woodwing

On February 28th, they turned off the lights for good at Denver’s # 2 daily, the Rocky Mountain News. The Seattle Post Intelligencer may not make it through March. The San Francisco Chronicle is “on the bubble”.

Does this mean the end of newspapers in the USA, or, as some would have us believe, the end of news?

Well, I think it is just a bit more complex. Let’s start with newspapers. The New York Times is not going away, nor is the Wall St. Journal, and probably not the Washington Post. But I would not be surprised to see almost all of the next tier of urban metros succumb in the next 24 to 48 months.

However, in contrast, at the bottom of the pyramid, thousands of small town weeklies are in good shape, and so are a lot of small dailies. The small local papers are healthy because they provide a unique news product and they provide a cost-effective platform for local advertisers. The urban metros provide neither. In the local papers, reporting on the local high school sports teams may occupy up to 20% of the news hole. What other media covers that? An urban metro stands no chance against Craigslist in the help wanted ad biz, but Craigslist cannot help you fill a job vacancy in a small rural town located at a distance from an urban center.

Moving on to “the death of news”. This line is usually specialized to the death of local news, and I find that just silly. Take my local case. San Francisco may soon be bereft of a big urban metro, but there will be no dearth of local news: 4 local TV stations with local news and the same number of local radio news sites, at least 20 small papers in at least 10 languages and dozens if not hundreds of local news blogs. Indeed, I would wager there has probably never been more news available from primary reporting.

What then is passing from the USA journalism scene? My answer is, the big urban newsroom is passing, and with it something like 10,000 jobs for reporters, editors, photographers, and graphic designers. These have been wonderful jobs in recent decades—relatively well paid, challenging assignments, generous expense accounts, few constraints and the odd chance at media stardom. As columnist Gary Massaro said on his final afternoon at the Rocky Mountain news, “Ah, hell, it was a good run.”