Apocalypse Now! Reinventing Newspapers in the Public Interest

by Tim J. McGuire
Reynolds Distinguished Visiting Professor

May 3, 2005

The beauty of Washington and Lee oozes from practically every building and rolling hill. It’s a thrill to spend Spring Term here, and I have learned so much in a few short weeks. I have learned you must stop thirty or forty yards in front of a corner, and not at the crosswalk, as you would in every other city in America. I have learned that some of these gorgeous colonial-type columns on campus are concrete, and others, dare I say it, are hollow! I have learned that if the anti-pick doesn’t engage properly with the plunger on the strike plate of your townhouse door, you can’t get it open. Who knew?

I have learned that despite all the complaints nationally you CAN find a cohesive, aspiring journalism faculty that cares and frets about students and their students’ futures. I have learned that engaged, talented and interested students can also have a heckuva lot of fun. I have learned that you can make wonderful friends in just three weeks. And I have learned that Virginia hospitality and welcome are genuine and deep. So many people have worked so hard to make me feel good about my stay.

I am especially pleased my wonderful wife Jean has survived several hectic weeks of family challenges to join me for this speech and for the next couple of weeks, including our 30th wedding anniversary a week from today.

When Brian Richardson asked me weeks ago, via email, for a title for this speech, I smugly turned to Jean in the office we share at home and pronounced that I had a really great title: “Apocalypse Now! Reinventing Newspapers in the Public Interest.” In my arrogance, I thought the title was particularly cute and I could forge new ground.

I obviously had not been paying attention. Within days I realized everybody from former journalists to editors to gurus to bloggers to the first grader down the street has been spouting opinions about dying newspapers, media death spirals, and the hopelessness of reaching young readers. That makes the challenge of being fresh, interesting and helpful in this speech especially daunting.

Twenty-four years ago Ted Turner said newspapers were doomed within 10 years. Michael Crichton looked ever so hip in Wired Magazine in 1993 when he predicted the demise of print. Andy Grove of Intel said it with much less smugness, but just as much certainty, in 1998. As I said several billion dollars ago, “There’s a lot of money to be made in this demise business.” Newspapers are still making an average of 21 percent profit, and many big newspaper companies are demanding 30-35 per cent margins.

Despite that continued financial success, now it is absolutely clear the apocalypse is upon us. I know because I read it on the Worldwide Web. I have read things like this:
Michael Malone, on ABC News Ventures’ site, said this: “This is the last great divide, and my sense is that few newspapers will be able to make the crossing. If they kill their print editions now, they won't have the revenues to make a smooth transition to cyberspace; but if they keep wearing their paper albatrosses, they'll have less of a chance of succeeding in the new world. Thus, if all of the old-fashioned newspapers are going to die, nearly all of the forward-looking ones will, too. Before it is all over, the number of "newspapers" left in America will probably be less than 10 -- and they might not be individual papers, but rather new entities created out of the current large chains. They will become the primary sources of national and international news, delivered into multimedia form.”

Continuing to quote Malone: “As for the local papers, they will be shut down, their presses depreciated and scrapped, their offices leased out and the newsroom reporters scattered to the four winds of blogdom and specialty sites … where they will provide local news, commentary, movie times and maybe even those long lost Little League box scores.”
Holy smokes, I said to Jean, this is bad. Paper albatrosses? Less than 10 newspapers? Reporters scattered to the winds? Yikes! It got worse, because then I read a Washington Post article by Frank Ahrens. He wrote this: “‘Print is dead,’ Sports Illustrated President John Squires told a room full of newspaper and magazine circulation executives at a conference in Toronto in November. His advice? ‘Get over it,’ meaning publishers should stop trying to save their ink-on-paper product and focus on electronic delivery of their journalism.”

Jean, I said, they’re saying the bell is tolling. There’s no use even trying to save newspapers. That title of mine wasn’t just humorous. The apocalypse really is here!

And then Susan Goldberg, the fine editor of the San Jose Mercury News, in a speech to a college audience recently, put some numbers to the case that newspapers are sliding into the depths. She said:

“According to the Newspaper Association of America, more than 80 percent of adults read a daily newspaper 40 years ago.

“Thirty years ago, that had fallen to 72%.

“Twenty years ago, it was 65%.

“Ten years ago, it was 61%.

“Last year, it was hovering just above 50%.

“And it should come as no surprise to any of you that among young people, the number is far lower -- 39%, and likely dropping by the minute.”

Some editors are responding to this the way several news sources say Bill Keller, the executive editor of The New York Times, did during a recent dinner speech. Keller apparently said, “This is not a time for editors to swear off alcohol.”

A long-time industry friend of mine, who is editor of one of the most prestigious newspapers in the country, sat next to me during a particularly depressing session at the American Society of Newspaper Editors meeting three weeks ago. As we listened to the sordid details of our demise -- losing young readers, declining circulation, declining credibility, the hostile blog takeover, a restructured classified ad market, twenty-four-hour on-demand news, and a decline in department-store advertising -- my friend’s shoulders slumped appreciably. He leaned over to me, and with only a small twinkle in his eye, said, “Tim, I think we should all climb in a warm bath and take a big dose of OxyContin!”

I am going to pass on the OxyContin, thank you. Despair has never been my game. I’m not quite ready to say that newspapers are dead. A little under the weather perhaps, but I don’t think the disease has to be fatal.

I have often been accused of dating both Polly and Anna, but I am not naïve. I know all those issues they talked about at ASNE are real. The very best newspapers and all the bad ones are losing circulation precipitously. The numbers for the Sunday cash cow that has sustained so many newspapers are even sliding off the circulation charts.

And I love my new IPOD and XM radio, and I know they and other electronic miracles are clear threats to the amount of time people spend with newspapers. What they’re doing to commercial radio is not pretty, but that’s a different and real death story!

And, yes, I know that young readers don’t have much time or interest in newspapers and they get a lot of their information from the Internet.

And the newspaper advertising climate is phenomenally tough. Many newspaper folks are hanging on desperately to the belief that they’re just in a down cycle, but this down cycle has gone on so long it looks like a trend. The fundamental shift in advertising patterns is now officially a monster that goes bump in the night.

And yes, I know all the hip folks say blogs are the thing, but I can’t quite get past the recent Gallup study that showed only 7 percent of Americans read blogs two or three times a week, and only 26 percent even know what they are.

I think it is important to take these warning signs seriously. Newspapers are in trouble, but so are the insurance industry, the health care industry and the American auto industry. But few say it is time for funerals in those industries. I fear we’re making a cottage industry out of predicting newspapers’ death. Hand-wringing has become sport.

In 2002, when I addressed the American Society of Newspaper Editors as the society’s president, I said this: “It is high time we show some courage. It is time we dig deep and tap into those values and morals and allow them to guide us in our leadership of American journalism. We must stop wringing our hands and ruing our fate. No more ruing.”
There are some editors who still greet me with chants of “No More Ruing!” Yet while many editors loved that line and found it hilarious, it could go down in ASNE history as the most ignored presidential line ever. The ruing has continued without stop, and frankly, it has become shrill and irritating.

A journalism colleague here at W&L lapses into a sympathetic tone when he talks about newspapers. You can almost hear the “there, there” patronizing in his voice. He speaks matter-of-factly about more robust media overtaking newspapers. Newspapers may be struggling, but more robust? My foot! What’s robust? Fragmented network TV? Cable TV news that attracts a few hundred thousand viewers? Fragmented Web sites that can’t deliver a cohesive audience? Blogs that serve 7 percent of Americans?

Every new communications tool that that comes along is proclaimed as the death of newspapers, when in fact they are not much more than media hula hoops in terms of constancy and penetration. The new technologies, the new ideas and the new challenges to readership are threats only if newspapers and newspaper companies stand still, and refuse to change. A man I’ve respected deeply for many years, Leonard Downie, the executive editor of The Washington Post, is perhaps the sanest voice in media today. He says “newspapers aren’t dying, they are trying to adapt.”

I think Len is right. He’s also correct when he says one of the impediments to that adaptation is excessive newspaper profits. Len says 15 percent profit margins would be plenty. I would not be so prescriptive, but I do believe that it is crucial that newspaper executives face up to the fact that they are milking their industry for profits and failing to invest in the long term health of the news gathering and the advertising franchise. Phil Meyer, in his new book, “The Vanishing Newspaper,” calls it “harvesting the assets.”
In that 2002 American society of Newspaper Editors speech I also said this: “I recently read the excellent Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Joseph Ellis, “Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation.” I was struck by Ellis’ contention that the voices of the Revolutionary heroes speak to us so eloquently because they knew we would be looking and listening. Ellis adds, “All the vanguard members of the Revolutionary generation developed a keen sense of their historical significance, even while they were still making history on which their reputations would rest.”

I went on to say in that speech, “Every editor, every publisher and every newspaper company CEO in America is living in a special, critical moment for American journalism. We need to find the personal courage to overcome our feelings of isolation, fear and powerlessness.”

In the last three years newspaper companies have continued to demand high profits despite this avalanche of news that newspapers are in deep trouble. Newspapers have been slow to invest and slow to react to this readership crisis. There’s lots of planning going on in newsrooms, but most of the orders to find solutions to the industry’s deepest problems come with one instruction: Don’t spend significant money. I know several editors who have been told to research some radical new solutions, but then told to do it on the cheap. Publishers want to restore excitement to newspapers without spending a precious dime of that 21- to 35-percent profit margin. Won’t happen.

It is time newspaper corporation CEOs and publishers come to grips with history — the history they are writing. Those executives must start imagining that if newspapers are indeed in the death throes, it is they who will be judged. The media history books could well show them watching their industry die for a few percentage points of profit. A new contract with Wall Street needs to be forged in the public interest.

In “The Vanishing Newspaper,” Meyer describes the Harvest Market position as “raising prices, reducing quality and taking as much money out of the firm as possible.” Meyer writes: “I know of no newspaper company totally committed to that strategy. But, on some days, there are very strong indications that they are drifting in that direction, egged on by short-term investors.”

I think the esteemed Mr. Meyer is being polite. When your franchise is under attack from every angle and you are obsessed with inexpensive, incremental solutions, then you are guilty of harvesting, or milking, or negligence. You choose.

Not long ago a newspaper publisher balked when I suggested he needed to really blow things up and create significant change in his processes and his structures. He said he needed to go slowly and show caution for fear he’d wreck everything. My friend, the time for caution is gone. That iceberg is no longer on the horizon. The iceberg is hitting us right now, and we’ve already suffered some serious damage to the ship. Unless newspapers reinvent themselves immediately something precious and dear will be lost.

I think the concept of sustainability is one newspaper executives need to contemplate. Many people think sustainable development is only an environmental concept. I would argue it is deeper that. Jeffrey Hollender, in his fine book “What Matters Most,” says, “Sustainable development seeks to meet the needs and aspirations of the present without compromising the ability to meet those of the future.” Hollender goes on to argue that it is simply impossible to continue to do business as we have been doing it without incurring dire consequences. He says the status quo is unsustainable and that we are breaking an unspoken moral contract with members of the next generation.

That perfectly describes the newspaper industry. We cannot go on as we have. Unless we radically change the status quo we are going to deny future generations the community building, the shared experience, the authenticating role, the watchdog role, and the guardianship of openness that newspapers have stood for all these years.
The title of my speech makes it clear that I think the reinvention of newspapers should be done in the Public Interest. I argue that that is a capitalist-loving statement and not a communistic one.

The public good should not be a goofy concept, and it should not mean your company becomes an unintentional nonprofit. A socially responsible company can be a high-performing, high-standards company. It does not have to be soft, mushy and an earnings drag. Phil Meyer wrote this in “The Vanishing Newspaper”: “While today’s investors might think it perverse, the notion of service to society as a function of business is neither new nor confined to those protected by the First Amendment. Henry Ford argued that profit was just a by-product of the service to society that his company performed.”

Reinventing newspapers in the public interest and for the common good is of course the right thing to do, but just because it would be altruistic does not mean that it can’t be profitable. Doing “the right thing” can make lots of money. Altruism does not require sack cloth and ashes.

Reinventing newspapers in the public interest and for the common good can provide the unity of information that consumers will require, desire, and demand after a few years of an increasingly fragmented society. Rescuing consumers and advertisers from “The Daily Me” fostered by special interests, blogs, small information niches, and increasingly insular segmentation and fragmentation will be big business. Maintaining, restoring and reinventing vehicles that will restore a sense of a shared self will drive profits and serve the public good.

Susan Goldberg, the editor of the San Jose Mercury News, told those college students a few months ago that she believes that a person who began his or her career in the “glue-pot era of journalism” probably won’t find the full answer to newspapers’ problems. “Deep down,” Goldberg said, “ I believe the fundamental change in our industry may begin to be figured out by our generation — but will fully realized by yours.”

Goldberg may be correct, though there are some pretty creative old codgers out there, too. I don’t claim creative or technological wizardry. I do hope experiences, observation and lessons taught me by some great mentors and industry bright lights allow a fossil like me to muse about five fundamental principles that might guide a radical reinvention of newspapers in the public interest.

1) The reinvention must be radical.
2) We must build the broad democratic (small D) community with integrity.
3) We must cultivate citizen journalism, but serve as an authenticator.
4) We must reaffirm our watchdog role with a return to great writing and storytelling.
5) We must choose thoroughness, completeness and sophistication.

Let’s talk about each of these five.

1) The reinvention must be radical

As Goldberg said in her speech, and as I’ve said today, we are not talking about “tweaking” newspapers and newspaper companies. We can no longer afford to dawdle. The newsroom naysayers have to give it up. We need to radically rethink things with the creativity that inspires so many of our brethren.

We cannot be committed to killing trees and plastering ink on them.

We must creatively use the Internet, but we must look beyond it, too.

We must energetically pursue the electronic tablet ideas of pioneers like Roger Fidler and the University of Missouri. The vehicle with which newspapers deliver information and advertising should not be limiting. That doesn’t mean we have to toss newsprint. It does mean we have to look for the best ways to engage readers and accomplish our other four tasks no matter the delivery method. To save newspapers, we may be talking about saving something that doesn’t look like it has looked for the last 100 years. And, we may be talking about a hybrid of delivery vehicles that includes print and electronic media.

We must explore new markets and new ways of serving as a connection between advertisers and consumers. With all the call for rethinking news, not enough effort has been invested in rethinking the revenue streams of newspapers. One of the most promising solutions lies in industry coalitions like Career Builder, the job site that is going head to head with Monster.com. That is an important, groundbreaking alliance, and I was thrilled during the Super Bowl when it became obvious Career Builder is willing to spend big advertising money to make that idea work — monkeys or not..

We must redesign our newsgathering and selling processes. Newsrooms and newspapers still look too much like that assembly line Henry Ford invented, and not enough like the creative, imagination-fueled workplaces of software makers and video game designers. You cannot create a radical future with a horse-and-buggy work environment.

2) We must build the broad democratic (small D) community with integrity.

Newspapers have enhanced democracy in America because of the power of shared information. Americans have mobilized and coalesced around that shared information to integrate schools, to achieve more, but not perfect, equality of race and class, and to address problems like child abuse, sexual predators and mental health.

The power of information to mobilize society and to keep our democracy in balance is probably newspapers’ greatest contribution to the common good, but that role is being eroded by too-justified assaults on our integrity.

Many attacks on our integrity are little more than ideological spin. But too many charges are sticking. From Jayson Blair to Jack Kelly to the Detroit Free Press, journalists are gambling with the trust and integrity that must be our ticket to reestablishing ourselves as a keeper of the public interest. Dramatically improved ethics training, higher integrity standards, a renewed commitment to avoid deception and unfairness, and more respected credibility auditing procedures are essential to serve the public interest.

Newspapers must be dedicated to removing ideological and class bias from our news pages. Last year L.A. Times Editor John Carroll publicly decried his newspaper’s tilted language on abortion and life issues. Other editors must copy Carroll’s courage and enforce strict bias standards.

I know this is an unpopular idea, but it is time for us to move ideological metro columnists to op edit pages. The deft storytelling and incisive prods of the Roykos and Breslins have, in many cases, been replaced by blunt-edged political opinions that confuse readers about the independence of our products.

Even more controversial, it is time to reexamine single-ideology editorial pages. Editorial pages began as a marketing tool in multiple newspaper markets. Ideology sold newspapers. If newspapers want to present themselves as above the ideological fray, and I think they must, editorial pages must move toward being public forums for energetic community debate and abandon the all-knowing, all-arrogant role of community pontificator and sometimes bully. Newspapers in places like Shreveport and Anchorage have editorial pages representing conflicting ideological stances. Those are remnants of two-newspaper towns, but along with USA Today they represent models worth studying.

One of my favorite books is “Stewardship,” by Peter Block. Block says “Stewardship is to hold something in trust for another.” Block says we choose service over self-interest most powerfully when we build the capacity for the next generation to govern themselves. That is the challenge facing newspapers concerned about the public interest. No other medium is as prepared to help the next generation govern themselves as newspapers are.

It was heartening at the ASNE meeting to see my former newspaper, The Star Tribune in Minneapolis, working with the Readership Institute at Northwestern University to use the core newspaper to reach young adult readers. So many efforts seem focused on creating entirely new products for young readers, products that have no connection to the newspaper. I am convinced newspapers have a better chance at survival if we can enlarge and improve the big tent to allow all our readers to share information.

Newspapers must unify, not divide. Rather than falling into the divisive, ideological, self-interest morass, newspapers must build the broad democratic community with integrity.

3) We must cultivate citizen journalism, but serve as an authenticator.
Citizen journalism is good. Voices squelched too long are being heard. Public debate is enhanced. Newspapers and networks have been too arrogant for too long in believing that only their voices mattered. Democracy is served when we hear more voices.
Blogs are good. I like blogs. I read blogs. Blogs have proven to be powerful watchdogs on the press and other institutions. And yes, there is a sweet justice to the fact that blogs look a lot like the pamphlets of the Revolutionary era that the Bill of Rights aimed to protect. Let’s treat the “bloggers as journalists” debate with the complexity it deserves and avoid the food fights. It’s a legitimate issue with big ramifications, if we can raise the discussion above the playground level.

But we also need to slow the bloomin’ train. Bloggers didn’t invent the wheel. Blogs are not the next century’s information vehicle. Blogs are a refreshing complement to the information spectrum, but they are not going to replace newspapers, television or major sites. Blogs are an imaginative, democratic information tool, but like other forms of citizen journalism they have severe limitations. Too many blogs become tools of special interests, and too many value shrill argumentation over trust, integrity and authenticity.
Newspapers need to figure out how to make citizen journalism and blogs a crucial part of their information menu. Not only do newspapers need to fulfill their longtime role as sense makers, but newspapers must serve as authenticators. I had been playing around with terms to describe the appropriate role when Tom Rosenstiel used that wonderfully descriptive term at ASNE a few weeks ago.

There has to be an institution or process in the information stream that guarantees accuracy, truth, fairness and perspective. Without that role information in this society will collapse into chaos. Newspapers fill that authenticator role best. Many critics, pundits and bloggers ridicule this kind of position and say it is arrogance and a desperate final grab at power that causes old newspaper editors like me to believe such a role is necessary. Peer authentication will work for some topics, but the public interest will be served well only if institutions and people committed to fostering and protecting public debate monitor, mediate and authenticate the flow of information.

When I use Google or other Internet search engines I am increasingly concerned that I find information without any brand integrity. I want to know the information I find has been vetted with the public interest in mind. But if newspapers are going to occupy that role, bias and unethical behavior have to be rooted out of newspaper organizations. The role of public conscience is a crucial one, but it carries great responsibility, and to fulfill that role newspapers have to make some significant improvements.

Newspapers need to make nice with blogs and figure out ways to comment on, organize and clarify the important work blogs are doing. Creative partnerships could make both information vehicles more credible.

4) We must reaffirm our watchdog role with a return to great writing and storytelling.
I fear the corporatization of newspapers has contributed to an investigative wimpiness that threatens the core mission of newspapers. The overpowering desire to appeal to a broad readership has caused many editors to over-think the investigative nature of their newspapers. There’s still some great investigative work being done, but there’s not as much and not enough.

Few things can be as important to a community as strong, penetrating investigative work. Journalists who highlight problems, challenges, opportunities and successes of communities can revitalize newspapers. Investigative reporting is in the public interest, and it can win readers like few other things you can do.

The key to improving investigative journalism is to concentrate on relevant subjects. Too often our investigations are too esoteric, and they do not hit readers where they live. The Readership Institute says the key to reaching young readers is to offer information that young people want to talk about, and the Institute says that young people want newspapers to look out for their personal and civic interests. Those characteristics define all readers. Tougher investigative reporting of issues that matter to people is a crucial way newspapers can reinvent themselves in the public interest.

My good friend Rick Rodriguez, the new president of ASNE, has made “Unleashing the Watchdogs” the theme of his presidency. The Poynter Institute is helping Rick by convening a major meeting in St Petersburg to plot a strategy for helping newspapers make investigative reporting the priority it must be. Sophisticated reportorial training, an energized recommitment to empirical computer journalism, and identification of great potential story ideas will certainly be a part of that agenda.

Arguably the profit squeeze has impinged upon newspapers’ abilities to tell great stories. Increased pressure on productivity, a drive to cover the routine just to show local volume, and reduced staff sizes threaten to devalue great writing ands wonderful storytelling.
Newspapers make a tragic mistake if they cede storytelling to nonfiction books and magazines. A fascinating new book called “The New New Journalism,” edited by Robert S. Boynton, says, “Rigorously reported, psychologically astute, sociologically sophisticated, and politically aware, the New New Journalism may well be the most popular and influential development in the history of American Literary non-fiction.”

That’s the kind of work we need more of in newspapers. We need readers to think of newspapers when they think of innovative, bold investigative storytelling. Arguably, the most compelling thing I’ve read in newspapers in recent months was the incredible excerpt from the new Enron book, “Conspiracy of Fools,” by Kurt Eichenwald. Eichenwald is a New York Times reporter, and much of his work was done for The Times. Other newspapers can do that kind of work, and they must. Newspaper readers are willing to invest time in great work. But newspapers make a mistake when they foist long boring work on readers.
The most important issue newspapers have to address in storytelling and investigation is courage. Industry leadership must recover the conviction that raising hell is an essential part of the journalistic birthright. Great investigative journalism can make a difference.
5) We must choose thoroughness, completeness and sophistication.

Newspapers’ future lies in being the information general store, not a series of boutiques. The theme of this speech has been that the newspaper’s greatest strength is bringing all the fragments, segments and special interests into one big tent. We have done that over the years by offering news, sports, business, lifestyle and popular culture. It would be a terrible error to abandon that completeness. You realize that comprehensive packaging is an essential newspaper strength when you struggle to find material on the Web. The ease of managing the package has to guide future efforts to reinvent newspapers.

As newspapers struggle with space reductions to reduce costs they are pursuing a foolhardy path. Thoroughness, which is communicating a sense that the newspaper has covered everything we need to know, is a precious attribute of newspapers. The dangers in this regard are especially frightening in the areas of national, international, business and sports news. The electronic competition in all four of those areas is formidable. Too many newspapers are pushing in-depth sports and national readers like me to Web sites that give me the thoroughness I need. Frittering away thoroughness could well mean frittering away the franchise.

Carl Bernstein has kicked up a lot of controversy recently by decrying "the triumph of idiot culture." I would not have used that language, but Bernstein is not all wrong. His complaint that too much news has “deteriorated into gossip, sensationalism and manufactured controversy” should be one to which news executives pay heed.

And his statement that “good journalism should challenge people, not just mindlessly amuse them" should serve as a guiding light for newspapers.

I am not suggesting that newspapers ignore popular culture. On the contrary, that can be one of newspapers’ most important contributions to public discourse. But if we abandon sophistication and insight in our coverage of popular culture we do not distinguish newspapers as a trusted source of shared information.

I do not pretend that I have all the answers, but I believe that if we are to reinvent newspapers in the public interest, that reinvention must be radical, it must build community with integrity, it must cast newspapers as the authenticator in a chaotic citizen journalist environment, it must emphasize the watchdog, storytelling strength of newspapers, and newspapers must opt for thoroughness, completeness and sophistication.

Three essential things will be required to execute this kind of reinvention —financial commitment, courage and trust.

Newspaper executives simply must take a hard look at their high margins. Reinvention requires money. Reinvention requires a firm conviction that the long-term future holds hope and promise. It requires a conviction that saving newspapers is a higher calling than milking and harvesting short-term profits.

Reinvention of newspapers in the public interest also requires courage. It requires courage to reinvent and end incremental “finger in the dike” thinking. And it requires courage to say we can contribute to the common good, and take an admired position in history, by saving newspapers.

And above all, newspapers must treat readers’ trust as the blessed treasure it is. That trust can give us the license to reinvent newspapers in the public interest.