Molly Ivins: The death of newspapers?

I don't so much mind that newspapers are dying -- it's watching them commit suicide that pisses me off.

Let's use this as a handy exercise in journalism. What is the unexamined assumption here? That the newspaper business is dying. Is it? In 2005, publicly traded U.S. newspaper publishers reported operating profit margins of 19.2 percent, down from 21 percent in 2004, according to The Wall Street Journal. That ain't chopped liver -- it's more than double the average operating profit margin of the Fortune 500.

So who thinks newspapers are dying? Newspaper analysts on Wall Street. In fact, the fine folks on Wall Street just forced the sale of Knight Ridder Inc. to McClatchy Co., a chain one-third KR's size. McClatchy's CEO, Gary Pruitt, pointed out in an op-ed piece that investors are so chicken that his company picked up KR for a song. (Actually, he said no such thing -- he was far more dignified. But that's what it comes down to.) So if newspapers are so ridiculously profitable, how come there's panic on Wall Street about them? Because we're losing circulation -- 2 percent in 2004, and down 13 percent from a 1985 peak, says the Newspaper Association of America.

So we're looking at a steady decline over a long period, and many of the geniuses who run our business believe they have a solution. Our product isn't selling as well as it used to, so they think we need to cut the number of reporters, cut the space devoted to the news and cut the amount of money used to gather the news, and this will solve the problem. For some reason, they assume people will want to buy more newspapers if they have less news in them and are less useful to people. I'm just amazed the Bush administration hasn't named the whole darn bunch of them to run FEMA yet.

more...

http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=20546

"I'm just amazed the Bush administration hasn't named the whole darn bunch of them to run FEMA yet." So true!
I suppose now that Ann Richards has been diagnosed with cancer I must let go of a Ann Richards/Molly Ivins ticket, but I can still dream!
You just get better with age, Molly!
Thanks for posting this and for the link!
Mo

I have to disagree with her assertion that people shouldn't write opinion unless they've worked as a reporter.

In my opinion this is just silly.

I read the NY Times online for the first time in a long time, and I was surprised to reallize that most of it was drivel and crap...

Beards are 'in'
So is unisex perfume
Which neighborhoods are hot to buy property in
Redecorating after a divorce

IE, mostly a bunch of useless junk for 98 percent of the people who would buy the paper to read news (to be fair there was hard news in there too obviously, but it is only a fraction of their content. It was watered down with GQ crap.

There's no reason that the internet news sources should be scooping the newspapers on big stories and controversial topics... a major newspaper probably has more contacts and better contacts than any blog in the world. But the papers have allowed themselves to become a second-rate source of news, compared to what online news has become.

I'm usually disappointed.

As soon as a cheaper, wireless digital paper reader comes along, the wood pulp and ink one will go the way of the whale oil lantern.