Despite an aging and declining readership, newspapers remain the major organizations for the practice of journalism. Newspapers control the culture of journalism and offer the most readily available jobs to those who want to enter the profession.

Newspapers are highly profitable businesses, in part because most of them operate in monopolistic environments. Few cities in the early 21st century have competing daily newspapers, unlike the situation in most cities at the beginning of the 20th century. Consequently newspapers can charge premium rates to advertisers, and they can raise subscription prices without fear of being undercut by competing newspapers.

Notes

News orgs discover web’s immediacy. A couple of stories from Romenesko’s blog on today show that big time news organizations are discovering the immediacy of the web. One comes from Westworld, which reports that when the Denver Post stumbled onto a scoop last month about beer magnate Peter Coors being arrested for drunk driving, the Post nailed the story and then put it on the organization’s web site – despite some grousing from the traditionalists. These folks thought a story like that should be saved for print first, which was several hours away. The paper’s managing editor said the web would be “our breaking news platform.” Then there is the story about CBS streaming its nightly news program simultaneously with its over-the-air broadcast. This, apparently, has come about only after painstaking negotiations with affiliates. One is tempted to ask: “Where have these folks been for the last 10 years or so?” (Posted Aug. 17, 2006)

The New York Times -- Talk to the Newsroom. The New York Times, as part of its ongoing effort to open its operation to public view, has begun a series of exchanges by various top editors and people who email questions. The questions are sometimes long but enlightening, and so are the answers. The editors have tried to explain the Times' point of view in producing the news. This week's editor is Michelle McNally, deputy managing editor for photography, and in weeks past there has also been an exchange with John Landman, deputy managing editor for digital journalism. More. (Posted July 14, 2006)

The New York Times under attack, again. The nation's premier newspaper, the New York Times, is under attack from the government and many of its partisan adherents because of a report about the government's use of bank records to track terrorists and terrorist organizations. All of this is following a predictable pattern, although the vitriol of those attacking the Times, as Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post reports, is at a high level. Predictable to a lesser degree though still not very surprising is the report from the Boston Globe that a lot of this information has already been in the public domain -- and the source has been the federal government itself. One wonders, then, why the attack on the Times has been so virulent. The Times is a convenient target; a lot of people don't like the Times anyway and would certainly be willing to believe that it has compromised national security. But the Bush strategy here may be like that of a baseball team manager arguing the call of the umpire; he knows he won't get the call changed but hopes to intimidate the ump into giving him the next one. Let's hope that doesn't happen. (Posted June 28, 2006)

Newspaper of the future. The New York Times devoted a great deal of space in its business section last month to a profile of the newspaper in Lawrence, Kan. The paper is devoting many resources to building an innovative set of web sites -- innovation that is a part of the newspaper's history and tradition. The Times article provoked online media guru and newspaper critic Vin Crosbie to identify six trends that newspapers should use in planning their future: multimedia, unlimited depth, depackaging, on-demand content, individualization, mobility and ubiquity.
More (Posted July 26, 2005)

Clearing his Deep Throat. Word comes today that the secret to one of the great politico-journalistic mysteries has been revealed: the identity of Deep Throat. It was Mark Felt, assistant director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation during the Nixon administration. This is an important revelation, and not just to those of us who have followed the Watergate story from its very beginning. Watergate was the last great newspaper story, one that certainly would not have happened in the same way in our current media environment.
More (Posted May 31, 2005)

Goings-on in Greensboro. Someone once described change in the newspaper industry as occurring at two speeds: slow and stop. Change seems to be occurring in Greensboro, N.C., with the News-Record giving some serious consideration to re-capturing readers with a web site that it wants to become the town's electronic "public square." (See note below.) What the editors are doing has become the talk of the online journalism world and is described in two articles, one by Poynter.org and the other in the Business Journal of the Triad. In the Poynter article, N-R editor John Robineson describes how his thinking evolved toward using weblogs to gain readership:

I had seen the readership data about our paper that show that we dominate with readers over 45, but that we are weak with readers under 30. I'd been thinking about that for months. Meanwhile, I've been reading bloggers for a couple years. We have an active blogging community in Greensboro and many bloggers write about civic affairs. We've mined their sites for news items to put into the paper. That taught me about the potential and opportunities of the medium. I started blogging about the newspaper about five months ago and discovered that, not only was it not difficult, but that it connected with an audience that I just wasn't reaching in the newspaper.

The newspaper has promised to roll out a new web site design in February that will allow some of the idea's the editors are considering to take shape. We will be taking a look at what they come up with. (Posted Jan. 20, 2005)

Newspaper circulation. In the fall of 2004, a report was issued by the Audit Bureau of Circulations showing another decline in newspaper readership. Here is part of what the New York Times story said about the report:

• The losses were widespread, with two-thirds of papers reporting flat or declining circulation, including The Washington Post and The Daily News, according to an analysis by the Newspaper Association of America of figures released yesterday by the Audit Bureau of Circulations. And the industry's decline was more evident on Sundays.
• The average daily circulation for the nation's 841 daily newspapers fell 0.9 percent, to 47,711,751, for the six months ended Sept. 30, as compared with the period a year earlier, according to the newspaper association. For those 662 papers that publish Sundays, the drop over the same period was 1.5 percent, to 51,625,241, according to the association's analysis.

An annual report on the news media. For an up-to-date report on newspapers, check out the annual report of the Project for Excellence in Journalism and the Committee of Concerned Journalists (http://www.journalism.org). The report has sections on each media, including newspapers (2004 report). This report talks about the overall state of newspapers, economic conditions, content, readership, news investment, and ownership.

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