Boston Globe Tailors Print Edition For Three Remaining Subscribers
Following up on Carl’s suggestions for saving the Times, the Onion has a few ideas of its own.
Can’t Bring Yourself to Type the Word “Ass”?
Eager to share our brilliant political commentary and blunt media criticism, but too genteel to link to horsesass.org? Well, good news, ladies: we also answer to HASeattle.com, because, you know, whatever. You're welcome!
Actually, not a bad idea for online delivery of news content, personalized so it includes a calender/datebook function.
But as a dead tree edition, it’s pretty funny.
Demand for news, and journalists, isn’t going away. It’s only the printers, and owners of printing plants (see, e.g., Frank Blethen), who are going down the (internet) tubes.
# 2: It’s a funny history.
Printers started off printing entire books, including the Bible and serious philosophical/political books. These remained extraordinarily valuable because the cost of paper remained very high, as well as the investment required in valuable printing machinery and the years of training required to produce skilled printers.
As the cost of paper went down, and more printers appeared on the scene, the market changed somewhat. This was Benjamin Franklin’s era, where a handful of local printers engaged in cut-throat competition to be the pre-eminant printer in the area. Their sources of revenue included government contracts which were secured through the good-old-boy network, books and political pamplets, and broad-bill advertising. Ambitious printers like Franklin even printed their own books, such as Poor Richard’s Almanac. The goal was to keep the expensive printing presses and apprentices busy, as long as the project at least covered the cost of the paper and ink.
Soon they realized a dual need: the public was hungry for news, especially from areas outside of the local town, and local businesses needed a cheap method of placing small ads which didn’t justify a full broadside on it’s own. So newspapers were invented in a mutually-supporting relationship – the newspaper printed the news, although much of it wasn’t much more than gossip, and entertaining articles written to increase readership. Networks of “correspondents” developed between the cities, with letters containing news and rumors circulating among the various printers in different cities.
Distribution of the newspapers was also cutthroat. Printers would vie for appointment as postmasters so they could fill any excess space with newspapers to be sold in other areas, and so they could at the same time exclude their competitors of that advantage. (You still see this, in a sense, with today’s third class and media mail rates with the U.S. postal service).
So in the U.S., the heyday of the newspapers was probably in the mid-20th century. The intense competition of the earlier half-century where there were multiple competitors was gone, usually only one or two local daily papers held sway in a city. Those papers virtually controlled public life and politics, as the editors determined which candidates to endorse, which ones to ignore, etc. If a social event wasn’t reported in the papers, it might as well not have occured at all. Only issues of importance to the editors rose to the level of public discussion. At the time they felt threatened by radio and the new television, but their distribution network and the cost of large-scale printing equipment kept most competition out.
But now the need for hard-copy news and advertising is gone, thanks to the internet. I still think the newspapers can survive for at least another decade, if they aren’t too burdened by debt. But I’m not going to make any bets beyond that.
….and then newspaper moguls started influencing politics (see Hearst, WR)
I gotta say, if the TNT or Times started delivering on hot fluffy pancakes with a side of bacon, I’d go back to print.
# 5: That’s a good point – lots of people don’t sit down to have breakfast in the morning, much less browse the morning paper. They pick up something on the way – donuts, McDonalds, Starbucks – and they MIGHT have a chance to skim the front page in the office break room while waiting for the next pot of coffee to brew. By the time they get home, it’s mostly old news, so why keep buying the paper?
@5,6
I still do the big home cooked breakfast eaten while reading the morning paper, but the TNT is so thin these days that I’ve had to start substituting reading material.
# 7: Either that, or start eating a smaller breakfast :-)
Newspapers and publishing are a business, period, and there is nothing in the Capitalist Manifesto that says any business model is entitled to Eternal Viability.