Papers on the plank
The print industry is, in many respects, fading. Newspaper circulation has steadily decreased in recent years, eroded by citizen journalism and a shift to online reporting in the form of blogs and user-powered news aggregators such as Newsvine and Digg. What was once a conglomerate held monopoly on journalistic discourse has now splintered into millions of individual blogs updated with new stories and opinions more frequently than could ever be possible under a single company.
In a 2005 Wall Street Journal story reporters Julia Angwin and Joseph Hallinan predicted newspaper circulation would see the “worst numbers in more than a decade,” given dailies’ 13% drop in circulation from 1984 to 2003. Last year’s annual study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism found that “Every media sector except for two is now losing popularity. Even the number of people who go online for news—or anything else—has stopped growing;” and “only the ethnic press is up” in terms of circulation. Statements like, “‘I really don’t know whether we’ll be printing the Times in five years, and you know what? I don’t care,’” by Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., publisher and chairman of the New York Times Company, smack of a thinly veiled fatalism.
Add to this the over 100 Washington Post staffers who recently accepted early retirement packages as part of the paper’s goal of cutting newsroom staff to reduce costs. When asked about his decision to accept the buyout, film critic Stephen Hunter said he was “‘doing what the Post would not do: I’m firing myself for being too old.’” Yet the paper does not seem merely to want to prune old foliage: this is the third such round of buyouts in the last five years, an unfortunate consequence of the paper’s decrease in operating income from $157m in 1999, to $66m in 2007.
But why are numbers dwindling in the first place? The pair at the Wall Street Journal cite two main causes: the national do-not-call law of 2003, which hurt papers due to their reliance on telemarketers for up to 60% of new subscribers, along with the “scandals at several newspapers” which they claim “have made some publishers less aggressive about counting certain kinds of subscribers.” They also acknowledge, however, that lower circulation “come[s] at a time when Americans have many news outlets that didn’t exist 20 years ago,” concluding that competition has forced papers to offer their own content gratis over the web, leading to a fall in paying subscribers.
As readers have begun to shift their attention online, industry analysts are investigating measures they hope may save traditional news companies. Generally regarded as the first step, analysts surveyed by the Project for Excellence in Journalism say corporate owned papers must tighten their editorial jurisdiction. Focusing more on regional affairs, it is argued, would solve journalism’s essential problem of toe-stepping, or over coverage.
A method employed by cable and network television may also help in newspapers’ plight. In what the Project’s report refers to as the overtaking of an “argument culture” by an “answer culture,” TV has phased out debate in favor of “offering up solutions, crusades, certainty and the impression of putting all the blur of information in clear order for people.” The trend toward answer-giving does not necessarily come hand-in-hand with impartiality; much less, the report emphasizes how “the tone [of the programming] may be just as extreme as before, but now the other side is not given equal play.”
Then there are the logistical tactics of alleviating budget worries. In response to free web-based classifieds services like Craigslist subverting one of their biggest money makers, many newspapers have combined forces with other classifieds sites to offer readers discounted rates and increased visibility.
In the end, however, newspaper companies must assess whether theirs is a “declining industry or an emerging one in transition.” 
photo credit: Hamed Saber