Republic and Slate.com, and the former editorial page editor of the LA Times, recently recanted somewhat on his earlier criticisms of news bloggers and offered a more optimistic assessment of their value, during a speech at The Commonwealth Club December 9, 2008 (listen to audio; see the video).
What will the future of Bay Area journalism be?
Where do you get your news? How good is it? Leave a comment and join the discussion.
An older gentleman by a kiosk outside The Commonwealth Club offices on Market Street holds up the San Francisco Chronicle and cries repeatedly, "EXTRA!, EXTRA!, EXTRA!"
Who says the newspaper industry is faltering?
At least, it's not hurting today, with another round of colorful, graphically pleasing editions featured on newsstands across the country. The Newseum web site has an extensive gallery of today's historic page-ones featuring a very elegant and simple cover from The Fresno Bee.
According the Associated Press, many of the nation's largest newspapers, including The New York Times, USA Today and the Washington Post, printed extra papers in advance of high demand. Many learned a lessons from the day after the November election when demand for papers to commemorate Barack Obama's victory left publishers flat-footed. Not only are newspapers increasing production of their daily editions, but also publishing special editions and books ranging in price from $4.95 to $14.95.
The rush to grab a piece of history through buying and preserving newspapers has been an American tradition since the colonists' veracious habit of reading the news made the nascent country one of the most learned places in the world. With the end of newspapers as we know them possibly around the corner -- at least, Michael Hirschorn at The Atlanticsays The Times could be kaput as early as this May -- how will people retain the memories of historic times such as President Obama's inauguration?
Without a paper and ink version of the news, will people download a screen shot of yesterday's home page of the Washington Post? Send the file to their printer and unassumingly tuck it between last month's overdue phone bill and their child's sterling report card? The Internet as a record of history has proven to be insufficient with its power based on constant change at the whim of breaking news. Lasting snapshots of a single day or event invariably fall through the cracks. Organizations like The Internet Archive strive to preserve the web's news history but fall short in their brevity.
What is the future? There seems to be a missing link between how a new generation of people consume the news through the net on a personal computer, laptop or even their smart phones. Portability and complete access to the web at any moment is also problematic. TechCrunch.com reported in December on rumors of a larger seven-by-nine inch iPod which would be capable of accessing the news and making it easier to navigate and read. Down the road, the news may be downloaded onto bendable computers, which conceivably could be rolled up and folded without harm.
Of course, none of these devices will solve the problem of capturing history in a tangible form. It may be the one aspect of communication we will have to adapt at a time when more information is flowing than at any time in human consciousness. The casualty ironically may be history.
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