Things to Do in Print When You're Dead

Newspapers are dead. We know this. Mindy McAdams tells us so. "Newspapers were a nice business. ... However, this is clearly over. It’s done. It worked for a long time, but now, like trans-Atlantic leisure travel in big passenger ships, it will never work again.... Future generations will not read newspapers. Ever. "

This nevertheless presents a problem for McAdams, because "journalism is vital to a democratic system of government, because without independent busybodies (yes, journalists) sticking their nose into everything, governments and large corporations can cheat, oppress, and starve people. ... {But} the business model to sustain journalism in the 21st century has not been seen yet."

But newspapers are dead. Out with the old, and in with -- well, we're waiting...

This presents a problem for Douglas Page, CEO of spot-on.com, "a Web-based news and opinion syndication service." He writes:

"A newspaper is both a consumer product and an advertisising vehicle. The latter's success hinges on the former. So if publishers want better results, they had better find a solution to the one part of their business that no other media wishes to replicate -- the daily printed newspaper. This requires a print strategy ... If Tribune and its fellow companies fail to formulate a plan to own the one thing that no other media outlet.... is interested in promoting or duplicating -- a daily printed newspaper -- publishers face a grim future indeed."

Shut up, Doug. There is no grim future because there is no future. Though as McAdams says:

"I don’t usually address this subject because I don’t know much at all about business, running a company, generating profits, and so on. ... The absence of any viable model is something we need to accept and (quickly) move past — so we can invent one that will work."

McAdams often provides very pragmatic information on her blog, "Teaching Online Journalism." So praise her candor about what she does not know. But one feels that that approach -- taken from two quotes about the same point -- is like the Shakers' saying, "We practice celibacy, and therefore do not have children to increase our numbers. We need to accept the absence of the children model to perpetuate ourselves, so we can invent a model that will work. Of course, we haven't a clue what that is, and neither does anyone else. Let us pray."

As McAdams notes, "In my current lifestyle, I concluded, the printed newspaper just does not fit. I spend a lot of time in front of a computer, in various environments. ... In that, I’m not so different from most people in North America." Leave aside that the use of "most" for the people of North America probably kicks Mexico out of the continent. Even if it were true for the U.S. and Canada, do those people have the same freedom to use it to graze that McAdams does? Is there any environment more conducive to spending nearly all of your time in front of a computer, with absolute freedom to look at whatever you want, than a university? I don't know.

There may be. Perhaps it is a newsroom. Perhaps government economics research. Perhaps it is Wall Street or perhaps it is the people doing logistics for UPS. What McAdams really knows is that the people with whom she interacts are kind of like her. And newspapers don't fit their lifestyle. And the customers are just like us. Ergo, it's dead.

This presents a problem for Mary Nesbitt of the Readership Institute. She notes that "readership among 18-24 year olds in the general population continues to slowly decline." I suppose this is another way of saying "Future generations will not read newspapers. Ever" but being more polite about it. She's Canadian, you know. North American.

But Nesbitt also notes that readership is fairly stable among all other groups, and those people spend 27 minutes a day with newspapers, as they did in 2002. She also notes that "the penetration of newspaper Web sites is still quite low in most communities." All this leaves Nesbitt scratching her head about the numbers: "Why aren't they much worse, when the imminent demise of newspapers seems to be all we ever hear about? The short answer is that reading customers aren't deserting newspapers at anything approaching the rate that advertising customers are... Lots of people still want it and lots of people are paying attention to the local newspaper." Darn, how can that be? Mindy told me they're dead.

When reading letters to the editor, you can tell that an overly sure-of-himself citizen thinks he has stumbled upon some major breakthrough in exposing cant when he starts his letter, "Now, let me get this straight."

So, let me get this straight.

Newspaper readership largely holds steady except among the youngest. "Readers are more engaged with print than the Web site." Lots of people are still paying attention. And the CEO of an online site says the only way for newspapers to save themselves is to come up with a workable print model. But none of it matters. We're dead.

Nesbitt does note: "The very youngest adults have media and news habits very different from their parents." So she asks the question: "Is it asking the impossible to expect newspapers to maintain a relevant, engaging print product for that large swathe of the population that clearly still reads and enjoys print; and to create something differently compelling online; and to build a new business model?"

Well, the answer is probably yes if "new business model" means "completely unlike the old one." Page notes: "About two years ago, Netcraft, an Internet monitoring company, announced that there are 100 million Web sites. ... If you're a newspaper publisher, take note: If you're struggling to sell ads in a monopoly market, how are you going to effectively compete against 99.9 million other Web sites?" He then quotes a Harvard Business School professor -- always dangerous -- named Michael E. Porter as saying, "A firm that engages in each generic strategy.... but fails to achieve any of them is stuck in the middle. It achieves no competitive advantage."

Page adds: "The daily newspaper industry can differentiate and stand out from all other media by creating a printed product that people want to read and advertisers find attractive." Part of his solution: The tabloid. Which seems to be a popular option on campuses where those 18-24-year-olds are. As my son said, "If they published The New York Times as a tabloid, I'd read it in print every day." OK, Arthur Sulzburger, over to you....

Alan Jacobson, of course, would shoot that down in a second. And maybe tabloids won't work. Or maybe they'll work for some readers and not for others. Maybe they work better for younger readers, and don't work as well for couples who want to read separate sections of the same paper at the same time.

In the long run, Mindy McAdams might be right. Or online newspapers might turn out to be a niche product unable to support themselves -- which, according to the Pew report released this week, seems to be what newspapers are becoming. Print might enjoy a brief nostalgia boom, like B&Bs in the 1970s. Or, maybe, someone would come up with a workable answer. No one knows the future. The current trend works for Mindy. She loves journalism and sees myriad ways to do it excellently online. She doesn't have much use anymore for printed newspapers. Therefore, why should she care about saving them? Any money used to save them inhibits the glorious future, which someone will figure out how to pay for sometime. Begone.

So those of us who see a future with print -- indeed, see a future with print as linked to the success of the sort of journalism we all love -- need to find a way to not be pulled down by those who say, "Print's doom is inevitable -- why look, everyone online says it is." Print without online is a losing bet today, but online without print remains a technology in search of a business plan that, like the 13th Imam, is still in occlusion.

The best way to help print is to Put Ideas on the Table. Lots of them. Counterattack can be the best defense.

Milton Friedman is quoted in the current New Republic -- actually he is quoted by Naomi Klein in "The Shock Doctrine," which then is quoted by reviewer Jonathan Chait, but let's assume that someone, perhaps a copy editor, verified that Friedman actually said this -- "Only a crisis -- actual or perceived -- produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around."

Chait dismisses this as obvious, and I'm fine with putdowns of Milton Friedman, but the second sentence is the more interesting. You're in a crisis, so what do you do? You ask, "Anybody know what to do about this?" But the U.S. newspaper business may be unrivaled in its ability to internally shoot down any effort at innovation. Too many senses of professional identity are tied to doing things a certain way. We often confuse practices with outcomes. So there were very few print ideas on the table and a lot of frustrated online people with lots of ideas. Publishers were riding the money train and journalists fall prey to the idea that any change is "making the paper like USA Today." There are, in fact, many ideas for "a solution to the daily printed newspaper," some good and some bad. And that, of course, will bring us back to Sam Zell.