Last one out, shut off the presses
By Bill Phillips
It always amazed me that media companies can operate two newspapers in the same city. I shouldn’t be, competing car dealerships can be owned by the same people in the same city and do fine.
Somehow, in the newspaper industry, and media in general, it just doesn’t seem right. But, the Vancouver Sun and the Province have done it for years, as have other newspapers. News this week that PostMedia plans to merge newsrooms in several large Canadian cities where they have competing newspapers is being hailed as yet another nail in the coffin of what appears to a be a sunset industry.
So what went wrong?
Quite simply, advertisers have stopped advertising. The demise of newspapers has never been about readers flocking to the internet to get their news, it’s been about advertisers cutting back, or stopping, their newspaper advertising.
There used to be an old saying in the industry that to have a successful community newspaper all you needed was a grocery store and a car dealership. Advertising from those industries would keep you going and everything else was gravy.
Over time small independent grocery stores closed down and chain stores took over. About 20 years ago, or so, the chain grocery stores discovered that is was cheaper for them to produce and print their own advertising, as opposed to having the local newspaper put those ads together.
They moved to flyers. For chain stores, it made a lot of sense because the same flyer could be inserted in newspapers in different communities. Economy of scale is the term.
Newspapers, rather than getting paid in the thousands of dollars to produce and run those huge grocery store ads every week, were getting paid in pennies for inserting the grocery store flyers. Retail stores followed suit and now flyers are predominantly where print advertising dollars go.
Auto dealers, though, remained fairly loyal to print and continued to pour big bucks into newspaper advertising. Newspapers were down, but they weren’t out.
Then a shift happened about four or five years ago – auto dealers discovered the internet. It’s considerably cheaper than print advertising and, apparently, it’s effective.
Automobile dealers still use print heavily, but nowhere near what they did even five years ago.
The Prince George Free Press held on for about two years after the automobile dealerships cut back on their advertising, then it folded. We went through a lot of the same things other newspapers did, and continue to.
There was denial. For months there was a belief that automobile dealerships would abandon internet advertising and come running back to print. They didn’t, at least not yet. Then the endless downsizing began. The Free Press went from twice a week to once a week, which, in my opinion, was when the death spiral really began. Then there were staff cutbacks. Around and around it went. We never recovered.
Newspapers bigger than the Free Press have suffered the same fate. The Kamloops Daily News went down about a year before the Free Press did. In addition to news last week that PostMedia is consolidating newsrooms in several major cities, Black Press has shuttered the Nanaimo Daily News, which has been in operation for more than 100 years. Black Press also owns the Nanaimo News Bulletin. It purchased the daily just over a year ago, which many in the industry then felt was the end of Nanaimo being a two-newspaper town. Buying up the competition and shutting it down is how newspapers compete these days. Each story in each town is different, but it boils down to advertising dollars drying up and blowing away.
It’s sad because journalism does suffer. News-gathering is one business where competition truly is good for everyone – journalists get better at what they do and the community benefits because the journalists are doing a better job. Sadly, good journalism is hard to track on a business ledger.
Where will it all end up? I’m not sure, however, I maintain that journalism, especially good journalism, will always find an audience. Right now that audience is on the internet, where it’s tougher to separate the good from the bad, but the ugly stands out pretty well. You might have to look harder, but good journalism is there.
Bill Phillips is a freelance columnist living in Prince George. He was the winner of the 2009 Best Editorial award at the British Columbia/Yukon Community Newspaper Association’s Ma Murray awards, in 2007 he won the association’s Best Columnist award. In 2004, he placed third in the Canadian Community Newspaper best columnist category and, in 2003, placed second. He can be reached at billphillips1@mac.com
Comments
With the advent of social media and the younger generations more connected through electronic means you will see less and less paper media in the coming years. It had already been felt as many papers instead of employing their own reporters use one or two outside sources for international, national and regional news as it cuts down on costs but you lose the local touch as every paper prints the exact same story word for word. (IE Rueters, Canadian press and CBC and so on.)
There will be a use for paper media for some time to come however eventually it too will be replaced by advances in technology as people want the news up to the minute not wait a day for it to be printed. Like it or not it will happen
There is a huge difference between waiting for a news item to come to you from another source, and actually getting out and reporting the news on a local level.
As newspapers shut down, and go to the internet, I believe that we will lose the concept of investigative reporting. To report, you need to have people on someone’s payroll digging up the facts and reporting the news,. Where will these people come from and who will pay their salaries.
If we just rely on internet news from the major news corporations then we will be subjected their version of the news, however we will be missing out on some of the local, provincial, news.
There is nothing to indicate that people will read anymore news because it is digital as apposed to print. So we will get snippets of news from the TV news programs, and some from the internet if we chose to look it up, however we will be missing out on the local news, and on the reporting of news by investigative reporting.
My guess is that we will all lose something if the printed paper disappears.
Formats like 250 News works well for local news in North Central BC, and perhaps that type of reporting is the future, but they also rely on advertising to stay in business.
I did wipe my Butt with this rag a couple of times ….OUCH!!
‘. The demise of newspapers has never been about readers flocking to the internet to get their news’ – Are you being serious with this comment? lol, a tad out of touch aren’t we? I don’t know a single person with a citizen subscription.
I agree with you Palopu but we are from a generation that grew up with papers, TV and radio as a primary source and had reporters reporting on local items and we are used to that interaction. Those born after the year 2000 the so called “millennials” have grown up with electronic and social media that is instantaneous and in the here and now and give their perspective from ground zero. It also provides multiple views so that the truth can’t be hidden which has been proven time and time again.
With that being said social media loses one thing ….objectivity you see a clip posted of the cops beating a man and social media blows up and crucified the police without knowing why they were beating him up. That is what social media loses the whole story.
Considering the liberal left blatant bias in media maybe people are just also getting tired of the BS.
Take the Citizen in its not shy love affair with Trudeau, it was like puppy love without the needed shower. Then there is its one sided reporting on the misused term climate change, very very biased. Like I said maybe people are seeing through that.
Seamutt, my thoughts align with yours on this issue!
Bill comments in this story that “It’s sad because journalism does suffer.”
If journalism is suffering, I believe it’s because objective, neutral and balanced reporting went the way of the Dodo Bird!
Palpou: “If we just rely on internet news from the major news corporations then we will be subjected their version of the news”
We’re already subject to corporate interests – those who own the media. Take for example the SoCal gas leak. It has been pumping tens of thousands of tonnes of methane every day into the atmosphere since Oct. Alternate news sites have been covering it since it started because the residents of Porter Ranch (30km outside of LA) have been sickened. Mainstream media gives it a mention every now and again. When the BP Oil spill happened – it was the lead on every newscast. Fukushima? Flint Michigan water issues? Or the growing drinking water crisis in the US? Once again, it is being covered by alternate media sources. Mainstream media is now talking about Flint because lawsuits have been filed by residents whose children have suffered lead poisoning.
I agree with Hart Guy, objective, balanced reporting is gone. CBC, funded by the taxpayer, is the worst. Marketplace had to retract their “hard-hitting” documentary on Supplements because the lab they used was incorrect in their testing results. Marketplace was forced to re-test at an independent lab. If CBC wants to continue their one-sided reporting, stop public-funding it. Let them find a private donor and the market will decide.
Another little aside is the majors and their paywalls . I don’t know of anyone willing to pay for news . The guys with the paywalls are imo having yet another Kodak moment . Try putting anything in the black press papers that does not fit with David’s fossil fuel push and see what happens . He wants his refinery regardless of what others want . His rags are little more than flyer envelopes . You left out the cash they get from local real estate adverts . It think they get a little more from them than they do from the auto dealers . Their days of shaping opinion are over and they ain’t comin back .
Gotta agree with most of the posters here thus far. Too many news outlets are heavily biased, especially CBC and the Citizen.
I recall 40 years ago that the bias was more to the right side of the spectrum but over the decades it has shifted strongly to the left. A lot of people get fed up and cancel subscriptions. Advertising pays the bills and there’s less and less of it, but I think companies would be more likely to advertise if there were more subscribers/readers. There would be more subscribers if both news and opinion were balanced.
That’s also why the internet has become a favoured source. Big media has lost its monopoly, there are lots of resources with alternative views and most times the sources are available for people to check the facts for themselves. Unfortunately there are a lot of people who don’t want the rest of us to know the truth which is why there are calls from the left to “regulate” the internet and shut down contrary opinion.
Most of the news is so bad that people are sick and tired of reading it and hearing about it. People are jaded after so many shootings or middle east bombings. We are saturated. It’s unfortunate that most news agencies either simply report the news or end up shilling for the news makers.
There is very little in the way of real investigative journalism. Those who want to deceive us are now given a free pass to do so. The media are so beholden to big money that they don’t want to make waves.
Okay, I’ll take the opposing side.
Why would I bother filling up my house and recycle bin with a stack of dirty newspapers that regurgitate the same stories I hear on the radio or TV, when I can go online and read about them in real time, as they happen? Not only that, but I can also find opposing viewpoints of the same story, making it far easier to draw my own conclusions as to what’s really going on.
As for sources? Geez, take your pick! Big city, small city, Canada, the US, Europe, Australia, the Middle East, etc. You couldn’t do that when Gundi’s News was around . . .
I’ll admit there is something nostalgic about the sound of flipping through a paper, but that’s really about it.
Comments for this article are closed.