You said it Sister!

I bookmarked this last week for posting and got distracted. Seeing it over at Bill Doskoch's blog reminded me ...

Syndicated columnist (and my heroine) Molly Ivins tackles the issue of newspapers cost-cutting themselves to death.

So we're looking at a steady decline over a long period, and many of the geniuses who run our business believe they have a solution. Our product isn't selling as well as it used to, so they think we need to cut the number of reporters, cut the space devoted to the news and cut the amount of money used to gather the news, and this will solve the problem. For some reason, they assume people will want to buy more newspapers if they have less news in them and are less useful to people. I'm just amazed the Bush administration hasn't named the whole darn bunch of them to run FEMA yet.

What cutting costs does, of course, is increase the profits, thus making Wall Street happy. It also kills newspapers.

Aside from my own sentimental attachment to newspapers, I have no objection to all of us shifting over to the Internet and doing the same thing there. You'd still have the two big problems, however: (A) How do you know if it's true? And (B) how do you put a lot of information into a package that's useful to people? If newspapers were just another buggy-whip industry, none of this would be of much note-another disappearing artifact, like the church key. But while Wall Street doesn't care, and neither do many of the people who own and run newspapers, newspapers do, in fact, matter beyond producing profit-they have a critical role in democracy. It's called a well-informed citizenry.

We are in trouble.

But I am not entirely sure that Canadian newspapers -- in Toronto anyway, with the possible exception of the Sun which today named yet another publisher and CEO -- are really in trouble. Last week's numbers from NADBank revealed no drop in overall readership, just a shift away from the big paid dailies to the freebie tabloids and the newspaper websites.

In fact, I did the math and it would appear that far more people read the Star alone on a typical day than watch all the local TV suppertime news shows combined.

We're still healthy readership-wise in this town because there's competition that keeps us sharp. It's those one-paper towns that are in trouble. Toronto readers can be grateful for the newspaper war -- which began with the 1998 launch of the National Post -- for that. It changed Toronto newspapering forever.

As one industry wag joked the other day, "Yeah, and nobody has made any money since."

Make no mistake though: The cuts are coming. Newspapers used to have profit margins of 20 per cent and more, and investors like those returns. They will soon start demanding them here as well.

Comments

[Bill-Muskoka]

Antonia,

"In fact, I did the math and it would appear that far more people read the Star alone on a typical day than watch all the local TV suppertime news shows combined."

You betcha! Given the choice between an irretrievable sound bite and a writen story, give me print!

Regarding the small papers, talk to the people at one of your divisions. They are thriving to my best knowledge. TorStar has some darn good management and people with down to earth business heads!

The rest, not a problem! LOL

Wall Street, Schmall Street, they come and go like Johns at a Brothel!

[Anonymous]

I like the new look of the Sunday Star. It reminds me of USA Today. Lots of different fonts but less substance.

On Sundays, CBC Newsworld airs the same Sunday morning program at night time.

Even the national nightly news programs are becoming video-blogs with the same talking heads discussing what they read in someone else's blog. Less substance.

Even TV programming has less substance. All the CTV channels across Ontario carry the same programs that run out of Toronto. The only exception are the local news programs. Even these seem to be run from Toronto now. The A-Channel does the same with the same shows on every one of its Ontario channels that run from Toronto. The only differences are the local commercials which run from Toronto.

[Barry Kiefl]

Antonia, I did a quick check of the audience for supperhour TV news in TO. A little over 1 million people currently spend 5 minutes or more watching these programs on City, CBC, CTV or Global in an average day, i.e., the average daily reach.

[Antonia]

Barry, just for the record, I was using the average minute audience supplied to me by the stations themselves last month. The ones I reported on here:
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1142203809916&call_pageid=970599109774&col=Columnist969907624636

[Bill-Muskoka]

Antonia,

I have always been fascinated with how stations determine how many viewers they are garnering? I know there is no technical way for them to monitor that, except on cable channels.

Satellite does not report it back, airwaves do not report it. Very few people have a Neilson ratings Unit atop their sets, sooooooo, from where are the figures derived.

Are they using Voodoo economics? Is it a sub-routine of CBC's magick program determination application? Enquiring minds want to know! LOL

[Antonia]

http://www.nielsenmedia.com/about_us.html

[Bill-Muskoka]

Antonia,

Thanks! I suspected nothing has actually changed from decades ago. I am surprised Neilsen is still pandering their BS and making money doing it. The so-called quality of programming reflects the quality of their BS statistics system, IMO!

In other words. The figures are, scientifically, meaningless. Yet, ad rates are set by them. Amazing industry it is, eh?

[PC]

We have entered the world of lies, damn lies and statistics.

Using the average number of people viewing at any given minute is deceiving. If you want to be comparing apples to apples, you want to do as Barry Kielf says and look at how many people watched at least five minutes of the newscast. Not every reader reads the entire paper, so you should individuals who watch at least part of the newscast. For example, using Antonia’s numbers, two people watching half a newscast count as one in the average minute numbers. Two people reading half the paper though count as two readers.

The average minute audience numbers are much more useful for advertisers who want to know how many eyeballs they get for their 30 second spot, not how many people turn to that newscast for information.

[Antonia]

Fine then.

NADbank reports that, in 2005, 985,000 people in the Toronto CMA read the Star ''yesterday.''

Barry Kiefl reports that ''a little over 1 million people currently spend 5 minutes or more watching these programs on City, CBC, CTV or Global in an average day." We're talking a diffierence of what? 15K? 20K?

I may not have access to all the numbers a professional like Barry does but my point stands: Newspapers are not dead yet.

[Bill-Muskoka]

Antonia,

PC is right when saying : "We have entered the world of lies, damn lies and statistics." I would only change it to say 'been living in' from 'entered'. An entire, multi-faceted industry rose from all the BS!

At least a newspaper can actually count subscriptions, copies printed, copies returned. That is a pretty real number.

Maybe when TV is sent over the internet then real figures will show how misleading Neilsen has always been.

Other than setting ad rates, the issue is one of interest only to people trying to show hoe their idea increased sales.

I wonder what a Slooper Bowl commercial will go for when real numbers are available? Same goes for hockey games.

[Jay Currie]

Newspapers are far from dead. Particularily in cities like Toronto blessed with several. And they will not be dead if they a) produce quality product which means spending money, b) recognize that the internet is their friend rather than enemy, c) figure out creative ways of monetizing existing content (and having your own TV station does not count).

What newspapers need to be looking at and looking at hard is the fast advance of "electric paper", wi-fi and iPod multi GB on the go storage.

Dead tree newspapering with a twenty four hour cycle and a particular closing deadline is dying. However, the skills which can create a Toronto Star or Globe and Mail (or even the Sun) are going to be in huge demand.

The question is, however, whether it will be Torstar which will be demanding them. What second generation, wireless broadband, enabled, electronic pulbishing is getting ready to do is eliminate the need for the printing presses and distribution networks which are the publisher's contribution to getting the paper out.

Just to give you a flavour: imagine that you subscribe to the Zerb/Heather Mallick/Rick Salutin and Judy Rebick as well as a Reuters RSS and a headline feed from AP/CP. This mix is sent in a constant stream to your wi-ffi enable iPod which stores it until you open your electric paper in the morning. It has live links to video coverage (including A-J) which you access on the e-paper which can show video. Click a link and - if you have not already got a subscription - will charge you half a cent to see the vid.

Here's the thing...all the technology I am describing here already exists. The only hang is really readable electric paper.

[Antonia]

On behalf of an anonymous commenter who posted this in the wrong thread:

You are, of course, absolutely correct. Cuts are coming to all Toronto newspapers -- and they will be big...well beyond voluntary buyouts for the 50+ brigade.

The newspapers wars just delayed the inevitable. But the time of reckoning is almost upon us. It will be DIE HARD WITH A VENGEANCE.

Even as we speak, the smart folks at TO newspapers are doing cartwheels to prove their worth over by volunteering for new projects, web efforts, blogs, podcasts, etc... The dummies will bitch and moan, seek refuge in their guild contracts, and be stunned when the axe falls.

See the kid in the corner of the newsroom WHO DOESN'T LEAVE At THE END OF HIS SHIFT and is always screwing around with streaming video? Annoying, isn't he? Well, he's gonna have a job and a raise in a couple of years. And you may not, despite your awards and previous praise from bosses.

Despite your 20+ years of above average service, you could become yet another embittered, unemployed hack -- too young to retire, too old to start over -- begging a buddy for part-time job teaching journalism at a community college. Ah well, there's always public relations. But you'll hate yourself in the morning.

Much better to get with the program -- NOW!

[Dean]

Paul Wells discussed the matter of foreign ownership in his blog a few weeks ago (http://weblogs.macleans.ca/paulwells/archives/week_2006_03_12-2006_03_18.asp). He ran an old 03 column, in which he dismissed concerns about foreign ownership, saying:

"...any Tennessee owner cretinous enough to fill the Windsor Star with news from Chattanooga would be startled to find Windsorites cancelling their subscriptions. He would either smarten up or sell to an owner, Canadian or otherwise, with some sensitivity to local tastes."

Problem is, replace "Chattanooga" with "Hollywood" and that is exactly what has happened. Papers have cut back on their local coverage, replacing it with the same celebrity fluff found on TV and that's probably one reason why readership was falling before the Internet came along. Conrad Black was famous for gutting newsrooms and local news suffered - famous example of a small city in BC (Cranbrook?) where a jet crashed and the Black-owned local daily got their coverage from the CP. Ivins is right. The corporations that own papers keep cutting the product and expecting people to keep buying it. Newspapers, or at least smaller town papers, can offer local coverage that others can't or don't want to. They should stick to their strengths - that's the way to sell papers, online or otherwise.

[Antonia]

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[Bill-Muskoka]

Antonia,

You are on the cutting edge and a leader. This blog runs smoothly, is informative, and there are many truly intelligent people who come here to post. It is an enjoyable experience.

So I will join you in saying:

I love your blog. I love your blog.
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[D. Shapiro]

You are right about the one-newspaper towns, but it's even worse than you would think. I lived in Winnipeg for seven years while they had two papers, the Free Press and the Tribune. The FP was always a nutbar right-wing place, but it was an adequate source of news. Since the Tribune folded, the FP declined to a shadow of its former self, and even the introduction of a Winnipeg Sun did not help. The FP has deteriorated further. It's not the reporters, it's the cost-cutting. Now in Toronto, I read the Star as well as papers and magazines online, and sometimes the free papers as well (I have a thirty-five minute ride on the TTC each morning). My only problem is that this takes up so much of my time that I can't seem to read more than one or two books a week, and I have to keep my TV-watching down to nine or ten hours a week. My wife and I try to get out to plays and movies, as well, and the occasional concert (in the last 12 months we have seen only a handful of movies, but over 25 plays). What's left? Six hours a night for sleep, half an hour for playing my guitar or piano (I haven't played the flute for over a year now, though I used to be very good at it). If I had any friends to speak of, I'd be in trouble. My daughter and I go to the ballet six times a year, and I'm still trying to find time to read Le Monde online more often. No, I'm not superhuman: I don't exercise enough, I work a comparatively short work week (37-1/2 hours, and they let me surf if there's no actual work on my desk), and the only time I get new clothes these days is Father's Day, when the wee one (she's in law school) buys me a shirt or two. We make choices. I post to my blog only three or four times a week (all sonnets -- really). And I read only six blogs, of which yours is the only one that posts every day. I don't read Maclean's since it has done nothing but aggravate me since it went weekly. I read the magazines online, so I read only what's posted (The New Yorker, the NY Review of Books, the London Review of Books), including stuff like the little bits of Slate, or the links at Arts & Letters Daily. I'm well informed, but as I was saying to my wife earlier today, most of what I know about the human condition I know from reading fiction. And if I couldn't do two or three things at once, I would never have finished university. I watch sports with the sound turned off while listening to music and reading aloud to my wife (we're reading Jonathan Harr's "The Lost Painting" right now). It's a full life. A newspaper is a crucial part of that.

[Dana]

D. Shapiro, lack of white space notwithstanding, that was an interesting digest of your days.

The curse of corporate ownership of the press is the tyranny of shareholder returns. So corporate newspapers exist primarily to sell advertising space and make as much money as possible.

Journalism is produced to fit between and amongst the ads. That way the product can still be called a newspaper.