This week’s Time Magazine predicts the next 10 papers to fold or go all-digital. It is a sobering list.
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UPDATE: SKIP TO THE END for today’s sad news about the 146-year old Seattle Post Intelligencer.
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1. Philadelphia Daily News
2. Minneapolis Star-Tribune
3. Miami Herald
4. Detroit News
5. Boston Globe
6. San Francisco Chronicle
7. Chicago Sun-Times
8. New York Daily News
9. Ft. Worth Star Telegram
10. Cleveland Plain Dealer
Here is their reasoning:
Over the past few weeks, the U.S. newspaper industry has entered a new period of decline. The parent of the papers in Philadelphia declared bankruptcy, as did the Journal Register chain. The Rocky Mountain News closed, and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, owned by Hearst, will almost certainly close or only publish online. Hearst has said it will also close the San Francisco Chronicle if it cannot make massive cuts. The most recent rumor is that the company will lay off half the editorial staff. Still, that action may not be enough to make the property profitable.
24/7 Wall St. has created a list of the 10 major daily papers that are most likely to fold or shutter their print operations and only publish online. The properties were chosen on the basis of the financial strength of their parent companies, the amount of direct competition they face in their markets and industry information on how much money they are losing. Based on this analysis, it’s possible that 8 of the nation’s 50 largest daily newspapers could cease publication in the next 18 months
These are the worst of times and the best of times. The worst for obvious reasons: Local and state news coverage is shrinking with the speed of melting icicles. Thousands of people are losing their jobs. Newspapers reek of desperation. Many important stories are simply not being covered
But also the best, because the nature of media and newsgathering is being democratized…reshaped…transformed…right now.
Intense and genuinely creative discussions (even if they are somewhat jittery) about the future of the news and the media are going on in many corners, and certainly at every journalism school in America. I take part in many at Annenberg.
Uncertain times, but also exciting.
UPDATE: MORE SAD NEWS: For nearly a week we’ve been hearing that the Seattle Post Intelligencer will go online only with a greatly reduced staff if they are unable to sell. (The Seattle PI incidentally, which has won its share of Pulitzers in its 146 years, has been doing great coverage of the W. R. Grace trial and was the paper that first broke the story).
Poynter reports that today the sales window has closed. Out of the paper’s 180 or so editorial staff, only about 20 have gotten offers to stay.
Already one of its star online columnists has decided to jump ship. Joseph Tartakoff, whose Microsoft Blog, reportedly accounts for one-fourth of the Seattle PI’s online hits, is going elsewhere. And the Washington Post online has an interview with the paper’s editorial cartoonist, David Horsey, titled How a Cartoonist Survives If Ink Newspaper Dies.
This is all sad, sad news indeed.
Do the any newspapers represent the working class of the country anymore? There was a time when people had to buy the newspaper just to read Mike Royko the voice of Chicago, Herb Caen, Mr San Francisco, Paul Coates, Bill Stout, in LA.
Besides the NY Times lineup of Dowd, Krugman, Rich, and Herbert, what paper has writers anymore that you just have to read? The major newspaper writers seem too safe and watered down anymore except for the wacky right wing Jeremiah’s your likely to find in most of the country’s newspapers.
And since it’s tough economic times nowadays, why not bring back the newsboys selling the paper on the corner? Now that was in your face sales at it’s finest.
Things like this is why I was pretty miffed at that article in the Atlantic a while back about “how to save the NY Times.” The NY Times, Wall Street Journal, and perhaps a lesser extent the WaPo have nothing to worry about compared to papers like those on the list here, and the Rocky Mountain News (RIP)–papers mostly in smaller markets that have ambitions to be major newspapers, so they do reporting on a national scale and couldn’t comfortably be hyper-local like smaller papers, but they can’t compete against truly large, national papers.
The pundits probably will probably say how terrible it is if say, the Cleveland Plain Dealer goes under, but they won’t lose a whole lot of sleep over it. But for the people that rely on a paper like that, it would be devastating.
DQ: I’ve been thinking the same thing. With rare exceptions, I find that the only must read voices for me are in the NY Times, which I find very upsetting.
We have some good voices here in LA. Patt Morrison is good—and, once it a while great. Steve Lopez waxes and wanes, but in the past he’s had some terrific moments. There was a period some years back, when he came close to a Must Read. But that hasn’t been true in a long while.
This only underscores the room there is for new voices I guess.
Evan, great—and very sad— point. When I hear things like the fact that the Seattle Post Intelligencer is dropping from a staff of 180 to a staff of maybe 20 (as you’ll see from the update), and an only online presence…it is really, really bad. Fortunately, Seattle also has the Times, but they perform very, very different functions in the city. Speaking personally, I never bother with the Seattle Times from her in LA. But I often find myself reading an article from the PI.
Maybe the L.A. Times could sell some newspapers if it actually covered real news stories, as does SignOnSanDiego.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/
MEXICO CITY  Headless bodies in Tijuana, kidnapped children in Phoenix and shootouts on the streets of Vancouver: These are the unwanted byproducts of progress in the Mexican drug war.
TIJUANA – The arrest of a high-ranking drug trafficker by the Mexican military early Sunday has led to the detention of at least a dozen state and municipal law enforcement officers suspected of cooperating with organized crime, authorities said yesterday.
ACAPULCO, Mexico  Gunmen killed six people, including a local police chief, in a series of attacks Monday in mountain towns in the Pacific coast state of Guerrero.
The police chief of Pungarabato was repeatedly shot while driving his red Mustang on a highway near the small town early Monday, Guerrero state public safety department said in a news release. Five other men were found gunned down in different towns in the isolated mountainous zone known as the Tierra Caliente, or the Hot Land, the state police said.
Until the last year or two, this issue bothered me – a lot. But when I see what someone like Josh Marshall – who started off blogging from Starbucks – pulls off with modest resources, increasingly I think this situation will take care of itself. The internet will progress from “blogginess” to the locus of authentic, revitalized journalism.
The Chronicle hasn’t even tried to be a must-read newspaper for at least a decade. They lost at least 50% of their pulse when Herb Caen died and it’s been downhill ever since. Frankly, the only good thing about the paper ever was its columnists. I don’t know what their total budget is, but for a hell of a lot less than the million a week Hearst has been losing I’m convinced the UC Journalism School could put together a better team to cover local and regional news and file it on a website.
As for a voice of the working class, that slot is being filled by ridiculous poseurs like Mike Barnicle and Chris Matthews and I think maybe the concept has run its course – to be replaced by more diverse voices that don’t try to peddle nostalgia and anachronism as “authentic” or “regular guy.” Royko’s Chicago has evolved and I don’t think it can be resurrected – and it may be no accident that the attempts to take on that mantle end up either absurdly phony – like multimillionaire broadcasters invoking their Irish roots and favorite football teams as some badge of authenticity – or utterly reactionary like the angry old white men who dominate talk radio. The contemporary working class is too complex and too diverse to be stereotyped or easily summed up by that old school image. Of course we need more of those voices, but some may be around us but we just don’t recognize them as such. I’m not so sure that well-educated “kids” like Ezra Klein and Josh Marshall or a wise-ass like Atrios or skeptics like Digby and Greenwald may not be as authentic as Royko was in his day digging at the pols and the phonies and speaking for the welfare of today’s “average” Americans.
Too bad that the NYT isn’t on the list. They will be after they run out of floors in their building to sell.
I’ve got an idea! Why doesn’t the NYT start covering all sides equally and fairly; i.e., write things that would interest a broader audience than the professors at Columbia. That would boost readership and ad revenue, but I doubt that the elitists can understand that.
reg: angry old white men who dominate talk radio
What’s wrong with being old…or white…or male? You bigot!
Frankly, conservative talk radio hosts are having fun ridiculing liberala. There’s no anger in it, so take your left-wing talking point off and start thinking for yourself if that’s possible.
The angry hosts are on Air America, of which the worst was Al Franken…plus, he doesn’t pay his taxes.
Sheesh. How pathetic the once highly regarded Cleveland Plain Dealer has sunk. Or is that “stunk?” http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2009/03/medina_meeting_was_sure_a_gas.html
Really breaking important local coverage, eh CPD? Check out some of the comments.
The Chronicle and the Mercury News together don’t add up to a whole newspaper these days.
An awful lot of the “print is dead” from various quarters on the Internet is plain silly. Where do those jokers think the “news” they read “for free” online comes from?
http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idINN1048893120090310?rpc=44
NEW YORK, March 10 (Reuters) – Eli Broad, a wealthy philanthropist who once looked at buying the Los Angeles Times, is still interested in a foray into the newspaper business, he told a gathering in New York on Monday night.
“We can’t afford to lose good newspaper journalism, investigative reporting,” the 75-year old retired business maven said during a lecture on business in philanthropy at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan.
Broad pointed to UK newspaper the Guardian as one example. That paper is owned by the Scott Trust Limited, which was created in 1936 to protect the legacy of longstanding editor and former owner of the Guardian, C.P. Scott.
“If several foundations are involved there is likely to be journalistic freedom,” said Broad. (Editing by Lincoln Feast)
One newspaper is, perhaps, finally getting the message about sagging sales.
Talk’s cheap. We’ll see if they do it, or, if they even get it.