Already a member?
Welcome to Brazen Careerist!
Nisha Chittal is using Brazen Careerist to share ideas. Join now to become a member and start networking with Nisha Chittal and other professionals just like you. Learn more.
Nisha Chittal is using Brazen Careerist to share ideas. Join now to become a member and start networking with Nisha Chittal and other professionals just like you. Learn more.
Do you? I don't. As avid of a news reader as I am, I can confess to not reading a single thing in print.
I get everything online now, like everyone else. The big media companies are definitely feeling it -- and the impending recession is making the situation even worse.
For my dad's generation, print newspapers were an important part of everyday life. My dad still reads the Wall Street Journal every morning on the train to work and treasures it, but I think he's of a dying breed. Yesterday he was showing me some stock quotes in the WSJ and I was struck by how long it had been since I had read a print copy of anything to get the news. Especially for something as rapidly changing as stock quotes, it seemed futile to me to look at a print newspaper published only once a day, when those stocks would fluctuate constantly throughout the day and the most up-to-the-minute updates could only be found online.
Last week the New York Times, still my favorite for news, announced that it sharply reduced its dividend -- which will save the New York Times Co. about $97.8 million a year. This is after years of increasing its dividend. Some think that page by page, section by section, the NYT's influence is fading away.
PC Magazine is shutting down its print edition and going completely digital.
And did you know over half the Washington Post company's revenue comes not from WaPo or Newsweek...but from its Kaplan test prep division?
On the other hand, in July, Gawker Media got twice as many pageviews as the LA Times website. And Huffington Post has supposedly raised $15 million in capital.
AdAge questions whether print can even survive another five years -- a little pessimistic if you ask me. But then there's been so many media layoffs lately, that the blogging giants are trying to seize an opportunity by offering free blog accounts to laid-off journalists. So who knows.
One thing I do know is that mass media is changing. No one wants a one-way message from the media anymore; they want a two-way conversation that they can participate in. They want to be able to comment on news stories, they want to be able to discuss the news as it happens, they want rapid updates every minute, and they want to be environmentally friendly and save paper. I'm taking a mass media course right now, and I'm surprised by how little we have even touched upon the topic of the internet -- we've studied nearly every kind of old media, but barely even touched upon the effects of the internet on the media establishment.
What I'm interested to see next is: which big media company will actually keep up? Or will they die out and be completely replaced by internet media?
Nisha:
The only reason I have read any print news within the last 5 years is because my university offered newspapers outside of every classroom. Even then I was normally just browsing through the headlines then tearing out the crossword puzzle.
Newspapers are suffering. Even the smaller, local papers whose readers are typically 40+ are not doing as well as they used to. I used to report for one in Northern Jersey. The owners happen to be family friends. We used to sit down once a week in his office and talk about the future of his business.
I think it's great that we can get so much global information via the web. We're more connected in that respect. But if local papers die, how are we going to stay connected within our smaller communities? Twitter? That's actually how I get my local news right now ... but it's so diluted and kind of lame.
This is actually *exactly* what I do - I'm a market researcher for a newspaper company. I could go wax philosophic all day on this, but I'll hit a few points quickly.
1. Your dad's generation isn't dying... yet. The 55+ age demo has about 30 more years of sticking to their archaic habits, including reading newspapers.
2. The analyst in me flinches when you mention newspapers and magazines in one breath. They're not the same, and their demos aren't the same. Different animal altogether. Refer to "print media" as opposed to "print newspapers" if that's what you're questioning. I don't mean that in a harsh way - like I said, it's the analyst in me.
3. Newspapers *must* change to survive. I disagree that NYT has lost it's voice because print isn't doing well - I subscribe to NYT's article feeds whereas before I didn't read them at all. The Internet has the power to grow audience beyond the local level, which is something that's very new to newspapers. "Hyperlocal" has become our watchword. Here in Corpus Christi, our readers are less and less interested in getting the world and national news from our local paper. It makes sense. There's no way a 200-person operation could rival the New York Times or the Washington Post. However, there's no way those papers will have reason to cover Corpus Christi news.
There is a part of me that sees some silver lining in these mass layoffs - we've got to figure out a way to do more with less. We have to look to future and say, where do we put our limited amount of resources? The answer ought to be ONLINE. Newspapers spent the 1990s and even early 2000s getting fat and not having to choose. We didn't have to look to the future and stay ahead of the curve. It seems to me that the industry took their readership for granted and now we're going "Oh, crap!"
And @Ryan Paugh: I'm the same. We get the paper for free and I read my horoscope, Get Fuzzy and do the Chicago Tribune crossword puzzle. ;)
And yes, we'll get our local news on Twitter. I already am. I follow @statesman (Austin American-Statesman) since their the closest Texas paper tweeting. It's pretty strong actually, and exactly the way newspapers should be heading. Find the people, find your usefulness to them, and they will consume what you have.
If this interests you, there's a great blog called Newsosaur: http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/.
@Holly Hoffman:
We have a few Tweeters in Madtown that provide local news, but I end up feeling like I'm missing the substance of the story and I have to go to a Google search to get the real scoop. And if I'm not quick to read my Tweets I'm missing out.
How does @statesman do it? I guess we have a ways to go before it's truly effective for the masses.
I read a ton of newspapers in college, but its so much quicker and easier to just get your news online now. Print media cannot possibly keep up with the internet, and if big publishing houses like the New York Times don't get with the changing face of media, they are doomed. Luckily for the NYT, they have New York City as a market, so they will be safe for a while, but smaller, local papers won't last too long.
All that said, it is still nice to sit around on a Sunday morning and read the paper for an hour. Unfortunately, it's a fast-dying past time.
Ryan
@Ryan Paugh:
Their tweets are actually just a blurb, then a link to the story on their website. You should follow them, at least for a bit to see how they do it. It's not just an auto-stream. It feels personal, is occasionally amusing, always informative. Great for traffic updates, but more in-depth stuff too. They solicit responses to their tweets as well, and also organized an Austin-area tweetup, which shows initiative.
Leave it to the most digitally-savvy city in America to be on the ball with new technologies. Oh, yeah, the Statesman also has 13 hyperlocal paper editions for outlying areas and neighborhoods to keep it relevant.
@Ryan Paugh-- same here. The only newspapers I can recall reading recently are the ones my university used to give out for free.
I actually barely get any local news at all, because I spend so much time trying to keep up with national and international news. I follow a few of the big news sites on Twitter, like CNN which posts breaking updates, but I haven't found any local Tweeters in my area that tweet local news updates...
@Holly -- good call on distinguishing between print media and print newspapers. I mentioned PC Mag because I thought it emphasized the point that print in general is struggling, but I definitely meant to focus on print newspapers -- magazines are a different game. I agree though, that newspapers really need to change and need to innovate in order to survive. and thanks for passing on the Newsosaur blog -- I'll check that out!
@Ryan Healy--yeah, I used to love reading the Sunday paper but it's a fast dying past time. The NYT can survive for a while, but who knows how much longer?
1) Paugh's avatar is pretty goofy :)
2) Print is going to gradually die. This would happen even if the economy was flourishing, but it occurring at a rapid pace now because of the economy.
3) Print vs online is generational. Older people like their newspapers, while younger people (us) like to read things online. Our generation has more people, so as we get older, newspapers, just like the workplace, will have to shift to digital.
@Schawbel:
It's all about personal branding. Community Managers need to be the life of the party. If I gotta be goofy to accomplish that ... I'm happy to appease the personal branding gods.
I must be in the minority, but I still love reading the newspaper. While I still consume a lot of information on-line, it doesn't replace my newspaper. I started reading the paper when I was about 4 or 5 (early bloomer) and still grab at least the smaller local daily whenever possible. Call me old-fashioned, but there is something about the actual print that seems more trustworthy.
I think what may bridge the gap is something like the Amazon Kindle - hand held, completely self-contained and can get the information (including Time magazine and the NYT) automatically.
As for the conversation, I don't know how much that might come into play. When I look at the comment sections of my local paper's news site (St. Petersburg Times), it's filled with flame wars, illogical comments, and other on-line bile.
I belief is that for news organizations to stay viable, they'll need to embrace certain technologies and integrate them into their methods.
I said this at a conference earlier this year and there was a HUGE hoohah about that "revelation". Gen Y was nodding their collective heads in agreement while the older folks were absolutely shocked and were asking me (publicly, in the blogosphere) why, and if there was anything to do about it.
Personally, I don't flip the papers at all unless it happens to be lying around in a student lounge or something and I'm particularly free. I get stuff I'm interested in via RSS and things that locally relevant, I'll hear about from Facebook, Plurk and/or Twitter.
Nisha Chittal, you may want to consider reading more from educated, trained journalists. It will make you a better writer.
Printed newspapers slow down the "skimming" and force you to pay attention to the construction of the sentences that build paragraphs that comprise a story/article. Sometimes, it is not only the "facts" presented in the story, but the manner in which the writer unfolds them to the reader that creates the art of writing. Art is found even in journalism that is supposed to be a story with "just the facts."
You are prone to hyperbole in your writing (definitely, everyone, nobody, constantly, only..) and excessive propositional phrase usage, making your credibility (or, at least the amount of research you do before writing) suspect.
I'm just saying there are very few absolutes and foregone conclusions in life. It is ok to have a strong opinion, but you may wish to refrain from being certain and absolute about things that are not entirely so.
Like @Holly above, I don't mean that in a harsh way, it is just the English teacher/Journalist in me talking.
One of the best thing's I've been able to participate in since joining Brazen has been writing and hosting guest posts. They allow me to get in touch with different audiences ... More...
Beth Oppenheim-Chan to All Fans
8 people have recommended this.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Email
Print
