Newspaper Is Not The “One Medium To Rule Them All”

Reminder: I speak for myself and not for my employer.

Late last month, the New York Times ran an op-ed by David Swensen and Michael Schmidt called “News You Can Endow.” It begins with this quote from Thomas Jefferson:

“The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right. [...] And were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate to prefer the latter.”

And then, ominously, the authors declare:

“Today, we are dangerously close to having a government without newspapers. [...] If Jefferson was right that a well-informed citizenry is the foundation of our democracy, then newspapers must be saved.”

I’ve done enough LSAT logical reasoning questions to recognize a broken argument when I see it.  I could hash it out, but I much prefer passive aggressive analogies.  Let’s say that Jefferson also wrote that the basis of commerce is the efficient movement of goods.  Today, however, we are dangerously close to having an economy without carriages.  Oh noes!  If Jefferson was right that excellent transportation is the foundation of our economy, then carriages must be saved!  Dunno about you, but I’m pretty sure the CEO of FedEx would disagree.

Swensen and Schmidt go on to argue that turning newspapers into non-profit organizations funded by endowments “would enhance newspapers’ autonomy while shielding them from the economic forces that are now tearing them down.”  In other words, they believe that because newspapers are not surviving the market economy with their current business model, they should — instead of adapting to consumer demand and concentrating on moving their operations online — forgo a business model altogether and become self-sufficient institutions that are immune to the desires of their audience.  I’ll give you a few seconds to apply and enjoy the carriage analogy here.

Of course, as Michael Masnick at Techdirt points out, Jefferson wasn’t really talking about newspapers as a medium, but newspapers as an implementation of journalism (just as — if my invented quote were true — he would probably have been talking about transportation, and not just carriages).  Doesn’t Jefferson’s quote really imply that, if anything, a citizenry who could be informed frequently, and even in real time, would be better off than one who only received news in a single, diurnal, static form?  To put it simply: wouldn’t Jefferson have been in favor of ditching newspapers for online news?

I love newspapers.  Really, I do.  I love to buy the New York Times (yes, the printed one) at the airport or when I go to Starbucks on the weekend.  There is something really special about that experience.  I remember when I was little and visiting my grandparents across the country, my “duty” every morning was to bring the newspaper to my grandfather while he had his coffee in bed.  A retired Marine general, he loved to give my brother and me — his “troops” — special assignments.  I’ll never forget that.

But that’s it.  I love newspapers — and will miss them when they disappear — largely because of memories and habit.  Because until the last decade they were the only real source of text-based “current affairs” journalism.  Because that’s the way it was, simple as that.  When I buy that newspaper today, I usually have already at least seen the headlines, if I haven’t already read the story (or a more updated version of it!) online.  Why do I buy the paper?  Honestly, I don’t know.  It just feels familiar and comfortable (and it’s easy to read on an airplane).

I would argue that the majority of those decrying the demise of the newspaper are largely making their arguments out of fear of losing that same familiarity and comfort.  Granted, there are a lot of people with their lives invested in the newspaper medium: those that help to design the paper layout, the printers, the delivery people, the newsstand owners, etc.  A major advertising channel will also disappear with the medium, which of course poses a grave obstacle for the transition to online.  These are very real and important casualties of this evolution.  But we don’t really hear arguments like that these days.  What we have instead are the reporters and editors who whine that the end of newspapers will spell the end of text-based journalism.  This is, in a word, false.

We can’t confuse the medium of journalism with its mission.  The mission of journalism is to convey to people what is happening, right?  How can anyone possibly think, then, that the ability to send and receive information in real time will kill text-based journalism?  Newspaper companies shouldn’t view the Internet as a competitor.  They should view it as their chance to evolve into a better iteration of themselves.

The argument against online news is that it will lack the funding and caliber of traditional news.  Let’s break that down.

First of all, an online news organization would not be nearly as costly as a print one.  Do you know how much it costs for the New York Times to print and deliver the newspapers themselves?  According to SAI, twice as much as it would to send every one of their subscribers an Amazon Kindle (retail: $360) for free.  Move online and you cut your costs enormously (of course, at the expense of lots of layoffs and lost investments as well).

“But what about news gathering expenses.  What about foreign bureaus and stuff like that?”  Does good journalism require overseas bureaus, as in the physical spaces?  Or even a multi-million dollar home headquarters?  Pre-internet newspaper journalism required this because you needed a place to file your article before the deadline, because face-to-face was the only way to have meetings, because the required equipment was too expensive to be owned and maintained personally.  You don’t really need any of that now that you can write up the story on your laptop at home, e-mail it to your editor, and discuss it over the phone.  Hell, a random dude on a ferry in the Hudson, armed only with an iPhone, was able to provide live Twitter coverage (complete with pictures) of the rescue of 155 airplane passengers from a sinking jet.

In their op-ed, Swensen and Schmidt quote the following from a 2008 report by Sanford C. Bernstein & Company:

“The notion that the enormous cost of real news-gathering might be supported by the ad load of display advertising down the side of the page, or by the revenue share from having a Google search box in the corner of the page, or even by a 15-second teaser from Geico prior to a news clip, is idiotic on its face.”

And yet, a Guardian blogger reported less than two weeks earlier that “the editor of the Los Angeles Times, Russ Stanton, said the paper’s online advertising revenue is now sufficient to cover the Times’s entire editorial payroll, print and online.”  Now of course they had to cut their editorial staff in half from 1,200 to 600 in order to get there, and this figure only covers payroll… but it is not “idiotic on its face” to believe that moving a newspaper completely online is possible.

“But news online will suck compared to printed news!”  Really?  I mean… really?  First of all, there are really good arguments about the quality of reporting only getting better when it goes online.  Second of all, who says that you really have to only publish the news that’s “fit to print?”  Is that what the market is demanding?  Sure, you want to eventually end up with a complete and accurate picture of what happened.  But isn’t there value in reporting what you know and building the story as you go?  This is basically what happens in the newsroom — the story is built and factchecked slowly until it’s ready to go to press.  Why not make this transparent and publish what you know when you know it?  As for editorial opinions, feature sections, op-ed columns, and all those other subjective and well thought-out analyses: those have value as well and won’t just up and “disappear” with the transition to the online medium.  What are losing value are “news” stories in the printed newspaper.  By the time that paper is in your hands, most of the stories in it are stale and obsolete.

Listen, I’m realistic.  I know that no company can just boom! move online.  I know that not everyone can afford a computer or a Kindle to read their news online.  I know this is hard, for social and economic and cultural and inertial reasons.  The point of this rant is not to say this should happen now or that it will be painless.  But let’s have that discussion and debate, and not toss out these half-baked, petty arguments about the Internet not being “good enough” for journalism and newspapers being the One Medium to Rule Them All.  The newspaper is not the last bastion of all that is holy and good about text journalism, as its defenders would have you believe.  What it is quickly becoming, though, is an anachronism.  Newspapers are a means to journalism, not an end.  To fight what the market is telling you and what consumers are demanding, and to attempt to “save” the newspaper medium out of some sort of “principle” and a belief  that the Internet cannot handle the serious business of the news — that is what is “idiotic on its face.”

Image used under a Creative Commons license courtesy of Flickr user Brooks Elliot.