It is hard to blame declines in newspapers' readership on the Internet. There are other factors involved that nobody seems willing to discuss.The newspaper industry is losing readership. So let's blame the Internet, right? In fact, circulation began to decline around 1970, with the fading of the once powerful evening newspapers. TV news is to blame there. Circulation of morning and Sunday papers was still increasing gradually, but according to Journalism.org's The State of the News Media 2004, "By 1990...even the boost from a growing population was not enough to maintain how many newspapers were sold each day. Circulation began dropping at the rate of 1 percent every year from 1990 to 2002." The slide continues, and now the voice of Silicon Valley, the once powerful San Jose Mercury News, appears to be on the auction block.
It is hard to blame these declines, especially those from 1970 to 1990, on the Internet. There are other factors involved that nobody seems willing to discuss.
Syndication. Local papers have become cookie-cutter products loaded with syndicated material, mostly from The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times. Filling space in the San Francisco Chronicle with New York Times articles saves money, but many people now just get the Times instead.
The New York Times pulled off a marketing coup by syndicating essentially the whole paper to cheapskate publishers across the country. As columns were included, many local columnists were fired. This whetted the public's appetite for the Times and created a megabrand; it's one of the few growing papers in the U.S.
Boring professionalism. Joseph Pulitzer invented the idea of the journalism school before 1900. These institutions spread over time but didn't really take hold until the 1960s. By 1970, newspapers had begun to decline. Coincidence?
A sign quoting Pulitzer, posted at the Columbia School of Journalism as a kind of mantra, epitomizes the problem: "Our Republic and its press will rise or fall together. An able, disinterested, public-spirited press, with trained intelligence to know the right and courage to do it, can preserve that public virtue without which popular government is a sham and a mockery."
The problem is the word "disinterested." It's the hallmark of journalism today and translates to bored and boring. Besides not giving a hoot about the story, the disinterested observer is often hoodwinked and subject to public-relations manipulations. Apparently, nobody sees this as a problem.
The disappearance of the paperboy. I was a paperboy as a kid. It was good money, and my knocking on doors seeking subscriptions or asking to be paid put a human face on the paper. Circulation grew with the population, but now newspapers must offer free subscriptions to sucker the rubes to renew. These offers come from Mumbai by phone, usually when you're at dinner. The bean counters love it. Some middle-aged man now delivers the paper out of an old Chevy.
No sense of humor. Today's papers have no collective sense of humor or fun. This is partly because of the J-schools and the need to be "professional." I haven't seen anyone laugh in a newsroom for decades. This may come from political correctness, or perhaps from some public-guardian ego trip. Maybe too many of the people working daily news beats are just duds.
While recently perusing 1950s-era San Francisco Examiner issues, I was shocked to find that the paper was crammed with small and interesting stories, many of which now would go into the reject folder. The paper had real life to it then—life that is now missing. Let's not blame the Internet for this.
