Hugh Hewitt blasted the LA Times in a speech last night.
hughhewitt.com
"Thanks to Cathy and Amy for organizing this. I have been a television, radion and print journalist in southern California for 15 years but have never been to an L.A. Press Club event. I bring greetings from Orange County.
It is tempting to use my time to underscore the failings of the Los Angeles Times, but how hard would that be? The paper's circulation stands at around 900,000 --just where it stood in 1968 when the state's population was at 19.5 million and there was competition. Today the Times has a monopoly and the state has about 35 million people. Any product that had failed to extend its costumer base under these circumstances would appear to be a product in deep deep trouble. George Will argued Sunday that the sound of a paper hitting the driveway would soon be as familiar as the clop of horsehooves on cobblestones, and though that is certainly an overstatement, it does put the focus where it should be.
What do blogs have to do with this? The first question is what the internet has to do with this. I read the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Boston Globe and the Los Angeles Times online every morning and in that order. I can't see the new generation paying with real money for what they can get for free.
The blogs of course have added a wonderful thing called accountability, which reinforces the decision not to subscribe to the newspaper. Not only is it for free, it isn't very reliable unless you share its world view.
But there's a much larger dimension to the blogs' impact, and it has to do with advertising.
The most interesting story in jopurnalism right now is that a grand jury in Texas is considering whether the Dallas Morning News defrauded its advertisers by inflating the circulation numbers. Close behind that and connected is the advertising dollars' move away from newspapers, as detailed in this morning's New York Times. We all know what CraigsList has done and will continue to do to classified revenue.
And now Henry Copeland's blog ads are offering advertisers a new and reliable way to reach very targeted markets with certainty that their ads will be seen.
Think about that 900,000 number.
In 1968, what percentage of the paper's ads did the average subscriber see?
How about today?
I still love the sports page, but I read the Cleveland Plain Dealer's and the Akron Beacon Journal's, or other, franchise-specific sites which aggregate news stories for me, and not the Times' --which is why, btw, I know the Browns had the best draft of all the NFL this past weekend.
I still read commentary by the wheelbarrel full, but I pull it from RealClearPolitics.com and the blogs I frequent. You don't have to be Susan Estrich to think the Times' editorial pages are as boring as C-SPAN hearing at midnight, except for Ramirez, fo course, and I can get him online as well.
If I want an insiders view of Sacramento, I read Dan Weintraub in the Sacramento Bee, or increasingly the online Sacramento Union. George Skelton may have retired for all I know.
Which brings me back to advertisers and their budgets. They are on notice that there's a lot of fraud in the numbers. They are on notice that a lot of people don't subscribe to begin with. How long until they figure out that the subscribers --real, honest paying subscribers-- aren't really reading their ads anymore? When they wake up, what are they going to do?
We know GM walked away from the Times this month, for how long, we don't know.
What conclusion will we draw if GM's dealers report higher sales year-to-year in April and May without any advertising in the Times?
And when advertisers figure out the cost per reader of blog ads is vastly lower than that of the Times or any other paper, do you think they are going to stick around out of loyalty?
I am unsure what it costs to buy the top ad space at say Instapundit,, Powerline,, LittleGreenFootballs, Michelle Malkin, CaptainsQuarters, and HughHewitt.com but I think it is a very safe bet that reaching the combined daily readership of those half-dozen center-right blogs --with a total of more than a third of a million visitors a day-- is far far cheaper than even a cheap ad in the Times, and that the ads purchased on the these blogs are seen by a much higher percentage of those blogs' visitors than the newspaper ad is seen by Times' subscribers.
In short, while most of the conversation about the new media-old media conflict has centered on accountability and idea competition, the real torpedo launched from the blogosphere at the newspaper world in particular is the alternative advertising platform they provide and will continue to provide as sophistication and readership grow.
Ten minutes before the Titantic hit the iceberg, it was the greatest ship the world had ever seen.
But even if it hadn't hit the iceberg, the Titanic was already doomed by the rapid advance of a competing delivery mechanism --the airplane.
Blogs may or may not be the iceberg to the newspaperer's Titanic, although the sudden collapse of advertising revenue does seem to me to be a real danger even if the migration of that revenue to blogs isn't instantaneous.
But blogs are most certainly a medium term disaster for daily print enterprises.
I get a lot of e-mai from journalism students. I tell them honestly that they are out of their minds to seek a career in newspapers. Put aside the poisonous atmosphere of the big paper newsroom --well chronicled at Tim Porter's First Draft. It is simply an industry facing enormous revenue pressures even as the public has grown tired of the deep bias of the agenda journalism that infects the bigs.
One final though. I don't know how much GM cancelled in Times' ads. But let's say it is a million a month.
How would you advise GM to spend that money?
Well, radio is usually on in a car, which means you have a potential customer.
And magazines can document their readers tastes and income levels.
I have already mentioned blog ads.
But why wouldn't GM build the on-line machinery to attract the car buying public --the sort of site with blog that will gain a reputation for content and graphics --and even web-only new car discounts or rebates.
In other words, invest in the means of production of advertising rather than subsidizing an old and decaying platform.
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To quote Charles Wilson, then head of GM and later Ike's Secretary of Defense, "What's good for the country is good for GM, and vice versa." Today the appropriate paraphrase might be what's good for GM's advertising budget is good for everyone's advertising budget. If GM doesn't need the Times, who does? |
