A long time ago I wrote about this subject, and I might even have used some of the same Weegee pictures to illustrate it. If so, don't worry because I have a lot more to say about the subject now, and I don't think anyone will be bored. The subject is newspapers.
The question I want to ask today is, who killed the newspapers? Did the internet do it? Everybody seems to think so, but surprisingly the answer is no, it didn't. The short explanation is that newspapers were dying before the internet got anywhere near as big as it is now. What killed newspapers was TV news, which offered news in film clips for free, and which was more current in its updates. Advertisers who could afford it simply moved to TV.
What short memories we all have! This problem was much discussed at the time. I could say more about this, but I have bigger fish to fry here. Remember, this was the short explanation. There's a longer and much more interesting one.
What really killed the newspaper was its inability to adapt to changing times. When the whole population moved to a counter-culture, "Rolling Stone" sensibility in the 1970s, the newspapers retained the same stolid feel that they had in the Civil War. I'm no supporter of the counter-culture, and I almost admire editors for resisting it, but change was in the air and the newspaper people seemed to be clueless about it. Where previous generations could rely on newspapers to reflect some of the sensibility on the street, the 70s generation turned to magazines to do that, and used papers only for the hard news and sports.
I know what you're thinking. It was the fragmentation of America, the lack of consensus, that drove people to the magazines, but that's only partly true. There's no reason why newspapers couldn't have have offered articles catering to different ideas in the same volume. Actually they eventually did that, and it wasn't uncommon to see liberal and conservative columnists on the same editorial page. Really, the whole problem was bigger than simple political diversity. It had to do with the feel of the paper.
Newspapers felt irrelevant. While magazines were talking about The Playboy Philosophy, radical politics, libertarianism, rock and roll, sex & drugs, flying saucers, Small Is Beautiful, talking to the dolphins, the new conservatism, levitating gurus, Black Power, hippie pads, high and low fashion, underground comics, science fiction, the New Journalism, feminism, caricatures, gossip about movie stars, etc., etc....newspapers simply fell back on hard news and sports. What a disconnect! The times were interesting but the newspapers weren't.
You don't have to be sympathetic to any of these new ideas in order to talk about them, but you'd have hardly known they existed if your only source had been the newspapers. And the format...people after the 60s wanted more intimacy, more pictures. Where were the pictures?
Clearly by the mid-seventies the newspapers suffered from a severe lack of imagination. Actually the rest of society did too, but we're talking about newspapers here. Did the unions kill the papers by making it difficult to take on new blood? Did dwindling circulations make them timid about experiment? Were newspapers increasingly owned and run by committees? Were the editors too hidebound? How about tax and corporation laws that put boards in charge of companies that were previously run by one risk-taking individual? Did lawyers deliver the deathblow by suing over everything in the paper? Were their human resource departments weeding out aggressive and gifted people who didn't happen to have college degrees? What accounts for the shocking lack of imagination in this field, a field that once included some of the best minds of their generation? Somebody in the know should attempt to answer this.
The pictures I put up here are by a famous newspaper photographer of the 40s and 50s named Weegee. A lot of them were rejected by the papers so he put them in books. You can see how stupid the newspapers were for rejecting these. This kind of intimate material was exactly what newspaper readers craved, but could only find in magazines. All the newspapers had to do was pay attention to what the magazines were doing to please the public, but they stubbornly refused. Would this have diluted the news? Not in the least! It's possible to have serious news on page 20 and gossip about movie stars on page 30. There's no contadiction.
Newspapers killed themselves. It was a case of unnecessary death from severe lack of imagination.
46 comments:
They died for me when there was no Al Capp, Chester Gould or Walt Kelly.
But at that age, that is all I read in the paper anyway.
An English professor of mine was convinced it was USA Today that killed newspapers. He would throw his chair across the room against the wall it made him so mad.
I still read The New York Times, occasionally the Wall Street Journal, even after Rupert Murdoch. I used to seek out The Village Voice, or the LA Reader or Chicago Reader, but I would say they lost their way at LEAST ten years ago, maybe 20 (about the time Feiffer was let go)
Yeah, TV didn't replace it, although it may have made it less necessary to more. Magazines aren't necessarily doing that hot anymore either...Blame the web there? I'm not sure I would.
Fascinating stuff, Uncle E.
Just look at the comics pages, Hagar The Horrible and Blondie are still being made.
It would be as if the Andy Griffith show and the Honeymooners were still being made, except with completely different cast and writers.
It would be hard to talk to a bigshot at a syndicate without spitting on them
The problem with the internet is revenue.
People flat out REFUSE to pay for content online with the possible exception of pornography.
The New York Times has 1 million subscribers and gets about 20 million unique visitors to their website, but their one million subscribers are worth a dozen times more than their online readers.
For one thing you can't target local readers like with a city newspaper, or how affiliates advertise on television.
Has a banner ad on a website ever led to money leaving someones pocket?
Whats really stupid are articles about how "youtube is replacing television". The only reason I or anyone else visits youtube is because of all the great copywrited material you can find there. If it was nothing but vloggers and mashups the site would collapse.
You might have the occasional "viral video" that gets millions of hits but even then you have to sift through clips of morons droning on for ten minutes of what they thought of the video.
Its pathetic how noones making videos for the fun of it (like you are). Everyone treats their stuff as a product and devote most of their time begging people to subscribe and seeing youtube as their ticket to fame. Have you ever read the comments on a youtube video? Freakin dregs of humanity.
http://www.theonion.com/content/video/youtube_contest_challenges_users
How is that overpaid hack Seth McFarlane's online cartoon venture going? He crowed about having created a viable revenue stream for himself and his sycophants. Was it successful?
Thank god we have satire, A really vicious and accurate parody is the best way to call someone an asshole, it cuts through any obligation to be "objective" and "show your work"
Hi Eddie,Then Why didn't they get inspired from magazines to recreate their medium?
John K could do an amazing parody of the state of todays animated shows
Craigslist is supposedly killing the local papers, because it is CLASSIFIED advertising that supports most small circulation local papers, and some chain grocers. But the internet is not always a great source for local news.
(different anonymous) Some of the gags in Seth`s series have been alright but I can`t get past the art.
He averages about 300k hits per vid. John K could put his stuff to shame.
The show was alright in its first season actually, but theres this unearned sense of smugness to new episodes. Pop Culture satire can be awesome when its done well (The Critic) but all Family Guy does is recreate iconic scenes from 80`s movies with the family guy characters.
You can tell he`s most proud of the fact that he uses a live orchestra and the elaborate chase and fight scenes, but that stuff takes zero creativity to pull off
Denise: Why didn't newspapers learn from the magazines? I wish I knew. The era of high-rolling, risk-taking publishers seemed to end with the deaths of people like Pulitzer and Hearst. My guess is that lawyers and changes in tax and corporation laws ended it, but that's only a guess and I could be wrong. I wish someone would do a book about it.
I miss how monolithic newspapers were compared to the internet. The plebians have too much of an outlet now. I'd much rather read an editorial by H L Mencken than some jackass ranting about why The Dark Knight is the greatest movie ever.
The internet has no style
Ad/marketing executives that pore over demographics charts and market research have made sure that the only culture that is mass marketed is flavorless mush, have you tried listening to top 40 radio lately?
Personally, I'm a big proponent of newspapers. I've subscribed for years to Canada's national newspaper, The Globe and Mail, and read it over a leisurely lunch each day. This is still my preferred way to receive the daily news, as there are often several articles relating to the same story, as well as terrific editorial pieces that take various opinionated stands on the issues. The Globe's internet webpage is also my home page, but I don't read it nearly as often as I do the print edition. For one thing, I have to be at home at my desk computer to do so, and besides the portability of an actual newspaper, I find it so much easier on my eyes than staring into a monitor.
Television news is okay, but rarely goes into the same depth as do newspapers. I also watch our Canadian all-news channel, CBC Newsworld, each day, but mostly just to flesh out what I've already read about with the visuals now added. As a fortysomething introspective kind of guy, I appreciate being able to read the news in the paper so that I can really think about things more at my own pace, rather than having it flashed before my eyes in smaller sound bites on TV.
So I really don't feel newspapers are irrelevant at all, but should be marketed more to we adults who like our news delivered more seriously than most. The newspapers that earn my scorn are the very ones that try too hard to imitate the weekly magazines, with too much sizzle and not enough steak. Actually, I think that newsmagazines are themselves in deep trouble, due to dumbing down to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Look at what a pathetic little thing Time has now become, when compared to what it used to be in the 60's and 70's. Even Canada's Maclean's has suffered of late under new management that seems to want to make it "hipper" and "edgier" to appeal to a younger demographic. Perhaps as we become an ever more fragmented society, older media like newspapers, magazines, and television should go back to targeting the audience that actually grew up with and appreciated them, instead of always chasing the youth who prefer the internet and handheld communication gadgets.
Well said Mr. Emslie. Its weird watching Mike Wallace interviews from the sixties and such http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=tZ8dTT2BRp4
Todays news feels patronizing by comparison http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=7MiXN_GImng
I hate how Cnn has gone out of its way to jump on the social networking bandwagon, they stop every 10 minutes to read rants off of myspace,
the whole "culture of participation" to web2.0 hasn't yielded much.
Anyone who considers themselves a "proud member of an online community" (digg, wikipedia, youtube) is a moron
Pete: Wow! An interesting comment! Like you I like the format, portability and in-depth reporting that you find in newspapers. I also like being seduced into reading news about other people' interests.
Maybe I have different idea bout the content. I don't see why papers can't use pictures to cover more areas that magazines used to cover without dumbing down the news. Of course with diminishing circulation experiment gets risky. These experiments should have been done years ago when the papers were healthier.
Somebody told me that New Leftist Warren Hinkle was hot to update the format of traditional newspapers, but failed and scared everyone else from trying. I'd be interested to find out more about that.
If worse comes to worse maybe papers will have to aim at Baby Boomers exclusively, but the prices will go way up since Boomers don't buy much and won't attract many ads.
Anon: True, nobody, including me, wants to pay for content on the internet. My possibly paranoid fear is that the government will attempt to tax the internet, and that will begin by legislation which will have the indirect consequence of making us pay for what we get for free now. I have no evidence to back that up, but I have strong hunch about it.
isn't all revenue from the internet taxed anyways?
Newspapers will keep dwindling, but there will always be a core market of educated affluent people that are the most desirable demographic for advertisers.
The problem with "the internet taking over" is that most amateurs don't have the resources or skills do real journalism.
I miss the authority Newspapers and journalists used to have, I see them becoming something akin to classical music, still there but only appealing to a specific crossection of society
Don't get me wrong, Eddie, I like photos in a newspaper just fine. Also, illustrations and cartoons, when they're good and look like they were done by professionals, and not five year olds. But I don't like the tabloid approach that many newspapers take, nor the dumbing down of the content to appeal to the rock 'n' rap generation. The Toronto Star is particularly guilty of the latter complaint, with an entertainment section that far too often wastes a lot of ink on sullen faced rockers and rappers. Ugh! It also ran an article some time ago on the problem of ever increasing amount of litter on Toronto streets, where it blamed packaging suppliers, fast food restaurants, city hall, etc, etc. - everybody that is, except the litterbugs themselves! Instead it seemed to take the opinion that the poor litterbugs were the victims of a society that placed too much packaging and other waste in their hands and so were not to blame if they tossed it on the streets. I consider myself a liberal, but I'm not one of those idiotic ultra-liberals who wants to blame society instead of adopting some personal responsibility for one's actions.
In regard to Baby Boomers, I suspect that newspapers targeted more to that generation would actually do very well, as the Boomers are a fairly well-to-do bunch now entering retirement age with lots of disposable cash. In fact, we have a well known entrepreneur and longtime visionary here in Toronto by the name of Moses Znaimer, who is now in his sixties, and has coined the term "Zoomers" to describe this generation of healthy and fairly affluent folks. After having created the very urbane City-TV back in the 70s, he has now moved on to serving the Boomers of today through having acquired two radio stations and a magazine that definitely cater to this demographic. As I'm nearing 50 myself, it's comforting to know there is at least somebody out there who doesn't want to ignore my tastes in favour of catering to the teens and twentysomethings like everybody else seems to do. Maybe with some luck, Moses Znaimer will also acquire The Toronto Star newspaper and get that back on track again.
Dear Sir,
Several of these commenters have claimed, incorrectly, that people "flat out REFUSE to pay for content online with the possible exception of pornography".
This is an attitude that exists partly because of ignorance. In fact their exist many successful internet original entertainment series.
I would like to point out a pair of them, but I will not share my thoughts as to the quality of the things in question (I have my own blog for such things)
Homestar Runner:
http://homestarrunner.stores.yahoo.net/
Penny Arcade:
http://www.pennyarcademerch.com/
The lesson that people have learned from these sites is that internet content is not enough to support an entertainment franchise (even one as tiny as a webcomic). So, they've branched out to providing a tangible good for the consumer's use.
So far T-Shirts and collections of what one is reading/watching are the big sellers. But particularly T-Shirts.
I don't know why.
Merchandise is different from content, if Homestarrunner.com or Penny Arcade tried to switch to some sort of subscription based system me and most of their readers would tell them to go to hell.
The fact that most online cartoonists can only survive as t-shirt peddlers is sad
The future of newspapers is particulary a concern for newspaper cartoonists.
More and more editorial cartoonists are getting laid off. Comic strips are getting slashed (Atlanta Journal-Constitution recently got rid of about a dozen).
One newspaper cartoonist wrote on Joe Murray's blog that he's planning to switch to animation if his paper lays him off. (Murray, BTW, wrote an online eBook on how to work in animation. A good read, really)
So we'll we see more print cartoonists switching to animation? Whether that's good or bad I do not know.
Whos To blame for newspapers decline? blame the hippies of course, they raped the mainstream media forever but i have a different and nonfounded theory to throw out there i thinkk that during the seventies everyone said fuckitall. Maybe the begining of the instant satisfaction generation. TV was widespread by then, WHY READ? Maybe it was distrust. Im of course talkin outta my ass since i wasnt even alive for the '80s but i have a feelin it was for reasons of disturst especially during that era, distraction may have been part of the appeal to magizines
To be honest, The thought of most newspaper cartoonists losing their livelihoods doesn't fill me with sympathy.
There aren't any syndicated cartoons I'd be sad to see scrapped, including Get Fuzzy
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/28784?Revisit
eerie
Radio was the first threat to newspapers, in fact, several newspaper companies bought radio stations to keep a hand in. This happened with television to an extant, too. Television's visual immediacy was a compliment to the hard news of next day newspapers (where you got the full complete story) until Ted Turner thought of the wonderful idea of twenty four hours news (which lead to twenty four hours weather reporting, entertainment & gossip, sports coverage, cooking shows, lifestyle shows, political commentary, etc.).
But newspaper executives were involved in emerging technologies from the getgo: online fax and text services via television, coaxial cable or computer from earliest days, but much of it was clumsily executed. Many far sighted executives did see the end of print media and wanted to get in on the next emerging technology for their companies. You see, newspapers aren't dying, Eddie ... they're evolving. What's shrinking is print media aspect. It's being replaced by several competing technologies that deliver content and it's all about engaging people's senses enough to sell stuff. Remember newspapers make money from advertisers, not subscriptions (how radio, television and now the internet hoodwinks advertisers to fork over boatloads of cash to flog their wares amazes the hell out of me.)
I prefer reading the NYTimes online, but I like my local paper for NYTimes crossword (doing that online is the pits!), and local features and food column but everything else is online content delivered some way via some device and tech like RSS.
The people complaining are the ones whose jobs will be directly affected by the switchover - soon those jobs will be as scarce as cabooses on a train. Print media demise has always been inevitable, it's been a very long lingering death. In twenty years, as a form of news content delivery, print media will be the rare exception, not the rule. There will be printed books, that will continue to linger like an analog art form, like vinyl records.
Jeez, Pete, the Toronto Star may be bad, but the Toronto Sun is a million times WORSE. At least The Star is in a conservative, non-tabloid format.
I, for one, love my local newspaper, The Kitchener Record.
Also, Pete, I think I know the radio stations you're talking about. I don't know anyone my age who listen to the radio anymore, but the Toronto sports stations run commercial all the time with some 50 year old bearded, long haired, sunglasses wearing tough guy DJ saying things like "I don't think it's right to be rude to people. But I also don't care. Look, babe, after 35 years in the industry, take it or leave it"
It's weird how radio is making a comeback for boomers.
Well, the comics are a lot worse now. I mean, a LOT worse.
- trevor.
Dear Uncle Eddie....
I must say I'm always entertained reading your thoughts...
I miss our lovely talks...
gordon
I agree with Trevor. What's this Funky Winkerbean crap? And Ziggy? Yick!
There are a precious few good newspaper comics today, though. Like Mutts, and I find Family Circus interesting in a strangely surreal way. I really like Zippy the Pinhead, too.
Great post, Eddie!
Hey, Eddie, this is off-topic but some idiot posted a blog entry trashing you and defending both UPA and bebop.
First I'd like to say that I've been enjoying your blog here now for a few months...great stuff. I share similar views.
On this, I personally am surprised to see newspapers still in print. They are so bulky and though palpable are hard to deal with and fall apart. If everyone had a laptop that was easy to carry, they would dissapear for sure. These companies could just move their focus and change with the times. People don't recycle like they should, myself included, and though the printers are aware and use recycled paper, it still leaves a lot of waste. I say do away with them...now this pushes the arguement into books...do we need them? as of now, yes of course. But all books could be read using a technological device if they could just figure out a way to do it so we can read them comfortably and where ever. I love my books, but if I had one unit that could hold me library and allow me to curl up and read it, like its papered counterpart, then I'd be just as happy...any thoughts?
Newspapers killed themselves. It was a case of unnecessary death from severe lack of imagination."
That's one thing, another is the many alternatives to newpapers. You can now reiceve news instantaneously via computers or cell phones.
Hi, Eddie! You clearly put a lot of thought into your post but, alas, you;re wrong on almost every point.
I speak as someone who was involved in print journalism in the 1970s and actually edited a weekly paper for about a year.
In the 1970s, this was the heirarchy of news:
Radio = extremely fast, almost immediate, very intimate, not very accurate; could do longer, better researched feature stories but was hampered by the fact the medium consists of people telling things, not showing them.
TV = fast, but slowed down by the necessity to develop news film and edit it together (this was in pre-videotape days); somewhat more accurate than radio, still subject to error and limited by technical shortcomings of the equipment.
Newspapers = fast, but a big daily might at the most 3 editions a day (morning, afternoon, evening) so that information couldn't be updated quickly or easily; more accurate than radio and TV but still subject to error, however there was more space to develop a story and get more details in.
Newsmagazines = slow, weekly at best, but much more accurate as they had time to double check facts and develop stories more fully.
Books = very slow but very accurate; could take months or years marshaling facts to guarantee accuracy.
As you can see, each medium fulfilled a specific niche, with people who wanted more information going to newspapers and newsmagazines while those who wanted to know what was happening right away listening to radio. Frequently a person would hear about a news story on the radio, turn on the eve ning news for more details, read his paper for even more info on it, a weekly newsmagazine for even more details, and months or years later a book to put everything into perspective. The Kennedy assassination is a textbook example of this.
The Internet has upset this applecart. True, newspapers and magazines were in a decline prior to the Internet, but it wasn't a fatal or precipitous one; newspapers and magazines were still being launched and thriving. (The culprit was improved TV technology, particularly smaller, more light sensitive video cameras as opposed to 16mm newsreel cameras which required film processing, etc.; this made TV almost as immediate and as intimate as radio but the audience shift came from newspapers and newsmagazines as the various network news organizations began launch news magazine programs in prime time and late night hours.)
The internet makes things as immediate and almost as intimate as radio, provides video the same way TV does (and because of technical improvements, with greater ease than ever before), a dazzling variety of sources and takes on a story, and, if one is willing to dig, extremely accurate information.
As a result ALL other media are suffering. The problem the Internet faces is that nobody wants to pay for anything on it; they want it all to be free and the Internet has benefit by pirating material from other sources (mp3s, video, art, text, etc.). As money to fund R&D in other media dries up as people look at stuff for free on the Internet, the Internet will also suffer from a drying up of certain types of material (we'll always have LOLcats, I'm sure).
The Internet isn't a good advertising medium, certainly not in the way TV and newspapers were, so the way to make it profitable might be via micropayments. It would mean every local server track every access to every website and pay those sites according to the number of times they receive a hit from that server.
For example, if you pay $10 for Internet access, $5 would be divided among whoever has a site accessed by the subscriber. If someone visits only Uncle Eddie's Theory Corner, you'd get $5 from that subscriber; if you were one of 500 sites visited that month, you'd get a penny. If you were one of 5,000, you'd get a mil (look it up, that's what the Internet is for).
This does you little good if only a few people are reading your site, but ten thousand subscriber visiting your site once a month is $100 (assuming each person visits 500 sites a month).
The numbers I cite are plucked out of the air, the actual figures would be vastly different, but you see how micropayments could work.
I think its kind of funny that he singled out Eddie of all people to "rebutt". What I love about this blog are his weird theories and musings, even if I disagree with one of the 10 ideas I never even thought about in his posts Im still richer for hearing it.
He's acting like he's rebutting some prominent musicoligist
Im going to start writing blogs full of musings about subjects Im not an "expert" in, in the hopes a pompous blogger will come across it and angrily rip my ideas to shreds, itd be hilarious!
If someone takes the time to write a lengthy response totally disagreeing or even arguing with his premise it at least shows that the original post stirred some thought.
It seems that only if a response is against the status quo of a blogger's "fans" does it get mocked for being too much. I'd bet Eddie himself appreciates Buzz's remarks. He more than most enjoys "rebuttals" which is well known to his friends in real life.
Jorge: Thanks for the link! What the guy said made me want to listen to Parker's Massey Hall concert again. I didn't like it the last time I heard it, but I'll give it one more chance.
Gordon: Hey! How's it going!? I miss those conversations too!
Buzz: Holy Mackerel! Now THAT'S a comment! I'll have to reply tomorrow night when I'm not so sleepy and can actually think about what you said!
Trevor: You could have had a second career as a writer! You should try to get back into print somehow!
Pete: I'll look up Znaimer. He sounds interesting!
Anon: True! I love rebuttals! That's what a theory site is all about!
Buzz: Thanks for the comment! I don't agree that you succeeded in refuting me, but everything you said was interesting!
Assuming that other people behave the way I do, they moved to TV for the reasons that I outlined. Some were excited by TV news to look for more depth reporting in the papers, but for many the TV news was enough. The change didn't happen overnight, and I'm sure some papers had temporary surges in their circulation, but the long term trend was pretty clear when you look back on it.
The internet intensified a trend that had already begun earlier. Now even TV news is threatened by the internet.
Your prediction about servers keeping records of the hits on your site, and payments being made based on that, had the ring of real possibility. Of course that income would be taxed and somebody would make the case that regulation would be necessary to prevent fraud, etc. Things like that scare me because it would invite the government into the net.
Thanks again for the thoughtful letter!
No one's mentioned how the printer's ink used to get all over your fingers. Broadsheets are too unwieldy to read on the bus & tabloids are embarrassing.
The Globe & Mail used to have a great motto under the masthead:
"He who is truly loyal to the chief magistrate will neither advise nor submit to arbitrary measures."
Junius
Speaking of printer's ink, Mark Twain once advised: "Never pick a fight with a man who buys ink by the barrel."
As Pete mentioned, Newspaper does go more in depth. This type of technique is often used in marketing for complicated issues, or technical material because the user can read the document, and read it again to fully comprehend the subject matter rather then be passive as a user is in TV or internet advertisements. I think some newspapers are finally catching on with color printer ink when they print the newspaper. Black and white newspaper is very old fashioned compared to today's high-tech ways to receive news and information.
Post a Comment