The great department stores once stood in every city like eternal sentinels of American commerce. Now they are gone.
Some wonder if the same fate awaits the American newspaper.
What was once unthinkable is now thought about as newspaper companies struggle with declining circulation and profits.
Few newspapers have disappeared, but the Knight Ridder chain is no more, a victim of pressure from shareholders as circulation and profit margins declined. The Chicago-based Tribune Co., which owns the Los Angeles Times, Newsday and The Baltimore Sun, among others, has put itself on the block for similar reasons.
No one knows exactly what will come out on the other end of this period of rapid adjustment. But if newspaper owners play their business cards right, most media experts think, they will still have institutions that are profitable and important, in print and online.
But there will be serious challenges. Just as department stores watched high-end boutiques take one type of customer and low-end discount stores another, newspapers are watching their readers – and advertisers – heading in all sorts of directions.
And, just like those old department stores, newspapers are accustomed to providing something for everyone.
Newspapers continue to do this as a matter of course. It is what they are expected to do.
That’s because big-city newspapers have been considered a part of the essential fabric of American urban landscapes, like roads and buildings and schools and parks. They were an assumed ritual of daily life. That is simply no longer the case.
Managers of The Boston Globe recently announced that they expected their newspaper to lose money this year because of plummeting circulation, classified and advertising revenues. Media analysts blame that chilling news, in part, on the fact that Boston has more high-speed Internet connections than most cities in America. Editors in other cities see the Globe’s problems looming in their own futures.
Still, while the ground is shifting, most newspapers remain highly profitable enterprises.
“Whenever I address an industry group, I always start out by saying, ‘You think you’ve got problems? How would you like to be Ford Motor Company?”‘ says Peter Zollman, a journalist turned industry consultant.
Indeed, newspapers aren’t in that much trouble yet. It is the trend that many find alarming. The challenge is to find ways to compete against an array of new competitors offering cheap advertising and free news before revenues begin to plummet.
