Inkless Wells

Paul Wells on all the latest out of Ottawa—along with the occasional post about jazz. Follow Paul on Twitter: @InklessPW

Categories: Inkless Wells

The Shrinking Newsholes: A Special Encore Performance

by Paul Wells on Sunday, December 14, 2008 12:09am - 111 Comments

Where would you expect an industry buffeted by technological change to make headlines? Detroit, of course, and indeed it is so this weekend. But I’m not talking about the car industry, I’m talking about my own: The Detroit News and Free Press are considering a novel response to free-falling circulation: stop even bothering to try to deliver the paper on most day s. Other news about the newspapers, which may help explain why you haven’t been seeing much news in a lot of newspapers:

Absurdly leveraged and not-overly-bright owner of the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times, among other properties, files for bankruptcy;
Newsweek follows 111 job cuts last year with perhaps 60 this year, designed to close most of the magazine’s foreign bureaus and many of its regional offices in the U.S.;
Time lays off dozens to follow the hundreds they laid off last year; shutters the ghost-of-its-former-self Canadian edition for which I wrote an occasional column in the early 2000′s; plays host to further rumours and backbiting.

Our own situation is better, but Maclean’s did lay off six of our friends and colleagues last week because the bosses anticipate a bad year across the industry for ad sales. (Chris Selley landed here, for the many who miss him here.) The boss tells a magazine-industry website (which used to be a print magazine until the industry slump killed it earlier this fall) essentially what he tells us: Maclean’s has done extraordinarily well compared to most of the industry, but our gravity-defying act is imperfect in an environment of general slump.

Assorted schools of thought hold that blogs will fill the holes left by all of this. I won’t quarrel. If you think the problem is that the mainstream media are too squishy and socialist, you will have company over at Small Dead Animals. If you think we are too capitalist and corporate, Bigcitylib waits to welcome you. If you’re less convinced that a handful of industrious bloggers can begin to fill the gap that’s left when a great city like Detroit loses any semblance of daily newspaper reporting, then I’m afraid I don’t have an awful lot of reassuring news for you, but if it’s any consolation I agree completely.

Tags: shop talk

More by Paul Wells

archangel

Jack Mitchell,

Trapped. Like a bee in a windowpane.
Mike T.

I haven’t read the comments, but it is shocking to compare bigcitylib to SDA. It’s not even that the left-right balance is so skewed, it’s that the reality/paranoid fantasy balance is so skewed.
Jack Mitchell

Steve: “I tried explaining this to my daughter but she’s still convinced she wants to be an artist. I suggested maybe a video game designer, or quelle horreur an architect.”

I’ve always thought video game design was a growth field artistically, sort of the logical destination of installation art. They aren’t really there yet, but maybe by the time she grows up? If only they didn’t have to spend 90% of their energy and resources reinventing the wheel, i.e. the game engine, every time. I wonder if there is a natural limit to how sophisticated graphics can get; I suppose time will tell.

I’ve known a few architects and they are all nice people. They have the advantage of working in a collaborative environment, like Renaissance painters; though this does keep them poor and overworked for the first decade or two of their careers. But they also don’t have to spend half their time wondering why they exist, which is a major bonus.

Painters, on the other hand, if they make it, make it big. It’s their work you should be collecting as they’re on the way to the morgue, as it’s tangible & thus has scarcity value. Though I suppose Byron’s manuscript of Don Juan must be worth something by now. About as much as a third-rate Rothko.

For your daughter, what about . . . journalist? Or does that word make every Dad despair?

Speaking of architecture, though, it’s a good reason not to despair about journalism. Forty years ago you’d have said it was a dead art; now they’re doing rather well. Personally I don’t think we’ll lose our need for news (and thus professional analysis), though we might if things continued as they’ve been continuing; I mean, we’re headed for the end of oil and some horrible epidemic at a minimum. Stay tuned, younger generations!
Steve Wart

Jack, your comments remind me of a quotation that once had a profound effect on me. I apologize for rendering them here in English:

And opening the window of his cell he pointed out with
his finger the immense church of Notre-Dame, which, outlining
against the starry sky the black silhouette of its two towers,
its stone flanks, its monstrous haunches, seemed an enormous
two-headed sphinx, seated in the middle of the city.

The archdeacon gazed at the gigantic edifice for some time
in silence, then extending his right hand, with a sigh, towards
the printed book which lay open on the table, and his left
towards Notre-Dame, and turning a sad glance from the book
to the church,–”Alas,” he said, “this will kill that.”
archangel

Steve Wart,

“or quelle horreur an architect.”

Speaking from some experience, I agree that architecture is a profession can be a horror for all but those with a consuming passion:

“The author describes the benefits of becoming an architect, including the opportunity to express oneself creatively, to improve the environment, and to achieve notoriety. But he doesn’t hesitate to show the other side—the lack of steady work and appropriate compensation, the intensity of competition, the restrictions imposed by clients, and the high degree of anxiety and disillusionment among young architects. Written in a clear, accessible style, the book is accompanied by the authors often-humorous illustrations and a valuable appendix.”

– Architect? A Candid Guide to the Profession, Revised Edition by Roger K. Lewis

Perhaps your daughter should read the book before she decides?
Steve Wart

Thanks archangel – it seems all worthy professions come with a healthy portion of angst and self-doubt. I will look it up
Jean Proulx

I’m training to be a teacher. I’ll be poor but happy. Or that’s my hope at least.
http://ragingranter.blogspot.com Raging Ranter

It’s a bizarre manifestation of supply and demand and the free market, which probably explains why it’s failing so badly.

Ti-Guy, your argument is what’s failing badly. You hit on some legitimate points, then hopelessly mangled them with your own twisted, er… reasoning, for lack of a better word.

Taking four paragraphs to say, “Dose eelites is running tings,” doesn’t strengthen your argument. Quite the opposite.
Sisyphus

RR – perhaps if Ti-Guy were to illustrate his points with images of chimps and baboons it all might make more sense to you.
http://jaycurrie.info-syn.com Jay Currie

I would say print is pretty much dead in five years. When was the last time you saw anyone under thirty reading an actual newspaper? Or over forty for that matter.

What we are waiting for is “electric paper”. Something magazine sized, about the same weight, with the readability of print (sorry I-phone/blackberry). Think third generation Kindle. But with cell capacity, online ability and 10,000 song storage. At that point say good bye to Macleans, NP, G+M, most of Southam. The Toronto Star will continue as a zombie unit for the illiterate and the Liberals in the enclave.

The revenue model is hard to figure – click through ads, display, crawlers. But, remember, no more dead trees and ink so costs drop hard.

The real value players will be editors. Both branded, as in Macleans, and freelance. Chris Selley was probably the most valuable long term player Macleans had simply because he could pick great stories and introduce them well. (Pretending Taylor is any sort of replacement is a joke.)

Reporting will still get done. A syndicate of twenty well followed editors could buy Kady or Paul’s output at $40.00 a day a piece and they would likely show up. But the younger, prettier, faster, smarter Kady and Paul might be on offer with video for $5.00 a day. The competition will be brutal and it will then, as now, be determined by editors.

Ultimately, and we are talking years not decades, we will have a much richer media mix without the intervening layers of political correctness, editorial bias and dead tree ethos which has brought the print media so low.

Come the day.
http://demosthenes.blogspot.com Demosthenes

Having been a blogger (and reader of blogs) since 2002, I can pretty much authoritatively state that if blogs replace “real” journalism, everybody’s in trouble.

Yes, blogs are a great way of democratizing opinion. If blogs rendered the commentariat of opinion journalists (like, unfortunately, our host) obsolete, I wouldn’t shed a single pseudonymous tear. But there’s no way that even blogs as massive as Daily Kos (or some kind of mythical Canadian equivalent) or as well written as digby’s Hullabaloo (google it, links on this site are problematic) could replace real journalism.

(And the prospect of Blogging Tories with serious cachet is terrifying. Witness Taylor.)