This is not the end of your daily newspaper. It's just the beginning of the end for hundreds of newspapers and the collapsing of many others into single regional franchises that can survive as the only source of printed news and advertising on a daily basis.
One paper. One staff. One press. One distribution system. One voice.
In Los Angeles, the Times will be that voice.
If the Daily News or other daily papers remain in the L.A. metropolitan market, they will do so in name only as intensely localized sections of the Times. Consolidation will occur quickly through sales, partnerships or closures.
I don't think there's any other way. And it's become clear in recent days that the people who run the nation's major newspaper corporations have come to the same conclusion after months of secret meetings that undoubtedly violated anti-trust laws.
But who cares about the legal niceties? The cost of producing and distributing a daily newspaper is too high and the revenue too low to sustain even minimal competition. Not enough people, especially younger people, read a newspaper regularly. Not enough advertisers still need to sell their products through a newspaper.
Most will say the Internet has won the war. But it would be truer to say that the newspaper industry has lost the war. Newspapers are boring and irrelevant to the lives of most people, too much of what they print as news is already old by the time it's delivered.
The editors and publishers who run newspapers responded too slowly and with too little imagination to the online revolution.
The same thing happened when television arrived in every house in the 1950s. Suddenly, people could see events live in their home as they happened and the words and still images in newspapers couldn't compete with the film footage and live video on television.
The result was that half the newspapers died. Major cities went from four, eight, 12 newspapers to one to two. .
Corporations took over took over from individual owners who published papers that let them give life to their point of view and values as they fought ferociously for readers in an anything-goes war.
There were outrageous tabloids and profoundly serious ones and everything in between. They were heirs to what started out as the free-wheeling penny press that gave birth to the First Amendment. In Philadelphia alone Ben Franklin and 120 others who owned presses told the world what they knew and what they believed. They slandered and muckraked and sparked lively public debates.
For the last 50 years, the voices of those who could tell the stories that move minds and hearts have been thwarted by the new rules of corporate journalism that demanded a kind of pseudo-objectivity and awarded great prizes and high salaries to those who conformed the best.
The result was profit margins of 20, 30, 40 percent on spectacular revenues A lot of people got rich, even a lot of journalists got well-to-do.
Those days are over.
The Tribune Company, owner of the LA Times, Chicago Tribune and many other major newspapers and TV stations is preparing to file for bankruptcy. It's not broke, it just can't pay its bills in part because of the global economic crisis, in greater part because its revenue are falling far faster than it can cut costs.
The problems of Tribune are the problems of the industry.
For much of this year, most of the major newspaper corporations have been meeting in secret to figure out how to survive -- without really changing. The strategy involves consolidations through partnerships and transfer of ownership and closures that will give total dominance over major metropolitan entities to single newspaper operations.
In recent months, the strategy has been unfolding with more than two dozen major papers being put up for sale only to find out they were worth no more than the value of their assets: Buildings, land, the distribution system, the bottom line value to advertisers of those, mostly older, customers still addicted to holding a newspaper in their hands.
The presses themselves were worth no more than what Third World countries were willing to pay for them.
Then, last week, the Rocky Mountain News announced it probably would not be able to find a buyer and would likely stop printing after many months of losses -- a move that would leave its joint operating agreement partner, MediaNews' Denver Post, with a total monopoly.
The Miami Herald sent up a similar smoke signal Friday and then Sunday, it was Tribune hiring bankruptcy advisers and ready to seek protections that will let it sell off assets, restructure contracts and other liabilities, cut whatever kinds of deals that will allow it to survive.
Many of those deals are probably already negotiated, at least in principle.
Like the auto industry, the newspaper industry is out of touch with what people want and its cost structure is out of whack with the value of what it produces.
Newspapers don't need the federal government to bail it out of its failure. It just needs the federal government to look the other way as the last vestiges of competition are eliminated.
So be it.
Pasteurized and homogenized news and information is all the press is capable of anymore.
The free expression of ideas envisioned in the Bill of Rights is alive and well on the Internet. Anybody can say what they want and stand a chance of being heard. Businesses based on news, information and opinion are starting to flourish online with vastly different cost and revenue models.
The exercise of First Amendment rights has never been stronger. It's just that free speech isn't what newspapers sell. They might just as well be licensed and regulated by government if it made any difference. But it doesn't
No, this is not the end of newspapers. It's the end of competitive newspapers. The survivors will keep shrinking until their revenue surpasses their costs. Their importance in our lives will shrink along with the changes as the public increasingly turns to the Internet where everyone can be a provider of news, information and ideas and well as their consumer.
The democratization of news is a good thing, and will become a great thing in the next few years.
I can only speak for myself and have been here on my blog for the last seven months since I was fired by the Daily News for standing in the way of its decline and fall. \
Needless to say, the money isn't the same. But there's joy in finding my own voice after 44 years of bumping up against corporate journalism's stifling constraints on free expression.
I'm an activist now, not a journalist. But my belief in the power of the truth to change the world is as strong today as it was when I started out in newspapers. The truth isn't a commodity that someone can own. It's what endures over time when the voices of many are engaged in a and open public conversation.
Newspapers are just a part of that conversation, a much smaller part. And that's a good thing. Much of what's wrong with America, with our city, is due to the lack of the kind of public conversation that the Internet makes possible.
Let the conversation begin.
Ron Kaye is the former editor of the Los Angeles Daily News where he spent 23 years helping to make the newspaper the voice of the San Fernando Valley and fighting for a city government that serves the people and not special interests.
Twice in recent years, Los Angeles Magazine listed Kaye among the city’s most influential people, specifically in the area of politics. Kaye has been variously described in the media as the “accidental anarchist,” “the Patrick Henry of the San Fernando Valley” and a “passionate populist.” He is now committed to
carrying on his crusade for a greater Los Angeles as an ordinary citizen. Previously, Ron worked at the Los Angeles Herald Examiner,
Associated Press, Cleveland Plain Dealer and The Australian as well as papers
in Fairbanks, Alaska and Yakima, Wash. He also wrote for Newsweek magazine, The Guardian in London and the National Enquirer.
The first problem with newspapers is that "paper" is obsolete. It's been obsolete for 20 years. Anytime you promote the presentation of news onto paper is a loser.
Talk, think, and react with electronic media news.
Second, it's not only the news media that is consolidating. Much of Corporate America is consolidating. Most of Corporate America consists of oligopolies. Of course, this is how capitalism works. This is typical capitalism. GET IT?
Do you really believe that there is no market for a viable news outlet other than the LA Times? Come on. Look at talk radio. It is thriving due to being a successful entertainment model. People listen to talk radio, when they alternatively could be listening to music, because they enjoy it. Simply put, talk radio created a fan base.
Not many people enjoy the LA Times enough to have that "fan-like" attachment. And, the LA Times is dying intentionally by not truly evolving. They can't be that stupid. I believe that Corporate America is allowing the newspapers to die.
Some will call this a "tin foil hat" attitude. But no, these people are not that stupid. There are plenty of solutions to envolve the local newspaper media into a viable electronic media, business model.
Will an entrepreneur journalist emerge to champion an alternative news source to the LA Times? No, of course not. Most are now pulling in decent wages in PR firms, promoting politicians and corporations, which feed propaganda into the single news syphon.
Third, what alternatives would make local news media work? Clearly, they shouldn't try being "one presentation" for every person. That approach is ancient history. Yet, this is still what the LA Times is trying to do.
Instead, they need to create niches and get likable personalities to attract a solid fan base in those niches. This is what Bill OReilly does. This is what Daily Kos does. This is what the Huffington Post does. This is what the local Spanish news stations do. Heck, why not just throw up your arms and convert the LA Times to a Spanish audience on radio?
Yes, many blog sites "get it". The audience goes to the site to get "trustworthy" information from likable personalities. What is so difficult to understand? News should be presented with entertainment as a forethought, not as an afterthought. It's only naive to think otherwise.
I do agree with you that newspapers have to evolve. I think they all know that, they just don't know how to.
Personally, I just started a subscription to the L.A. Times. Why? Economics. I realized when I was Christmas shopping that the lady in front of me had a coupon she got in the L.A. Times that I didn't get because I didn't get the paper that day.
But that's no way to sell a newspaper because many people couldn't care less about coupons.
We shouldn't be surprised that the newspaper business is hurting just as many other businesses are. I don't know what will happen. Maybe the big newspapers will eat up all the small newspapers. Maybe all our news will come from the Internet in 20 years?
However,I do know that it is tragic that the decline of reading news in this state and county has been coupled with a decline in the newspaper business. Kids need to read and the newspaper business needs readers. You would think that the state board of education and the news business would have seen that they can really help each other, but I guess NCLB won't endorse kids learning about current events.
They have to learn the prescribed, NCLB curriculum instead.
Sheesh----the teachers can't even use newspapers in classrooms anymore. Under NCLB the newspaper became irrelevant.
Do you see how bad legislation can reach out its tentacles to damage more sectors of society than we could ever imagine?
I think the Times needs to get under the umbrella of bankruptcy until they figure out what to do next.
The problem is that those in charge today are the same people who have been in charge during the downfall and have no new ideas. Internet, they say, and yet can't figure out how to make it work.
If the people in charge of the auto industry should be fired, so should the people leading the news industry. They should all be replaced by people in their 20s who started their careers with the Internet, not typewriters.
Those of us working under today's management have to sit and watch as they fail us day after day.
Yes, REPORTER. Why do newspapers still follow an antiquated management structure? Why are there layers upon layers of editors and section managers? Has the newspaper owners been living in a cave for 25 years? When all of Corporate America has been cutting out middle management, why hasn't newspapers been ruthlessly cutting out middle management? The newspaper business has been plodding along with blinders on.
Getting the story right? Look, if a reporter writes a story wrong, then fire him. If there are problems with correctly reporting then do what any quality control department would do. Put two persons on the story, independently, and see if they come up with similar answers. The newspapers have been union shops for too long. They should die and restructure like the Big Three Auto Companies.
Lastly, how much of the LA Times ownership money did Sam Zell put up which is his own money? My understanding is that it is almost all borrowed money. Sam Zell didn't lose a lot of LA Times ownership money. The banks are taking the loss. And now that the banks have been bailed out by the U.S. Government, WE THE PEOPLE HAVE TAKEN THE LOSS.
And another thing. Do you really believe that kids today don't read? Have you heard of Facebook, Myspace, etc.? Understand this. They don't read what you wish them to read.
I'm astounded you fail to mention the role played by those I believe to be most at fault in the collapse of journalism in general, and newspapers in particular (aside from lazy consumers content with being ill-informed).
'Twas the greed of corporate investors that killed the beast, Mr. Kaye. When earnings of merely 8% and 10% simply weren't enough - especially when compared to the high-flying figures being enjoyed by those ravaging Wall Street, it was the investors and boards who demanded newspapers squeeze more and more blood from the rock. When television news went from being a public obligation and loss leader to a division expected to match earnings with the other divisions, journalism died there, too, overtaken by the paralyzing fear of offending any demographic or (gasp) advertiser!
Blaming editors for having failed to respond to declining interest in the face of challenges for attention is like demanding that authors dumb down their books because of growing interest in cable TV movies.
Investors and consumers warrant the bulk of the blame.
Yes, Buster, that is correct. Newspapers used to be proud of being communicators! Then people realized that they should buy space for the ads they wanted published and that really did two things, increased readership and newspapers. Franklin did not expect to make money, he wanted to communicate ideas. The telegraph replaced the pony express. The printed page replaced pony express. And not so much for the money as it was to inform people. These were all very bright individuals who cared about our country.
Now there seems to be a whole new citizen. Go to college, get an MBA, be successful so you can drive a Lamberghini (sp?) or whatever so that you can impress your neighbors. Nouveau riche never impressed me and that is not why I love my life. My life is my family, neighbors, being able to worship in my Faith, and the smiles I share when I see those who share my life.
I belong to the first bunch and actually pay my own way, pc, printer, toner, dues, lunches
at meetings because this country happens to be the only place on earth where freedom matters and we have choices. That is why people come and noone leaves.
And now the NYT is taking a 2nd against its' downtown property to "make its' payroll".
Talk about a failed business model.
I know reading a newspaper dates me. I know that subscribing to a newspaper dates me. But, what doesn't date me is the fact that a newspaper still provides just about the only place where local news can be found (provided, of course, it is newsworthy). And, that is what concerns me. As much as I value and use the internet, it removes people from their sense of community. True, it creates another. Buy cyberspace is vast as compared to a paper like the Daily News (and forget about the Times covering anything local in the Valley). No matter what, being able to dig through the morning's paper to find out about something that happened a few blocks away just aint the same.
According to a report heard on NPR the Tribune, for one, is profitable, however, the debt service from the leveraged buyout eats up all available cash.
The newspaper is indeed dead and dying if it focuses on paper as the mode of delivery. Digital pipelines are now the superior mode of delivery.
Good writing, intelligent analysis, and champion sleuthing still draws an audience. The Internet is the best hope for a compelling business model. I think it involves giving readers concise well-written news, but backing it up with documents, recorded interviews, pictures, and video that form the backstory. In other words, making the stuff behind the news "entertaining" to view, listen to, read, or consume.
Imagine what that would look like. It would look like a well-done blog with rich resources not available to most bloggers today.
If digital pipelines are to be the new delivery mode, there are regulatory implications for the business model of what will work.
There needs to be a change in the regulatory environment for cable and enhanced telecommunications services. Once touted by the greedy "de-regulation" loonies as not a public utility freighted with public interest, the Internet, cable, and other information pipelines have become an essential commodity to life. As such, it is time for some reasonable public interest regulation of the digital pipeline into people's homes. Perhaps that pipeline will become part of the solution to the need for a new business model of information services (formerly known as your newspaper).
DON'T FORGET TO FIRE JESSICA
How Close Were Blagojevich and Obama?
The New York Republic
http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2008/12/09/how-close-were-blagojevich-and-obama.aspx
Thats an interesting article. The libel laws here in the Republic of Ireland have gagged newspapers for decades.
Hence meltown time now, for every hidden political stroke/mismanagement/hidden scandal,kept buried for 50 years.
I think the truth will out far faster when all citizens have full access to the world wide web.
Sadly,we are a long way from that at present.
Ron,
You paint yourself as an innocent victim of it all, yet you bowed down to the corporate pressure to climb up the ladder at the Daily News. You may not have stifled voices directly, but you managed to pluck down your agenda where you saw fit, into good stories. Really good reporters left, and many of your favorites (actually, they were like bad, cheap characters you hired so you could fulfill some fantasy in the movie you saw in your head starring...well you), who bought into your agenda, stayed, until you were "fired." You were fired, in my opinion, for panicking and implementing half assed ideas, instead of focusing on telling editors to quit being childish and to make better use of good reporters (who could report AND write, unlike several who would turn in 45 inches of notebook vomit). Seriously dude, you were no better than the rest of them. You were just louder and said the f-word every now and then.