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Find out more about Ed: Ed Duffy has been a news junkie for as long as he can remember. In 1972 he stayed up late with his transistor radio to his ear listening to the final election returns. He was 8. During his three years in the Army he worked composing responses to Congressional Inquiries. Now he has a monthly business paper of his own, several blogs on a variety of subjects and a graphic design and print shop. His passions are his family, free markets, free people and the truth. |
The owner of the Rocky Mountain News announced today that the paper is up for sale. If a buyer is not found soon, the paper could close down as soon as the middle of next month.
The demise of the News, should it come to pass, is a symptom of problems facing newspapers across the country. Some would say their editorial content was a major factor as well, but there are certainly other, industry-wide challenges.
Newspapers have historically made a lot of money on classified advertising. It's been both a revenue source and sought-after content. Now, websites like Craigslist, Monster.com and Ebay have taken much of the demand away. Buyers and sellers are finding cheaper, faster ways to find what they need.
You no longer find "breaking news" in the newspaper. With 24-hour cable news on TV and streaming news on the Internet, what's in your paper is old news before it hits your porch. Newspapers have also increasingly relied upon newswire services for content as a cost saving measure. If you're just getting the exact same AP story in the paper that you read 8 hours ago on Yahoo, why pay the subscription price?
Cable and the Internet also provide a less expensive advertising venue for businesses. The appeal of newspapers has always been their broad reach due to massive daily circulation. They don't have that claim all to themselves anymore and the competition is cheaper. To make matters worse, they have very little room to cut costs and lower prices. It's hard to imagine that they could pay their distributors any less than they're paying them now.
Does this all mean that the printed news media is dead? Not necessarily. It still has some positive aspects to exploit. Papers are portable, cheap and the content doesn't go away. It's often more convenient to have a hard copy of a document or story than to have to pull it up on a computer or web page. What must change is the attempt to appeal to everyone with one publication. Papers will need to distinguish themselves with unique content or focus on a very targeted geographic area, or both. They may also need to make the papers free. After all, the reader is where the value to the advertiser comes from. If I'm going to help you generate ad revenue, the least you could do is not make me pay to do it.
Generally speaking it looks like the economy of scale for newspapers is getting smaller. Contrary to the Wall Street banking community, many may have become "too big to succeed."
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