The rise and fall of newspapers

THE RISE AND FALL OF NEWSPAPERS

1820s-present

WHAT’S HAPPENING WITH NEWSPAPERS From 2007 to 2010, 13,500 newsroom

employees lost their jobs nationwide. That represented one in four newsroom workers. (source: American Society of Newspaper Editors, April 2011)

Newspapers themselves are shrinking, becoming narrower (from 13.5” to 11” in many cases) and thinner to reduce ink and paper costs.

News holes are shrinking, too.

TALK ABOUT IT “Even though reporters gauge the

importance of a story by length, that's not how readers do it," says Alan Jacobson, president of Brass Tacks Design, a newspaper design firm in Norfolk, Va. "They want shorter. They want things chosen for them that they care about. It goes back to relevance.”

* From “The Incredible Shrinking Newspaper,” by Louis Hau, Forbes, 2 April 2008

MANY ARE CLOSING Tucson Citizen Honolulu Advertiser Cincinnati Post Oakland Tribune Contra-Costa Times Baltimore Examiner Rocky Mountain News*all since March 2007

OR THEY’RE GOING ONLINE ONLY OR A HYBRID OF ONLINE AND OCCASIONAL PRINT

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Detroit News/Detroit Free-Press Christian Science Monitor Ann Arbor News East Valley Tribune* Source: newspaperdeathwatch.com

THE CAUSES A “perfect storm” of revenue problems:

Plummeting circulation fueled by aging readership The recession, which took a huge bite out of real estate

advertising Near-annihilation of classified advertising at the hands of

Craigslist Inability to leverage large increases in web readership into

commensurate profits

Bad future: The U.S. Department of Labor projects employment of correspondents and reporters to drop 8 percent between 2008 and 2018.

A CASE STUDY IN CORPORATOCRACY Craig Dubow, Gannett’s CEO

of six years, stepped down in Oct. He oversaw 20,000 layoffs and a stock price that plummeted from $72/share to $10.

Still, he was rewarded handsomely for showing so little regard to his employees, walking away with a $37M payout.

HOW A NEWSPAPER ‘DIES’ http://vimeo.com/3390739

THE “PENNY PRESS:” THE REVENUE MODEL BEGINS• The New York Sun succeeds in making the 1-penny model work in 1833• One penny back then = 41 cents in 2012• The standard price, 6 cents, would equal $2.49• Today, newsstands sell papers for at least 50 cents, usually $1.• So one penny would be even less by today’s standards.

WHAT CHANGED Unlike the party press, the penny papers aren’t

affiliated (usually) with a political party. To gain as wide an audience as possible, they

purport to tell the news “objectively.” Technology catches up, with steam-powered

presses. Revenue shifts from the subscribers to advertisers. By 1835, there are three penny papers and several

more six-penny papers. The newspaper wars begin.

THE “FIRST” MASS-MEDIA EVENT

THE MOON HOAX Benjamin Day’s Sun on Aug. 25, 1835,

tells of Sir John Herchel’s supposed discovery of life on the moon.

Other newspapers run the series that ensues. It runs all around the city, then the nation, then gets translated and runs around the world.

The paper attributes the story to the Edinburgh Journal of Science.

AMONG THE “DISCOVERIES” “38 species of trees, twice this number of plants, nine

species of mammalia, and five of ovipara. However, the highlight of this extract was the discovery of the first sign of intelligent, though primitive, lunar life — the biped beaver. These extraordinary beavers walked on two feet and bore their young in their arms. They lived in huts "constructed better and higher than those of many tribes of human savages." And signs of smoke above the huts of the beavers indicated that these advanced animals had even mastered the use of fire.”

– www.museumofhoaxes.com

AMONG THE DISCOVERIES IIThe scientists discovered human-like creatures living inside a ring of red hills they dubbed the "Ruby Colosseum." Unlike earth-bound humans, these creatures were "covered, except on the face, with short and glossy copper-colored hair, and had wings composed of a thin membrane, without hair, lying snugly upon their backs." -- Ibid

RESPONSE Excitement, debate Edgar Allen Poe upset, feels it ripped off his

“nonfiction” story from June in which a man built a balloon that flew to the moon.

Foreshadows the media’s power to influence popular belief and not in a good way

James Gordon Bennett’s Herald points out on Aug. 31 – his presses back up and running -- that the Edinburgh journal had folded in 1833. Media largely ignore him.

THE CIVIL WAR CHANGES MUCH Before: Mainly political cheerleaders, vehicles of

cultured discourse. Letters from subscribers and stories reprinted from other papers form the backbone of their content. It was provincial by necessity

After: War correspondents, the byline (thanks to Union General Joseph Hooker’s vanity and fear of leaks), the popularization of national news, the Associated Press (due to the high cost, about $100, of using telegraph lines), knocks advertising and editorial off the front page.

THE BEST WRITING OF THE WAR GOES TO… This account of the battle of Antietam/Sharpsburg, the bloodiest day in U. S. history, written by George W.

Smalley with input from three other New York Tribune reporters. Is widelyregarded as the best piece of journalism from the Civil War. -- www.war-news.us

Fierce and desperate battle between two hundred thousand men has raged since daylight, yet night closes in on an uncertain field. It is the greatest fight since Waterloo, all over the field contested with obstinacy equal even to Waterloo. If not wholly a victory tonight, I believe it is the prelude to a victory tomorrow. But what can be foretold of the future of a fight in which from five in the morning till seven at night the best troops of the continent have fought without decisive result?                     

   * * * Burnside hesitated for hours in front of the bridge which should have been carried

at once by a coup de main [soon becoming] outnumbered, flanked. . . . His position is no longer one of attack; he defends himself with unfaltering firmness, but he sends to McClellan for help.

                                    * * * Burnside’s messenger rides up. His message is: “I want troops and guns. If you do

not send them, I cannot hold my position half an hour.” McClellan’s only answer for the moment is a glance at the western sky. Then he turns and speaks very slowly: “Tell Gen. Burnside this is the battle of the war. He must hold his ground till dark at any cost. I will send him Miller’s battery. I can do nothing more. I have no infantry.”  

ONE MYTH PERSISTS FROM THE WAR It DID NOT create the inverted pyramid. Some textbooks credit the creation to

unreliable telegraph lines during the war.

Number of summary news leads in 1860: 2 of 2,043 analyzed

Number in 1865: 0 of 2,002 Number in 1870: 1 of 2,622 Number in 1900: 202 of 4,782

CREDIT THE PROGRESSIVE ERA

"The inverted pyramid form of writing provide readers with immediate, relevant information unlike stories of the mid and late nineteenth century that employed a flamboyant, narrative style. The summary news lead, then, was developed by progressive, educated, science-oriented journalists in response to social factors that went beyond the limitations of the telegraph during the nineteenth century.” – Marcus Errico,

http://www.scripps.ohiou.edu/mediahistory/mhmjour1-1.htm