Jack Shafer argues that newspapers aren't dying because the appetite for news and opinion has dried up; in fact, he thinks quite the opposite is true, and that the Web's own weaknesses create an opportunity.
As my friend William Powers puts it in his recent study, "Hamlet's Blackberry: Why Paper Is Eternal" (PDF), "digital reading has become a part of everyday life, yet for most people it hasn't replaced reading on paper." Paper allows what one researcher calls "flow-style reading," which is worlds apart from the intense foraging we do on our computers. The Web is a great place to look for things we're interested in, but it's still not the best place to have found them.
As good as the Web is at keeping apace with the current, it isn't very good at telling me when my news tank is full. The final editions of well-edited newspapers still do a better job of conveying the most vital news than does a browsing of the Web. It gives readers a yardstick with which to measure the news before they dive in. If I had just 10 minutes to catch up on what's happening, I'd rather fan through the paper pages of the Times and Post than click my favorite sites. For decades, the Wall Street Journal has kept its busy readers abreast of the day's most important stories with its Page One "What's News" column. The idea is ripe for adaptation by other newspapers. (Sidebar: I really like the way the Times Reader measures news consumption.)
Following Powers' logic, I'd like to see newspapers do a better job signaling via text or layout whether pieces contain new news, terrific insight and interpretation, or just more of the same old bollocks that I can get elsewhere, presumably the Web. The Financial Times imposes rigid discipline in reporters by prohibiting any stories—even those on Page One—to jump to another page. The paper assumes that you're up to speed on the news and don't require the complete back story every time it publishes a story. It's a perfect use of print.
In the Web era, I find myself spending more time with the inside pages of newspapers, probably because I've not tainted my consciousness by previewing many of them on the Web. Those inside pages tend to have a magazine feel to them because of their greater independence from breaking news. In recent months, I've noticed the Washington Post place heavier emphasis on graphics to illustrate the inside news, taking advantage of big pages whose acreage dwarves that of the average computer monitor. All to the good.
Powers writes that "the public exodus from newspapers is not a rejection of paper, but an objection to using it for hard news and other utilitarian, quick-read content … that gains little or nothing from arriving in that format." Ceding supremacy to the Web has been an important first step in the daily newspaper's evolution to its next state. The newspaper is dead. Long live the newspaper.
For a while now, I've held the view that the Web should be the 'news' stream and the newspaper the 'meaning' stream.
There's a lot of breaking news out there, and a lot of people who think they know what it means. There's not a lot of high-quality professional analysis or photojournalism. There are no serious infographics bloggers that I know of. Even though there are some very clever Flash designers out there, as Shafer noted, they run up against the barrier of monitor size. For that reason, I think newspapers remain well-positioned to cut through the clutter.
I also think it makes sense to hold some scoops for the paper, and to use the paper to launch major features and special projects -- but then to use the Web's unique quality of interactivity to continue the party in cyberspace. The Globe and Mail does this to a certain extent with its online chats and comments for stories.
One should remember that the Wall Street Journal wrote a story, published Feb. 27, 2006, about the Globe's success in fighting the overall tide of declining circulation. G&M editor-in-chief Edward Greenspon said this:
Mr. Greenspon says he doesn't know what kinds of change will result from the staff-driven makeover. But he says he realizes his paper's relative success may not be good enough in the long run. "Newspapers are falling off the cliff," he says. "But we're at the back."
What Shafer doesn't explore (and you can't do it all in one column) is that he's looking at the high-end function of journalism (or should that be Journalism?), but there's a lot of mid-market and low-end newspapers built on audiences who really aren't looking for more than a jolt from a good crime or oddity story and don't really care about being informed citizens. As we move further into the digital age, where is the place for those papers? Does the cost of print make newspapers for low-end demographics an uneconomic proposition?
What about with local papers? The whole hyperlocal thang appears to be just hype at the moment, which isn't to say someone won't make the model work at some point. Right now, however, it isn't clear to me that the online world poses as big a threat to local newspapers as it does to national ones.