Why the Boston Globe needs to go bankrupt

At BuzzMachine, Jeff Jarvis says the New York Times should force the Boston Globe into bankruptcy:

[The Globe is] losing $85 million a year. They saved only $20 with recent concessions. It could bring The New York Times down. Time for radical surgery.

Speaking of bankruptcy (and layoffs, and pay cuts and out-of-print): The Wall Street Journal maps the decline of the nation’s top newspapers since 2006.

Talkin' newspapers and journalism

A couple of articles worth your while regarding the financial troubles  of newspaper industry and what has brought them (in part) to this point:

The Fed shouldn’t save newspapers because they “are not too big to be allowed to fail.” (Newsosaur)

American journalism is in trouble because of “editors and reporters focused more on winning prizes or making television appearances.” (Walter Pincus, Columbia Journalism Review)

Throw everything at the wall and see what sticks

Huffington Post co-founder Ken Lerer lambastes newspapers for living in an “echo chamber,” failing to “adapt their business models,” and makes note of that “perfect storm” that has so many journalists bemoaning the fate of their industry. Criticisms that should sound more than a little echo chamber-ish to anyone who’s been following the pontifications about the newspaper industry.

Megan Garber (who’s awesome, btw), respectfully summarizes Lerer’s talk at Columbia University, where he prescribed the same vague calls to innovation that Clay Shirky wrote about a month ago (nothing will work, everything will work). But after initially bristling at Lerer’s generalized recommendations, upon reflection I realize he’s probably right. Now is the time for experimentation:

Lerer (after noting the usual caveats: that there’s no silver bullet to rectify journalism’s woes, and that “no one knows what the future will look like”) pointed to innovation—and hasty innovation, at that—as a necessity for newspapers and other news outlets. We need to “embrace disruptive innovation,” he said. …

Newspapers that went Web-only

Paper Cuts has put together a map that shows eight former newspapers that have stopped publishing their print editions and are now Web-only (since 2007). Be sure to check-mark the past three years to see all eight.

"Death spiral" is preferred way to describe newspaper industry

In  “‘Death’ of papers seen as oversold” (April 1, 2009), the Washington Times looks at an ongoing journalistic craze with no end in sight: reporters navel gazing over every layoff, furlough and quarterly loss of ad revenue as signs of the coming apocalypse for the newspaper industry:

Each monetary woe — whether it’s the New York Times cutting salaries by 5 percent or layoffs at the Houston Chronicle — is lumped together under the heading “the death of newspapers.”

The exact phrase “death of newspapers” was used to headline or anchor more than 300 separate news stories in the past year, according to a Nexis search — that’s about 25 stories per month that have pronounced the death of the genre. “Death of print” is another favorite.

So is “death spiral,” which made an appearance (via citation) in my recent post Visual proof that newspapers are doomed.

In fact, it was seeing ”death spiral” for the umpteenth time that got me wondering: Is it my imagination, or has the term really been as overused as it appears?

Visual proof that newspapers are doomed

You’ve read the statistics. Now we have visual confirmation that newspapers are in a death spiral:

“That’s just a whirlpool,” you say? Maybe to someone without a taste for visual metaphor. But trust me — that’s a death spiral, and newspapers are floundering just below the surface.

And this stock photo? Just a pile of newspapers burning? Au contraire — it’s the symbolic loss of revenue from classified ads. There goes your main source of revenue, up in smoke. Craigslist says it smells great.

Still not convinced, given the irrefutable stock photo evidence?

Well, perhaps THIS will change your mind …

Hilarious skewering of news industry bloggers

At Huff Post, Paul Dailing gives a well-deserved ribbing to the news industry know-it-alls in “How to become a ‘death of newspapers’ blogger“:

That’s why I’ve decided to become a “Death of Newspapers” blogger. I’ll join the ranks of Jeff Jarvis, Paul Gillin, Jay Rosen and Clay Shirky in competing to see who can use the most jargon to describe something everyone knows is happening.

Apparently, it’s very simple. The more you self-reference, pick feuds and talk about the failure of TimesSelect, the better you’re doing. If you make it sound like you’re the one who figured out newspapers are dying, you win.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer goes Web-only

Just in from the AP: The Seattle Post-Intelligencer will publish its final print edition on Tuesday:

Hearst’s decision to abandon the print product in favor of an Internet-only version is the first for a large American newspaper …

… Hearst’s move to end the print edition leaves the P-I’s larger rival, The Seattle Times, as the only mainstream daily in the city. The Times plans to deliver a copy of the newspaper to every P-I subscriber on Wednesday morning, spokeswoman Jill Mackie said.

The New Republic on the golden age of newspapers

As newspapers downsize or shut down altogether, hyperlocal coverage has been viewed by many, myself included, as a way of adjusting  to the new economic realities ushered in by the Web. But in the March 4 New Republic, Paul Starr points out the drawbacks of niche coverage and relying on other sources for national and international news:

Just as there are other sources for international news, so there are other sources of Washington coverage–but journalists from regional papers perform a special service for their readers, monitoring their representatives in Congress and reporting on federal programs from a local angle.

You're gonna miss us journalists when we're gone

Rod Dreher of the Dallas Morning News fights the good fight for professional journalists everywhere in his post ”When newspapers go away.” Unfortunately, he comes across sounding like Jack Lemmon in Glengarry Glen Ross:

Still, I wonder if all the people who are cheering for the demise of newspapers and print media, claiming that we deserve oblivion for our sins and failings, really understand what kind of world they’re going to get when we’re gone, or only shadows of our former selves.