......the role of the once-a-day, mass circulation print newspaper, what this blog now refers to in some places [YOTUBE for example, 240 hits and counting...] as a snailpaper. He made this remarks at a Univ of AK Anchorage lecture in 2007. Text copyright Howard Weaver (2007, 2010)
SPEECH BEGINS:
Although our time here this evening is meant to be spent talking
mainly about the future, it's impossible to start without some
references to the past.
By some confluence of coincidence, 2007 provides us a chance to think
about the present with reference to several anniversaries of the past.
For the McClatchy Company, founded in 1857, this year marks a 150th
anniversary; for the Anchorage Daily News, this is a 60th anniversary
year. And even though I've said so before, it still shocks me to
acknowledge that 2007 is also the 40th anniversary of my first
newspaper paycheck. Yes, I was young them, a junior at East Anchorage high school -- but 40 years is still, well, 40 years.
Let's postpone that reflection for a moment, and look back farther
still.
We could go all the way back to the first newspaper,
established by academic consensus to have appeared in Switzerland just over 400 years ago. More profitably, perhaps, we can limit our
reflections to this continent, and look at how newspapers have emerged in the New World.
They played a pivotal role in colonial affairs. Benjamin Franklin and
Thomas Jefferson were only two of many founders associated with
newspapers -- Ben as a full-fledged printer, writer and publisher, Tom
as more of an "angel investor" who helped start a paper specifically
to compete with Alexander Hamilton and other Federalist opponents.
Indeed, the wonderfully argued Federalist Papers many of us read in
civics class were, in fact, colonial "letters to the editor,"
establishing better and than other evidence just how central a role
the founders thought the press could and should play.
But those early newspapers were nothing like what we think of as
newspapers today. Colonial papers were, by and large, partisan,
ideological and polemical. Typically subsidized by some special
interest, they served as mouthpieces, not watchdogs; their audiences
were small, their language florid, their posture extreme. They were,
by any definition, the blogs of their day.
Indeed, the main theme of my short excursion into newspaper history
tonight is to remind you that the institution subject to so much
discussion and hand-wringing today --
the daily newspaper --
wasn't
always a stable, unchanging product. Far from it.
For starters, there certainly was no "mass media" of any kind. As late
as 1830, the country's largest newspaper had a circulation of 4,500 --
and most papers were half that size or smaller. By the middle of the
century, technological innovations changed the playing field, as
steam-powered rotary presses became fast enough to produce mass
circulation papers. The telegraph emerged by the time of the war with
Mexico to provide what must have seemed like "instant news" to those
accustomed to delivery by clipper ship or horseback rider.
Entrepreneurial publishers soon started to broaden their appeal,
recognizing that less overtly partisan newspapers could attract larger
circulation -- and, with it, larger profits. By the end of the 19th
Century publishing giants like Hearst and Pulitzer fueled their mass
circulation appeal with a mix of vigor and sensationalism that gave
birth to the era of the Penny Press or, as a competitor dubbed them,
the Yellow Press. They preferred the term "the journalism of action,"
as when William Randolph Hearst organized a jailbreak to spring a
political prisoner in Cuba.
At the same time, another trend was growing. Historian W. Joseph
Campbell has fixed on 1897 as the pivotal year, when the muscular,
partisan antics of the Yellow Press came dramatically into conflict
with a different, more objective paradigm: the centrist "All The News
That's Fit to Print" philosophy of Arthur Ochs and his New York Times.
As always, new technology and further disruption loomed ahead. The
year with the most newspaper titles in U.S. history was 1919; not
coincidentally, the year 1920 marked the country's first commercial
radio broadcast. As you might expect, the delivery of live radio news
into living rooms free of charge had huge impact on newspapers,
especially when Depression era economics forced many advertisers to
chose between radio and newspapers.
An even more dangerous competitor emerged not long afterward, and by the end of World War Two, broadcast television began what seemed like an inexorable march to media dominance in the country. In the 1950s television killed off something like half of America's daily
newspapers -- afternoon newspapers, for the most part.
Perversely, that carnage set the stage for what would be newspapers'
most stable, powerful and prosperous era, a time between roughly 1960 and 2000, sometimes called "the Golden Age of American Newspapers." I want to explain why a better name might be the age of "Fat, Dumb & Happy."
After afternoon competitors were killed off by Huntley, Brinkley and
Cronkite, the surviving newspapers generally operated as monopolies in their towns. With expensive barriers against competition -- tens of
millions to buy presses and assemble distribution fleets -- they were
well-insulated. And on top of that, they enjoyed another critical
advantage: while CBS and NBC could advertise Chevrolets and Coca-Cola, the broadcasters couldn't duplicate the classified ads that sold used cars or filled job vacancies. Newspapers had those to themselves, and priced them accordingly.
Even if you didn't pass Economics 101, you can probably answer this
question: If a monopoly industry protected against competition enjoys
an exclusive franchise on lucrative advertising, what happens?
If you answered "obscene profits," go to the head of the class.
Obviously, this explains two parts of my alternative label for the
era: Fat & Happy. But -- why Dumb?
It's partly just this simple: almost nobody or no institution changes
if it doesn't have to. When newspapers were making 30 or 40 percent
profit margins, there was little incentive to become more efficient or
responsive to consumer demands. My boss Gary Pruitt, the CEO of
McClatchy, has noted that newspaper leadership through this era proved the wisdom of Warren Buffet's admonition that you should always invest in companies that could be run by complete idiots -- because sooner or later, they would be.
That joyride ended about the year 2000. And why then?
Well, in 1994 we saw the introduction of software known as a "browser" that allowed people to view graphical information across a global network known as the internet. By the year 2000, that World Wide Web had moved from fringe to mainstream, and America's monopolistic, protected newspapers had a new competitor. Among its many other characteristics, the web has these two attributes: it costs almost nothing to launch a new web business, and it's a splendid place for classified advertising.
In other words, the barriers that had protected newspapers' profits
were gone, and a new era of competition had begun.
While this was a transformative event, it does not, I will argue,
signal the end either of newspapers nor newspaper companies. I'll
explore why in the remainder of these remarks.
Not too long ago, a McClatchy board member asked me over lunch what I thought was the biggest single change to come about in journalism since the introduction of the networked web. For the moment let's leave aside the reshaping of media economics -- and oh, if only we could -- to concentrate instead on the part of the business I know best -- news, journalism, content.
Even with that limit, there are many possible answers to the question
of what has changed most.
Newspaper people once took pride in boasting that we published the
news every day; today the notion of publishing only once a day seems
almost quaint.
Certainly this represents one huge change: There is no "news cycle"
nowadays, and we're all competing all the time.
We also produce news in many new formats today, another big change
that has come upon us very quickly. Even five years ago, 95% or more
of the effort in our newsrooms was focused on producing tomorrow
morning's printed newspaper. Today's newsrooms produce instant,
breaking news for the web, shoot video, manage email alerts, record
podcasts and deliver information to cell phones – and produce tomorrow morning's newspaper.
In my sessions with our newsrooms, I always acknowledge that while
it's not hard to drive a car down the freeway, and not too tough to
change the oil, it's damned difficult to do both at the same time …
yet that's essentially what we're asking them to do.
Much of my confidence in our future rests on how well they are
responding. When you add the readership of our daily newspapers with
the unduplicated reach of our digital operations, our total audience
is still growing. No other media can claim that.
Let me put it another way: more people want what we do today than
wanted it yesterday, and that is manifestly NOT the profile of a dying
industry.
Yes, newspaper companies' profits are down. Moving from a
monopolistic, protected position into a hyper-competitive new economic landscape, how could it be otherwise? And as we remind ourselves at McClatchy, it's not raining on us; it's just raining. It's raining on Sony, and Ford Motor Company, and Delta Airlines. Maybe it's rained on some of you.
Charles Darwin is reported to have said that evolutionary survival
goes not necessarily to the smartest competitors, or even to the
strongest, but to those most responsive to change.
Some will respond, and change, and prosper. Some will die.
I assume you've come tonight because you have at least some interest
specifically in the news business. Let's look at how we fit into this
economic Darwinism.
It seems to me there are three questions you might well be asking about now:
Is there an economic model that works?
What is McClatchy doing to get there?
And why why should you care, anyhow?
I promised some time ago to tell you what I thought was the biggest
change to come about in the news business since the advent of the
internet. I've saved that for last, because I think that within the
challenges of this biggest change we find the seeds of our salvation.
The most profound change is not continuous news cycles, or multimedia storytelling or even the demands imposed by newly competitive markets. I think it's the complete erosion of the gatekeeper model of news.
For most of my career, editors decided where to send reporters, how to handle what they discovered, and how to tell that to the public.
No more.
Let me confess that I liked the old gatekeeper model, and in some ways I mourn its passing. Maybe that's understandable, since I spent a good bit of my career doing exactly that job at the Anchorage Daily News. As Alaska's ranking gatekeeper, I helped put a lot of good journalism in the paper that powerful people didn't want there, and I kept out a bit of bad journalism that staffers sometimes wanted to print. To asignificant degree, I got to decide what was big news in Anchorage and what wasn't. But those days are gone.
The top-down hierarchy of a few editors or news directors at a few
institutions deciding what's news is history. Readers now get to
select their own stories, from a plethora of sources, good, bad and
otherwise. It's now easy for individuals to construct that news report
we once referred to as "The Daily Me," comprised solely of information
they want to see, not what somebody else picked out for them.
In our business we talk now about three kinds of journalism: the
journalism of affirmation, like blogs and talk radio, where folks seek
out news and information because they know in advance it will confirm
their point of view; the journalism of assertion, as in cable
television shows where panelists yell different points of view at one
another, but rarely supply much illumination; and the journalism of
verification – our kind of journalism, about which I will say more in
a moment.
In today's world without gatekeepers, amateurs can find audiences,
websites like the Drudge Report or dailykos can dominate political
discourse for activists, and programs like The Daily Show – augmented
by YouTube – redefine public affairs journalism for younger audiences.
In the face of all this, what's an old-fashioned newspaper company
going to do? Let me tell you what I've been telling the newsrooms I
visit: It's time to stop wringing our hands and worrying about "the
future of news." Sure, there's still some uncertainty, but we already
know the blueprint for the future, and the details are rapidly coming
into focus, as well.
We are becoming a hybrid news company, centered on a general
circulation, printed daily newspaper alongside a growing portfolio of
digital products. All of these will deliver branded information on
demand to that growing total audience I mentioned a moment ago. It's a world where we will have less control but greater reach; more
competitors and more partners; and organizations that are somewhat
smaller but substantially more sophisticated than today's.
"Data" of itself is so widely available nowadays that it's of little
value to the reseller. But value-added information can be priceless.
By way of example, consider whether you'd like to take part in this
experiment: you will take all the money in your 401(k) and invest it
based solely on what you read in blogs. I will take mine and invest
based on reading the Wall Street Journal -- and we can easily check
later to see who has a happier retirement.
Good information -- verified, refined, sorted, selected -- has always
advantaged those who have it. It always will. Our challenge is to make
sure we can deliver that quality of information, and then to make sure
people know that we do.
In thinking about our consumer, the person to whom this value-added
information must, indeed, provide value, I envision this scenario:
My customer awakens to a clock radio tuned to National Public Radio
and starts her day to the sounds of All Things Considered. Maybe she
tunes in the Today Show while dressing, and listens to sports-talk
radio on her commute. Like nearly everybody else, she steals a little
time from the boss and does some web surfing at work, then walks into a lunchroom where CNN is playing on the television. Later her email in-box will be filled with notes from friends forwarding priceless
tidbits and imploring, "You just gotta see this ..."
In serving that fully saturated consumer, what's a company focused on
a once-a-day printed newspaper supposed to do?
We win not by merely adding to the info-glut that surrounds her, but
by being the tool that helps her manage it.
To start, let's deliver a succinct and literate printed summary and
orientation to her doorstep each morning. We'll put a hundred of the
smartest people we can find in a room and ask them to spend all day
helping her sort and filter and organize that information. She already
knows Dick Cheney shot somebody in the face; we might be the one who poses the question, "Why did it take 18 hours for somebody to call the police?" She will already have heard what Condeleeza said about Afghanistan, but will she remember on her own that she said something different six months ago? And all that stuff from the blog links her friends mailed her yesterday -- which parts of that were really true?
We'll add value to information in many ways -- sorting, selecting,
ranking, personalizing – and most importantly, by verifying it.
We'll add value by being her original source for most news about what
happens in her hometown. With more reporters and a bigger audience
than anybody else, we'd better.
We'll add value by being one of the primary sources for the constant
digital delivery that surrounds her long after she leaves her printed
newspaper at home. Unlike the newsroom I ran in Anchorage, today's ADN can report the news of an explosion at Elmendorf as quickly as a radio station, and may have video online before anybody. Political gossip can reach the campaign blog at any hour, and folks with an appetite for such things can read transcripts of FBI wiretaps while they listen to audio of a prosecutor's opening remarks.
There are three big themes at play in our industry today. One of them
-- the revenue reset occasioned by new competition -- is as big a
challenge as any faced by newspapers in my generation.
But the other two are both good news for journalists.
For one, people have never had a bigger appetite for information.
Whether scanning their PM news update in email or arguing with
neighbors in the comments section of their favorite blog, more people
are more involved with the news than ever before.
And on top of that, journalists have never had better tools to employ
in satisfying those demands. Access to the 24/7 news cycle and
powerful multimedia tools to tell the story of an Army widow's fallen
warrior are just the start. We also have the capacity now to convene
community conversations, not just report on them; to reach instantly
across a vast state almost without cost; and to provide audio of a
senator's voice at the editorial board to a whole nation.
For 150 years, McClatchy has been guided by a single mission: to
produce public service journalism that improves the lives of the
people it serves. And what does that sort of journalism try to do? To
speak the truth to power, to hold the government accountable, to help
build community cohesion, and to be a voice for the voiceless.
Today's explosion of new media outlets and expanded voices for
bloggers and other citizens is unquestionably a net good in a society
based upon self-government and an open, honest search for truth. But
it is also true that even in this new world, the heavy lifting of
watchdog reporting is being done by institutions with a tradition of
public service journalism and the expertise and integrity to back that
up. In just the last several years, these oft-derided "mainsteam
media" have opened the country's eyes to things like unauthorized
wiretapping by the NSA, the CIA's secret "black site" prisons in
Europe, illegal back-dated stock options at public companies,
scandalous conditions at Walter Reed Army Hospital and the politicized
firings of U.S. Attorneys.
With all our manifest imperfections, the traditional press serves an
essential role for our self-governing society. Whatever our changing
economics, it's essential that we find ways to continue that service,
to remain mission-driven in our efforts to tell the truth and empower
citizens.
The McClatchy Company was founded in the California Gold Rush 150
years ago in 1857 -- before the invention of electric lights. In the
first 30 years of its existence, the Sacramento Bee newspaper saw more than 80 competitors born and buried. With the flick of a switch one day in the 1860s, a transcontinental telegraph began to deliver
instantly the distant news that formerly took weeks to arrive in the
saddlebags of the Pony Express. Radio and then television, a Great
Depression and two world wars all shaped its history, and all
contributed to a robust and resilient DNA that reflects Darwin's
prediction about the odds of those most adaptable to change.
As we speak, the world wide web is not yet 15 [18 in 2010] years old. Personally, I
can't wait to see what happens next.
SPEECH ENDS
(c) 2007 Howard Weaver
