Simon Says Newspapers Would Be Killing Themselves Even Without The Help Of The Internet
For the definitive dramatic take on why and how the newspaper industry has fallen so hard, watch season five of HBO's The Wire, much of which is set inside the beleaguered Baltimore Sun newsroom. The show has it all: The ever-present desperation and dread. The hushed, huddled stand-up meetings in which colleagues whisper about who they think the next round of layoffs will hit. The strain of fewer people, many with less experience and training than they need, trying to handle more responsibilities for diminishing pay and benefits.
The show is so dead-on because it was created by a man who knows. Former Baltimore Sun reporter David Simon has observed print media through the good times and the awful. Last week he testified before the Senate Commerce Committee that it's a fallacy to blame the Internet for print's demise. Newspapers, Simon said, are hastening their demise because management sacrificed the craft of journalism for the bottom line. Rather than strengthening their products, newspaper executives protected outrageous profit margins at the expense of quality.
Anyone listening carefully may have noted that I was bought out of my reporting position in 1995. That's fourteen years ago. That's well before the Internet ever began to seriously threaten any aspect of the industry. That's well before Craig's List and department-store consolidation gutted the ad base. Well before any of the current economic conditions applied.
When newspaper chains began cutting personnel and content, their industry was one of the most profitable yet discovered by Wall Street money. We know now—because bankruptcy has opened the books—that the Baltimore Sun was eliminating its afternoon edition and trimming nearly 100 editors and reporters in an era when the paper was achieving 37 percent profits. In the years before the Internet deluge, the men and women who might have made the Sun a more essential vehicle for news and commentary—something so strong that it might have charged for its product online—they were being ushered out the door so that Wall Street could command short-term profits in the extreme.
Simon's solution to the problem, however, seems as narrow-minded and protectionist as the corporate practices he resents. He says the way to save old-school style journalism is to move to a subscriber-paid online model and for news sources to "protect" their content from bloggers. Guess Simon doesn't realize that links to news sources actually direct traffic their way.
Wire creator David Simon testifies on the future of journalism [Reclaimthemedia, via Mediabistro]
(Photo:Triin Q)
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Comments:
I love and fully agree with the tag on this post.
The newspaper industry is a lot like McNulty when everyone looks at him *that* way: "What the f*** did I do?"
....The Wire was better than The Sopranos. There, I said it.
And.....begin the flame war.
Yeah, we see how well protecting your "content" works for media companies (ahem RIAA and MPAA). It's the age of digital distribution, twitter, etc. You can't sue everyone.
@Bearded Rapper: Yeah, sans the ticker-tape parade, it actually looks kind of nice.. what with the shiny, presumably un-peed-upon floors and intact seats.
Is anyone else wondering how other print media is doing? Popular mechanics and wired and several other publications are crammed full of ads, or even "special advertising sections" that i normal just rip out and toss before i even begin reading. I know playboy is in the shitter, but they only charge about 1$ per issue if you subscribe, but then thats about the same price as alot of the other big titles out there. How long before I lose my paper copy of wired to read on the crapper?
Quality has reached an all time low with a media that is overwhelmingly in the bag for the current administration. Whatever happened to media being a watchdog over the powerful?
I started watching the fifth season of The Wire, and stopped because it just got too depressing to watch. It really is the state of my industry, and the people who aren't in charge, who are really just trying to make a living doing what they enjoy, are trying to keep their heads above water, and avoid scrutiny of the bosses who are happy to give out pink slips.
@PartOfIMAXConspiracy_GitEmSteveDave:
Oooh! Padded seats will soak up the urine to make sure it doesn't drip on the floor and dirty my shoes!
@Sean Beattie: The Wire is better than the sopranos. I'd be surprised if many people disagreed with you there.
I finished season 5 on netflix about a month ago, and immediately went back and started it from the beginning again. its' infinitely re-watchable, not only because of the incredible writing and directing, but because the actors who play them- Bunk, Omar, Marlo, Slim Charles, Bodie, Snoop, Carcetti, Stringer, Wee-Bay, and so on- are just magnetic.
@Sean Beattie: I concur. They were both great, but The Wire's stories and dialogue were a little better I think. And it was more consistent. The Wire had a couple of weak episodes, but The Sopranos had a couple of weak entire seasons.
What they need to do is break up media conglomerates. It was the commoditization of the news that turned it into disposable junk. If newspapers were just newspapers, and not a vehicle for funneling profits to a parent company whose sole purpose was to give dividends to stockholders, they would have a better product, and people would pay for it. All the news is now is sensationalist junk meant just to drive clickthroughs.
I like the new tag, "The Wire was a badass show." I can only hope this is a recurring story here on Consumerist.
@pecan 3.14159265: Sadly, all five seasons of the show pretty much depict the exact same thing that you just described, just in different industries (police, unions, education, local government and journalism).
Easily one of the best shows ever made though.
@Bearded Rapper: So, you don't feel this picture lives up to it's caption, "world's worst subway car ever?"
I read the Hartford Courant most of my life. In the 80's they cut back local coverage while still claiming to be your local paper. Through the 90's and into this decade locally produced news was replaced with wire articles and ads. Then about six or seven years ago they cut columnist and reporters just as the internet was taking hold.
Why should I pay for reprints of wire service stories when I can get them for free. I still subscribe to a local paper because they write stories and have well reasoned editorials that I can't get elsewhere.
@HiPwr: Agreed. Pretending that the incredibly slanted leftist reporting had no effect on readership is ignoring (another) elephant in the room.
The media has always been left-leaning, but the rising popularity of righty Fox News caused the rest of the media to jump the shark into pure liberal-mouthpiece mode. Fox responded by doing the same for the right, and now we have no useful media at all.
Everyone's just concerned about reporting on Obama and Biden's lunch, or Obama's walk around the neighborhood with Michelle.
@Bearded Rapper: Please. A little paper does not a filthy subway car make. Look at those floors! Look at those seats! Even with the paper, that is the most comfortable subway car I have ever seen. Hell, the paper adds something extra, free reading material!
Now if all the papers in that car simultaneous scattered all their pages throughout the car, were balled up and urinated on, I might agree with you, but they are relatively whole.
He sounds still pissed that he got bought out. That seems to be coloring most of his assertions. It's unlikely that keeping him and the others onboard would have helped in the long run. People simply have moved away from newspapers and cheaper online ad revenue hasn't made up the difference for the more expensive ads lost in print.
I have said for years that the newspapers can be very successful but they chose not to be. The stories I get in mine are wire reprints and they are more than a day old. The local coverage is very limited and if you take away the obituaries/ local ads it would be almost nonexistent. In this day in age I know there is massive fraud and corruption but the papers won't expose any of it. To me the local papers are like stores trying to compete with Wal-mart on price. It is bound to fail because you will never match Wal-mart's prices so it is best to try and compete in a different area.
It's annoying that the basic, no-frills paper, done well, not only did well, they did fantastically, with a 40% ROI. That's crazy-high (for legitimate, non-bubble-fueled businesses).
The leveraging, the consolidating, the acquiring as part of a print/broadcast empire, is what killed many of these papers. And also caused formerly good papers to veer towards sensationalism over solid reporting, alienating the types of smarties who subscribe to home delivery.
About the only time Bigger Is Better, it seems, is in the bedroom.*
* And I am. Yes, I am!
(that's what mom says)
(wait - that didn't come out the way I meant...)
Once our news media is gone, or just about gone, and all the news you can get is on TV and internet, here today, poof gone tomorrow, we will really be living in a NWO. Hate to sound paranoiac and dooms day, but I think this was premeditated. Rupert Murdoch, Ted Turner, their designs have shed the old skin for a new much more flexible one: pop media monopoly.
@Dirk: I'm pretty sure they don't have one where he's lived, or visited. But he heard someplace that they're quite dangerous and packed to the gills with illegal immigrants, or at least swarthy foreigner types. Non-European swarthy foreigner types.
@Ghede: Seriously, that subway car makes some of the ones on the DC metro look like zombie movie sets...and I largely regard the DC metro as being relatively clean and clutter free!
Ironically enough, it was a criminally underwatched show when it was on-air. I know next to no on who's actually seen it, though anyone who has, has liked it.
@Mr_Human: You know that he wasn't exactly hurting when he got bought out, right? In 1992, he'd finished with his book, Homicide - and that turned into a best-seller and a TV show. I don't think he's bitter or pissed about losing his job.
I think his point - and rightfully so - is that the buyouts and layoffs have been going on since before the big bad internet. Which means that newspaper has been losing for a long time. Let's see, mid-90s...what had a stranglehold by then? Oh yeah, cable news.
The truth is that we're used to 24/7 news cycles and print is always old...
@Coach
You hit the nail on the head - it's all supply and demand. The vast majority of the public does not demand teh slanted bias that is being provided.
I wouldn't mind if the media just admitted what most can clearly see and get on with it. But to expect that the aveage Joe will beleive their pleadings of "we have no bias" is laughable.
Printed newspapers are a ludicrously inefficient medium for delivering their value and as a result are terrible for the natural environment. Good riddance.
Yes, yes you do. It's got plots that don't pay off in a single season, characters you see sporadically becoming key pieces of puzzles, and honest storytelling with no cop-out ending. David Chase is clown shoes.
The printers unions are at least PART of the problem, probably a major part. While most of you are talking about the delivery of the news, I'm talking about the production of the newspaper.
I work in the printing industry, and I've spent a major part of my life in printing. What I've seen over the last 30-odd years is that most of the unionized printers are going or already gone. But the non-union printers have found ways to adapt and evolve with the new technologies.
Upgrading of equipment, employee training and cross-training, staying on top of new technologies and methods, reducing waste, keeping a sharp eye on material costs, these are all essential things today. "Lean" management is not just a catchword, it's the way to keep your doors open. You will never find lean management objectives written into a union contract because it's not in the union's interest to think that way.
*end of rant*
David Simon is a genius. He wrote an essay about the death of the newspaper for Esquire a while ago that is among the best I've read. [www.esquire.com]
@Scrutinizer: When I moved to Dallas seven years ago The Dallas Morning News was an amazing value. 35 cents and it had hours of information in it, including some of best sports and religion reporting in the country... now it's $1 for the weekday edition and it's half the size.
uhh.. no this is not worlds worst subway car...
im a seasoned veteran of the NYC subway system. until you have wandered into a subway car that has a fresh steaming pile of feces on a seat in the far corner, a cart of stinking belongings rolling around in a shopping cart, a homeless man sleeping in the seats in other end of the subway car, and another homeless man sitting in the middle of the floor naked, then you can talk. (yes, this has happened to me)
@pecan 3.14159265: "It really is the state of my industry"
The irony being that Simon appears to have based it largely on his experiences in the 90s. I love the Wire, and loved the 5th season (as a former J-school undergrad w/ friends in the news business, I really dig this stuff) - but it's worth it to search for some of the articles about Simon's supposed vendetta against the Sun, and how he incorporated that into season 5. Even if you don't completely believe his detractors, it adds an interesting layer to the season...
Scrutinizer (above) makes a very good point above. If newspapers want to claim that the Internet killed them, why don't they stop carrying all wire stories and hire back journalists to write stories?
If it turns out that nobody wants to read stories written by journalists, then so be it ... but that's not the Internets fault, that's a design fault of the business model.
But I doubt it.
@Sean Beattie: No flames here. The Wire was an incredible show. You have to trust it and allow yourself to get into it - or at least I did. When I first saw season 1, I liked it, but it wasn't exactly what I was looking for at the time. But it stuck in my head and I eventually came back to it, and found myself in love with it.
Seasons 1 and 2 are great, but the show hit its stride with season 3, and just blew it out of the park with season 4.
@Harry Pothead: I'm confused by your logic.
If the unions are gone or going, replaced by non-union "lean management", how can you blame unions for the continued shutdown of newspapers?
Your own words suggest that the union/"lean management" model is irrelevant.
@bbagdan: Oh, and that computer is perfectly harmless? Do you power it with a human-run bike or something?
Why pay to read liberal clap-trap by opinionated journalists when you can read slightly less opinionated, more-researched garbage in a blog? Maybe if more newspapers actually printed news instead of just blaring their political agendas more people would read them.
Of course, certain consumer blogs seem to be heading that way too, pretty soon there wont be anyone left that can think for themselves.
The internet didn't kill newspaper; television did. It's just taken this long for the subscribers born before TV was their main source of news to die off.
@Sean Beattie: I absolutely enjoy The Wire way more than The Sopranos. I bought the entire series for $80 thanks to an Amazon Gold Box deal figuring that it would be good since it took place in Baltimore, and if I hated it, I could sell it to someone else.
I am getting ready to start watching season 3 now...totally hooked.
You're only starting season 3? Get ready; it gets truly awesome (in the actual definition) starting with the third season. The fourth is my favorite, though.
Just goes to show how stupid it is to sacrifice everything for the Laissez-Faire Capitalist Holy Grail: short-term profits.
How many companies in America, other than a couple in the electronics / computer industry, really invest in the long term anymore?
Man, that picture is the world's worst subway car ever. How do those passengers manage to survive the litter?