The other day I went out to dinner and the way out of the restaurant I noticed an empty Plain Dealer newspaper dispenser. As I walked about Cleveland, I noticed that every PD newspaper pay-as-you-go curbside unit said “Not In Service”. Being curious I called the Plain Dealer subscription department and the representative stated that their focus is home delivery these days and every other delivery method wasn’t cost effective.
As a matter of fact, the size of weekend edition of the Plain Dealer recently shrank, however the cost of delivery increased. To further increase the drama, the Cleveland Free Times recently was purchased by The Scene, a nationally syndicated magazine, which further dwindles your news choices.
Could traditional newspaper delivery be reaching the end? You can now get all your news on the iPhone by downloading a free news application. Do you still buy the daily newspaper? Will you continue to purchase the local news if the cost continues to increase?
There will always be a market for good content. Even if the trend is to online rather than print. Traditional methods are just to slow to react to the flow of news.
Papers like the New York Times are making a good push online into interactive things like RSS, video and podcasts. Papers that don’t transition quickly will be left behind, unfortunately.
I remember one of my professors commenting that the mistake the railroads made was how they defined themselves. They defined themselves as the railroad. When automobiles, trucks and planes became better choices, the railroads struggled and most died. Had they defined themselves as the transportation industry, they might have sought and embraced the newer ways to transport people and goods and some of those defunct companies might have survived.
I think the newspaper business has been facing a similar situation. Any newspaper that only sees itself as a newspaper will probaby fail. If they see themselves as purveyors of information, they may survive. CNN and MSN will rarely provide local news so there will always be a need to reporters, photograhers and writers to get the stories to the readers. Publishers will be needed to deliver the stories in whatever way the reader wants. The publisher needs to redefine itself somewhat.
This subject is close to my heart because my father was a newspaper man. That’s what they called themselves in his day. He was the editor of Showtime, which was an entertainment supplement for The Cleveland Press. He was there during the Seltzer years, it’s heydey, and died before the paper did. Perhaps that was good. I still have a copy of the last edition of The Press. It was a sad day.