The prevailing winds of the media are changing and newspapers have to adapt. “We have to do more with less” was the stark conclusion of the executive editor of The Baltimore Sun in hit TV show The Wire. Almost all newspapers are experiencing a dramatic decline in circulation as more and more people are looking to the Internet as their primary news source. Most newspapers now have their own, continually updated websites; not only is the news free, it is more up-to-the-minute, more ‘new.’ ‘News’ is a commodity subject to diminishing returns, and the Internet is making newspapers appear increasingly like oldspapers.
The Audit Bureau of Circulation reports that, since the year 2000, The Guardian’s circulation has dropped from 401,560 to 358,844, The Times from 726,349 to 617,438, and The Telegraph from 1,039,749 to 783,210. And the rate of decline is growing. In America, overall newspaper circulation dropped 10% last year alone, with the industry as a whole losing $7.5 billion in advertising revenue.
The pain is being felt most acutely at the shallow end of the industry, by local newspapers. Last year, in our own fair city, the Evening Post saw its circulation fall by 8.2% to just 42, 000. These figures are fairly typical – The Nottingham Evening Post’s circulation fell by 8.6%, The Edinburgh Evening News by 7.8%, The Liverpool Echo by 6.6% and the Newcastle Evening Chronicle by 6%. The only prominent local newspaper to see a rise in circulation was the Manchester Evening News, whose publishers adapted their business model to keep the paper profitable. The majority of their papers are now free and, in the face of the proliferation of free papers like The Metro, other publishers are having to follow suit.
The Evening Post is owned by regional publisher Northcliff Media, whose other titles include Bristol’s Venue magazine and the Western Daily Press. Responsible for 18 different daily titles, Northcliff Media is in turn owned by The Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT), one of Europe’s largest media companies, and owner of the ever-controversial Daily Mail. According to The Guardian, DMGT reported a pre-tax loss of £239 million last year, whilst the operating profits of its subsidiary Northcliff Media fell 85% to just £6 million. The collapsing scenery of the newspaper industry is dragging the company into the red, forcing the company to diversify. Viscount Rothermere, chairman of DMGT, explained that “over 50% of [their] operating profits are now derived [from activities] other than publishing.” DMGT’s portfolio now includes several other subsidiaries like DMG Broadcasting as well as others dealing in digital media.
The problem is that in order to fund these new ventures, companies are having to cut back on local newspapers. Earlier this year it was announced that the Evening Post is planning 45 job cuts - almost a third of its staff. The remaining staff will simply have to heed the advice from The Wire and do more with less.
But, as The Wire’s creator and former journalist David Simon says, “more with less is bullshit”. Having fewer staff will inevitably have a negative effect on news coverage.
This problem is exacerbated by the fact that the most important news entails the highest costs. Reporting and fact-finding require hard work, time, and money. To drum up better circulation, newspapers increasingly rely on salaciousness, comment, gossip, and pictures. It is hard to imagine The Metro breaking Watergate, but ‘Nipplegate’ was splashed across its pages. Received wisdom is that this will lead to a trivialization of news, devaluing the currency of our democracy.
But “au contraire,” cries George Monbiot in The Guardian – “local newspapers are not worth saving.” According to Monbiot, they long ago ceased to be the bastions of the underdog, and have caved to corporate interest.
The impotence of local newspapers is further examined by Nick Davies in his book Flat Earth News. Davies cites a survey of press releases issued across two months by Northumberland county council. 96% of them were turned into stories by local papers. In many cases the papers copied the releases verbatim; in no case did they add any information. They might as well have been published by the council. Local newspapers may be dying, but local news is already dead.
Ironically, the very thing primarily responsible for this fatality, the Internet, may also provide the panacea in the form of ‘citizen journalism.’ This entails members of the public playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information. The Internet is the primary tool. Ordinary members of the public can post blogs, upload videos, or provide commentary to the news of the day. This new form of journalism is only in its nascent stage, but already the advantages are clear. It is more participatory, and hence more democratic. There is also no profit motive to distort coverage.
Critics counter that it is an unreliable system because, unlike newspapers, it is not subject to fact-checking. This is not entirely accurate. Like academics, bloggers are subject to peer review. Bloggers are actively looking to catch one another out, because when they do, their own blogging grows in legitimacy, whilst their rival’s wilts. However, the peer review system isn’t as perfect as it is in academia: there will always be a place for salacious gossip in blogging, whilst there probably won’t be in neuroscience.
Whether this changing media landscape should be seen as a positive or negative development is up for debate. But I see no need to be as gloomy about it as some are. The new system undoubtedly has many virtues, just as the old dilapidating system has many vices. For an aspiring young journalist, the prospect of money being taken out of journalism and moved to ‘citizens’ is pretty galling. I guess we’ll just have to do more with less.
Rory Graham
30/11/2009
