Shrinking newspapers, shrinking world
Reports the New York Times: ”Almost two-thirds of American newspapers publish less foreign news than
they did just three years ago, nearly as many print less national news,
and despite new demands on newsrooms like blogs and video, most of them
have smaller news staffs, according to a new study.”
(So much for globalization…. or perhaps American publishers are just comfortable believing they’re each at the centre of the universe.)
The report, by the Pew Research Center, is here. The interesting context, imo, is in this excerpt:
”The study, by journalist Tyler Marshall and the Pew Research Center’s
Project for Excellence in Journalism, captures an industry in the grips
of two powerful, but contradictory, forces. On one hand, financial
pressures sap its strength and threaten its very survival. On the
other, the rise of the web boosts its competitiveness, opens up
innovative new forms of journalism, builds new bridges to readers and
offers enormous potential for the future. Many editors believe the
industry’s future is effectively a race between these two forces. Their
challenge is to find a way to monetize the rapid growth of web
readership before newsroom staff cuts so weaken newspapers that their
competitive advantage disappears. In recent weeks–after this survey
was completed–a new round of newsroom cutbacks, made against a
backdrop of steadily deteriorating advertising revenues and rising
production costs, intensifies the difficulty of the challenge.”
Reports the New York Times: ”Almost two-thirds of American newspapers publish less foreign news than
they did just three years ago, nearly as many print less national news,
and despite new demands on newsrooms like blogs and video, most of them
have smaller news staffs, according to a new study.”
(So much for globalization…. or perhaps American publishers are just comfortable believing they’re each at the centre of the universe.)
The report, by the Pew Research Center, is here. The interesting context, imo, is in this excerpt:
”The study, by journalist Tyler Marshall and the Pew Research Center’s
Project for Excellence in Journalism, captures an industry in the grips
of two powerful, but contradictory, forces. On one hand, financial
pressures sap its strength and threaten its very survival. On the
other, the rise of the web boosts its competitiveness, opens up
innovative new forms of journalism, builds new bridges to readers and
offers enormous potential for the future. Many editors believe the
industry’s future is effectively a race between these two forces. Their
challenge is to find a way to monetize the rapid growth of web
readership before newsroom staff cuts so weaken newspapers that their
competitive advantage disappears. In recent weeks–after this survey
was completed–a new round of newsroom cutbacks, made against a
backdrop of steadily deteriorating advertising revenues and rising
production costs, intensifies the difficulty of the challenge.”
