The students in my advanced reporting class are among the few students at Emory University who hold a newspaper (other than the campus semi-weekly) in their hands when they read it. The only reason they do is because I require them to bring The Atlanta Journal-Constitution to class, rather than access it online, and I give them occasional pop quizzes to make sure they're reading it.
They don't like that a bit.
These are journalism co-majors, but most of them had never read a daily newspaper before they entered the journalism program, and I have no illusions that any of them will read one in print after they graduate. I may be Peter with my finger in the dike, holding back the flood of technology, but I'm tilting at windmills, and I know it.
I was reminded of this when the latest circulation figures for daily newspapers were released. Circulation was down an average of 2.6% during weekdays in the past six-month reporting period and more than 3% on Sundays. The San Francisco Chronicle led the downhill slide with a drop of more than 16%. Some executives subsequently pointed out that print readership, as opposed to circulation, is holding steady, and that readership of newspaper websites is growing.
Bored readers
Media critics on the right took the circulation decline as good news, another sign, in their view, that the press is continuing to lose credibility. There might be a hint of truth in that, but perceived bias in the press runs a poor second to the alienation caused by readers' boredom, the utter predictability of news coverage and the self-absorption reflected in the reporting of stories such as the indictment of Scooter Libby, Vice President Cheney's chief of staff. This was an example of the press assuming that its own limited involvement was what readers were really interested in.
But these factors are sidebars to the main story, which is that technology is changing so fast that newspapers aren't keeping up.
For starters, the economic model on which newspapers are based is slowly disintegrating. At a time when Wall Street is hounding publicly owned newspaper companies to increase profits, classified ads – one of the mainstays of revenue – are being lost to Internet sites. Another cash cow, department store ads, is shrinking because of retail consolidation and the growing popularity of online sales and auction sites. Newspaper websites hold some promise as revenue generators, but so far it's mostly a promise.
Second, the newspaper production and distribution system makes less sense in the digital age. Except for innovations in printing technology, and a dramatic shift from afternoon to morning newspapers, it has changed little in 100 years.
Every day, thousands of trees and tons of old newspapers are ground up and pressed into newsprint. Every night, massive presses roll in cities across the USA. Then, thousands of trucks fan out across cities and suburbs and countryside hauling newspapers to drop-off points, where tens of thousands of other drivers in cars, pickups and vans grab a few hundred copies and speed through neighborhoods before dawn, tossing them in the general direction of houses.
The problem is that tens of millions of Americans now have the choice of either fetching that paper – if they can find it – or simply clicking the mouse on their home or office computer and getting most of the same information free.
Free information
Which goes to the heart of the matter: Information that's free usually crowds out information that's not. And free or not, people like choice. Technology has given the consumer the upper hand in both cases. (Two examples: We have four iPods at our house now. A year ago we had none. Why listen to someone else's choice of music when you can create your own? My son-in-law, a pro football addict, has two satellite systems and TiVo. No more commercials for him; no more halftimes, either.)
This shift doesn't mean newspapers will disappear overnight. That might take 10 years; it might take 25. But traditional newspapers increasingly will become niche products for the shrinking number of older readers who cling to the pleasure of sitting with a cup of coffee on the back deck on Sunday morning and perusing five to 10 sections of a newspaper.
And it doesn't mean that we're turning into a nation of dummies, even if our attention span is getting shorter. There will be a market for serious reporting and good writing. But the future belongs to those with ink in their veins who can get beyond nostalgia and live on the cutting edge. Don't be surprised if someone invents a simulated newspaper that can be folded and tucked in your pocket and whose contents are updated 24 hours a day, whether you're sitting in a park or kicking back on a beach.
Too many news executives assumed, or hoped, that the new technology was a fad that could not compete with the monopolistic natural order run by those who answered to a higher calling – "journalism" – and who had an enlightened view of what readers need.
They were wrong, but this is not about journalism anyway – it's about consumer empowerment fueled by technological innovation. And if editors and publishers want to keep their journalism franchise – if they don't want to end up working for Yahoo! or Google – they're going to have to prove that they are at least as smart in packaging and delivering information as they are in finding and reporting it.
With my students' help, even I, a dinosaur who still reads four newspapers a day, can see that.
Don Campbell, a lecturer in journalism at Emory University in Atlanta, is a member of USA TODAY's board of contributors.
