Writing in The New York Times, Timothy Egan invokes the spirit of Thomas Jefferson in an impassioned plea for continuation of the status quo in the newspaper business. His argument is more eloquent than most, but it’s predicated on two shaky assumptions.

The first is that newspaper readership is higher today than ever. Egan calls this the “great paradox,” and it would be if the numbers existed in a vacuum. It’s true that newspapers’ total audience is growing, but the real question is relative to what? This blog gets a lot more readers online than it would if it were copied and distributed on street corners, but is that an inherent measure of value? The growth of the Web and the emergence of high-quality search engines are a tide that lifts all boats, but that doesn’t make the boats themselves any more valuable. You can turn around this logic: There are some 20 million active blogs today that didn’t exist five years ago. Facebook traffic drawfs that of all major newspapers combined. Does that make blogs and Facebook a more useful resource than The New York Times?

Fewer Jobs, But Not Fewer Journalists

The second assumption is that journalism jobs are going away and with them, professional journalism. Egan cites Huffington Post, a favorite mainstream media whipping post because it pays its contributors so little. “We could be left with a national snark brigade, sniping at the remaining dailies in their pajamas, never rubbing shoulders with a cop, a defense attorney or a distressed family in a Red Cross shelter after a flood,” he moans.

Well, he’s got one thing right: in the future there will be fewer salaried staff positions at big media institutions. But it’s stretch to say there will be fewer professional journalists.

Huffington Post lists 30 editors on its masthead. We can assume that some of those people are getting paid. While it’s true that staff jobs are declining, there is a model for the future of journalism careers. It’s called freelancing. Lots of professional journalists make a perfectly good living today writing for multiple clients. Some of those clients are businesses and others are media organizations. The corporate work generally pays better, and that supplements the more interesting “pure” journalism work. Many of the best journalists in the US long ago left their staff positions in order to go solo. Most freelancers I know prefer the flexibility and freedom that the lifestyle provides. And most magazines couldn’t survive without their services.

Lots of industries work this way. The accounting profession has a few mega-firms and thousands of individual practitioners. Doctors can choose to work for a medical group or hang out their own shingle. Many independent consultants provide specialized services that their clients can’t get from big organizations. These people make good livings without working a staff job. Freelancers create good journalism without working for media organizations.

A Cleansing Process

The Internet is in the process of cleaning inefficiency out of the media business. To demonstrate the waste of the current media model, search for coverage of any major news story on Google News. Chances are you’ll find more than 100 stories about the same topic, each reported by a different organization. Every day across the US, hundreds of reporters, editors, copy editors and layout artists duplicate each other’s efforts producing the same stories about the same topics. This duplication of effort was necessary when the only way to reach readers was on a printed page. It isn’t necessary any more.

Why are there over 100 journalists at every Presidential press conference, political convention, World Series game and Olympic event when five could report the facts equally well? Is it conceivable that a smaller number of national media organizations could do the work more efficiently by pooling resources for the big events and farming out the color stories and sidebars to a network of freelancers? Could journalists make a decent living selling these services? I think so.

The destruction of newspapers is creating pain and heartbreak for the people who are losing their jobs. Our heart goes out to them. But this process is part of a necessary cleansing process, one that will force many journalists to re-evaluate their strengths and seek new sources of income. This will ultimately bring efficiency to a market that is shedding a legacy of waste and duplicated effort. Read Chris Jennewein’s upbeat piece on SensibleTalk.com about why it’s a great time to be a journalist for inspiration.

Tribune Co. CEO Sam Zell must be relieved to be back on familiar territory in the real estate business. He’s just put the neo-Gothic Tribune Tower up for sale as well as Los Angeles Times property in historic Times Mirror Square. Technically, Zell says he’s only seeking ways to maximize the value of the properties, but it’s hard to imagine that his options would include making the investment required to redevelop the buildings for the long term. He’s putting them up for sale and potentially buying another year of life for his highly leveraged company. The Wall Street Journal quotes sources estimating the two properties could fetch $385 million.

So the man who said he was going to shake up the Tribune by challenging conventional thinking and breaking the mold is now going back to what he knows best: selling real estate. That kind of vision has got to inspire the troops, especially in the wake of major layoffs at two Tribune papers this week. Edward Padgett has Zell’s memo to employees urging them to keep their eye on the ball and not speculate about what’s up with the property sales.

Assume that more layoffs are on the way shortly. Edward Padgett has the text of a memo from Los Angeles Times Publisher David Hiller to his staff setting the stage for major cost cuts. We can assume there won’t be a lot of joy around the barbeque at LAT employee picnics this weekend.

The Atlantic has a Q&A with Tribune Chief Innovation Officer Lee Abrams in which he doesn’t come off sounding nearly as goofy as his memos make him out to be. Still, his comments are short on the kind of breakthrough insight that the Tribune probably needs right now.

In Other Layoff News…

• Gannett Co. is looking to cut 150 employees from the Detroit Free Press and the rival Detroit News. That’s about 7.5% of the total workforce, according to Gannett Blog. Management is hoping to make the cuts through buyouts rather than layoffs, but hasn’t ruled out the latter. Detroit is a joint operating agreement town, meaning that the two competing papers belong to the same corporate parent. That’s how bad the advertising climate is. (via Fading to Black)
• We noted yesterday that when the new round of layoffs at the Hartford Courant are complete, the news staff will have been reduced from 400 to 175, or 55%. That’s not the worst of it, though. Alan Mutter calculates following a small layoff just announced at the San Jose Mercury News, its staff will have been cut 63%. Commenters say that estimate might actually be on the low side.

The Future Takes Shape

Veteran journalists might scoff at the joint effort by MySpace and NBC to recruit citizen journalists to cover the upcoming political conventions, but we think it’s an innovative idea. Someone with a lot of talent but without a lot of connections is going to have the chance to gain a national audience for a few days this summer based solely on his or her creativity and hard work. And what the heck is wrong with that?

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Add the San Diego Union-Tribune to the growing list of newspapers that are republishing the best content submitted by users in print. The paper has launched a social network for residents of San Diego county. It’s got all the usual Facebook-like stuff, but editors will be monitoring the discussions and publishing good material in the company’s community weeklies.

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for information and some of the promise and challenge that presents. The NPR example is great.
Speaking of citizen journalism, the Guardian has been reporting on a conference about the future of journalism. Caitlin Fitzsimmons blogs a panel about how news organizations are tapping into crowds

Miscellany

Online Journalism blog has the first in a series of planned stories about semantic journalism. Nicolas Kayser-Bril kicks things off with a plain-English explanation of the semantic Web. Basically, if machines could do a better job of interpreting information, it would make all our lives a lot easier. And the Death Watch editor could catch another hour or two of sleep.

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We have intentionally avoided commenting on the pissing match between the Associated Press and a group of self-righteous bloggers over fair use of AP copy. We tend to side with the bloggers, but we think the AP also has a point. If you’re late to the party or haven’t been following it closely, Editors Weblog has done the legwork for you. This timeline of the dispute is full of links to relevant detail and covers the big issues succinctly.

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Alan Mutter has created the Default-O-Matic, a tool that rates the likelihood that various large newspaper companies will default on their debt. Journal Register Co., whose stock is almost literally not worth the paper it’s printed on, leads the funeral procession, while Washington Post Co. is the healthiest overall. Read this post if you want a quick tutorial on what “default” means. It’s more involved than we thought.

And Finally

LA Times Pressman Edward Padgett shares this gem: “A recent study conducted by Harvard University found that the average American walks about 900 miles a year. Another study by the American Medical Association found that Americans drink, on average, 22 gallons of alcohol per year. This means, on average, Americans get about 41 miles to the gallon!” Have a nice weekend everyone.

Here’s the redesigned home page of the Orlando Sentinel. This will apparently serve as a model for redesigns of several other Tribune Co. properties. What do you think? Ping us in the comments area below.

Tribune Co.’s Chief Innovation Officer Lee Abrams has already weighed in and HE LOVES IT! The Wall Street Journal explains the background of the ambitious company-wide effort and says the South Florida Sun-Sentinel and the Baltimore Sun are next on the redesign list, followed by the Chicago Tribune. Whether a visual makeover can repair the problems all these papers are suffering in their core markets is a matter of speculation, but there’s no doubt Zell & Co. are trying some new tactics.

A Modest Proposal for Miami

Could Miami become a one-newspaper town? Alan Mutter thinks so, and he puts forth a persuasive argument for restructuring the Herald and the Sun-Sentinel under a joint operating agreement (JOA). JOAs were a 1970s gift from the government to the newspaper industry that enabled competing newspapers to consolidate operations and do business as a legal duopoly. For the last 30 years, it’s been a license to print money. Today, it may be a lifeline to publishers whose only alternative is closure. Unfortunately, JOAs have also historically been a license for publishers to become fat and complacent as competition is removed from the landscape. They’re one of the reasons the industry is in so much trouble today.

Editors Debate Newspaper Survival

A group of Chicago journalists got together last week to discuss the topic of “Will Newspapers Survive?” The panelists were all working reporters and editors who are realistic about the future and their attitudes were strikingly sanguine, as reported by Chicago Reader. Tom McNamee, editorial page editor of the Chicago Sun-Times, offered the most dispassionate perspective: “We may not all be making fortunes. Our 30 percent profit days are over. We may not survive. But you know what — that’s our problem. Not to say that the world’s in crisis because newspapers may not survive in the form that we recognize now.” Other panelists blamed the business side for not innovating quickly enough. The editors are psyched to change, they said, but the sales and management suits are too stuck on their historic profit margins. (via Editors Weblog )

Miscellany

• Washington Post Executive Editor Leonard Downier, who led the newsroom to 25 Pulitzer Prizes, will step down after 17 years in the position and 44 years with the newspaper. Downie, 66, said new blood is needed to accommodate rapid changes in the business. “So much further change now needs to take place at the newspaper and Web site, and someone else should be tackling that,” he said. He is a true class act.
• The Georgetown (Kentucky) News-Graphic will switch from afternoon to morning delivery, saying that the cost benefits are compelling in this day of stratospheric gas prices. Publisher Mike Scogin notes “In the outer parts of the county…carriers sometimes travel several miles to deliver just a couple of newspapers.” (via Fade to Black )
• As the Daytona Beach News-Journal waits to be sold, its publisher talks straight to the staff. Gone are 99 positions and a whole slew of tasks are being transferred to other departments or outsourced entirely. Bureaus will close, stock tables will be cut and business sections will be consolidated. It all adds up to one big morale hemorrhage, but the News-Journal publisher’s message is realistic: “Despite the unavoidable disruptions and distractions this week, we still have jobs to do, and it is in everybody’s best interest that we do them professionally and well.”
• If your newspaper is considering a 10% staff cut, be glad you aren’t in Taiwan. The China Times will lay off almost half its staff due to the weak economy.
• It seems like you could spend all day just reading gossip and analysis blog (like this one) about the newspaper industry. Danny Sanchez has gone and assembled a pretty fine directory of them.

And Finally…

The editors of the Washington Post have recently been quoted as saying that the paper could do with fewer copy editors. The Post’s Gene Weingarten has some fun with that idea. Thanks for reminding us that the wizards of grammar and spelling do play a vital role. (via Mark Hamilton)

Continuing fallout from McClatchy’s 1,400-person layoff last week: PaidContent.org’s Joseph Weisenthal remarks on all the attention to CEO Gary Pruitt’s pay, noting that you have to offer a competitive salary to get a good executive these days. He’s right. Tempers also flared at the Raleigh News & Observer over an executive’s decision to stay at a $210-per-night hotel on a recent visit to the paper just before the layoffs. The Raleigh Chronicle has the dirt, including links to executive blog postings on the topic. The Chronicle also claims that, in blaming the Internet for the company’s fortunates, McClatchy execs failed to note the impact of a strong alternative publishing market on the N&O’s business. Editor & Publisher’s Mark Fitzgerald analyzes McClatchy’s $4 billion debt, which seemed worth taking on at the time but which, in retrospect, was horribly timed. Still, McClatchy may be better positioned than most publishers to survive the industry’s collapse, he concludes. Analysts say it’s one of the better managed companies in the business.

Meanwhile, McClatchy editors and columnists weighed in on what comes next. Dave Zeeck at the Tacoma News quotes Mark Twain reasoning that there’ll always be jobs for reporters. Sacramento Bee Editor Melanie Sill is defiant. She points out all the good work the paper is still doing and says the loss of seven editors will just force everyone to be a little more innovative. Meanwhile, Miami Herald ombudsman Edward Schumacher-Matos takes the novel approach of asking readers to tell him what choices they think the paper should make. And Bob Ray Sanders of the Fort Worth Star Telegram compares the whole thing to a funeral in a dour, backward-looking essay.

And in Non-McClatchy News…

Add Hearst Corp. to the list of publishers struggling with the shifting winds of the industry. The publisher of 15 dailies and more than 200 magazines lost its CEO of 15 years last week over an apparent policy dispute with the board. Hearst has managed to make some smart bets online over the last decade, buying it a degree of insulation from the industry’s troubles, but with its San Francisco Chronicle serving as the poster child for newspaper collapse, it perhaps can’t change strategy quickly enough. Poynter’s Rick Edmonds speculates about what’s been going on in the Hearst board room and remarks upon Hearst’s unusual management trust, which expires upon the death of the last family member who was living at the time of William Randolph’s death in 1951.

By the way, where’s Belo Corp. in all the recent layoff activity? Jeff Siegel notes that last week’s bloodbath at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram should be putting pressure on the Dallas Morning News to cut back, but owner Belo has been strangely silent. So the stock market is speaking, knocking Belo shares about 6% lower last week. If the Star-Telegram can cut a sixth of its editorial staff with impunity, can the Morning News afford not to notice?

Forecasts of the impending death of the Sun-Times Media Group are greatly exaggerated, at least according to company executives. The struggling company, which has been saddled by the misdeeds of former executives, has $120 million in the bank and is ready for the worst, top managers told shareholders last week. In fact, CEO Cyrus Freidheim actually believes newspapers will rebound when the economy does in a year or two. His optimism is striking in light of the company’s recent announcement that it is “exploring strategic alternatives,” which is a euphemism for finding a buyer.

Tribune Exec’s Memos Invite Staff Derision

When chief scientists from Google speak, the technology media hang on their every word. Contrast that to Tribune Co., whose executives increasingly look like the village idiots of the newspaper world. The company’s chief innovation officer, Lee Abrams, is fond of sending memos about how the industry can reinvent itself. They’re a rambling brain dump from someone whose lack of insight is almost painful to read. Now parodies are springing up, and P.J. Gladnick excerpts a few from the Poynter discussion forums. Read one of Abrams’ original works on LA Observed before looking at the knock-offs. This is some great satirical writing which is unfortunately being shared amongst only a few insiders. Steve Outing comments that Abrams probably disenfranchised his audience at the outset by admitting that he had “NO idea that reporters were around the globe reporting the news.” Outing titles his blog post bluntly: “Are we watching a Tribune train wreck in progress?”

Layoff Log

• The Eugene Register-Guard will cut its work force by 30 employees, or 12 percent of its 260-person full-time workforce. The paper will try to achieve the reductions through a combination of buyouts and unfilled vacancies, although the publisher wouldn’t rule out layoffs.
• The Cleveland Plain Dealer isn’t laying off - yet. Although two news outlets have reported that dozens of jobs have been cut, Publisher Terrance Egger issued a denial, saying the reports are “100% not accurate.” However, the debate may be a matter of semantics. “Given the current economic conditions and trends, we cannot maintain the current expense base and stay viable,” Egger told Editor & Publisher. A local alternative reporter wrote on his blog last week that executives have told staff that they plan “to cut 35 pages a week from its news pages and 20 percent of its workforce.” The paper employs 304 newsroom staffers.

Miscellany

Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts shows why the people who run newspapers now are not the ones who will reinvent the industry. In a column that is striking in its lack of insight into the troubles facing his own industry, Pitts announces that he’s changed his thinking and now believes that maybe online should come first, that newspaper websites should be the principal online destination for local residents and that people should pay for that service. This was conventional industry wisdom circa 2001. Then Pitts notes that he’s come to this view reluctantly and mainly because he’s afraid of losing his job. Unfortunately, folks like Leonard will lose their jobs anyway because they’re being dragged kicking and screaming into the future. Cynical attempts at defining a solution only make them look more clueless. And solutions like those he proposes are what got the industry in trouble in the first place.

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One of the week’s more convoluted exercises in deductive reasoning comes from the Mercury News‘ Dale Bryant. In an unusual inversion of the rules of supply and demand, she blames the surging price of newsprint on the lack of demand: “With less construction, there is less wood waste that would have found its way to pulp mills and eventually to newsprint. In response to rising costs, newspapers have cut back on the use of newsprint, trimming the size of papers as well as turning to the Internet. That has caused prices to go even higher,” she writes. The result is that the Merc is cutting back on some of its print sections, but that’s actually in the readers’ interests. “[T]he choices we’ve made are based on our belief that what’s most important to our readers is that we continue providing news about your local community,” Bryant concludes, bringing new meaning to the concept of “less is more.”

Perhaps hoping that no one would notice bad news if it was released on a post-Memorial Day Friday afternoon, the Newspaper Association of America quietly reported that advertising sales by US newspapers fell a record 14% in the first quarter, with real estate and recruitment ads both shrinking 35%. The results are worse than even the most pessimistic skeptics predicted and may indicate that the industry has entered an irreversible death spiral.

BusinessWeek’s Jon Fine thinks the unthinkable: one or more major metro dailies will go under within the next 18 months. It isn’t such an outrageous idea. Rising newsprint and gasoline prices are layering more burdens on top of an already troubled industry that distributes its product by truck. Some publishers have seriously floated the idea of cutting out unprofitable Monday and Tuesday editions. MediaNews CEO Dean Singleton recently estimated that 19 of the top 50 US newspapers are losing money.

If more than a third of top US titles are losing money, then the spiral has probably begun. The only way to stop it is to cut deeply and painfully, with staff cuts of 40% or more and a primary focus on online delivery.

However, that’s not likely to happen. Businesses in trouble rarely have the stomach or the investor support for substantive change. Instead, they do what all of them are doing today: cut 5% to 10% here and there until they slowly bleed to death. I outlined this scenario in my 2006 essay on the collapse of newspapers and the reinvention of journalism:

Newspapers will be forced to lay off staff in order to maintain margins. Cuts in services will lead to cuts in editorial coverage, making papers less relevant to subscribers. As circulation declines, advertising rates will have to come down to remain competitive. This will put more pressure on margins, leading to more layoffs, more cost cuts, more circulation declines and more pressure on margins. Once this spiral begins, it will accelerate with breathtaking speed.

If you look at Alan Mutter’s analysis of the McClatchy layoffs, you can see how this scenario could play out. In Mutter’s view, the cuts won’t even cover a quarter of McClatchy’s revenue shortfall. That means more cuts will have to be made, further hobbling the capacity for its papers to produce a quality product. Reader attrition continues. And so on and so on.

Each of these trends is playing out right now, only a lot faster than I predicted. The longer publishers fiddle with hiring freezes and redesigns, the longer they put off the tough decisions that could still save some of them. Unfortunately, for the majority of US newspapers, it’s already too late.

Big Changes in Store at the LA Times?

Speculation has swirled for a few weeks that Los Angeles Times Publisher David Hiller won’t last the summer, but now the rumors are getting louder. After losing out in an attempt to undermine his own editor last week, Hiller now looks vulnerable, and there are reports that he could be gone as early as July. The changes could also be accompanied by deep cuts in the LA Times editorial staff. We’ve heard up to 19% of the newsroom could be let go, though no decision has been made yet. The LA Times was one of the papers recently singled out by Tribune Co. CEO Sam Zell and COO Randy Michaels for poor journalist productivity.

And Finally…

CNN reports on a Yahoo employee who Twittered his layoff in February and gained an eager following. Ryan Kuder recently took a job from the hundreds of leads contributed by his Twitter followers . His story was covered on prominent blogs and has now jumped to mainstream media. All of which shows how one person can make a difference these days.

In the new world of journalism, anyone is potentially a journalist, even if only for a few minutes. This idea doesn’t sit well with a lot of media veterans, so it’s no surprise there is debate over the tactics of the Huffington Post and its employee, Mayhill Fowler, that led to two big campaign scoops.

The most recent one, which every political junkie heard by now, concerns a three-minute rant by Bill Clinton over a Vanity Fair report questioning the propriety of his post-presidential decorum. Clinton’s remarks were captured on video by Fowler, who didn’t identify herself as a reporter but who claims to have had the video camera in plain view while Clinton was talking. The LA Times account describes the recorder as “candy bar-sized” and Clinton claims to have not known he was being recorded.

Fowler also recently caught Barack Obama criticizing small-minded Americans in comments that were not meant for reporters.

Fowler claims no professional journalism experience, which means she isn’t a “true” journalist, to use a phrase favored by veteran editors. Yet no one can dispute the veracity of her reports. After all, they’re on tape.

The hot potato for professional journalists is that ordinary people with a $100 video camera can now capture major news events that the media miss. The problem for public figures is that these folks don’t necessarily identify themselves as journalists or operate by the rules. And since public figures have practically no coverage under libel laws, their every utterance is potentially fair game for the media. Which is actually a problem for the media.

Layoff Log

• Continuing the trend toward newspapers burying their own bad news, The Day of New London, CT cut about 12% of its jobs and relegated the news of the cuts to an inside business page on a Saturday. The comments are as interesting as the story on The Day’s website. Readers question whether senior executives are taking pay cuts and cite a director’s profile from dating site Match.com, of all places, as a source of information about the director’s compensation for his services.
• Layoffs are spreading into the magazine industry, which until now has been far less affected by the ad sales slowdown than the newspaper business. Folio magazine reports that three publishers are announcing layoffs. Meredith Corp. will cut 60 positions and leave 60 other open jobs unfilled. B-to-b publisher Reed Business Information is eliminating 41 jobs in advance of its divestiture by parent Reed Elsevier. And another b-to-b stalwart, Penton Media, will cut 42 jobs. There’s no word on what percentage of the workforce these layoffs constitute.
• The Cleveland Plain Dealer is one of a ring of innovative Ohio newspapers that came up with the idea of putting aside rivalries to share resources. That isn’t going to save it from the storms that are battering the industry, though. Cleveland Leader reports that management plans to cut 35 pages of news a week along with 20% of the workforce. That’s on top of a 17% cut in positions after a recent buyout.

Miscellany

Craig Stoltz reviews the redesigned websites of the ultra-conservative Unification Church-backed Washington Times and the Bay Area-bred San Francisco Chronicle and concludes that, surprisingly, the Times is the one doing the innovating. Whereas the Chron’s new design is more of the same, he says, Times has apparently started with a blank slate and rethought its approach to news presentation without bias toward print or anything else. The most innovative new feature is the Dig Deeper button, a hyperlink that literally flips a story on its head to show more background and detail. Try it; it’s neat. (via Jeff Jarvis).

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Editors Weblog rounds up some data and opinion from around the industry and shows why the economics of online advertising don’t comfortably replace the print model. There’s a study that shows that readers of nytimes.com spend an average of 68 seconds per day with the paper, compared to 16 minutes for the print edition. And the bounty of alternatives means that ad rates are under constant competitive pressure. Quoting Scott Karp of Publishing 2.0, “Print circulation is about 10% of total audience reach, while online advertising revenue is 10% of total ad revenue — the economics are nearly the perfect inverse of what they should be.” This is not an optimistic piece.

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Gannett Co. will write down the value of its assets by up to $3 billion, blaming troubles at its UK operation. Gannett is widely to considered to be one of the most financially sound US newspaper publishers.

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Google CEO Eric Schmidt says his company has a “moral imperative” to help the newspaper industry and that the company’s recently acquired DoubleClick ad service could help. He didn’t offer any more details. Newspaper publishers must be breathing a huge sigh of relief.

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Dan Schultz of MediaShift Idea Lab proposes a five-step process for vetting news that originates from citizen journalists. It involves link analysis, commenting, geotagging and moderation, among other things. Content Ninja has an analysis.

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It’s depressing to see newspapers shutting down ventures in new markets. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel will close a free weekly aimed at young readers. A memo posted by Romenesko cites two years of ad declines and increasing newsprint costs as the double whammy.

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The new venture by former Wall Street Journal managing editor Paul Steiger has debuted. Pro Publica will produce investigative reports in partnership with other media outlets and publish those stories first on the partner’s print and Web properties. The initial site is nothing more than a roundup of news from other sources, but the site is almost fully staffed and original material will begin appearing shortly, according to the “about” page. Pro Publica is a nonprofit funded by some big charitable organizations. It will initially employ 27 journalists.

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Paul Bradshaw wants to know if blogging has changed the way journalists work. You can take his short, anonymous survey here.

And Finally…

The Online Journalism Blog is piercing the gloom with a new website where journalists can tell why it’s a great time to be in the business. It looks like Jolly Journalist just debuted, so hurry on over to be one of the first to comment.

 

If you want to understand why the newspaper industry is doomed, read the comments of Sun-Times Media Group CEO Cyrus Freidheim from a Columbia College panel this week. The press is “nowhere near as robust or strong a watchdog as it has been…The free press really is the newsroom. It is not technology. It’s really the newsroom.”

Freidheim’s comments reflect the kind of insularity that will only hasten newspapers’ collapse. Across the U.S., too many editors and executives are convinced that there is only one kind of “true” journalism, and that it involves a newsroom, editors, reporters, slot men and a copy desk. Any model that doesn’t conform to this rigid and traditional view isn’t genuine and so should be dismissed. They are blind to the prospect that any other form of journalism could deliver value, much less improve upon the current model.

As we’ve noted before, news journalism as practiced today is a study in inefficiency. The idea that hundreds of thousands of readers should invest their faith in the judgment of a handful of journalists to determine what they may and may not know is intuitively ridiculous in an age of abundant information. It’s a model that made sense when we had no other choice. It makes absolutely no sense any more.

In order to realize the potential of a new kind of journalism – one in which millions of individuals contribute to and enrich the body of information - we must discard our old assumptions about what journalism should be. It would be a blessing to never again have to see the phrase “true journalism,” with all the institutional arrogance it implies. Unfortunately, as reporters, editors and news executives who are mired in the past continue to curse the gathering darkness, we are likely to see it many more times.

Contrast the gloom of the ink-on-dead-trees business to the boisterous glee of a meeting of Diggnation as  Jeff Jarvis describes it after a visit to Digg.com’s first East Coast party. Digg is one of the most popular sites on the Internet and it’s creating a new approach to presenting the news. Instead of leaving news judgment in the hands of a few editors, the entire community of Digg members is invited to vote on what should go on the front page. And vote they do, many thousands at a time. A story that makes it to the front page of Digg can draw hundreds of thousand of visitors to a web page in the matter of an hour or two. Is this model perfect? Of course not. Is there value in this idea? Absolutely. Should newspaper executives learn from it? Well, consider Jarvis’ words:

“[Digg Founder Kevin] Rose and company have built a real media enterprise from nothing but technology. What’s notable to me, more than its size, is the passion and loyalty of its audience, which was what was most evident last night. Could you imagine 2,000 fans standing in the rain for the chance to watch your local anchorman or hear your local editor? Is it possible for old media to inspire this kind of passion?”

Also, read the American Journalism Review’s coverage of The Smoking Gun, a profitable investigative website that specializes in digging up public documents and exposing them for people to verify and comment upon. You’ve already visited this site’s extensive collection of celebrity mug shots. Everyone has. The Gun has three employees and has broken some major stories, as well as exposed other supposedly legitimate stories as fakes. But since there are no editors and no copy desk, we suppose this isn’t “true” journalism.

Jarvis further comments on the emerging model in this post. We couldn’t have said it better ourselves. It’s not a matter of either/or. It’s the best of both.

 

Miscellany

The owners of the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News have warned for months that they were on the brink of defaulting on their loans, and now they’ve missed a key interest payment. The payment on $85 million in loans was due on June 1 and Philadelphia Media Holdings LLC’s failure to pay will force it into a higher debt bracket at best. The payment was blocked by lenders who hold another $295 million in debt so as to avoid hurting Philadelphia Media’s cash flow. This means the holding company is now forced to renegotiate its loans, most likely at a higher interest rate. If it fails, it faces the risk of default.

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Add Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to the list of prominent executives predicting newspapers’ demise, only Ballmer is casting the shroud a little wider. He told the Washington Post that in a decade there will be “no newspapers, no magazines that are delivered in paper form.” He later corrected that timeframe to be variable, but you get the point. Everything will be delivered over an electronic network, he said.

As shrewd a guy as Ballmer is, his sweeping generalization is probably not realistic. For one thing, newspaper circulation is actually growing in some developing economies. For another, some printed publications are doing just fine, thank you. Pick up an issue of Brides magazine next time you’re in the B&N and see if you can make a case for its impending death. Details aside, Ballmer’s prediction is probably not unrealistic for major metro dailies, whose decline is accelerating faster than even the most pessimistic forecasts.

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Free papers may be a growth market, but profits are still proving problematic.Scotland’s Aberdeen Independent will close this month after a 12-year run. The paper never made a profit, despite having been voted Scotland’s best free weekly eight times during its 12-year existence. Thirty staff members will lose their jobss.

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Newsosaur Alan Mutter quotes a Deutsche Bank analyst predicting an 11.2% drop in print sales in 2008, which would make this the worst annual revenue decline in industry history. Mutter estimates that, in constant dollars, the newspaper industry today is worth only 70% of its 1996 value, and the trend is in the wrong direction. Circulation levels are already at post-WW II lows and are headed further down. “We keep throwing more and more rope into the well, but we never seem to hit bottom,” he quotes one industry sales executive as saying.

And Finally…

• One of the reasons many viruses die out is that they succeed in killing their hosts so quickly that the hosts have no opportunity spread the virus. In that spirit, the Los Angeles Times Pressmens 20 Year Club reprints this gem of a communiqué from its union to local businesses who advertise in the LA Times. In short, the union is threatening to try to drive out of existence the dwindling number of businesses that advertise in the LA Times because the paper won’t negotiate in good faith with the union. Of course, the less business the paper has, the less likely it is to negotiate in good faith. So let’s kill the host. At least we’ll feel better about ourselves. Sheesh.
• Frontline Reporter has a great short article on Top 10 Journalistic Uses for Twitter. Read them and start putting this simple yet powerful little utility to work for you.

Moody’s Investors Service has joined the Greek chorus of financial watchdogs predicting more bad news for the newspaper industry. Analysts expect newspaper advertising revenue to drop 7% to 9% in 2008 and maybe slightly less in 2009, but only if the economy recovers next year. If it doesn’t, look out.

Most troubling is the decline in cash flow, defined as earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA). Over the past 10 years, EBITDA has fallen from 28% to 19% as a percentage of revenue, Moody’s said. Cost cuts aren’t keeping up with revenue declines, which is eroding EBITDA by more than 10% a year. That erosion comes at a terrible time because so many publishers are heavily leveraged with debt. Less cash means less money to pay creditors. Moody’s thinks deeper cuts will be needed in editorial operations, but “It will prove challenging to continually reduce editorial costs without impairing the core news product or employee morale.”

As if to accent the Moody’s forecast, E.W. Scripps Co. said newspaper revenues will fall 8% to 10% in the second half of 2008. The company is in the process of splitting itself in two.

Optimists See Growth, But Much of it is Free

The head of the World Association of Newspapers says reports of the industry’s demise are greatly exaggerated. Speaking to the World Editors Forum meeting in Göteborg, Sweden, CEO Timothy Balding cites statistics showing growth in Asia and South America that is outstripping declines in the US and Europe. Overall newspaper circulation is up over 3% internationally. A lot of that growth is coming from the expanding free-daily industry, however. Free papers now make up 23% of circulation in the EU and 8% in the US.

Wired magazine editor Chris Anderson comments on this trend, noting that it is another indication that information is becoming free. While any growth is good, the loss of paid subscribers presents big challenges to the economics of the newspaper industry, which are predicated on circulation lists.

Free isn’t necessarily good business in the US, though. The CEO of Metro International SA tells Bloomberg that it’s examining its options in the North American and European markets while looking to expand into 30 new markets. The world’s leading publisher of free dailies has struggled to reach profitability, although its market penetration has grown rapidly. Per Mikael Jensen says emerging economies look to have more promise at the moment.

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A study conducted by advocacy group Newspaper Works shows that Australian readers hold newspapers in high esteem. The survey of 1,010 people found that 90% of readers do nothing else when reading a newspaper as compared to the half who busy themselves with other things while the TV is on. Most perceive newspapers as “absorbing, dynamic and reputable,” and the online extensions only add to that credibility. (Via Editors Weblog).

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Finally, the editor-in-chief of the Los Angeles Times tells Media Bistro that print isn’t going away in his lifetime. That said, Russ Stanton is honest about the challenges, noting that the substantial infrastructure cost of print is a liability. “Someone, somewhere is going to grow the revenue from online enough that it can support a newsroom of our size and talent. And when that happens, that’s when you can start, if you so choose, to pull the plug on the paper,” he says. He adds that citizen journalism is pretty intriguing.

Turnover Continues At the Top

Rupert Murdoch continues to put his own team into place at The Wall Street Journal. Deputy Managing Editor Bill Grueskin is the latest to go, leaving the paper for a post in the ivy-covered halls of academia. Grueskin’s departure comes just two months after Managing Editor Marcus Brauchli was unceremoniously shown the door.

Los Angeles Times Editorial Pages Editor James Newton will leave the paper to finish writing a book about Dwight Eisenhower. He had been in the job only 14 months. Newton’s memo to staffers made it clear that he wasn’t motivated by some pressing inner urge to tell the Eisenhower story. “[T]he paper still has challenges ahead. The publisher and I have discussed those difficulties, and he is entitled to an editorial page editor who shares his vision on how best to confront them,” he wrote. LA Observed has Newton’s farewell memo, as well as the obligatory bouquets of gratitude from Publisher David Hiller.

Thoughts on the New Journalism

Jeff Jarvis eloquently expresses an important point about the future of journalism in this essay on the ethics and culture of linking. The link is the currency of the blogosphere, of course, and the emerging culture of journalism is embedding links into news reporting process. In the old days, Jarvis notes, reporters would rather repeat all the legwork done by a competitor than acknowledge being beaten on a story. This led to tremendous duplication of effort. In the new model, though, journalists are learning to link to useful information and build upon it, creating a new and richer style of journalism.

Jarvis cites the experiment being conducted by a group of Ohio papers that are sharing stories between each other rather than processing them through the Associated Press. This means less rewriting, faster delivery and more genuine content. Says Jarvis: “[T]hey’re doing what they do best and linking to the rest and they are linking to original journalism: the new architecture at work.”

Meanwhile, the CEO of acquisitive MediaNews Group urges newspaper executives to “discard our arrogance.” Speaking to the World Newspaper Congress in Sweden William Dean Singleton says, “We’re going to have to quit writing and editing for each other and write and edit for that consumer out there.” He says half the chain’s profits will come from online sources by 2012. Singleton continues recent criticism by industry CEOs of the way newspaper journalism is done. News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch recently said The Wall Street Journal has too much management overhead and Tribune Co. CEO Sam Zell has also insulted his editors.

Layoff Log

 

• The Portland Press-Herald and MaineToday.com will cut up to 35 positions on top of the 27 jobs that were eliminated in March.
• Newsday has reportedly laid off 32 employees — half in operations management and half from Star Community Publishing. This follows a 120-person reduction in March. Publisher Timothy Knight said the move would “reduce management layers in operations, clarify roles and responsibilities, and speed decision-making.” The paper is awaiting transfer of ownership from Tribune Co. to Cablevision Systems Corp.

And Finally…

Simon Owns interviews journalist and Editor & Publisher columnist Steve Outing about a new venture he’s working on called Reinventing Classifieds. It’s a blog in which prominent publishing professionals contribute their insights on classified advertising and how the newspaper industry can recapture that business. At first glance, the content looks a little like Newspaper Death Watch – lots of bad news. But there hasn’t been much good news to report in the classified industry of late. There’s lots of up-to-date news and even a piece by design guru Roger Black. The site is tied to a project led by Future of News developer Christopher Ryan that’s attempting to build a distribute ad placement platform that newspapers could use to get a leg up on Craigslist.

The 15th World Editors Forum is going on in Göteborg, Sweden, and Editors Weblog is providing exhaustive coverage. A lot of the talk has been about the new, integrated newsroom and the reinvention of journalism. Here are some highlights.

• Two researchers discuss a study analyzing the five stages of news production and how journalism organizations are involving readers in each. Not surprisingly, most news outlets still don’t ask readers for much input until after the story is published, although a few are experimenting with early intervention. News editors still see their gatekeeper role as vital, the researchers say.
• Sweden’s Östersund Posten has launched a hyperlocal experiment involving 101 unpaid bloggers to write about community issues. Traffic is up 60% and so is advertiser interest, although no financial figures are cited.
• The CEO of Denmark’s Det Berlingske Officin, and editor-in-chief of Berlingske Tidende says journalists must give up their gatekeeper role and adapt to a new style of reporting that stresses reader participation and links. “The reader has broken the old circle of power,” says Lisbeth Knudsen.
• The managing editor of The Wall Street Journal’s wsj.com tells how an integrated approach to news reporting has helped double online traffic in the last year. Almar Latour says journalists are now encouraged to incorporate video, photos and informational graphics into their work. It hasn’t been easy to convince writers to put down the pen and pick up the camera, though. One tactic that’s helped has been the Most Popular List, a constantly updated report on the stories that are getting the most traffic. The list has generated healthy competition between reporters.
• The assistant managing editor of the UK’s Daily Telegraph tells how one-week training programs intended to help the newsroom adapt to multimedia have improved camaraderie and morale
• The editor-in-chief of Germany’s Tide sings the praises of citizen journalism as a cost-effective way to develop content, but warns that citizen “reporters” need to be trained that quality is as raw content. The paper has trained almost 200 ordinary folks, who now contribute an hour-and-a-half of video a day to the site, says Werner Eggert.
• The editor-in-chief of the national Danish newspaper Kristeligt Dagblad tells how adding weekend editions and offering defecting readers the chance to switch to a smaller weekend-only package has doubled circulation. Erik Bjerager says the new editions are less newsy and more focused on Christian values.
• The Innovations International Media Consulting Group presents its annual survey and calls upon newspapers to be more innovative. It singles out several papers for praise, including The Spokesman Review of Spokane, WA, which has invited anyone in the community to attend its daily news meeting.
• The managing editor of India’s Mint business newspaper tells how his publication survived in a highly competitive market by making journalistic ethics a differentiator.
• The founder and editor-in-chief of Rue89.com tells of journalism without print and says that life is good. The French website combines professional journalism with blogger and reader input to create rich content at low cost. Many of the best stori