Andrew Spittle

Just when I thought I had read everything up on The Atlantic’s website right now I came across a wonderful piece by James Warren concerning the frighteningly increasing decline of newspapers and traditional print journalism. In it he writes that:

This matters because of the unique role journalism plays in a democracy. So much public information and official government knowledge depends on a private business model that is now failing. Journalism acknowledges and illuminates complexity, and at the same time prioritizes, helping us to evaluate the relative significance of developments playing out all around us. A very shrewd journalist-entrepreneur I know, Steve Brill, asks that one just imagine walking into a library and seeing the pages of all the books scattered on the floors and stairwells. To be sure, editors are human and subjectivity plays a role, but a newspaper places those pages—and thus the news—in some sensible order.

And, importantly, there’s a sense of social mission. Good journalism keeps public and private officials honest and helps citizens make thoughtful decisions. It does this by systematically gathering, processing, and checking relevant information, and by doing it with a spirit of independence. It’s how two previously unknown Washington Post reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, put together the Watergate puzzle that forced the 1974 resignation of President Richard Nixon.

While I do think that much of the problems that are currently inherent to print journalism have been self-created by the industry I nonetheless find it sad every time that I read about a newspaper laying off hundreds of workers. Like Warren says in his article the reality is that many of the most trafficked sites on the internet rely heavily upon newspapers for their content and reporting; were it not for newspapers I believe that some of the sites he lists (Huffington, etc.) would not have anywhere near the content they need for survival. As an addict of news and reading in general I find it personally sad that I would lose sources like the New York Times, LA Times, and Washington Post.

The next few years will certainly be interesting ones (and hopefully not too depressing of ones) for print journalism and I just really hope that at least some of the large print institutions survive and provide a model for others to follow in the rebuilding of newspapers.

Link to the full Atlantic article.

Michael Hirschorn over at The Atlantic writes of The New York Times that:

The paper’s credit crisis comes against a backdrop of ongoing and accelerating drops in circulation, massive cutbacks in advertising revenue, and the worst economic climate in almost 80 years. As of December, its stock had fallen so far that the entire company could theoretically be had for about $1 billion. The former Times executive editor Abe Rosenthal often said he couldn’t imagine a world without The Times. Perhaps we should start.

That’s a scary thought, but perhaps is one that is slowly but surely become more of reality. I don’t like to think of a world without The New York Times or many other large newspapers, but I still fail to see how they are adapting to new technologies in a speedy and efficient manner. The next few years will be interesting, and potentially lethal to the newspaper industry. I’m glad I’m did not go into school with dreams of writing for the Times.

Link via End Times – The Atlantic (January/February 2009) .

The New York Times has taken a new step in its attempts to increase revenue: sell ads on the front page.

In its latest concession to the worst revenue slide since the Depression, The New York Times has begun selling display advertising on its front page, a step that has become increasingly common across the newspaper industry.

The first such ad, appearing Monday in color, was bought by CBS. The ad, two-and-a-half inches high, lies horizontally across the bottom of the front page, below the news articles and a brief summary of some articles in the paper. In a statement, the paper said such ads would be placed “below the fold” — that is, on the lower half of the page.

I’m glad to see that the NY Times is working toward staying profitable in creative ways. The fact that the ad will appear below the fold is important to me because it allows the paper to increase its ad revenue in such a way that (hopefully at least) is not distracting to the reader.

Of concern to me though is that if they are accepting ads like the CBS one that are two and a half inches high, what will happen to the front-page content? What I hope the Times will do is to simply shorten some columns but keep the same number of stories on the front page. If they begin to cut front page stories in order to fit the ad on the page then I’m worried.

Link via The Times Starts Selling Display Ads on Page 1 – NYTimes.com.

So I’ve moved this blog back to its original place at WordPress.com. I’ve found that the exposure that is inherent through this (i.e. getting traffic from WordPress’ own tag listings, etc.) is greater than anything I’m willing to do on my own. Since this is really a small project for me I’m not willing to spend the time drawing traffic to my site through commenting on other blogs, etc. With that in mind I’ve moved it back here but the rest of my personal site will remain the same. In addition, my portfolio will remain hosted through my other site. Anyway, enjoy the future posts here.