Boston Globe truck, originally uploaded by jtu.
There has been a dearth of posts lately, and I apologize. You ever throw out your back? Yeah, it’s been that kind of week. Couldn’t even Tweet (gotta get me a smart phone). Blech.
In case you haven’t heard, one of the big stories that’s got these media warrens all abuzz is The New York Times’ threat to shutter the Globe. Morrissey Boulevard is apparently hemorrhaging something like $1 million weekly. Ouch. A million here, a million there, and soon you’re talking real money.
Incidentally, 90.9 broke this story last Friday.
A post-Globe future suddenly seems far less hypothetical then ever before, and some reactions that I’ve seen range from cri de coeur to yawning indifference.
Where do you fall on that spectrum?
But before you answer, the following should equip you with a fairly comprehensive understanding of the challenges and creative and economic possibilities the digital space presents to news organizations:
On Point: Local News Without Paper
Among the guests are Monica Guzman, the first digital reporter for the now web-only Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Guzman’s “spirit of experimentation, her try-try-again optimism” inspired Senior Producer Wen Stephenson’s post here (which in turn sparked my post here).
Radio Boston: Super Local News
Uber-blogger Adam Gaffin and Media Nation’s Dan Kennedy are among the participants in a fascinating conversation about how local weeklies are fairing online even as their budgets tighten. Can bloggers fill the breach?
An Open Conversation on Hyperlocal News
I never tire of mentioning this conversation about hyperlocal journalism facilitated by NPR’s Keith Hopper, here at the station, and featuring such luminaries as Lisa Williams and Doc Searls.
“Chaos Scenario”
A number of years ago, On The Media’s Bob Garfield postulated the “Chaos Scenario,” essentially what would happen if the “traditional marketing model collapses before a better alternative is established.” (That program airs on 90.9 on Sunday, 6:00–7:00 AM and 2:00–3:00 PM.) His new book, sure to send shivers down many a media manager’s spine, says the industry is already well into its descent into nuclear winter.
“It Wasn’t You” Is No Consolation
For a more personal perspective on the human costs of budget cuts, listen to Carey Goldberg’s touching commentary. Goldberg was a health and science reporter at the Globe.
Rambly thoughts.
I must admit to being one of those locals not helping… the only time I’ve looked at the Globe is to glance at the headlines on the pile sitting near the checkout at the cafeteria at work. Most of those headlines were completely redundant with information I had read first thing online via Google News.
The big piece that was different were snippets of local and local news that made the front page but didn’t have enough online mass to hit my Google News page. While I have no experience in the field, I think the Globe, and other regional papers, need to cut costs primarily by ceding the national news coverage to other forms of media, and focusing on local and regional investigative reporting. Unfortunately, I don’t know if that is compatible with a standard advertising model.
It will be interesting to see how this shakes out over the next 10 years or so. I’m pretty sure I would survive the death of television and newspapers without a blink; I have plenty of things to keep me busy, and my primary entertainment is through social videogames. I do not think, however, that I am representative; I suspect that my computer geek demographic isn’t the leading wave of an abandonment of paper, but merely a subset of people likely to stick to non-paper media. Paper can’t multitask.
Thanks for the thoughtful comments Nicholas.
Your media consumption habits align themselves with what I have anecdotally observed and read about concerning the media consumption habits of the “millennial” generation, a group that is quite fluent using, RSS readers, Facebook and other digital tools to get the information that interests them (on their schedule).
As you alluded to above, this presents huge challenges to the revenue model for media organizations heavily leveraged in the old ways of doing business. The million dollar question then is: How do publishers like the Globe generate enough revenue to transition to the digital space. Swapping “paper” (or “analog” in the case of radio) dollars for digital pennies just won’t cut it.
I guess we should brace ourselves for more turmoil ahead…
Thanks again for commenting.
I admit to being part of the problem. I don’t buy the newspaper and haven’t for years. And the last few months that I bought it was only for the coupons.
The coupons could still sway me. If there are at least $10.00 worth of coupons for things that I actually use, it’s worth buying the paper. I did look at the Sunday Globe in the store recently and didn’t see any coupons or so few that it wouldn’t have mattered. Recently, a lot of the coupons that I’ve been able to use I’ve been finding on blogs.
The news that I want is online. I’ve found that by the time that I read the paper, much of the news is old. For me, in order for the paper to be worth spending money on, it has to contain something other than current news, because the news in the newspaper is no longer current.
I get my news online and on local tv. I don’t have cable, but again, I can watch some of that online too.
Ironically, my mother recently wrote a Guest Post on my blog about this very issue, but she is not online and still gets a lot of her news from the paper.
One thing that shocks me though is that if either the Globe or Herald were going to fold, I would think that the Globe would be the last one standing, not the Herald.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts Anali.
My parents still faithfully subscribe to the newspaper, though both are online. I know in the case of my mother and her husband whom is often out of the country, the web keeps them up to speed on news back in the states.
Interesting re: coupons. You are the first person that has made that point. I wonder what alternatives retailers are exploring as they anticipating the scaling back of newspapers?