The Death of Newspapers

by Robert McArthur and Armand Vaquer

The recession aside, it appears that the death knell of newspapers is either nearing or already upon us.

The latest newspaper that may bite the dust is the venerable (founded in 1865) San Francisco Chronicle. Its owners announced that they are cutting jobs to meet cost-cutting targets, and that if those targets aren't reached, the paper would be sold or closed down. (They lost more than $50 million in 2008, and 2009 is looking even worse.)

Denver's Rocky Mountain News will publish its final edition today (Friday, Feb. 27 - that issue should be a collector's item).

Other newspapers who have one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel include:

The New York Times. It is saddled with service debts of some $400 million. They have dwindling cash reserves and plunging revenue.

The Tribune Company: (owners of the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, the Baltimore Sun and several others) filed for bankruptcy last December. It doesn't look good for them in 2009.

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune, New Haven Register, Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Daily News all filed for bankruptcy.

The Tucson Citizen is preparing to cease publication. It has been around for 138 years.

Newspapers generally get their income from two sources: their readers (who either paid by subscription or at the newsstand) and advertisers. As more and more newspapers started making their content available on the Internet free of charge, the first source of income dried up, and readers stopped paying for articles that they could get free on the web.

The rise of classified advertising web sites such as Craig's List also cut deeply into newspapers' revenue stream.

The manner in which newspapers (and, also, the electronic media) covered the 2008 presidential campaign didn't help matters any. Many people reacted to the biased reporting in Barack Obama's favor and led them to cancel their newspaper subscriptions. Why should someone support a newspaper whose reporting is so biased that they can no longer trust it for hard news? People no longer have faith in newspapers as the news articles are laden with biased opinions. Advertisers may have decided that their advertising money could be better spent elsewhere.

If the newspapers do die out, the only remaining sources for news will be television and through the Internet. As was mentioned, the biased reporting during last year's campaign has also further reduced the network news divisions' credibility. The networks' news divisions have also felt the pinch of the current rough economy and have also reduced staff.

Even if they also die out, people adapt and new means of obtaining news will develop and will fill the void. It is bound to get interesting in the years ahead.

JUST IN: An annual newspaper industry convention has been cancelled due to industry woes: Breitbart.com

UPDATE (2/28/09): Since this blog was posted Hugh Hewitt posted an interesting article on the subject: Newspapers and the Party of Big Government