I’m pretty fond of the Hartford Courant. It’s been my hometown paper all my life. It’s a Connecticut institution, love it or hate it.
That’s why it bugs me to much to see the latest round of really bad news for Connecticut’s paper of record.
CEO Sam Zell also said the newspapers could eliminate a nationwide total of about 500 pages a week of news as they aim toward a 50-50 ratio of news to advertising, not including ad inserts and classified advertising. Currently the space devoted to news is about two-thirds of the total at The Courant. (Courant staff)
All reductions will be done by the end of September, according to the article. The Hartford Business Journal has more ominous words from CEO Zell:
Listening carefully to the words of Zell and his chief operating officer, Randy Michaels, it’s clear that the name of the game is generating cash to service massive debt at a time when Tribune newspaper ad revenues are sagging (down 15 percent in the first quarter). There’s not even time for lip service to Hartford’s long tradition of journalism as a public service.
Michaels told the analysts there’s big money to be saved by cutting the news/advertising ratio at papers to 1-to-1 (it’s 2-to-1 at The Courant) and by cutting reporters. “You can eliminate a fair … number of people while eliminating not very much content,” Michaels said, according to a transcript of the call posted on SeekingAlpha.com. “This is going to happen quickly.”
Zell chimed in, saying, “I promise you he’s underestimating the level of aggressiveness with which we are attacking this whole challenge.” (HBJ)
There’s even more at Editor & Publisher, the publishing indistry’s trade magazine. None of it is good for the Courant.
I know circulation is down. Revenues are down. And print newspapers, excellent though they often are (or have been), are starting to circle the drain faster and faster. News gets sacrificed as revenues fall. The percentage of the paper that’s ads increases. At some point I have to ask what this reader did in Karen Hunter’s column Sunday:
Why on Earth would I pay $269.88 per year for a glorified advertising supplement?
Why, indeed? And the more people come to that realization, the less money the paper pulls in, and the more space needs to be devoted to ads. Where’s it end?
News on the Web
Is there a solution for local and regional news outlets? I don’t know. Short of going entirely online, shutting down the printing press for good and closing the office to have reporters telecommute…? I’m not sure there is, unless more money can be pulled from web ads and an actual balance can be struck between ads and revenue, and circulation stops dropping like a rock.
Maybe the regional news service of the future will be exactly like I’ve described above: paperless, building-less and mobile. There are already some great news outlets on the web. CT News Junkie and the New Haven Independent are the best, and there are others, like Westport Now. Is that model (maybe larger) the future? If newspapers like the Courant really do start fading into oblivion… would people actually be willing to pay for news online?
It’s impossible to say. But I have a feeling we’ll find out sooner than we think.
Sources:
Hunter, Karen. “Tough Times, Tough Choices.” Hartford Courant 15 June, 2008.
“Paper Cuts.” Hartford Business Journal 16 June, 2008.
Courant staff. “Tribune Co. Plans Cuts At The Courant.” Hartford Courant 6 June, 2008.
19 responses so far ↓
The world is going more and more, paperless.
People just like the interactivity and on demand news on the internet.
I attended the Free Press event in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where Dan Rather, Bill Moyes, and others spoke on the future and responsibility of media.
I am one of the new breed of “backpack journalists”, I am now affiliated with independent news uploading services.
I cover events and my photos, videos, and what I write is picked up and printed.
As CNN, Fox, the BBC and others lay off more and more camera people and reporters there is an even greater market for those of us polishing their skills in the independent media arena.
Many of us, want our America back the way it should be:
http://thesrv.blogspot.com/2008/06/reclaiming-elections-and-prosecuting.html
As far as the Courant goes, they either have to adapt, or die. Many newspapers can only be found in library archives and in museums.
huh??
Seriously though, a few months ago I saw a CSpan forum that included (I believe) the heads of the Tribune, maybe the WSJ and one or two other bigwigs. And they had one message on the future of news….
Over the coming years, expect to see a reduction in overall offline news (though they spoke more of a reduction in offline advertising)… and you will simultaneously see an increase in online news content. The panel suggested that offline newspapers would continue to exist, though at a higher newsstand price… and that the newspapers would be generating larger and larger shares of revenue from online advertising.
It’s a phenomenon of which most of us are probably already aware… I think GE is big into the online revenue stream… look no further than Hulu.com and their NBC unit.
Personally, I am concerned about the future of news. But I think the transition will be worse than the news model that we ultimately get.
In the meantime… what’s wrong with a li’l bit o’ CTLP-style vigilante journalism?? GC… are you up to the task??
Help me GC-Kenobi… you’re our only hope!
along with the NHI and our News Junkie, of course! And who knows, maybe someone like Greg Hladky will go online and start his own service? The key may be if they can create a model that generates revenue quickly, then profitably.
That could be interesting if the Courant lays off a group of reporters and while they collect for a few months… they begin an online newspaper that competes directly with the Courant.
Of course, we’d have to help them… but that’d be my pleasure.
This is the last gasp for newspapers. Some door, once closed, cannot be reopened again. Some hard analysis is in order.
You cannot produce wiggets without wigget makers, and news is still a product produced by reporters for a market. It is somewhat misleading to say that newspapers have fallen into debt because advertisers have fled; has anyone recently separated into two piles the advertising vs the news sections of a Sunday Courant? It’s nearly 50/50 now.
Advertizers flee when advertising markets are reduced. People are no longer reading newspapers, defined as papers that contain news – that’s the problem.
Why is this happening? Figure that out, and you will be able to propose a correction.
It was said the “last hurrah” of the railroads was hauling the cement and aggregates to make the concrete for the interstates, the last time they turned a profit in the age of high regulation.
The last hurrah of the newspapers was the tech boom — the most valuable real estate in a newspaper is the classified ads (highest dollar per square inch). The computer companies flush with cash were buying lots of advertising, particularly in nationally prominent papers like the Boston Globe. Then the bubble crashed, but the online help wanted ads like Monster and Craigslist took over that business permenantly. Took the papers’ management many years to realize what the staff was telling them — that revenue is never coming back. They made a good amount of profits advertising for the companies that were hiring the computer geeks who could slay the grip of newsprint.
However, like Mark Twain, the reports of the death of the railroads were greatly exagerated. The rail system is now bursting at capacity, freed by deregulation to drop uneconomical routes and concentrating on how to provide the most efficient transport along the trunk routes. If you’ve heard the recent radio commercials that railroads move 1 ton of freight 430 miles on a gallon of diesel, that only tells part of the story. In 1983, they moved 1 ton of freight about 270 miles on that same gallon. Pretty sure you’d be happy if your SUV had a similiar increase in efficiency.
Likewise, the newspapers need to adapt and change. While they weren’t in a regulated market, their golden age of fat profits in a market place of limited competetion both for their product and their advertising that was the 1970s will never come back.
As I’m typing, the morning call in show on WINY just ended. I listen them once in a while over the internet. If a tiny little AM radio station can be a commercially viable station for decades up in Putnam, CT…I have a hard time figuring “new media” can’t be viable.
The Courant is failing because they fail to provide unbiased news. They consistently provide biased reporting and fail to report on important stories on the town level. THAT is why they have failed. It has little to do with the Internet or advertisers. The paper has slit their own throat. I would still be a subscriber today if I would have seen an inkling of balanced reporting. People are flocking to blogs to get information that the newspapers are misreporting, or not reporting on at all. People want both sides of a story not the biased corporate pap that they have been fed. We have been telling this to the Courant all along - they know what their problem is - they fail to correct it and so as far as I am concerned the market has spoken.
Wait a minute; this really is big news:
“Courant About to Change–For the Worse”
Who would have guessed that was even possible?
Wait a minute; this really is big news:
“Courant About to Change–For the Worse”
Who would have guessed that was even possible?
I agree with Dal90….to proclaim newsprint dead is to exaggerate things just a bit.
Newspapers in print have an achival quality to them that online news will never have. Plus, the portablity of a newspapers cannot be beat — who amongst us has not taken the sports page with us as we do our “morning” business?
But like every business, todays behemoth newsrooms with specific reporters for specific tasks (Business, Political, Social, etc) will have to change with the times. Reporters will have to multi-task, multi-report, and multi-produce (like take the photos, write the text, post stuff online, etc).
The Web is only a threat if they continue on with their old ways. Embrace this new technology and learn to work with it, not against it.
In the future, in a world with “citizen journalists” where every person could conceivably “bear witness” to news and report it (via a cellphone camera) the need is ever greater for “credible” news sources. That is where the “old guard” newspapers/news organizations can fit in….and yes…with the news explosion…eventually we will pay for credible (and presumably unbiased) news.
Will there be layoffs…yes. Will there be downsizing…yes. But does the signal to death of newsprint…no.
The New York TIMES had its major columnists on line for a fee and dropped the program after a year because not enough people were willing to pay. I am of the old generation and still enjoy starting my day with the New London DAY. I then check the Hartford Courant and Norwich Bulletin Web sites to see if there are any other interesting news tidbits. I get e mail news updates from the New York TIMES and the Washington POST to keep up with the ‘newspapers of record’ for the nation. I also know that my kids never read the newspaper. They get their news from TV or on line. It is a trend that will ultimately spell the end of the print version of the newspaper. I just hope that the news media will still be able to afford the reporters and investigators that are vital in keeping the public informed about obscure political problems and potential corruption in government. The amateur just doesn’t have the time or the access to accomplish ‘muckracking’ effectively on a continuing basis.
The problem with these newspapers is that they don’t report the news anymore. They pick and choose what they want to run.
To expound upon what Republitarian points out:
The Courant was at its best doing the type of Jon Lender investigative journalist that brought down Rowland. And I don’t know how you do that without staff, so the loss of the fourth estate is a loss for all of us.
That said, I don’t think the problem was so much they they sent out to intentionally break down the editorial / news barrier but lost of the fundamentals of 5WH journalism (who, what, where, when, whey & how) for two abominations: interpretive and anecdotal.
The interpretative model is where they explain what it means. This assumes the newspaper writer is actually smarter than the reader and inevitably requires basic assumptions regarding world view — which is where the bias creeps in.
In the anecdotal model a long, drawn out, frequently poignant story about one individual is published as if that’s somehow representative of a state with 3 and 1/2 million people in it.
It didn’t help any that the reader representative wasn’t — at least after McNulty left the position — but rather became an apologist for the paper.
So the question isn’t why someone should pay for a glorified advertising supplement but why someone should pay for left wing opinion — in this state, that’s carrying coal to Newcastle.
If it’s the WSJ, yes.
I believe that in recent years, newspapers have reduced their total number of journalists. In turn, journalists have to cover more… but have no additional time. This led directly to a reduction in hard-hitting, investigative journalism.
If I’m correct in my understanding, then it’s appropriate to point out that reporters are doing the best job they can… it’s the management that’s screwing up journalism.
Nonetheless, it was a Courant reporter who recently explained to me that the time constraints faced by reporters has led directly to the loss of their “coffee shop talk” time.
And that’s where society can benefit from the hordes of Genghis Conn… we can provide the coffee shop talk that reporters no longer have time to absorb… they can decide which “handles” are credible and use the blogosphere’s coffee shop talk for story ideas.
GC… you may not have asked for it, but the burden you now wear is actually pretty heavy… keep up the great work! Without you (and others) this state would be even worse off (hard as though that may be to believe)!
If citizens try to sue Connecticut Officials, the Courant often doesn’t pick up the story. Another reason to get more news online.
Would they cover a story like this, or even looking into bid rigging of the Judicial Branch, case fixing, and the retaliation practices of Connecticut Courts and State Police?
More:
http://thesrv.blogspot.com/2008/06/is-it-grand-jury-time.html
I honestly believe it’s more subtle then that.
The stark contrast between the old reporters and the new reporters came to me from listening to some of the last of the reporters hired without a Journalism degree (and not even necessarily four years of college at all).
These guys had 40 years in when I knew them, and 65 and retirement was on the horizon. Part of it is changing times, but part of it was growing up in the communities they covered. They had good connections, they’d take photos for the police before police had cameras. They had the confidence of people they worked with, and exercised that discretion in what was reported. In exchange, they had very good sources. It may sound cliche, but it’s these guys who understood whose uncle had slept with whose grandmother, and how that affected city council personal politics.
With J-school, very seldom do reporters get hired where they grow up — there’s only so many news openings in a year, and so many graduates. The two usually do not line up. So you have people coming into an area blind to it’s culture, traditions, laws, etc. It’s even more aggravated with minorities, because J-school graduates most likely grew up in a town like those on Route 44 on either side of Avon Mountain…not down off of Albany Ave.
Around the same time I was hearing the war stories of these old horses (I was “slumming” out of the server room and helping fix some field office PCs), the Boston Globe was wringing it’s hands what to do about covering urban areas.
You see, hardly any black or latinos went to Journalism school. And coming urban backgrounds, they pretty much weren’t interested in such a major if going to college — they wanted something practical. That’s a pretty common scenario frankly, liberal arts is for people who come from comfortable backgrounds. The people who’ve really struggled tend to look towards teaching, engineering, nursing, etc — where the jobs are.
The solution is simple. The Boston Globe people couldn’t think outside of the box they had built since the 197os though. They’d even make appeals to all the employees for ideas…but if it didn’t involve Journalism school, the ideas were non-starters. But that’s the problem. You don’t need J-school to be a good reporter. It is a craft, but that craft could be taught between classes at the newspaper and mentoring. Bring in the kids young, maybe they work part-time splitting their time between local colleges and craft training at the paper. If you have the craft system in place, it also means you can easily train others — from organic gardeners to retired teachers, to engineers looking for a part-time job because they enjoy newspapers — to contribute quality articles.
I don’t care how big of a staff you have to help you, if you’re not from the community you’re covering you won’t have your finger on the pulse of it and understand the subtle nuances of personal interactions going on. Maybe after a couple decades, if you stay around long enough, you start to earn the trust of the locals. Maybe not.
Dal… your argument is persuasive.
My experience is Cheshire. And since I grew up here (and my parents grew up here… high school sweethearts, actually… going on 47 years married, this week), I’m certain that is the reason that some people confide in me… while many people may never confide in a non-native reporter.
I still believe the “coffee shop talk” time could benefit the goal of shedding light on problems areas, but nonetheless… I appreciate your thoughts and am sure they are very much true a lot of the time for many people.
So sad.
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