Frank Rich wrote a New York Times Op-Ed yesterday, The American Press on Suicide Watch that does a pretty good job of describing the problems newspapers face today.
"It’s immaterial whether we find the fruits of their labors on paper, a laptop screen, a BlackBerry, a Kindle or podcast. But someone — and certainly not the government, with all its conflicted interests — must pay for this content and make every effort to police its fairness and accuracy. If we lose the last major news-gathering operations still standing, there will be no news on Google News unless Google shells out to replace them. It won’t."
I do spend money on news. I subscribe to The Economist and The Atlantic. I also assume some of my cable TV fees go to entire networks devoted to news. I used to subscribe to the Boston Globe but found it consistently less and less valuable. I had already found out about most things the day before (it's yesterday's news) and it didn't have much in the way of analysis. More and more election coverage is about the gaff of the day or a review of a TV spot instead of actual analysis of positions on issues. There were occasionally really interesting investigative features and I enjoyed them. But I could get them for free on the Globe's website when they published them.
I can pay for a paper or read online for free. I think online is just better. My news isn't wet on a rainy day. I don't have to wash my hands after reading it. With a little mac magic I can click on any word to get a definition or look it up in google or wikipedia. I can usually see the article on one page but if it is continued, clicking a link is easier than finding the next section, page and column (particularly if you're on a train or plane). Even the paper gets better feedback on what articles I read and what interests me.
I can get an electronic edition of the New York Times that's just like the paper edition. I don't want that. I don't want to install a different application to read newspapers. A standard browser or RSS reader should do. I don't want it to look just like the newspaper. Show me the whole article on one page and figure out a way to show me a "front page" in a reasonable way. The home pages of the New York Times and the Washington Post are gigantic wastes of space and difficult to find "news" on. I also want to be able to blog about and link to news articles so I can talk to others about it and let them know what I think and let them read the original article for themselves.
I think part of the problem with this transition is that newspapers put their content on the net for free. As long as some good news sources are free, I'll use them. If the Times, Post, etc. all charged a reasonable fee, I'd happily pay for one. And I still want some way to read the occasional article from another source that someone points me to (either for free or a small fee). I can subscribe to a "paper" on the kindle, why can't I on the web or on my iPhone?
The fact is, newspapers have increased their reach with the web. We don't need 100 papers covering Washington. We don't need 200 professional film critics covering the same 5 films that get national releases each week. And no we probably don't need 50,000 bloggers doing the same, but they aren't trying to get paid. I think local newspapers will have to start concentrating on local news and will be smaller and should charge less. Not having to print and deliver papers should save some costs, shouldn't it? I expect to subscribe to news sources for local, state, national and world coverage. Probably with organizations that specialize in each.
Update: Berkely Blog writes their experience having cancelled the NY Times after 25 years of subscribing. I agree completely.
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