By John Durante
The CBS magazine show Sunday Morning recently profiled the widespread meltdown in the conventional American newspaper industry. Among the latest outlets to tell this story — often set in cautionary tale tones — the story included the requisite link, but only superficially explored, of social media as a force driving newspapers’ demise as we near decade two in the new millennium. But before we collectively get anymore gaga over Google, a-twitter about Twitter or think the next CNN I-Report includes tomorrow’s Pulitzer winner, allow us to join the small but growing chorus that declares we are overstating the influence of social media in killing newspapers.
For certain there has been an impact. But the vulnerability of daily newspapers has not been so much on the content or editorial side of the ledger, but rather, from the ranks of classified advertising. The rapid emergence and absolute market dominance of Craigslist has taken away what has always been the most profitable and reliable newspaper revenue stream with blinding speed. Equally as quick has been the public’s conversion to using Craigslist. (As a mid to late adopter of new media charms I recently sold an auto and a home on Craigslist in a mere three weeks). Without those stout, always to be counted-on classified dollars, what could we expect to happen to many newspapers?
But this is only a partial answer. By diminishing and moving away from the very qualities unique to the conventional daily news process of providing stories with context and understanding, newspapers themselves have been playing a form of Russian roulette. “New” media is in many hands simply a more extreme form of conventional local TV news before it. For too many social media adopters, these great new tools are principally about delivering data, sometimes key mobilizing information (see how the political uprising in Iran was helped by Twitter) and snippets of social flotsam that do little to enhance our collective understanding of much of anything in the world around us, (say outside of the weather). Far too many social media outlets offer little knowledge and even less context from all their “news.” Just because social media makes it easy for just about anyone to create “decontextualized” content is seen by many as socially redeeming. Maybe, but I think the jury is still out on that point.
Instead of distancing themselves from all of this, newspapers have embraced the rapid-fire delivery of data that lacks context. An explosion of revamped editorial styles, electronic editions and myriad other forms has diminished newspapers’ value as a potentially vital news and social force. Add context-free, rapid-fire social media to aging print business models and you have an industry working on a tightrope without a net. The answer can’t be to simply give away the context, 140 characters at a time. That’s nonsensical journalistically and unprofitable commercially.
In fact, the most dangerous self-inflicted wound suffered by newspapers may have started not in the 21st century but more than a generation ago. When first published in the analog days of 1982, USA Today was seen by many as either the first blending of conventional print and television news styles OR the end of the Fourth Estate as a linchpin to Jeffersonian Democracy. It was both heralded and reviled.
The mother of decontextualized content, many traditional newspapers somehow thought USA Today represented a needed “new journalism.” It didn’t. But it did make virtually anyone who cared to read the small print superficially conversant in one or two stories from virtually every state in America. And this was at a time long before calling circles, the wide influence of ESPN, cell phones, Twitter or other vestiges of the hyper-connected, instant access, digital era.
Somehow industry leadership saw USA Today as a signal of progress and a path that newspapers were to follow. To know a little about a lot of things was seen as more appealing than to have a deep context about the issues central to most any community — local governments, economic development, crime and public education. Newspapers shifted away from providing as much coverage and content as they once did on these topics because ostensibly, readers no longer wanted it (or was it the other way around)? The current situation, economically and technologically, has only worsened an already existing decline of more than a generation.
In short, long before social media burst on the scene, newspapers were straying far from their historically destined success: social utility and market uniqueness. In the process they ran into other forces that dragged them deeper into the jungle of itsy-bitsy “news” and to the downside of the digital information world. Today the industry is the worse for it. The rest of us are probably not far behind. This all happened not because technology dictated it. It happened because newspapers simply stopped telling real, authentic, contextual stories.
_____
John Durante is senior marketing associate for WordWrite Communications.
