By KAREN PARKER | County Line Editor
One thing I have learned over the years is that if you are going to be self-employed, it’s a definite plus to have an ego the size of Texas. Mine, I think, is more the size of Rhode Island, or possibly Mount Tabor. Self-promotion does not come easily to me, which is my excuse for failing to acknowledge National Newspaper Week (Oct. 4–10).
Come to think about it, I don’t recall seeing a mention of it in any other local paper either. We newspaper folks are a strange lot. We always seem to have the ambition to throw out salutes to everything from 4-H to National Restaurant Month. If there were a National 10-Penny-Nail Week or a National Manhole Cover Month, we wouldno doubt be on board for those as well.
But we are largely silent on our own value to the community and to the health of democracy. We are the whipping boy for every politician and elected official who cheerfully heaps blame us for everything from global warming to the 2015 shortage of pumpkins. Yes, we did conspire with Charlie Brown to foil your annual Jack-O-Lantern carving experience.
To paraphrase Mark Twain, our death has been greatly exaggerated. Newspapers were supposed to die with the advent of radio, and then withthe arrival of television. Nothing of the sort happened. And then came the Internet, and reams of eulogies for newspapers have been spoken and written about the death of newspapers.
Anyone who anticipated that newspapers would give one great last gasp and tumble over like a deer shot through the heart is probably disappointed. Death is not coming easily. Newspapers have withstood an onslaught of slumping subscriptions, declining ad revenue and a chronic case of floundering about, trying to find a place in the land of new media.
Nearly all of them have plunged into the competition by launching their own websites, only to discover that that the going price for advertising is far below what they commanded for print. Instead of going directly to newspapers, companies turn to outfits like Google, which can deliver a targeted audience of, for example, 18- to 30-year-olds in the market for umbrellas or underwear or unicorns. When and if Google does pass those ads off to newspapers, they receive only a small percentage of the ad’s cost, and Google keeps the lion’s share.
Businesses also turned to Facebook for what they thought was free advertising. As it turned out, Facebook is also into the advertising game, and companies wishing to reach an extended audience will pay Facebook or forget it.
Classified advertising, once a goldmine for daily newspapers, has been whittled down to nothing due to Internet services such as Craigslist.
Weekly newspapers, which rely on the U.S. Postal Service and not counter sales, have been battered by slow or no delivery. Some outraged subscribers have opted for the paper’s e-edition, but many have simply dropped their subscription in frustration.
Meanwhile, the drumbeat of consolidation pounds onward. Earlier this year, the employee-owned Milwaukee Journal Sentinel merged with Cincinnati-based E.W. Scripps Company. The ink was barely dry on that arrangement when earlier this month the publication was flipped and sold to Gannett Company.
The local ownership of Wisconsin’s flagship daily, nationally hailed for superior investigative journalism, is now in the hands of the Virginia-based owner of USA Today. The company also happens to own most of the daily papers in the Fox Valley area.
Gannett was willing to pay far above market value for Journal Media, and shareholders just could not resist a deal. In a world where newspapers kowtow to the market and not the readers, should anyone be surprised?
Recently I heard a media critic asked if he considered Gannett to be leaning left or right politically. Neither, he said. The company is just about making money. Its business model is to own so many newspapers that it can approach national advertisers and compete on the same level for sales with network television and companies such as Google, he said. If your local newspaper begins to like a few local puff pieces wrapped around a version of USA Today, well, too bad.
The future for newspapers is murky. With fewer and fewer editorial voices, can they continue the long tradition of ferreting out the truth and being a government watchdog? Will lousy legislation slip by us and become law with no one the wiser until it is too late? Will they be no more informative than the bulletin board at the convenience store or your Aunt Martha’s Facebook posting? Will we look back at the vibrant, noisy, nosy, questioning newspaper of the past with the same sentimental attachment we now reserve for milk in glass bottles and doctors who made house calls?
Many years ago, I predicted that the Wisconsin Newspaper Association’s annual convention, which once filled the ballroom of the Pfister Hotel in Milwaukee, would be reduced to meeting in a broom closet.
As individual newspaper ownership continues to dwindle in the state, that may not be far off.