Death Knell For Tree-Based Newspapers

There are a lot of newspapers out there going under, either completely or by going 100% web-based and forgoing printing paper editions. I know several people who have lost their jobs in the industry in the last year, and many more who are in danger. Obviously, to those people I say good luck.

There are a lot of reasons thrown about as to why this is happening. One idea is that the political bias exhibited by papers are turning off half the potential readers out there. You know, liberals run the newspapers and slant all the news to make conservatives look bad. I actually think there is something to that, as studies show that journalists as a general rule run a bit left of center. That said, there's no definitve way to know to what extent an individual reporter's biases find their way into individual reporting. Beyond that, if 50% of the population were pleased with the editorial slant in their local newspaper, you'd think circulation equal to half the available population would be plenty. In short, I think there are individuals out there who cancelled their subscription because of political bias (real or perceived), but not enough to explain anything but a small sliver of the decline of the print newsmedia.

There's also the idea that the internet killed the print newspaper. I think this is largely to blame, though it is more a function of the migration of advertising from print to web. Profit margins at newspapers (in general) just aren't what they were five years ago.

Then there's my hometown newspaper, the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer. They have laid off staff three times in less than a year. The main reason that the L-E is failing has more to do with another cause of failing newspapers. Mainly, it's a terrible newspaper.

I read it a few times a year when I visit the folks down in Georgia. The Sunday edition of the paper is maybe 25 pages, with barebones AP or Reuters reprints for the National and World sections and single paragraph blurbs for local news. There's usually one big ticket story of local interest that dominates the front page and is continued throughout the paper (see "purple cats are a menace on page A3", see "tranquilizers, food dye may be answer on page A7").

This may not seem like much, but consider that the paper is riddled with misspellings, uncapitalized proper nouns, non-sequitirs and other grade school mistakes. I find at least one and usually several of these sorts of things every time I read the paper. Now consider that this is a paper that serves a city of 185,000 people*. The Fargo Forum is ten times the newspaper the L-E is. This newspaper is going under mainly because nobody with a high school education can stand to look at it.

*I don't think this number includes Fort Benning which is attached to Columbus' south side, but couldn't confirm this. If I'm right, the population increases to well over 200,000. Also, Phenix City, Alabama lies across the Chatahoochee River and is also part of the L-E's circulation area.

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Other resources:
Pew Research Center report: State of the News Media 2009