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Societal Shift Grinds Down Newspapers

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By RYAN BLETHEN

The Tampa Tribune

Published: March 3, 2009

Life has taught me that change and unpredictability are consistently predictable. I, like everybody else, have gone through a constant string of transitions. These transitions are rarely easy and sometimes painful. This churn is not limited to our personal lives.

There are societal transitions so significant nearly everybody and everything is affected. We are living through such a transition. The Internet has not only changed the way people communicate and live, this societal shift is also grinding up newspapers and journalists.

The carnage is real. Not a day passes without some saddening or dire industry news. Friday was no different. Denver's Rocky Mountain News cranked out its final edition.

According to a story on the Rocky Mountain News' Web site Thursday, Rich Boehne, CEO of E.W. Scripps Co., which owns the newspaper, said that the paper "becomes a victim of changing times in our industry and huge economic challenges."

No doubt the Rocky Mountain News' employees will not be the last to hear similar statements before their newspapers close. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the Tuscon Citizen are both for sale and could close if no buyers are found. A tough proposition in this economy.

Layoffs, furloughs, Chapter 11, closure are no longer words and terms used by business writers. Everybody from the publisher to the summer intern has an intimate understanding of what this industry is up against.

Making the transition more difficult is that publishers felt secure sitting atop the bloated classified sections that made up a hefty chunk of revenue. It was that comfort and devotion to classifieds that blinded the industry to the disruption that the Internet would cause.

Nobody in the industry foresaw free classifieds thriving on the Internet at sites like Craigs-list. An advertising director would have been laughed out of a meeting if she suggested giving away a revenue producer like classifieds for free.

This brutal recession has only sped up the deterioration of newspapers and spurred a slew of stories and television segments about the issue.

A lot of the recent discussion has been about micropayments and other ways to make readers pay for content. I am skeptical about readers paying to read a story. They have been trained to believe that content is free - a hard habit to change.

It has also been suggested that newspapers be transformed into nonprofits or live off the donations of the wealthy. I also have doubts about such a model.

What I have no doubt about is the good that will spring from the industry being hyperfocused on not only surviving but thriving.

Will any of them work? I have no clue.

What is clear is that there is no killer app for saving newspapers. Some ideas will take hold, others will not. What is for certain is that newspapers will emerge on the other side of this transitional period much changed.

Ryan Blethen is a columnist for The Seattle Times.

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