News business going under?
In almost every direction one looks these days, the business of disseminating the news is in decline simply because cost is exceeding revenue.
Whether it be the legacy media, national and/or state news, local news, (print, TV, radio), almost all are dealing with declining profits or no profits at all. Hence, the layoffs reported in all quadrants, across all 50 states, and/or the complete shutdown of news operations.
This includes print, broadcast media (TV and radio), and online news outlets (BuzzFeed News, The Messenger etc.), which are shuttering faster than anyone could have predicted only five years ago.
Even the nonprofit Texas Tribune (texastribune.org) laid off 11 percent of its news staff in August 2023, and it’s almost completely funded through big, big donations, mainly from relatively rich foundations. All of which are disclosed by TT on its website and in almost every story where a conflict may exist.
Last year, Trib staff unionized, as if that will preclude any future layoffs. (It won’t.) And, it could be argued, that unionization will harm more people than it will help, but that’s yet to be determined.
Last year, 124 newspapers across Texas shut down operations, leaving news deserts in their wake. (Source: Dreier Roundtable.)
In many instances, they are replaced by someone, or a small group of people, with a social media account who prefers to post anonymously, sitting in grannie’s basement rent free, decked out in jockey shorts that were last washed two weeks ago, scarfing down four packs of Twinkies, so they can’t be sued when they commit acts of libel. (They gots no money.)
Rarely can they even tell the difference between who is a public figure and who is not. They either personally hold a grudge, which guides their “news” coverage, or they will accept money to publicly shame someone, while dressing it up as legit news reporting.
And so it goes. (A nod to my Cousin Wallace.)
In the Old Days
In the old days, the main two components of any news outlet in terms of churning out local content and pocketing revenue were — editorial and advertising.
The two groups, however, rarely hang out together, and rarely hold one another in high esteem.
Of the two, the news division typically included the elitist snobs who looked down on the ad department, even though it was those people who kept the organization up and running.
This has been deluded in recent years, but that’s only because those working on the news side have been knocked down a peg or two, forced to also carry and work the camera, and/or take their own cell photos to graph a news story because the news photog just got the pink slip. Or their photo staff has been cut to only two, when it should have five.
In most journalism schools across the country, the would-be news reporters were never taught the business side of the business.
My greatest news mentor in the area of news was in the newspaper business for a decade or so before landing a professor’s job at Baylor. RIP, he’s passed on now, but you can still pick up his obit online — Larry Storer, Waco.
A great guy. During his tenure at Baylor, he was the only prof without a PhD, even though he has two master’s degrees.
Yet, he was the only one of the five or six, maybe seven, profs who had ever actually worked for a newspaper. Or any news op at all.
They had spent their entire careers in academia. They could teach the upside down pyramid, but not much about really writing a story fairly and objectively.
That would be like me having gone through aviation college only being taught by guys (including women) who only knew how to “fly” a simulator.
Duh? That’s been the way it is at most journo schools, and most professors have never been laid off, all snuggly in their comfy college tenure for life gig once they land it.
Sometimes, I thought most people on the editorial side just imagined the revenue (their paychecks) grew on trees.
The ad side of the business was mainly comprised of the non-elites who knew the meaning of hard work. After all, selling ads is harder, requires harder skin, than writing a story about the school board meeting.
These are all generalities, of course, based on my 43 years now in the business, but I’ve witnessed the same behavior at weekly newspapers, daily newspapers, aviation magazines, and a computer magazine.
That’s not to say, either, that there aren’t some great, great people who work on the news side of the business because there are. It’s just that the rest think alike in a herd-like mentality.
Which is sad, really, because to create a new news operation, if you will, when a newspaper goes belly up, for example, you need people from both the editorial side of the business and the ad department working together to create something new.
Yet, they share few if any commonalities.
A New Day
Today, the media business is in a state of turmoil.
Why? Because most people have decided they want their news for free, and even though a certain percentage of the population still prefers print, most of the younger readers go online for news. Or they listen to Joe Rogan’s podcast for free.
Question is, who’s going to create the news for free? AI?
Because there aren’t that many Joe Rogans who actually worked the podcast angle for approximately 11 years before he hit the mother lode worth hundreds of millions.
Recent example of a clueless news reporter — CNN’s Jim Acosta who recently left the network that Ted Turner founded.
Jim says he’s going to go online and start his own enterprise.
Ten to 1 that Acosta has no idea how he’s going to monetize his content online.
Online ads sell for pennies on the dollar compared to print ads or TV or commercial ads.
This is where the two previous groups mentioned — news and sales — could actually come together and perhaps create something new: an online news operation that actually makes money.
While some online news sites do make money, many struggle to generate significant profits, or really, any profits at all, due to factors like the widespread availability of free news on social media, on proprietary news sites, declining ad revenue from traditional banner ads, and a large portion of users utilizing ad blockers, making it difficult to monetize content through advertising alone. News outlets have tried paywalls, but except for a select few, they don’t work.
Why? Because, again, in today’s digital age, people want their news for free, and that’s how they have come to expect it.
Or relatively free. Here at The Advance, we only charge $25 for an annual subscription, and that includes both digital and print.
I’m biased, but I still think that’s a pretty good deal.
Meanwhile, let’s check out what today’s FB poster has posted with the name Truth in his boiler plate.
Don’t know who he or she is. They’re going after someone who’s not even a public figure. The information posted is false, because I’ve checked it out.
If that’s the future of news in America, we are indeed in a lot of trouble.
Jan’s Note: There is another major problem with anything put up online and on online ONLY!!! In addition to the very real problems above of false/fake news, the web site can be hacked and at some point definitely will be hacked.
The next biggest problem with anything published online would be that was is uploaded can be changed at any time. That means that anyone who read the previous version won’t have the correct information whether that is an editorial, news story, or public notices.
The internet goes down much more frequently than anyone would like, plus computers crash. When that happens it might be quite awhile before they’re repaired or replaced. Meaning, printed news media won’t ever completely disappear, nor should it.