If you're looking for a decent explanation of why the newspaper industry is in such bad shape, you could do much worse than reading this lengthy piece in Maclean's about the Globe and Mail - it is an account of a group of people with an astoundingly solipsistic approach to their task, nattering on (and on and on) about "platforms" and "real change" and "brands" and "affluent demographics". Then, near the end, you get a single anecdote, a perfect encapsulation of why so many people are unwilling to pay a single cent for the product, of why so many are so very deeply cynical about and contemptuous of the ability of the news media to perform its most basic roles:
Last week, a senior official in the PMO marvelled that a Globe reporter called to check a fact, noting: “That has never happened before.”
Bob, is there really any evidence that people are turning away from buying newspapers because of a distrust of the content?
A lot of people now get their news online -- newspaper sites, CNN, Google and other aggregation sites, etc. -- from the same people who also run traditional media products. Why pay $1.00 per copy when you can get the content free and searchable? I don't see it has anything to do with trust.
It's easy to say that newspapers should "just report the facts." But today most readers have already heard, seen or surfed the news before they see their daily paper. They know the favourite team's result from last night; they know that so-and-so was dismissed from Cabinet. The challenge for a paper is to figure out where to take the coverage: opinion and analysis? international? community events? How much coverage for each story? These are all choices that have an effect on the circulation and advertising results. I cannot blame anyone in the media today for considering these "solipsistic" matters.
Posted by: Adrian | July 10, 2009 at 12:48 PM