The collapse of the Rocky Mountain News hit a lot of journalists hard — there was a shudder throughout the industry that was one part “there but for the grace of God” and another part “who’s next?”
I even blogged about it here. Then, a little while later, I blogged about the up-and-coming “IWantMyRocky” site, a clearinghouse for newly-unemployed Rocky Mountain News journalists, where they were actually doing some pro-bono online-only journalism, and kinda, sorta hoping to make a go of it.
The posting at I Want My Rocky has slowed markedly, especially since more than six months has now passed, and I’m sure many of the unemployed are moving on to other, paying gigs.
One of those was profiled in the New York Times — M.E. Michael Sprengelmeyer has bought a small community weekly in New Mexico and seems to be turning it into a real beast. (Don’t miss the tale of how he now owns Jack Abramoff’s suits). But is small-town community journalism the way to go? From the article:
People around town say they have noticed the difference. The greatest compliment may have been paid by Roberto Martin Marquez, editor of the Santa Rosa News, who wrote in his paper that “M. E. is making me a better newspaper man.”
Sales of The Communicator are up, in part because of eight sidewalk boxes that Mr. Sprengelmeyer bought from The Rocky and posted around Santa Rosa. He will not say how much money the paper makes, but says it is more than enough to support him, and he has visions of expanding to two days a week.
“If a house burns down, everybody here knows it, saw it, knew the people, probably hugged them, but they still want to read about it in a paper that comes out four days later,” he said.
The experience has made him an evangelist for small-town papers, which he says offer a hidden opportunity for unemployed journalists.
Interesting … however, the sentence continues:
… a hidden opportunity for unemployed journalists, but he acknowledges it isn’t for everybody. He works to the brink of exhaustion, fueling late-night production sessions with nicotine and caffeinated energy drinks. After a few hours’ sleep, he makes a three-hour, round-trip drive to pick up his press run in Clovis, where the paper is printed.“I couldn’t do this if I had a family,” he said. “But it feels like it matters, and I’m having fun.”
And there’s the rub — he’s working himself to the bone, out of sheer dedication to the craft. But this isn’t a sustainable model for journalism, I’m afraid.
More lessons from the closure of the Rocky Mountain News were presented a couple of weeks ago, in a talk that the former editor, president and publisher gave to Google. Here’s a video of the talk:
It’s a half-hour long, and I haven’t yet had the time to watch it all, but there’s a brief summary on TechDirt:
He basically goes over the last decade and a half or so of mistakes that the Rocky Mountain News made in terms of trying to figure out the online business. The key takeaways aren’t that surprising if you’re a regular reader around here. The company kept defining itself as a newspaper company, not a news organization (or, better yet, a community builder). Everything it did was based on how it would impact the paper edition. The focus was not on competing with web properties and services, but on the other major newspaper in town, the Denver Post. Things got so bad that when the Columbine Massacre happened, the newsroom refused to give any news to the web people, because they were afraid that the Denver Post would “steal” it.
It seems like pretty much everything was based on looking backwards, not forward. There was little effort to figure out how to better enable a community, or any recognition that the community of people who read the paper were the organizations true main asset.
I have a lot of sympathy for the people who are trying to run newspapers these days. They have to keep this gigantic legacy business of “print” going — with all its associated costs — and also startup a new online division, with all-new associated costs.
There weren’t too many horse-and-buggy manufacturers who transitioned into making cars, although a lot of them tried. It took a new generation, with a new outlook to come in and sweep away all the old ways of doing business.
I know that there are a lot of smart people doing their best to juggle two competing instincts — web and print. But I worry that the internal dynamics of such a juggling act will just tear news organizations apart, like they did the Rocky Mountain News.
Grant Hamilton
5 Responses to “Newspaper life watch: What happens after a newspaper folds?”
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What about the differences betweem reading on paper surfaces vs reading on screens and do we need a new word for this? THIS is what the future of newspapers in going to be all about. See my rants there:
I think on-screen readers have a long way to go before the replace printed paper, even though they have obvious advantages (and disadvantages).
A new word? I wonder — we still do “portraits” even though they are photographs and not paintings. I suspect “newspapers” will be the anachronistic word that we use for quite some time, even if they are web-only.
I spent several years as a Creative Director in the Internet Advertising Division of a corporation that owns a few hundred small to mid sized ‘hometown’ style dailies. And yes, as a whole, the newspaper industry was WAY late to the emerging technology party. This was the result of a host of factors, most of which have already been discussed. Perhaps the most troubling thing i saw (and a MAJOR factor in my justification for leaving) was the total lack of understanding how to monetize and capitalize the digital medium. Advertising pricing tiers and CPM structures were so low as to undercut the perceived value of the product. Longtime/large buy print advertisers were frequently offered the internet ad as a ‘bonus’ – further undercutting the perceived value. Ad placement and rotation created ‘shared’ ad space – which made advertisers’ feel they were getting less bang for the meager buck they had invested – making future price increases a hard sell (especially with established clients mentioned before). The only way to make prevent the web portal from being a revenue drain was to increase the volume. So before long you had, at best, 50/50 ad to content ratios per page – which undercut the value even more.
There was no forethought to make web advertising a ‘premium’ product – independent from the print paradigm even though every indicator showed that readers were steadily moving to online based information sources. Then when the economy began slipping, you had no wiggle room – no way to approach longtime clients or incentivize new advertisers with reduced rate offerings.
Newspapers had a great, long lasting ride with unheard of profit margins (upwards of 20-30%). But those days are most likely over. Margins will get thinner on the print side – but web offers unlimited opportunities. Ad Directors and Sales Departments just have to resolve to get premium pricing – create demand through constrained volume and construct ways to make the Advertiser feel a connection – a reward – for making an online ad buy.
Thanks for the well-thought-out comment. I think you’ve got an interesting point when you say that newspapers need to position their advertising in a premium way. I think the whole notion of web advertising has been devalued because there’s so much opportunity — and it’s not all newspapers’ fault. There are plenty of low-cost (and low-value) advertising venues out there, what with blogs, and Google AdWords, etc.
But also, sometimes I think it’s not that web advertising is undervalued, more that print advertising was always OVERvalued.
That said, (local) newspapers do provide unique, valuable content that (local) advertisers should be happy to be associated with. There’s been a lot of talk about how difficult it is for the editorial side of the business to transition to a web-based future. The ad sales dept. needs to get there, too.
Most ad departments can’t envision what a digital product looks like, so how could they possibly help create ads or a strategy for it?
Since most publishers have ad backgrounds, that approach spreads through the whole operation.
I can only disagree with your statement that print ads were over-valued. Value is whatever people are willing to pay…by definition, ads existing is proof that they have value.
Seems to me that readers didn’t abandon print, print (ie. decision makers) abandoned them.