Are Newspapers Headed For Extinction?

Pete's post below continues a discussion (for example, here and here) that CG&G has touched on before and is something that I, as a partner in one of the largest independent communications agencies in the U.S., deal with every day.

The decline in newspaper readership is undeniable.  It's happening in every section of the country and among every age group.  While people over 30 are still more likely to get news from a hardcopy of newspaper, even that demographic is increasingly finding it easier and faster to go online.

But newspapers aren't the only information source losing eyeballs.  Broadcast and cable television newscasts are losing viewers as well.

So the question isn't what; it's why.

Part of the reason, of course, is technology and the growing ability to have access to information any time you want it.  As a result, what used to be a rush to check your newspaper for baseball scores when you got up in the morning now has been replaced by an alert you received on your I-Phone or Blackberry.  And the business news you used to look at in the morning now is probably something you already know about because you have CNBC on in your office all day long.

But technology and the ability to access information on demand wouldn't have developed as it has without the extraordinary changes in life style that have taken place.

For example, while they were getting ready for work in the morning, Americans used to watch The Today Show interview newsmakers .  Heads of state, cabinet members, and representatives and senators would be grilled with tough questions by Hugh Downs, Barbara Walters, John Chancellor, Jim Hartz, Jane Pauley, and Tom Brokaw.  The show’s anchor’s were news men and women and, even when they weren’t, as when former major league baseball player Joe Garagiola had The Today Show helm, reporting what had happened over night and what it meant was the show’s main focus.

No more.  Instead of primarily presenting the news, Today is now a four-hour talk, cooking, and lifestyle magazine program that in most markets airs in time slots once filled by game shows and Phil Donahue.  Britney Spears and Paris Hilton are far more likely to be guests than Tim Geithner and Larry Summers.  And the only thing you’re likely to watch being grilled these days is a steak in a special July 4th picnic segment done on the street outside the studio to the delight of the live audience that has been waiting for hours in the heat and humidity to get a glimpse of Today’s celebrities.

Is America no longer interested in the news?  Hardly.  But watching Today report the news while you're getting ready for work between 7 and 8 am has been replaced with the need to be out the door by 7 to get on the road, catch a train or bus, or just be in the office, plant, or store by 8 am.

The same thing is happening to newspapers: they just don't fit the lifetsyle of as many people today as they used to.  For example, it's tough to read a paper when you're driving a car and more people drive to work today than ever before.  For logistical reasons, it's also impossible for a newspaper to provide the same type of current information as a website.  Sports scores from the West Coast, for example, are likely to be missing or incomplete in an East Coast newspaper but will be reported within seconds of a game ending on ESPN.com.

I'm still a devoted newspaper fan who loves having the time on a weekend to sit with a great cup of coffee and scan the pages.  I want to see not just what is being written but who wrote it, where it's placed on the page, the size of the headline, etc.

And I still buy in to the "romance" of newspapers.  I love the stories from my many friends who write for major dailies about the efforts they made to report a story and get through the gautlet of the editing process by the deadline and to be impressed by their excitement when it all comes together.

But when you think about it objectively, when you realize that the I-Pod is today's equivalent of the Guttenberg press in terms of providing more information less expensively to a far wider audience than was possible before, you realize that the romance of newspapers is really only romance in the same nostalgic sense that people talk about traveling by train across the country instead of flying.

These days, far fewer people do that too.