Newspapers obit

CSM reports Newspapers struggle to avoid their own obit
They face dwindling circulation and competition from other outlets, but are likely to survive - if they can adapt.

Will the last American newspaper lose its last reader before the middle of the century? Journalism professor Philip Meyer thinks it's possible.

After all, the percentage of adults who report reading daily newspapers has fallen from 81 percent in 1964 to just 52 percent in 2004. If the trend continues, there won't be any readers left within a few decades, says Mr. Meyer, an author and former reporter who teaches at the University of North Carolina.

The unhappy prospect of fizzle instead of fizz isn't the only challenge facing publishers and editors. The antics of plagiarizing and lying newspaper reporters have scarred the media's credibility. Recent industry scandals raise questions about whether newspapers are fudging their circulation numbers, and federal do-not-call legislation stopped the lucrative practice of selling subscriptions through telemarketing. And now, free websites like craigslist.com are siphoning off millions of dollars in vital classified ad revenue from newspapers.

Jim Romenesko blogged Cox Newspapers president Jay Smith says: "Don't believe the doomsayers. They've been out there for a long time, and we'll gladly carry their obituaries."

Jay Rosen blogged Want understand why people read blogs? Compare this account in the Christian Science Monitor, "Newspapers struggle to avoid their own obit," to Porter's post. They treat the same subject. The article is a good one by industry's standards. The author, Randy Dotinga, did the best he could within established newswriting conventions. And Porter's post blows away Dotinga's account.

There certainly are changes ahead. The three broadcast networks are rapidly losing viewers to cable news, newspapers are losing readers to online news, etc. I don't expect either to disappear any time soon, but things are changing.

George Will editorialized If you awake before dawn you probably hear a daily sound that may become as anachronistic as the clatter of horses' hooves on urban cobblestones. The sound is the slap of the morning paper on the sidewalk.

The circulation of daily U.S. newspapers is 55.2 million, down from 62.3 million in 1990. The percentages of adults who say they read a paper "yesterday" are ominous. Americans ages 8 to 18 spend an average of six hours and 21 minutes a day with media of all sorts, but just 43 minutes with print media.

The combined viewership of the network evening newscasts is 28.8 million, down from 52.1 million in 1980. The median age of viewers is 60. Hence the sponsorship of news programming by Metamucil and Fixodent. Perhaps we are entering what David T.Z. Mindich, formerly of CNN, calls "a post-journalism age."

Paul @PowerLine blogged The key question is why media-savvy youth have rejected traditional journalism. One explanation is simply that this audience likes to spend time online. However, to the extent that this is the problem, the MSM can react (and is reacting) by putting its product online. The trick is to figure out how to make money this way.

Will concludes that the future of big media is uncertain. It seems certain, though, that it will never recapture either its position as the arbiter of the way things are or its full market share. However, I think there's a niche for big media which can be found where it has always purported to reside -- as a fair and honest broker. What strikes me as most uncertain is whether big media has the will to reside there.

John Hawkins blogged The Incredible, Shrinking Old Media

Ed Driscoll blogged There's no doubt about it: big media's audience is definitely skewing older.