There Used To Be a Newspaper
We’ve been spoiled. We think researched and vetted information shouldn’t cost anything. We grab stuff off the Internet without s thought…
We’ve been spoiled. We think researched and vetted information shouldn’t cost anything. We grab stuff off the Internet without s thought, acting as though there are no production costs, no time spent by hardworking journalists who ask the questions and pour over documents that most of us lack the time or expertise to even consider.
Yes, information itself is and should be free. But the gathering and disseminating of that information is not. And the assumption that it should be free has sent the news industry teetering on the precipice of a full collapse.
I am not blaming readers. Much of this is the fault of the business itself, of the inflexibility it demonstrated as a series of social and technological changes altered the playing field, and the absurd optimism it showed in the face of these tectonic shifts. I’m talking about the Internet, but it goes much deeper and goes back much farther, and it was exacerbated by accumulating debt that left media companies both big and small without the resources they needed to adapt.
The story goes like this. Until the advent of television, local print publications owned a monopoly on information — all local information. And newspapers used this monopoly to bring in a disparate group of readers who had different interests and different needs. Sports, the social pages, and novelties were the candy of the news operation that drew in readers; harder news about government and major social and economic issues were the vegetables. We got readers to eat their vegetables by promising the candy.
This arrangement boosted circulation and helped sell potential advertisers on the paper. Of course, those businesses who advertised had few alternatives. There was in most smaller towns only only one place through which to disseminate the information about the car you had for sale, the room you had for rent, or the special deals your business was offering this week.
This eclectic mix of information drew in readers who were not interested in everything the paper had to offer. The paper created a unified sense of community, but it also offered something for everyone, and he assumption was you read what you wanted and skipped what you didn’t want. Readers picked and chose from a menu of options — sports and classified, social news and the puzzles, government news and wedding announcements and Little League scores.
The fact that advertisers — both retail and classified — had few alternatives boosted ad revenue, which became the primary way newspapers funded themselves. Newspapers could minimize their cover price and subscription fees, giving readers a quality product as a nominal price. Revenue from subscriptions and newsstand sales were therefore nominal, though the sales themselves helped papers count readers, and those counts — circulation numbers — could then be used to show potential advertisers the papers’ reach.
Advertising funded the operation, which meant the industry was vulnerable to changes in advertisers’ needs. First came radio and television, though the initial impact was small. Then along came direct mail and local cable, which started peeling away the eyeballs and ad money. There was a drop in readership that was masked by the closing of papers. A region that had 10 papers with an average readership of 100,000 had 1 million total newspaper readers. There was overlap, but that didn’t matter for the numbers. Five would close, and individual circulation might rise but total readership might fall — the five remaining papers might have an average readership of 150,000, but 250K readers disappeared from the total. No one noticed or cared because their individual readership increased.
The industry, assuming continued individual growth, then went into hock for new toys, expanded product and staffing (mostly on the administrative side), all as it ignored its online component. Newspapers gave away the news to their online readers, which only trained those readers — who had assumed news was cheap because the paper had only cost a quarter — to expect information free of charge.
At the same time, corporate ownership pressed papers and other media outlets for larger returns, the classified market collapsed Craig’s List swooped in, the monopoly shattered as the Web opened opportunities for readers and businesses, and the entire model collapsed.
In its place, we’ve allowed rumors and half truths to proliferate. At the national level, this is because of a focus on entertainment value and conflict, and a desire to chase the metrics — viewers, web hits, etc. — along with the growth of a partisan media establishment that violates all the norms of good news reporting and logical discourse.
At the local level, the rumors spread because there are no news outlets to spread factual information. Local residents, few of which have the time or expertise to visit city hall and look at development plans or draft ordinances, hear things that they then pass along.
We need new models of local news. A friend runs a local website in a neighboring town. She is trying to sell ads, but struggles to generate enough income to keep it going. The state-level site I often write for is mostly foundation funded, but also struggles to cover its budget.
My hometown lacks a news source since my old paper closed several years ago. It had been in decline when I left to join Patch, which promised to recreate the local news ecosphere on the web but failed miserably. Others have stepped into the fray, but they struggled as they attempted to build on the old ad-based model.
New Jersey is setting aside $5 million for local news — a Civic Information Consortium that will fund “projects designed to meet the information needs of residents around New Jersey, especially in underserved communities, low-income communities and communities of color,” according to the Free Press, its chief backer. (Full disclosure: I am working with the Free Press on an unrelated project on economic need in New Jersey.)
The money will go to “longstanding and startup news outlets alike while also launching media-literacy and civic-engagement programs. It will also provide grants to support the information needs of New Jersey’s low-income communities and communities of color.”
At the same time, I’m exploring a Patreon-based, subscription model for reporting on issues and developments in my hometown of South Brunswick, NJ. I’m starting small — one or two posts a week on land-use issues, budgets and taxes, economic need. I’m asking for $1 a month for readers, which is a modest fee that will barely cover my fuel costs until we reach a critical mass of patrons. This is an experiment, and there are no guarantees. But we have to experiment if the local news industry is to survive.
It won’t be easy, of course. This approach flies in the face of free-news headwinds. A dollar a month seems nominal but, with readers used to getting their news for free, a dollar a month might as well be a king’s ransom.
I have been a newsman for 28 years and served as a reporter, news editor and managing editor of the South Brunswick Post and The Cranbury Press, as editorial writer and web editor at the Princeton Packet, and regional editor at Patch. I teach journalism at Rutgers University, and writing at Middlesex County College and Brookdale Community College.
To help fund my work, including South Brunswick Re-Posted, make a pledge here at Patreon. You can buy me a coffee at Ko-Fi, or clap for my work at The Medium. Follow me on Twitter @newspoet41 and @kaletjournalism, or follow my experiments in combining images and text on Instagram @kaletwrites.
Thanks.