Bad News

A recent report on a ten-year study of newspapers has found shocking evidence that cutting budgets in newsrooms equals an overall lose of profits. In a statement detailing the findings Esther Thorsun stated "If you invest in the newsroom, do you make more money? The answer is yes," conversly "If you lower the amount of money spent in the newsroom, then pretty soon the news product becomes so bad that you begin to lose money."

It seems like a pretty simple idea. Consumer A purchases Paper X because the quality of journalism meets their consumption needs. But if Paper X lowers the quality of the product they're selling by reducing the newsroom staff by 30-50% than Consumer A is probably 30-50% less likely to consume the product. Yet the newspaper industry as a whole has continued to slash newsroom payrolls while desperatly boosting circulation. Attempting to increase your consumer base while decreasing your product quality can only happen if you're willing to decrease your cost of consumption (both the literal cost of the product and the effort needed to consume).

Since newspapers are understandably reluctant to slash their prices while hemoraging money they instead look to internal payrool cuts as a way to increase profitability, except this action sends them into a negative feedback loop by constantly decreasing the quality of content which decreases consumption.

Before we can worry about the demise of the newspaper we should ask ourselves why this matters at all. In an era when news is available 24/7 both in audiovisual and written forms via cable and the internet, what benefits do newspapers have to offer us over other outlets. While there is a tactile pleasure from the physical act of reading a newspaper this alone isn't enough to create the valuation need for newspaper survival.
While others may have different opinions about the merits of continuing newspaper service, personally I believe the best aspect of newspapers is the ability for them to offer sober reflection on breaking news. While online and televised news operators are pressured to immedietly report on events to get the scoop, newspapers by their very nature are a delayed mechanism of reporting. The fact that they go to print once a day creates a window of opportunity, however brief, for reporters and editors to gain a bit of perspective on an event. They are less likely to be swept up in the hysteria of live coverage.

Of course this window of time between the emergence of a story and the coverage of said story doesn't always lead to better, multiangled reporting, but it at least gives the opportunity for such an approach. An approach that can only occur in a newsroom fully staffed by a trained, talented and diverse staff. But with the current trend of cutting newsroom staff down to an editor, a janitor, and a chimp pounding away on a keyboard, the quality of reporting will continue to fail to meet the critical mass necessary for good journalism.

Even more troubling are newspapers efforts to become live media through their internet portals. Leading papers, rather than embraceing their unique statures, are attempting to compete toe to toe with the CNNs and Drudge Reports of the world by offering breaking news reporting. The pressure to get this reporting posted on the sight as soon as possible opens the newspaper up to the potential calamities faced by the traditional constant-newscycle media.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070215/media_nm/newspapers_newsrooms_dc
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1125017
http://www.iwantmedia.com/layoffs.html
http://publicityhound.net/index.php/how-newspaper-layoffs-affect-you/