Whither the Mainstream Media?
Power Line
In the big-media world, the turmoil continues. At Market Watch, Bambi Francisco describes how the revolt among news consumers has impacted the economics of news producers:
<<< Not only are some consumers not paying for content, some are displacing those heretofore assigned to create it and others are affecting the economics by their online-sharing behavior. That additional power given to the audience is evident in the financial results of many companies. In the magazine industry, advertising pages at Time Warner Inc.'s Time magazine were down 23.8% in 2006 from 2000, according to Publishers Information Bureau. Newsweek's ad pages fell about 17.6% in the same period.
In the newspaper industry, the New York Times has been halved since trading above $50 in 2002.
In the music industry, sales of CDs have been declining in the last seven years and fell 20% in the first quarter of this year. And a significant distribution channel of music in the last two decades -- retail outlets -- saw 800 music stores shut down in 2006. >>>
Some news outlets are responding by moving further in the direction of opinion:
<<< In order to compete, the monolithic traditional magazine, newspaper and television networks appear to be relying on reporters to move up the value chain and become brands themselves to attract the audience. Why? It's not a one-size-fits-all media world. The audience is learning or becoming conditioned to identify with a personality or expert or show, rather than one big institution. So each reporter/columnist must provide more analysis, more insight and more dedication to his or her trade to outperform and outshine the crowded stage of free stuff.
Regarding Time, the Wall Street Journal writes: "In addition to the new look, editors have invoked the Economist as a role model for the new Time -- less of a news digest, more of an opinion journal." It goes onto to say: "It's a risky strategy for a mass-market magazine. If the appeal is too narrow, circulation could suffer, bringing advertising down with it." >>>
This strikes me as exactly the wrong approach. Commentary is, if not easy, certainly plentiful. The unique advantage of the traditional press is its ability to fulfill the primary news gathering and reporting function on which all else depends. Increasingly, though, that's not what reporters and editors want to do. It is the loss of their reputation for reliability, not their "boring" devotion to fact, that has caused consumers to cancel their newspaper and magazine subscriptions and turn off the evening news.
The New York Times has more, via InstaPundit:
<<< For newspapers, February was the cruelest month. So far.
Revenue from advertising was in striking decline last month, compared with February a year ago, and were generally weaker than analysts had expected.
At USA Today, the nation's biggest newspaper, ad revenue was down 14 percent this February, compared with February last year. Gannett, which owns USA Today and is the nation's biggest newspaper company, reported that its overall ad revenue declined 3.8 percent in February from February 2006.
Ad revenue at The New York Times Company fell 6 percent overall, declining 7.5 percent at The New York Times; ad revenue at the company's New England Media Group, which includes The Boston Globe, was down 4 percent. At The Wall Street Journal, published by Dow Jones, it was off 10 percent.
The Tribune Company, whose papers include The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune and The Baltimore Sun, reported losses of more than 5 percent. So did McClatchy, whose papers include The Miami Herald, The Sacramento Bee and The Lexington Herald-Leader in Kentucky.
Most of the numbers were worse than January's and came after a difficult year in which many newspapers continued to pare costs by laying off employees, shrinking the physical size of their print publications and reducing benefits. >>>
Is this good news or bad news? I can't improve on Glenn Reynolds' comments, so I'll reproduce them:
Revealingly, lots of readers have emailed this story to me
with various gleeful comments. I don't share their glee. I
want newspapers to get better, not go broke. However, it
says something bad about the politicization of news
reporting that so many potential readers are canceling
subscriptions and even taking glee in bad financial news
for newspapers.
There is a reason why mainstream news media, pretty much across the board, are struggling, and it isn't just the internet as a new medium. More fundamentally, consumers no longer trust the accuracy and integrity of mainstream news sources. This is not a new observation, but it's hard to see any serious effort to correct the problem. On the contrary, it seems that most media concerns are looking to even more subjectivity and show business for salvation.
UPDATE: For just one of countless examples of the sloppiness (or worse) that has cost the mainstream media its credibility, see Scott's post on the latest Power Line-related correction in the Minneapolis Star Tribune (link below).
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