To quote the poor wretch being dragged away during the Black Plague in Monty Python’s “Holy Grail”: “I’m not dead!”
As long as I’ve been in the business, there have been predictions of the imminent demise of newspapers. If the telegraph, radio and television couldn’t strangle us, why would the Internet?
Pundits, particularly those with connections to Silicon Valley, are full of dire predictions for newspapers. Michael S. Malone, a high-tech reporter who grew up in the bosom of Internet technology, predicted on The Editors Weblog in 2004 that 90 percent of print publications will be out of business by the end of the decade. “Before it is over, the number left in America will probably be less than 10, and they might not be individual papers but rather new entities created out of the current large chains.”
This gloom-and-doom scenario makes no sense. When the Denver Art Museum lays off 14 percent of its employees, no one predicts, “There will only be five museums left in America in 10 years.” Or when Circuit City jettisons 3,400 of its highest-paid hourly workers, nobody cries, “Electronics will vanish by the end of the century!”
Are these tough times for print? You bet. Layoffs are everywhere, and the technology landscape is changing. Ad revenues for major U.S. newspaper chains have declined anywhere from 3.8 to 7.5 percent. Yet there are 1,450 dailies in this country with a paid circulation of 53 million. There is growth among suburban papers.
The trick is to work with new technologies, not against them.
Instead of whimpering about the loss of circulation and the immediacy of information on the Internet, newspapers should do what they do best – provide accurate and complete information.
Some more unsolicited advice:
Dave Zeeck, editor of the Tacoma (Wash.) News-Tribune, put it bluntly to a gathering of his fellows at a recent meeting of the American Society of Newspaper Editors: “For a generation or more, we’ve let others define us. We are uncomfortable about advocating for ourselves. We’re still the source of most news in this country, and it is an advantage we will have for a long time.”
Staff writer Dick Kreck can be reached at 303-954-1456 or at dkreck@denverpost.com.
