Looking backwards and forward on the health of the newspaper industry

Today marks a milestone in my own career. As of today, I’ve been out of the media world for five years after 30+ years of working in a variety of roles in traditional media organizations. While my professional career still has some dealings with marketing and media from time to time, most of my professional efforts these days are in a different direction.

Easily I could sing praises for the company that I work for now, and for the amazing leadership and co-workers that’s I’m fortunate to be surrounded by on a daily basis. I’ll save those comments for another day. Instead today, I’m feeling reflective on an industry I still love. Though things are in a different era now (post pandemic world) than even five years ago, the day-to-day dealings of the newspaper industry haven’t changed that much from when I was calling the shots in my previous role.

I don’t specifically recall someone saying five years ago that all newspapers would be gone. Over the past ten years, I’ve read those columns numerous times proclaiming the approaching dearth of the industry, though I’ve never really believed that. Newspapers continue to radically change, and not very much of that a change has been for the better.

There are also certainly far fewer newspapers today than there were five years ago. According to the New York Times, over 360 newspapers have closed their doors since the pandemic. The next five years doesn't look much better for the industry with more and more publications expected to vanish. For the publications that manage to stay in business, how they do business is radically changing for the worse too.

From 2008 to 2020, the number of journalists working in the US has decreased 26%, and that percentage has only accelerated since the pandemic. The number of publication days for newspapers has also dropped dramatically. A daily newspaper used to be considered a five, six or seven day a week publication. Now many of those "daily" newspapers publish only two or three times a week. Many others are now only weekly publications.

While I think the next ten years will be extremely difficult, I still expect to see newspapers around. There will be fewer, but they will be around. Large companies are squeezing the last of their profits from newspapers and their assets, like prime real estate in the heart of downtowns across this country. Once they have driven those investments into the ground, in some markets you will see rebirths. We're seeing this in a few markets already, and I think you'll see more of this in the coming years. Start up journalistic endeavors, some for profit while others that are not-for-profits are dotting the landscape, and I predict we'll see more of these as large companies shrink their publication's footprint.

Some journalists and newspaper owners alike have looked to government to help save the industry. Some programs previously sponsored by politicians would create a newspaper industry beholden to government and politicians. Our free press cannot work as designed if newspapers are getting direct government subsidies for their operation.

The latest bi-partisan bill is closer to getting my endorsement. The bill, introduced by Claudia Tenney (R) from New York and Suzan DelBene (D) from Washington state would offer a tax credit for hiring more journalists along with a tax credit for small businesses that advertise with local media outlets. The second half of this bill's proposal is the best option in my opinion because it forces newspapers to compete for advertising dollars. The advertising done by small businesses would help increase their business along with helping newspapers. My recommendation would be to expand that tax credit to any traditional media (newspaper, radio, TV and even cable) that has seen the devastating impact of the digital era.

To say I don't trust many of the newspaper companies that control the bulk of the titles still publishing across the country would be an understatement. A direct subsidy to these companies that have made operational decisions for the past two plus decades based largely on fluffing up their own bottom line is misspent charity. Offering a tax credit to mom-and-pop businesses who use local media is a good investment in Main Streets across the country and provides media companies an opportunity to grow their business too.

Even with this type of assistance, the future of the newspaper industry is tough. Newspaper companies had opportunities to rule the digital world in the early days of the internet. Many of the early disruptions like CareerBuilder.com and Cars.com were platforms created by newspapers. Rather than build on those victories, newspapers cashed in, took the large payout, and then started whining about how tough the digital era was for them. So yes, I'm a little skeptical of the industry leaders to do anything but cash in whenever the opportunities arise.

This is not to take away from those on the local level, doing their best to keep operations going in those local communities. Are they covering less news than they were? - yes, but the amount of news being generated is still strong. The Wall Street Journal recently reported on "ghost newsrooms" which is the practice of large newspaper owners to have newspapers publishing but having no one on staff working locally on news stories. It is a sad reality that small towns face, but the impact is much greater than just that small town.

The Wall Street Journal reported, "The decline of local news is having an outsize impact on the entire media industry because the study said that until recently, as much as 85% of the news that ultimately made national headlines was first published in a local newspaper."

Just in the past year or so, we've seen the impact nationally on the lack of local reporting. Two stories come to mind where the lack of a local watch dog played out nationally -- the Ohio train wreck and chemical spill, and the election of George Santos in New York state.

I have many good friends still in the traditional media business. They continue to fight the good fight, try to serve their local communities and provide the best product they can with the resources they have been given. Nothing but love and respect for them.