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bigbrothersrule t1_iy000y6 wrote

Reply to comment by TurtleRockDuane in Fit to Print (2017) - Documentary that tells the history of how Wall Street greed and lack of foresight lead to the decimation of the newspaper industry and tens of thousands reporters losing their jobs and the eventual erosion of a vital way to hold power accountable. [01:33:47] by thenewsisreal

It's rarely ever simple. It started with a short-sighted decision to give all content away for free. That's content that subscribers were paying for in print form, now free for the entire world to consume and/or appropriate. It didn't seem like a big deal at the time because only nerds used the internet, everyone got papers delivered, and classified ads were a cash cow. If anything, this was an extra way to sell some ads. So publishers trained consumers that their content wasn't something they ought to pay for.

Then three things changed.

  • Predictably, in 20/20 hindsight, people figured out that they could just read the newspaper earlier and free over the internet. They cancelled their paper subscription. That made the newspapers even more reliant on online advertising and classifieds.

  • Then, online advertising consolidated into, well, basically Google. All the pricing power left the papers' hands. They were doing all the work to attract eyeballs, while Google kept a larger share of the ad revenue.

  • Craigslist. It cannot be exaggerated how much that low-fi crime magnet of a website changed journalism forever. All of a sudden you could sell or advertise anything you wanted to the world for free. With the last cash cow gone, newspapers were left with a slice of Google's ad pie, and halting attempts to convince people to pay for content again.

The narrative about Wall Street and private equity is completely true, but it's only the outcome of systemic weakness that the publishers inflicted upon themselves in the '90s. The vultures only descend when it smells like death down there.

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fried_clams t1_iy039yn wrote

My newspaperman father used to call all of the mergers and buyouts the "mating sounds of dinosaurs", meaning that they were going extinct. The most important factor in the decline of newspapers was the loss of readers, not subscription and newsstand revenues. They couldn't attract enough advertising revenue after a critical mass number of eyeballs moved to the Web. Newspapers kept enough advertisers, and survived the onset of radio and then TV because they offered more detailed, comprehensive and local news. They kept there circulation and ad dollars.

It is interesting that for all their history, newspapers were joined at the hip with advertising. We all just assumed that they would always stay together.

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nikonuser805 t1_iy07le4 wrote

The Newspaper business reminds me of the underpants gnomes in South Park. But in the case of Newspapers, the transition from the 1990s to the 2030s looks like this:

Step 1. Gather news. Print and distribute physical medium. Profit.
Step 3. Gather News. Distribute through electronic medium. Profit.

And Step 2 is the utter chaos and disastrous shitshow for those who work in the news business. This is where they are today, and no one really knows how to get to step 3.

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