Will all newspapers soon die?

[argonsagas]

How much do you depend on local newspaper(s)?
Do you look forward to getting them and read at your convenience, preferring this to online screen time?
This is what has happened for years at my house.

Today I am wondering, is there any future of newspapers in our world?

Locally, we saw our last newspaper just over a month ago. .
There was no announcement or notice: delivery just ceased.
They had already shut down their offices in Mississauga earlier this year, so phone or visit was not possible, but e-mail inquiry got no response..
Delivery had been very erratic for more than two years, which got many complaints, so my neighbours and I just thought it was more of the same.

Not so, as the Toronto Star, owner of Metroland, which was the parent of dozens of local newspapers, had ceased printing at almost all of them.
This news story tells us that they blame FB, Google , etc, but, to me, it seems they chose this over admitting their own multiple failures to dependably produce good content or deliver it.
Locally, many of us simply gave up as the papers arrived two to three days late, or not at all, thus they very often did not meet the expectations of local readers and/or advertisers whose flyers did not get delivered or were of no use as they arrived too late..

This article explains:

https://www.ctvnews.ca/business/metroland-ends-print-editions-of-community-papers-flyers-1.6563053

.

[bccap]

The days of print appear to be gone. I swore I would never give up the feel of a book and yet now not only use an e-reader I prefer it. Going to the library from the comfort of my couch. Adjusting the font size and brightness to accommodate my aging eyes is great ......I don't think I've even seen a newspaper in a store for quite some time . And can't say I noticed when the boxes on the street disappeared ..... One publication I miss, a victim of the death of print is UHF Magazine ......

[dpep]

Yes, print is not totally dead but is in the process of shrinking to a niche market.

The local newspapers were felled by Craigslist and its later emulators. The constant stream of revenue from classified ads were what paid the bills for local newspapers,

They perform an invaluable function with regard to informing citizens about local government and developments. One way they have survived is to become part a larger national network. The USA Today parent company owns a number of metropolitan dailies including the Times Union here in Jacksonville. (to which I subscribe digitally).

[Vmass]

Man, I miss grabbing a Boston Herald to go with my black coffee..........

[KiwiAlfa156]

Legacy media like newspapers will be gone sooner that later. They have lost there revenue streams. Follow the money. The money is where the eyeballs are. The eyeballs are staring at the 'feed' on their personal screens. Content in the 'feed' is pre-selected and personalized based on the biases and preferences snooped by those same devices. All those eyeballs spending more time in the comfort of their self-affirming echo chambers with personalized advertising. All clicks measurable and reported back to advertisers in real time. "All Hail the Algorithm!"

[argonsagas]

Legacy media like newspapers will be gone sooner that later. They have lost there revenue streams. Follow the money. The money is where the eyeballs are. The eyeballs are staring at the 'feed' on their personal screens. Content in the 'feed' is pre-selected and personalized based on the biases and preferences snooped by those same devices. All those eyeballs spending more time in the comfort of their self-affirming echo chambers with personalized advertising. All clicks measurable and reported back to advertisers in real time. "All Hail the Algorithm!"

I agree that likely all of that is true, but I am still looking at the Metroland group actions, and wonder how often a similar scenario has played out elsewhere.

I still wonder if this group have not been more than a little bit instrumental in bringing themselves down, and use excuses to deflect blame for their own failures.
.
Example:
The standard of writing and the content in our local paper had been going downhill for years, and many readers, including me, complained, but the trend continued.

They did save money by using the same articles, both opinion-type and event reporting, in multiple newspapers across the Metroland chain, but where a reader might expect clear and accurate information, there was often a very decided bias in what was printed.
It was particularly annoying to many readers to see them repeatedly push the issue of "trust" in their papers while ignoring the reality that they were pushing their own very obvious biases in so many articles within the same pages

With every "trust" article written by senior members of Metroland staff, they asked for reader response.....but ignored everything readers submitted that may have helped, so nothing changed.. .
.

[trent]

My great grandfather used to bring big rolls of paper from railcars to newspaper building.

They looked like four foot by six foot rolls of toilet paper...lol

Then my uncle took over, bet they don't use much of it these days

[oldGSfan]

Man, I miss grabbing a Boston Herald to go with my black coffee..........

I used to deliver the Boston Herald, nice to know someone read it!

[KiwiAlfa156]

I agree that likely all of that is true, but I am still looking at the Metroland group actions, and wonder how often a similar scenario has played out elsewhere.

I still wonder if this group have not been more than a little bit instrumental in bringing themselves down, and use excuses to deflect blame for their own failures.
.
Example:
The standard of writing and the content in our local paper had been going downhill for years, and many readers, including me, complained, but the trend continued.

They did save money by using the same articles, both opinion-type and event reporting, in multiple newspapers across the Metroland chain, but where a reader might expect clear and accurate information, there was often a very decided bias in what was printed.
It was particularly annoying to many readers to see them repeatedly push the issue of "trust" in their papers while ignoring the reality that they were pushing their own very obvious biases in so many articles within the same pages

With every "trust" article written by senior members of Metroland staff, they asked for reader response.....but ignored everything readers submitted that may have helped, so nothing changed.. .
.

I know what your saying regarding journalist quality, and I can't speak to your local papers. But I do have some experience in the media in my neck of the woods having worked for a company that provided technical solutions for broadcasters. Also my wife until recently was a TV producer and a columnist for one of our national newspapers for over 20+ years. Over the last 5-10 years or so, they have culled experienced journalists in both TV and print and replaced them with a few millennials trawling the internet for content as part of cost-cutting. Sub-editors don't exist any more, to filter out the factual errors, spelling mistakes and complete BS stories. She was made redundant from the newspaper and her contract with Discovery the owner of TV3 NZ, was terminated earlier this year. The staffing at both the paper and the TV station have been smashed. The live show she worked on was cancelled a couple of weeks ago and the final show will go to air Dec 1st. The reason is money. Or more correctly the lack thereof. There is not enough to support the high labour cost of producing a product that can't attract enough advertising dollars to make it viable. So quality is impacted as staffing cuts bite and more people stop buying papers or watching network news. It's a death spiral.

Folk of the younger generations don't consume news like we did. Social media doesn't give one common source of news -or definition of what constitutes 'news' for that matter. For better or worse, before social media, the one to many nature of broadcasting gave us all a common narrative. A consensus of core truths from trusted sources. The decentralized nature of social media and the proliferation of alternative sources of 'information', allied with a big tech company business model that occupies market share by feeding peoples personal biases (both left and right, up and down) and amplifying them. Believing what you want to believe isn't new. But in the modern media landscape the machinery of big tech perpetrates, perpetuates and reinforces division, because content may be vital in owning eyeballs, but the quality, value, harmfulness and accuracy of that content is not.

[Redman]

I guy I know, mid 30s, part owner of coffee shop.
I told him his picture was in the local daily (well, 5 days a week) paper, front page no less. (him serving a mayorial canadate on election day.)

I was prety much expecting him to ask if I could bring that in for him to see.

But, No. What does he do?
He does something so his cash register / order entry machine can get online and goes to the papers web site.

.

[Eli69]

Well if nothing else it'll save some trees.

[argonsagas]

Well if nothing else it'll save some trees.

That may be the only good thing to come of it.

I still wonder if much of the failures could have been very, very, easily avoided.

Coming clear on position, I used to write things for local newspapers in 1980's and 1990s..
I wrote many things, sometimes very controversial and occasionally very harsh.
t took a while to get there, but I earned a lot of respect from the editors, who printed my exact words, changing not even a comma.
.
I was actually surprised when I learned I had a"following" because many readers really liked my writing.

I feel sure that was in considerable part because I had learned to meet an imperative: write/speak to your expected audience.


To put this in perspective, with this thread my initial concern was loss of my local newspaper, which is only a small part of Metroland and it is that corporation that is in so much trouble.

What I witnessed is that the paper increasingly disregarded its core reader interests, instead focussing on whatever appeared popular on a given day on social media.
They ignored their own support core who expected actual news and solid, factual, reporting, but instead received a flaccid mix of pap and verbal flatulence.
Readership and support for the printed papers dipped and then went away as the paper itself rejected reader expectations of consistent quality and integrity The Trust that they repeatedly spoke about was not lost, if was forfeited in their quest for .....I do not know. what.

Perhaps the decline was inevitable, and may still be, but how many others have done what Metroland did: turning themselves into weak-kneed followers of the wind, instead of leaders?

[trent]

Maybe one day when newspapers are all but forgotten, newspapers will make a come back.

Like vinyl records and turntables....

[Nessism]

The New York times and Wall Street Journal, seem to be surviving okay. Lesser fish wrap, like the L.A. Times, where I live, isn't worth the read. There in lies the rub; as readership has dwindled, and staff writers have been diminished, the quality of the product has suffered. Also, media in general, skews liberal, and many of us don't have any interest in skewed reporting. My guess is that within the next 10 years, the daily paper, delivered to your home, will be dead.

[Eli69]

I get my news from the Epoch Times.