The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism recently completed a survey of 259 newpaper editors across the United States. The findings demonstrate the need for newspapers to continue to adapt to the changing media landscape. Newspapers have faced unprecedented challenges in recent years as readers and advertisers shift to other outlets, mostly on the Internet. Many newspapers have more readers today than ever as Web readership soars, but online ads bring in only a fraction of the revenue that print ads — which are on the decline — generate. The challenge “is to find a way to monetize the rapid growth of Web readership before newsroom staff cuts so weaken newspapers that their competitive advantage disappears,” notes the study.
“Editors said they had seen gains in other areas as well: the ability to post stories online quickly and to update them frequently, particularly during breaking stories such as fires and tornadoes. The constant demands of the Web have pumped added pressures as well as vitality into newsrooms,” reports the Los Angeles Times.
Additionally, the study concluded, ” “In effect, America’s newspapers are narrowing their reach and their ambitions and becoming niche reads.”
I offered my own opinions about the future of the newspaper business here. I observed, “I’ve argued before that the publications with a niche and that serve a specific audience need (it might be based on a genre of news or geography) have a better chance of making substantial gains in online advertising.”
I appreciate that you are keeping us up-to-date with the conversations around newspapers. I personally love the printed papers, and I am in that generation that really shouldn’t. However, I recently canceled all of my print subscriptions. Here is why: the rates keep going up, the same content is online, I am spending more and more time in front of my computer, and I travel a lot and it is a pain to have the beacon sitting on my front porch letting people know I am gone.
While I don’t want newspapers to go away, I probably will never have another print subscription. This is a shame: with printed editions, I read more than I probably would. When I go online, I only search out those items that might be of interest to me. Your point then is valid, maybe newspaper will only be able to make money by going niche. However, from a societal standpoint, here is the question: might we make ourselves dumber to the world around us by narrowing our focus to those niche areas and ignoring the other, possibly more important, issues that don’t interest us (but should)?