“Goodbye, Colorado,” read the headline of the final edition of the Rocky Mountain News on Friday February 27th. Colorado’s oldest newspaper was forced to close down just two months short of its 150th anniversary.
The E.W. Scripps Co., which owns the Rocky, said the newspaper lost $16 million last year and the company was unable to find a viable buyer since announcing a sale Dec. 4th. The Rocky is the largest newspaper to fail in the present recession. The newspaper industry was already suffering from falling ad revenue.
The problem is widespread. 33 U.S. daily newspapers have owners that have sought Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the past 2 ½ months. Several newspapers are also up for sale.The staff of the Rocky knows what is at stake first hand. Like good reporters, they gave us the story. You can see it presented in a moving video on the newspaper’s website entitled “Final Edition.” The Rocky is a Pulitzer Prize winning paper. The motto in the news room is, “if your mother tells you she loves you, check it out.” They do and they take pride in it.
You can hear a reporter in the video point out that bloggers do not necessarily have the same journalistic ethic. They are aware that most of us are now getting our news from the internet. Most of us know that the best bloggers get there information from newspapers like the Rocky. Local newspapers attempt to keep our government officials and businesses honest. We cannot afford to lose them; we need more of them.
John Temple, the editor and publisher of the Rocky, gives us an idea of the changes in the newspaper industry that challenge the Rocky and other newspapers. When the paper started in 1859, they pulled in the printing presses using oxen. “Today,” Temple says, “we are sending content over cell phones, reporters are filing photographs from their assignments and they instantly appear on our website.”
Today businesses throughout the world dramatically cut their costs by using the technology available to move to more efficient paperless processes. When the faculty senate used to meet at one college where I taught, they used to print over 50 copies of every document for all in attendance. By the time I left the college six years later, all documents discussed in these meetings were posted on a website available to everyone on their laptop and on the huge screen that was now in the room for every meeting. The technology available now enables us to share information much more efficiently and less expensively.
Doctors are beginning to use video conferencing to interact with patients at a distance. Administrators and executives are beginning to use it for meetings and interviews. It is rarely used to the extent that it could be.
We can find a model for the kind of innovation the Rocky and other local papers are forced to consider from the Waterfront Community Church, which was recently discussed on NBC news. This church gives 100% of the donations it receives each Sunday to those who are in need. It can do this because it is a church without a physical location. It rents out the local high school gym on Sunday for services. The pastor does his work on his laptop at home or in a coffee shop. When you focus on your core service and you use technology to help you provide that service as efficiently as possible, many businesses are finding that you simply do not need many of the things that contributed to the businesses' overhead in the past.
When you have these innovative business models and paperless processes in mind, the challenges for the Rocky become clearer. While Temple says at the Rocky there has always been an attitude of, “let’s embrace opportunity, let’s embrace change,” you can see the obstacles in the way.
As you view the video of the Rocky’s “Final Edition,” you are first moved by the heart wrenching plight of the family that was the Rocky. The Rocky was produced primarily in a central office building where the newspaper was housed and it was printed on paper as well as being found online. In the video you see paper all over the place and people working on computers in cubicles in a big office building. Most of the things you see in this video are not actually needed to make a paper today.
Today you do not need paper to make a newspaper: most people read them online and the number is increasing every day. According to the Newspaper Association of America, online readership went up 7% in 2007. The New Media Update reports that those age 18-24 are 38% more likely than average to not read any print newspaper during a typical week. They also report that those that get their news online tend to be heavy consumers "based on their heavier than average visitation across most key news sites."
So you do not need paper and all the printing presses to make a paper. You also do not need a large office building. With laptops and the various forms of video conferencing available, most of the staff can work from home more efficiently. For reporters this convenience should be an added benefit: they can do more in the field while on assignment. The only thing you really need to make a great newspaper these days are talented people and the money to pay them.
The major problem facing the online business model for newspapers is funding. Most newspapers already give away content for free online, so the primary way for them to generate revenue is through advertising. Without selling subscriptions, many papers would have to dramatically cut their staffs to survive online.
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer is the first major paper to decide to go completely online. This move could take place as soon as March 18th. It appears as if they plan to continue to give away their content for free online and generate revenue through advertising. In order to cut the costs necessary to make such a business model work, they plan to cut their staff from 150 to 20.
Bruce Watson at the Daily Finance reports that "the employees being let go seem to include all copy editors, editorial writers, designers, sports writers, and features writers."
It appears that they will only be keeping:Two or three senior-level editors or producers.
Five frontline online producers.
Two frontline editors.
A Web developer.
A general-interest blogger/reporter.
A breaking-news reporter.
Two business reporters.
A political columnist/blogger.
A photographer.
Watson reports that one of the reporters who was fortunate enough to receive an offer for one of these positions revealed that the new deal would "have increased his insurance cost, cut his salary, forced him to forego his severance, erased his vacation accrual, and canceled his overtime." The reporter declined the offer.
Legitimate concerns are being raised about the product such a small staff could actually produce and what, if any, relation it would have to the quality work the Post-Intelligencer did before. No one is suggesting the Post-Intelligencer will ever be the same.
The implications are extremely serious. Many questions have already been raised about the press not providing a critical voice during the lead up to the Iraq war. If we begin to undervalue the profession of reporting in our society, it will only make the problem worse.
There is no silver lining to this situation. But there are ways to make the best of it. First, this small staff that will remain at the Post-Intelligencer does not need the large building presently used, pictured above. This staff can work from home or the road using video conferencing tools. The revenue that used to go to rent for that luxurious building can now be used to support the staff that make the paper.
Second, online advertising is improving; its value is increasing and it will continue to do so. There are forms of advertising available online that are simply not available on paper. Online ads can play music and videos: they can speak to customers directly and they can be used in conjunction with business websites to create unique experiences.
I clicked on one ad and I was taken to a website for the business and an instant messenger came up with someone asking if I needed help. I typed in a question and was given an immediate answer by a human being. I found this to be an extremely effective tool for getting my business.
Google recently announced they will be implementing a program that enables them to use the past online behavior of the person visiting a site to select the ads that will be placed on the site. If a person happens to be a musician and visits many music websites, ads relating to music will be selected. This will obviously increase the effectiveness of the ads. Things like this are not available to businesses when they advertise on paper. As these advantages are made clear and explored to a greater degree, the value of online advertising will increase and generate more revenue for online newspapers. This will allow them to increase the revenue used to support staff.
Third, today their are inexpensive online platforms that can be used, with the help of a talented professional, to produce a quality online newspaper. Reporters, photographers and editors can take their work directly to the web without taking on the large debt needed for printing presses, delivery trucks, and big buildings. Bloggers do this all the time. This could enable newspapers to cut out the companies, like E.W. Scripps, which are necessary for standard papers to function. More of the ad revenue generated by the paper could go directly to the people who make the paper.
This approach would reduce the extent to which corporate interests and wealthy tycoons, like Rupert Murdoch, have an influence over what is reported. The 33 local newspapers mentioned earlier that are endanger of going bankrupt are owned by just four individuals. A democracy is undermined when it is informed by newspapers owned by a few very wealthy individuals.
Fourth, moving our newspapers online will dramatically reduce their carbon footprint. Think about how much energy it takes to make the Sunday edition of your favorite paper on paper: the trees cut down, the ink, printing presses, delivery trucks, paper routes, newspaper machines, the paper moved into the landfill. I respect the President, my girlfriend, and all those out there who love to read newspapers on paper; but we need to get over it. We need to learn to appreciate the unique luxury of reading a great paper on a widescreen laptop with an excellent picture, which allows you to adjust the font, play music and videos and link to an unlimited data base of additional information.
We need the Rocky and all the other local newspapers that attempt to keep us informed. Moving to the online business model has obvious challenges. There are, however, some obvious changes newspapers can make to become more efficient, like all the other businesses in our economy.
I would love to see the staff of the Rocky and the citizens of Denver explore the possibility of the Rocky continuing in an online form: without the office building, the printing presses, the cubicles, and E.W. Scripps.
Scripps owns the newspaper's name, masthead, archives and Web site. It says it will continue to offer those "assets" for sale. Let Scripps keep them. Let the real "assets" of the Rocky--the people--start their own paper.
They can put it up on their own website. They can work from home and interact through video conferencing. They can meet in living rooms and coffee shops when necessary. The online ad revenue generated by the Rocky could go directly to the people who actually make the Rocky.
Bringing back the Rocky online could mean a lot to many different people. A long with providing an important voice, it could provide an important model for the kind of innovative thinking we need throughout the country in the present economic recession. Other local papers and businesses are facing financial challenges. And more and more individuals are finding themselves facing these challenges. Many of us are being forced to reinvent ourselves in a manner that can better serve in the changing economy. These days many of us walk with the Rocky.
So with all the bad news we read, it was nice to see that the staff of the Rocky is going to make a go of it: they are starting their own online newspaper. It will be called the INDenver Times. The video below is an introduction for the project. Its nature and success will depend on the amount of support they receive. The only thing we know for sure at this point is that we will have a chance to bring back a version of the Rocky.
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