Re:Newspapers Lose $10 Dollars in Print for Every $1 Gained ...
by InclinedPlane on Monday March 19, 2012 @05:06PM
(#3726214)
I guess I'll trott this out again:
The problem is that the newspaper used to be a communications conduit and newspapers grew to identify with that role. A proper newspaper reprints national and international news, and the weather, and sports, and it has a classified section and a comics page and a crossword and a jumble and an oped page. And the fantastic thing about reprinting wire reports and cathy cartoons and classifieds was that it was so very, very profitable compared to the effort required.
But a lot of that is obsolete today. That wire report is less accessible and less timely than it is to read the original online. Same goes for the weather. Etc. Today newspapermen are like hoarders. The amount of strictly original material in a paper has always been shockingly small, but today that is the only leg that they have to stand on. But papers don't have the guts to cut off the rest of their body and run lean and mean in the rough and tumble online world. Partly because in some cases they can't due to labor agreements, and partly because they are afraid that their original reporting alone isn't enough to be successful. But mostly because they can't stomach the idea of being something else, something that in their eyes is diminished.
Pay no mind that not serving as a broadcast medium for marmaduke strips, crosswords, and omnipresent wire reports hardly counts as a diminishment. It's their conception of their world and their role and they will live or die by it (spoilers: it's the second one).
The problem is that the newspaper used to be a communications conduit and newspapers grew to identify with that role. A proper newspaper reprints national and international news, and the weather, and sports, and it has a classified section and a comics page and a crossword and a jumble and an oped page. And the fantastic thing about reprinting wire reports and cathy cartoons and classifieds was that it was so very, very profitable compared to the effort required.
But a lot of that is obsolete today. That wire report is less accessible and less timely than it is to read the original online. Same goes for the weather. Etc. Today newspapermen are like hoarders. The amount of strictly original material in a paper has always been shockingly small, but today that is the only leg that they have to stand on. But papers don't have the guts to cut off the rest of their body and run lean and mean in the rough and tumble online world. Partly because in some cases they can't due to labor agreements, and partly because they are afraid that their original reporting alone isn't enough to be successful. But mostly because they can't stomach the idea of being something else, something that in their eyes is diminished.
Pay no mind that not serving as a broadcast medium for marmaduke strips, crosswords, and omnipresent wire reports hardly counts as a diminishment. It's their conception of their world and their role and they will live or die by it (spoilers: it's the second one).