The March of Progress

Love it or hate it, we live in a world of continual change. It may be argued that with the acceleration of technologies, the tempo of the march of progress ticks faster with every step. At first, a marcher may find himself just out of step, but if he does not correct his course quickly, soon he will find himself trampled and coughing on the dust of the world that has left him behind.

Enough with the metaphor: Newspapers and magazines have been in slow decline since the dawn of the internet. Right now their leaders are at crossroads trying to determine which course they will take. Their current situation is unenviable: Declining circulation, declining advertising, and declining advertising rates have left the industry starved for revenue. For those companies lucky enough to have sizable war chests and minimal leverage, living off their reserves is an option. But even they will be forced to face reality soon enough; like a polar bear lost at sea, his fat reserves can only last so long. For others, the threat is more immediate, and they are being forced to make decisions much more quickly.

At this point, I lead the reader to "The Newspaper Suicide Pact" (by xark!, via boingboing), where the author does a good job summarizing the option that the newspaper industry is about to take: Failure.

I could write a whole essay exploring the reasons why people (and organizations) choose to fail, but that juicy topic I will save for another post. Instead, I will explore the failure of media in the past, with an eye towards what a failed newspaper industry may look like in the future.

I choose the word "failed", but what I really wish to convey is "severely declined", to the point where the industry is hardly recognizable. Let us look to another "failed" medium: Live Theatre. Today it is largely relegated to high-end, high-dollar performances (Broadway) and locally-funded, volunteer-supported efforts (community theatre). Once, theatre was a lively, profitable, and common endeavor. Every city that could support a theatre had one; larger cities may have had multiple theatres in operation simultaneously. What killed live theatre?

To answer this question, we must look at the function that live theatre served: Entertainment. It told stories, provided a place of gathering and common experience, it helped people explore and live lives they could not otherwise experience. What other media provided these things? Books, which lived concurrently with live theatre, could only be enjoyed by those who were literate and whose imaginations contained an expansive-enough palette to color the words on the page. Theatre served a different audience: One that preferred its art already painted.

Movies, unlike books, could provide an experience much like live theatre, but at significantly reduced cost. While the production of a movie might entail higher initial costs (cameras, film, editing, etc.) than a live performance, a live performance required much the same costs to run every night and would quickly become much more expensive than a movie. Simple economics took over from here: If a person could receive his entertainment in much the same manner from a less expensive medium, why continue to go to the old, more expensive medium?

It would follow that theatre should have died out entirely, but it persists to this day. While movies provide an experience very similar to theatre, the experience is still somewhat different. There exist to this day a minority of people who possess the desire, means, and geographic concentration to support the continued existence of theatre. In large cities, theatre is supported by a combination of private and public donation, along with ticket prices well in excess of a comparable movie. The experience to these philanthropists and connoisseurs is worth the expense. In smaller cities and towns, community theatres are alive and well, presenting shows that, while not of the same quality (though this point is endlessly arguable) of their big-city companions, provide their audiences with the unique texture of a live performance. These, too, are funded by a combination of charity, philanthropy, and volunteerism.

I suggest that newspapers will follow a similar trajectory. Online and television news are quickly supplanting newspapers, as both are able to provide substitutable content at a lower price. Newspapers will never be able to compete on a large scale with "free" internet news, "free" broadcast news, and negligible-cost cable news. However, there is a certain texture that newspapers add to the news that these media will never be able to replicate. In cities of sufficient size to support them (and for publications with sufficient reach beyond their geography), newspapers will live on. They will not be the profitable enterprises of yesteryear, nor the ubiquitous part of everyday life that they have been for nearly a century, but dedicated aficionados will continue to demand their news, on newspaper. They will be willing to pay a premium for this luxury, even to the point of starting foundations for their local newspapers. Newspapers will live on, but as (mostly) non-profit organizations founded and funded through philanthropy, charity, and volunteerism.

The quicker the newspaper industry recognizes this reality and adopts its structure accordingly, the likelier it is to find success. The longer the newspaper industry puts off the inevitable, the fewer the institutions that will survive. The changes will be tough: Shareholders and other equity stakeholders will need to accept that a charitable deduction is worth more than a bankrupt note; well-paid editorial boards, luxury offices, and expensive perks will have to give way to the more modest realities of non-profits; and the new leaders of these companies will have to seek out volunteers and donors with the same fervor they once pursued advertising contracts. Ironically, these new newspapers will have to find ways to license their content from the very online and televised news companies that will supplant them. These realities may seem unconscionable, but they are rooted in history. For all of us who enjoy holding an easily-smugged, foldable, roll-able, recyclable bit of paper in our hands every morning, here's to hoping the industry will accept its fate before it dies out completely.