Scaling Newspapers Down

The death of the American newspaper continues apace with sharp cutbacks planned for Tribune Company papers. To me as an outside observer one striking thing about these newspaper cutbacks is how indiscriminate they seem. The NYT's account of the cutbacks includes this:

“The problem is the papers aren’t producing ad revenue, and diminishing the journalism isn’t going to solve that,” [James O'Shea] said. He said it was wrong to think that a paper could cut staff without reducing output and quality.

Literally speaking, I think O'Shea is probably wrong. For example, Michael Phillips did a review for The Chicago Tribune recently of You Don't Mess With the Zohan. Meanwhile, The Los Angeles Times ran a different review of the same film by a different reviewer. But Zohan is Zohan in Chicago, LA, Orlando, and wherever else the Tribune owns papers. Reducing staff such that the entire Tribune company only reviews each film once, and then runs that review in all its different papers, seems like a way to cut costs without compromising quality. Indeed, in principle you could cut costs while increasing quality by keeping on staff the best critics across the company while ditching some of the dead weight.

And similarly, it's not as if running "Exiting race, Clinton solidly backs Obama" by Janet Hook and Noam Levey in the LAT and "Hillary Clinton steps aside, urges supporters to back Obama" by James Oliphant in the Tribune is some huge advance for journalism as opposed to running just one article in both papers. But you never see any kind of serious effort to identify possible efficiencies and rationalize operations. Instead, these mandates for sweeping cuts (eliminating 82 pages of news per week from the LAT) come down as owners are apparently content to preside over dwindling operations stuck in a death spiral of declining revenue, cutbacks, declining quality, declining audience, declining revenue, cutbacks, etc.

Comments

You're right. I see absolutely nothing wrong with having one source of information. What could go wrong?

Posted by eriks | June 8, 2008 4:40 PM

While I think you can go too far with that, I have wondered why the big-city papers don't run their foreign bureaus as a cooperative -- kind of a super-premium AP.

Posted by Delicious Pundit | June 8, 2008 4:44 PM

That's all fine and dandy, but followed to its logical extreme, how do you train the next generation of film critics or encourage anyone to go into that line of work when there's only one or two jobs in the entire country?

Posted by Curly | June 8, 2008 4:52 PM

Ah yes, centralize everything so that there is only one voice and no local angle, cuz, y'know, that worked out soooooo well for Clearchannel. Yup, they cut costs, and then drove away the listeners.

Seriously Matt, do you even bother to think before you write any of these entries on newspapers, or are you just repeating the company line? Here's an idea: why don't you respond to all of the criticisms that you've gotten each time you've thrown out one of these ill informed screeds instead of repeating the same corporate dogma over and over again.

Posted by rickenharp | June 8, 2008 4:54 PM

Our local newspaper chain (Booth Newspapers, covering most Michigan cities except Detroit) splits its coverage that way. Local reporting happens in-house, but much is picked up and shared across the chain. Editorials, sports, local arts are shared. National news, op-eds, non-local arts reviews, etc., are pasted in from various syndication services.

I don't care to defend the quality too much but it doesn't shock the conscience and I imagine it's an efficient use of money.

Posted by The Hoff | June 8, 2008 5:11 PM

Part of the problem is that critics and reviews are, like cartoons, one of the things that motivates people to buy subscriptions.

Kenneth Turan, Michael Wilmington, Roger Ebert et al have followings and fans. No beat reporter that covers Chicago labor news has an equivalent following.

Posted by PTS | June 8, 2008 5:19 PM

Jesus fuck Rick get a grip. The newspapers are in a death spiral and you want more critics following Zohan? From what I heard it sucked. Unless you have a serious counterproposal STFU.

Posted by Drew | June 8, 2008 5:24 PM

Matt is back to his asinine "does the LAT and the Chicago Tribune really need two movie reviewers?" package-deal fallacy over the important issue of the homogenization of the media.

To answer his question, no, both Trib-owned papers do not really need to have to spend the money for redundant movie reviewers.

But they sure as shit need to have separate Washington bureaus to hedge against the groupthink so endemic to political coverage.

The television networks do a fine job already of framing the debate to the specifications of the owners of the USA. We don't need the newspapers to go any further down that road than they already have.

Posted by Clive A. | June 8, 2008 5:26 PM

I think you guys are being a little too tough on Matt here. Some stories are clearly national in their primary iteration (the war, presidential races, wide-release movie openings, the Olympics, the NBA draft). It would make sense for a big newspaper conglomerate to have a "national bureau" or something to write the hard news story about these sorts of things, and then let local papers cover local angles as they emerge. It certainly makes more sense to save money by consolidating in stories with a national audience than by letting go the local theater critics or the police reporters.

Posted by southpaw | June 8, 2008 5:28 PM

Newspapers need two things to exist, a public that can read at the high school level and people who care about their local community.

Virtually every newspaper in the country has supported open borders and unlimited immigration and has supported lowering education standards in the public schools. So now, most large urban areas are a vast mix of diverse interests where recent immigrants have zero interested in their community and most pulbic high school graduates are not educated enough to read a newspaper and understand what they are reading.

It seems like their is a little poetic justice for what is happening to newspapers. Maybe they should have supported better academic educations in the schools and should have suppport a well rounded education so that their readers would have some culture in common.

Posted by superdestroyer | June 8, 2008 5:35 PM

You don't need any reviewers to know that Zohan would suck. Unfortunately, I got dragged to it by my Sandler-loving friend, but even he thought it sucked. Go see the panda movie instead.

Posted by Mike | June 8, 2008 6:13 PM

Newspapers need two things to exist, a public that can read at the high school level and people who care about their local community.

Three things -- you forgot coupon shoppers.

Posted by dj moonbat | June 8, 2008 6:20 PM

That's all fine and dandy, but followed to its logical extreme, how do you train the next generation of film critics or encourage anyone to go into that line of work when there's only one or two jobs in the entire country?

Training?? Gimme a break.

There are already literally tens of thousands of people posting film reviews on the Web that nobody pays them to write. Most of them are going to be pretty pedestrian, but the top 1% are going to be really quite good. Their 'training' will have consisted of watching a lot of movies, and discussing them online with other perceptive critics.

They'll do fine, and they'll work for free. Some of them might get paid on a piecework basis.

But there's no inherent need for a corps of professional film reviewers, just like there's no inherent need for a corps of exceedingly well-paid professional op-ed writers.

On the other hand, we do need professional news reporters. That's the real, irreplaceable distinctive of a major-city newspaper. As I've said here before, it drives me nuts that the WaPo is giving early retirement to Tom Ricks and continuing to pay Robert J. Samuelson.

Posted by low-tech cyclist | June 8, 2008 6:21 PM

Matt's missing the larger point. Newspapers aren't just cutting critics, they're cutting metro reporters, closing foreign bureaus and reducing their DC presence to just enough to say they've got an office there. And while you may not need a separate person from each paper covering the Hillary speech, you sure as hell need those folks covering the local delegation and fishing out bigger stories. As we've seen the last seven years, it's often the reporters for smaller papers such as the Boston Globe or the folks at Knight-Ridder (McClatchy) who were breaking really important stories. If we leave everything up to the AP, Times and Post, we're doing ourselves a huge disservice. We like to think that blogs are super awesome, but it's still newspapers that do the vast majority of important journalism in this country. No question that we're worse off because of their decline. And maybe the LA critic loves Sandler and the Chicago critic has some brains in his head. Variety ain't a bad thing.

Posted by NHCt | June 8, 2008 6:24 PM

Zohan was terrific. Extremely funny and it was hilarious how they portrayed the Muslim terrorists.

Posted by Mark | June 8, 2008 6:39 PM

While I agree with the premise that national stories like wide release movies probably do not need to be covered by unique critics in every local market, Chicago and LA are probably uniquely bad examples.

To the extent that the L.A. Times has a competitive advantage, being the local paper of the entertainment industry is it. Even conservatives would read the entertainment and sports. The Times sports page has declined over the years, but so its Calender section really is the core of the paper. Done right, a L.A. Times review really does have unique insight from its proximity to the studios.

On the Chicago side, my experience is that no major U.S. city is more touchy about cultural imperialism. Take away a beloved local critic in favor of a Los Angeles based one and there would be a genuine outcry.

This under-scores the real problem, the Tribune Company was stupid in acquiring the L.A. Times in the first place. There just are not that many efficiencies to be found in that combination. More logical would be a cross platform combination within the same local market. A newspaper, a TV station and a couple Radio Stations within L.A. cover many of the same things. With the web blurring those lines anyway, it makes a certain amount of sense to just merge those operations.

Posted by Dean | June 8, 2008 6:43 PM

While I agree with the premise that national stories like wide release movies probably do not need to be covered by unique critics in every local market, Chicago and LA are probably uniquely bad examples.

To the extent that the L.A. Times has a competitive advantage, being the local paper of the entertainment industry is it. Even conservatives would read the entertainment and sports. The Times sports page has declined over the years, but so its Calender section really is the core of the paper. Done right, a L.A. Times review really does have unique insight from its proximity to the studios.

On the Chicago side, my experience is that no major U.S. city is more touchy about cultural imperialism. Take away a beloved local critic in favor of a Los Angeles based one and there would be a genuine outcry.

This under-scores the real problem, the Tribune Company was stupid in acquiring the L.A. Times in the first place. There just are not that many efficiencies to be found in that combination. More logical would be a cross platform combination within the same local market. A newspaper, a TV station and a couple Radio Stations within L.A. cover many of the same things. With the web blurring those lines anyway, it makes a certain amount of sense to just merge those operations.

Posted by Dean | June 8, 2008 6:50 PM

"there's no inherent need for a corps of exceedingly well-paid professional op-ed writers."

Or wannabe pundits for online magazines, either.

But the bottom line is - the Web can do all this. Who needs this on paper?

I haven't read a newspaper in ages. I get my daily news from Google News which links me to the stories of interest to me (along with my tech site sources for the tech info I need). I get my background info and analyses from Web sources that don't tread the MSM - or blog - party line - from sites like Asia Times who has a reporter who can get "embedded" in the Taliban. Try that from some clown from the New York Times.

I get my local purchase info from Craigslist and Google and my local movie listings from the sites providing that. (I used to use CitySearch for that, but they got lame.)

Newspapers are OVER. Close them down and forget about it. Or more properly, move them to the Web and figure out how to fund the reporting using independent reporters.

Do the best reporters work for newspapers - or for themselves? I bet the latter.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | June 8, 2008 6:57 PM

Part of the problem is that critics and reviews are, like cartoons, one of the things that motivates people to buy subscriptions.

Boy are these newspapers going to be fucked when the rest of the world discovers rottentomatoes.

Posted by jbryan | June 8, 2008 7:17 PM

My interpretation of Matthew's notion here - or at least my own best idea - is that he is calling for national newspapers with local editions.

No, we don't want only one take on DC politics; but the idea that the LA and Chicago papers writing their own stories on it creates two different narratives is a very web-centered concept: in fact, it creates only one narrative in LA, and only one narrative in Chicago. The fact that the two might differ is immaterial.

Meanwhile, the effort to make sure that each paper does the same national story independently means that fewer different stories get written, there's less local coverage, fewer independent investigations, etcetera.

It would be great if in every major city you could get your paper with local coverage plus the New York Times's national coverage, or your different paper with different local coverage plus the Wall Street Journal's national coveragem etcetera. It couldn't be worse than what we have now, anyway.

Posted by Warren Terra | June 8, 2008 7:27 PM

I'd be curious as to whether MY would want fewer different reviews of Heads in the Sand.

Posted by Ronnie Pudding | June 8, 2008 7:30 PM

I sense a conflict of interest here, Matt. If the newspapers take your advice, they'll end up producing coverage that looks even more ridiculous and monopolistic than it already does, thereby making weblogs look that much better by comparison.

The real fallacy gripping the nation's media boardrooms is that shoppers (i.e. free-sheet adzines) represent a good business model for daily newspapers. The reality is that newspapers have gotten into trouble by getting hung up on print and failing to remember that they are first and foremost media (doesn't really matter how they distribute the product, as long as they distribute it) -- and in so doing conceded an enormous share of the classified ad space to Google, Yahoo and Craigslist. Because they've missed that opportunity they are now in the resulting downsizing mode and there's not a lot that can be done, other than to realize that healthy newsrooms are CRITICAL in differentiating their product from the online ad machines.

Incidentally, Guardian Media Group in the UK is still doing rather well. Why?

1. Keeping the UK's classified ad market for jobs in the creative, education, government and NGO sectors in their vise-like grip in the online age, as they have for 25 years. The Guardian is Britain's leading newspaper for classified advertising, and it's in the classifieds that US media are getting KILLED.

2. A redesign that actually helps their customers as opposed to just making the paper look prettier. The Berliner redesign a year or two ago downsized the paper far enough to make it convenient to read on public transport, while still leaving it just large enough to be recognizably a broadsheet, and leaving that broadsheet fold in the middle that prevents it from falling apart like a tabloid does.

3. Through all the ferment, protecting the quality of their newsroom.

Where have they gone wrong? Primarily like the US papers in not embracing the web in its entirety fast enough; they should have had ads on there earlier than they did, they should have had better search features and better tracking of comments sooner than they did, and so on. But substantively they did what they had to do; protected their classifieds, protected their newsroom, made themselves more customer-friendly.

Posted by DBX | June 8, 2008 7:46 PM

But the bottom line is - the Web can do all this. Who needs this on paper?

I haven't read a newspaper in ages. I get my daily news from Google News which links me to the stories of interest to me (along with my tech site sources for the tech info I need). I get my background info and analyses from Web sources that don't tread the MSM - or blog - party line - from sites like Asia Times who has a reporter who can get "embedded" in the Taliban.

That reminds me of the Congressman who wanted to cut funding for the Census Bureau, saying that he could get all of their numbers from an almanac, so what did people need the Census for?

I hope the analogy is obvious.

Posted by low-tech cyclist | June 8, 2008 8:06 PM

Having worked on the business side for a major newspaper I can tell you that what newspapers need to be profitable is classified advertising: employment, real estate and car sales. Look at the classified section of any major paper today and the classified section of any major paper 20 years ago. You'll see the difference and you'll know everything you really need to know about what has killed the newspaper. Its most profitable, steadiest and most predictable business has gone to the web.

Newspapers used to be a major cash cow. They still can make money but profits have declined substantially. American business expects growth every year and it isn't going to happen.

It's not about the quality of the reporting. It's not about the literacy of the readers. It's about the classified advertising.

(I worked on the business side in print media - newspapers and magazines - for a number of years. It's my opinion that traditional print is dead. Its only a matter of time before the corpse starts kicking. The web is simply faster, better and cheaper.)

Posted by Sherry | June 8, 2008 8:12 PM

The Intertoobs aren't going to kill newspapers anymore than cable killed network tv.

That said I'm not sure either should be treated financially the same as Lays potato chips.

Posted by mcd | June 8, 2008 8:13 PM

sherry,

Literacy and culture connection is important. Everyone newspaper knows that whites are much more likely to read a newspaper even without many classified ads. Blacks are less likely than whites but more likely than Hispanics with Asian pulling up the rear. If you look at the demographics in Los Angeles, they are a killer for newspaper. Literate Hispanics and isolated immigrant communities are not going to read the Los Angeles Times or probably look at Craigslist.

Posted by superdestroyer | June 8, 2008 8:30 PM

Yo Drew!

I'd ask you (along with Matt) to actually get informed on the topic before you start hurling the insults. For example, you might want to read this article from the Washington Monthly on the DECLINE of Clear Channel after they did specifically what Matt is suggesting here.

(Here's a wild concept - maybe the decline in readership is due to the fact that newspapers don't report NEWS anymore! Or that they all give the same viewpoint!)

More to the point, what happens when the movie isn't something incredibly stupid like "Zohan", but something like "War, Inc." or "Stop Loss", and the reviewer and the person doing the reviews is somebody like Michael Medved? (Let's not even address the concept that different movies might play differently in different parts of the country - I'll assume that concept is just way over your head)

Matt keeps bring out this same tired old trope over and over again and gets ripped in the comments EVERY TIME but he never addresses any of the complaints, and then comes out with the same stupid idea over and over again. Even worse, he treats this topic like there is only one true viewpoint for everything (news, reviews, etc.) and that somehow by just having one voice spouting that opinion that that one truth will be communicated, missing the fact that all news is subjective and that consolidation means consolidation of opinion, not consolidation of actual facts (ie. - news).

So there you go Drew, I actually had a point and backed it up with real world examples. What have you got, besides insults that is? My guess is "not much".

Posted by rickenharp | June 8, 2008 9:07 PM

Yes, literacy and cultural connection plays a major role in circulation. When Mark Willes took over the Times, not having a background in publishing, he thought the circulation issues were the problem. People who had been with the Times for some time found him laughably naive and found his circulation drives embarrassing. Display advertising revenue caused by lower circulation numbers wasn't the problem. The problem was the loss of the easy cash flow from classifieds.

Personally I had nothing to do with the events that led to the deterioration of the Times, but people I know well were right at the center, and I had a front row seat. I'll be shocked if within the next five years someone doesn't write a book about the dysfunction that was Times Mirror after Otis Chandler left.

The Internet has already killed newspapers. The only ones that have a viable future are the truly local papers that provide an advertising outlet for local businesses who are not well served by the broad reach of TV, radio or large metropolitan newspapers.

As a footnote, I now own a small business comprised of two stores. Many of my employees are Latino, and they are marginally literate but they do look at Craigslist quite a bit, actually to a degree that really surprises me. They struggle with my very simple point of sale system, but they spend slow times searching on Craigslist, Ebay and other web sites. I know some small business owners who ripped out the Internet connection because they didn't want their employees surfing the net. Do not assume that immigrants do not use the net.

Posted by Sherry | June 8, 2008 9:09 PM

So just exactly why does The Atlantic have more than one blogger? Wouldn't one blogger be enough? And why do we need so many books on Lincoln or Nixon? Or about love?

It is a logical fallacy to equate journalists writing on the same topic with them writing the same story.

Yes, newspapers are dying. Their business model no longer works. As has been pointed out, cutting quality by reducing staff can only hasten the end. It's like the restaurant that is losing money so they decide to save money by buying lower quality food and using fewer servers. Lower expenses and no more customers either.

We may no longer need newspapers but we always need more good journalists and other types of writers.

Posted by eve | June 8, 2008 9:55 PM

"That reminds me of the Congressman who wanted to cut funding for the Census Bureau, saying that he could get all of their numbers from an almanac, so what did people need the Census for?

I hope the analogy is obvious."

Not only is the analogy not obvious, it doesn't even make sense.

I specifically suggested that the news organizations run Web sites rather than expensive paper and use independent reporters to provide the news instead of running their own news organizations which are subject to political editorial control. (Of course, the sites could still use only independent reporters who followed their party line, so I'm not sure how much better that would be.)

Here's the bottom line: What significant function does a "newspaper" do or market that it serves that the Web can't do better?

Answer: Nothing.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | June 8, 2008 10:46 PM

OK, Richard, I'll explain the analogy: the stories you're reading that Google News points you to are from NEWSPAPERS. Newspapers are the leading providers of news online.

Posted by too many steves | June 9, 2008 12:33 AM

"Zohan" may be "Zohan" and not need localized reviews, but a lot of cultural output, from indie rock bands and opera productions to plays and art exhibits, varies widely and is perceived differently from one community to the next. Emptying the local paper's critical stable merely assures that the paper will concentrate on commercial mass entertainment such as Hollywood movies, network TV and the bands played on Clear Channel stations. Weren't we supposed to be getting past that kind of top-down pop culture?

As to political reporting, this is the very last year you want to see local and regional expertise disperse or disappear. Half the states in the country are tossups or barely leaning to Obama or McCain. Anybody really think some New York- or Washington-based reporter dropping in on Raleigh, Grand Rapids, Wilkes Barre or Albuquerque is going to find, let alone understand, the voters who will swing this election?

Posted by allbetsareoff | June 9, 2008 12:36 AM

Hollywood would gladly pay the critics themselves if they could do it without it being scandalous. More writers = bigger chance that someone other than Earl Dittman will come up with a quote for your sucky film.

On the other hand, no politician would bankroll a political reporter.

(Worth remembering re: GMG that the group includes Auto Trader. But the British model has long been to have staff critics for the nationals and let the local papers do capsule reviews.)

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | June 9, 2008 1:03 AM