I only wish it were April 1st today. I only wish this were a joke. This makes me very sad, because I cut my teeth on the print newspaper. I wrote for two large Canadian newspapers (The Montreal Gazette and The Globe and Mail) and a small paper in Utah, as a correspondent from Washington, D.C.
It is the sad economic reality in which we live.
Today is the last day the Rocky Mountain News (with video) will publish. It had failed to find a buyer.
E.W. Scripps announced yesterday that it is closing the 150-year-old, Pulitzer prize-winning newspaper, (four Pulitzers in the last decade), leaving Denver with only one newspaper: The Denver Post.
Print newspaper advertising sales plunged to their worst in more than 37 years during 4th quarter; newspaper advertising sales have declined steadily since 2006; readership has declined for the last 7 years, giving way to online readership.
Traditionally, newspaper reporters walk into a newsroom to be told this is their last day.
Hearst, the company that owns The San Francisco Chronicle this week announced it could close the newspaper, unless it adds more budget cuts or finds a buyer. The Chronicle lost $50 million in advertising sales last year. San Francisco is the nation's 14th largest city.
Hearst is also prepared to close its Seattle newspaper, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, if that newspaper doesn't find a buyer.
The Philadelphia Inquirer filed for bankruptcy protection this week. The Chicago Tribune and the Minneapolis Star-Tribune are also in Chapter 11.
Unfortunately, there are numerous newspapers in deep financial trouble, with few potential buyers interested. A very sad sign of the dismal economic times.
The Death of the Newspaper: Not TV but the Internet
Since the 1960s, the death of the newspaper has been predicted. Television predicted it would quickly eclipse its print sister; but, however great the effect of television news has been, print newspapers did hold strong through the 1960s.
TV news broadcasts did eventually have a great impact on many newspapers: By the 1970s and 1980s, cities that once had a morning and an afternoon newspaper were forced to close the weaker-selling newspaper - usually, the afternoon newspaper.
In the early 1980s, The Montreal Star (the afternoon paper) closed, leaving only the morning paper, The Montreal Gazette. The Montreal Star had been the bigger and better newspaper.
In Toronto, The Globe and Mail is holding strong (I think); it is the more literate, but smaller newspaper, compared to the Toronto Star (the newspaper for which Hemingway once wrote).
Boston is unique in that its more literate newspaper, The Boston Globe has a circulation greater than the tabloid, The Boston Herald. That uniqueness is solely due to the unique character of Boston, owing to its large number of universities and university graduates in the region.
In New York City, the New York Times traditionally had a readership of about half that of the tabloid New York newspapers.
Some newspapers also adopted the tabloid format rather than the broadsheet format, as a tabloid format is easier to read on public transit.
The Chicago Sun Times and Ottawa Today are two such newspapers that are reputable newspapers published in a tabloid format, and they started in the 1970s.
But the readership of newspaper has declined severely over the last seven years. People can read their daily newspaper online and for FREE.
I am one such reader, who gave up daily reading of my beloved Boston Globe in paper format, for reading it online. I now read the New York Times online, and much more often and more thoroughly than I read the Boston Globe. (The New York Times bought the Boston Globe some years back.
Publishers including New York Times Co. and Gannett Co. are cutting costs and seeking to sell assets after forecasting further declines in print advertising sales. Philadelphia Newspapers LLC, publisher of the Inquirer, and Journal Register Co. filed for bankruptcy protection to reorganize their debt.
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Comments: 81
Beryl, I was thinking about you as I was putting up the info on the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
However, I, as a print-addicted chick and a former hard news and feature reporter for 3 newspapers (then computer/biz newspapers and tech publishing), I NEVER considered nor do I now consider ANY TV NEWS Broadcast to be NEWS WORTHY of being published.
Newspapers had to change to more news analysis, since TV news obviously outdid newspapers on timeliness.
I do love print books. I am about 40 behind. I curl up in bed.
Those are my most creative thoughts.
I hate to think I would ever buy a reader. I need quite large print. I will read from my computer, but I don't want a Kindle.
Nothing like a newspaper and coffee.
Read it on the internet a few minutes after the announcement was made.
Heard it on the evening news at 6pm on the day of the announcement.
The following day I saw it in the paper.
I can get internet access on my cell phone for less than the monthly subscription cost of the newspaper and have news in real time. If newspapers are to survive (and very few will), they will need to embrace the internet, consolidate, and perhaps even align w/ cable news channels.
Our local once-a-week newspaper is still going, and apparently healthy....I don't know about the daily, which heralds from a bigger town in our area.
I am afraid we are losing quality to quantity. Smaller and cheaper (and even free), isn't always better. But once it's gone, there is no going back. It's hard trying to recapture the past.
Great Article!
People should try to be as merry as possible. eat, drink, love. sex.
I was merely talking to the point of timeliness. And yes, the braodcast media does have to use the deeper insights from the print media for their deeper coverage.
And news magazines, esp. Newsweek, are all about analysis.
Ed Murrow. I remember him.
Our local paper is terrible; mostly ads, no meat. I wouldn't miss it if it disappeared.
I do recall my sister Tanya's paper route. That's back when they let kids have one.
And, my sister Melissa and I helped her deliver them door to door.
Now, you have to have a van and a license. It's really awful to think that the newspapers are going broke.
We were not at all concerned about our competition, until we saw it fly our heads. By that time, it was too late."
Angela, it is so sad I cannot bear it. But it spurs me to write more stories about the good old days.
To women, HER PHOTOSHOOT
The rest of the country, I am not sure about.
The Tribune Co.'s 3 papers - Chicago, Minneapolis and Philadelphia - plus the Hearst papers - the Chronicle and Post Intelligencer REALLY SURPRISED ME.
But all survivors will be much smaller.
Yes, your brother in law is living the news.
Still, this makes me sad
And wary
and creeped out.
Not your brother in law.
The death of the newspaper.
I had a teacher from one of the Miami papers...I will email you...
It was at an alumni meeting about 10 years ago when this former teacher could barely read the words in front of him (so drunk) but he mentioned how the 'new media' was giving newspaper graduates more and better paying jobs than recent grads were used to...
I began to worry. Seriously worry.
But i never thought the newspapers would die.
The industry needs a bailout. Loan.
And scary, because this is just one of nearly all the industries in deep doo doo.
The Examiner, the Chron's former Hearst owned competitor from when the Chron was privately held, survives as a freebie daily. For many years the Chron and Examiner had a JOA. They shared the same printing plant and had a few other things in common. Then Hearst dumped the Examiner and bought the Chron. I'd hate to see the Chron go the way of the Examiner.
I just lost storytime tapestry, zinester was sold out and I can't get any response from anyone, I cannot publish and they won't give me my own membership list so I can start up storytime Tapestry elsewhere.
Nippy, I read the article, thank you for pointing me there.
Carol, my sister just told me that one of the French newspapers in Montreal is in danger of being closed. We didn't discuss which one.
The ones in trouble or alrready dead are good newspapers. Very good newspapers.
RMN, Inquirer, Tribune, Star Tribune, Chronicle, Post-Intelligencer.