This is for newspaper folks and devotees who whine about Craigslist being the chief cause of newspapers’ decline.
Newspapers have been in decline since 1955. As a relative share of GDP, newspapers have declined nearly 50% since then. Database marketing (direct marketing) and electronic media have contributed nearly six times the impact on declining share as the entire web. Most of the decline happened before the web was introduced and certainly before Craigslist was an inkling in Craig’s imagination.
Newspapers shifted from news and information content as value to consumer, for which consumers eagerly paid, to an advertising supported economic model. They started the transition in the late 1890s. If newspapers charged per copy what they did in 1910, a copy of your local daily would costs $2.67. Newspapers demonstrated for electronic media that it was possible to prosper on advertising alone. As goes advertising, so goes traditional media. The shift to ad supported income has degraded the quality of news ever since, because advertisers pay the freight and publishers know it even as they protest the strength of the influence (just consider the investment into the sales organization). Imagine if they had had to compete for consumer attention without the support of advertising. Craigslist inverted the model to place advertising as a tiny income byproduct of the community service value.
Newspapers failed to embrace public journalism as promoted by Jay Rosen and others in the early 1990s. (They still struggle with the concept even as they are forced to consider its benefits for everyone). Newspapers have assumed that they define community by what news they cover and how and when they present it. They failed to consider the role of citizens in deriving a definition. Only recently have they begun to change their tune. Craigslist ushered in a classified utility based upon community service first. It made all the difference. Even without the news component as dailies had defined.
Newspapers nearly killed the micropayment movement in 1995 by dismissing it as inapplicable to their plight. Apple later resurrected it for iTunes and iPod. It may be too late to reignite its power now for news content.
Newspapers failed to convert their company cultures to ones that would foster innovation.
Newspapers failed to measure finances based on sustainable practices (staying in business) even in the face of declining product consumption and advertising market share. In other words they profit harvested by paying huge dividends and salaries to top executives, and failing to restructure in the late 1980s when the signs of decline were well established. Peter Drucker predicted the eventual failure of newspapers as early as 1976 (he estimated sometime around 2000-2010 newspapers would become marginal) just based on trends evident then.
Is that enough? The leadership in newspapers has failed for over 50 years to make the changes necessary to continue in business. Their cultures placed value on conformity to carry out the imperatives from above—otherwise their rank and file employees would have to take responsibility too. They need a revolution now to survive. Their devolution to demise may be the only thing that saves them to reorganize as new news companies.
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