Talk:Decline of newspapers

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 7 January 2019 and 1 May 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Montalvc.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 19:10, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Origin

This article has been created following a discussion at Talk:Newspaper#Future_of_newspapers. I'm the first to acknowledge that the copy is shockingly POV and unreferenced - it's intended only to give us something to start working on. Barnabypage (talk) 21:35, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

And you did a good job in creating something that can be developed and organized. It's a start, as you said. Thank you. — Becksguy (talk) 20:58, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Agree is quite POV, but a good point to begin expanding to a NPOV version. Thanks! DPdH (talk) 01:51, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Sources

Here is a collection of a few sources for development. I will add as I repost or find them. — Becksguy (talk) 22:24, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

• Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers
• Getting the news: Then and Now from the Washington Post, 2005
• Hard News: Daily Papers Face Unprecedented Competition from the Washington Post, February 20, 2005
• "Seattle Paper Shifts Entirely to the Web". The New York Times. March 16, 2009. Retrieved 3009-03-18. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer will produce its last printed edition on Tuesday [March 17, 2009] and become an Internet-only news source, the Hearst Corporation said on Monday, making it by far the largest American newspaper to take that leap. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help); Unknown parameter |authors= ignored (help)
• Tsai, Catherine (March 16, 2009). "Ex-Rocky Mountain News staffers plan news Web site". The Associated Press. Retrieved 2009-03-18. With backing from three entrepreneurs, staffers of the recently shuttered Rocky Mountain News plan to start an online news publication if they can get 50,000 paying subscribers by April 23 — what would have been the News' 150th anniversary. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
• Perez-Pena, Richard (March 12, 2009). "As Cities Go From Two Papers to One, Talk of Zero". The New York Times. Retrieved 2009-03-17. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help) NOTE: Included in External Links
• Kamiya, Gary (February 17, 2009). "The death of the news". Salon.com. Retrieved 2009-03-17. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help) NOTE: Included in External Links
• Alterman, Eric (February 11, 2009). "Save the News, Not the Newspaper". The Nation. Retrieved 2009-03-17. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help) NOTE: Included in External Links
• Mutter, Alan (January 01, 2009). "Newspaper share value fell $64B in '08". In the worst year in history for publishers, newspaper shares dropped an average of 83.3% in 2008, wiping out $64.5 billion in market value in just 12 months. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help) Although this is a blog entitled Reflections of a Newsosaur, it's from a veteran newspaper editor and executive.
• Perez-Pena, Richard (February 22, 2009). "Philadelphia Newspapers Seeking Bankruptcy". The New York Times. Retrieved 2009-03-19. The owners of The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Philadelphia Daily News filed for bankruptcy late Sunday night after talks aimed at restructuring their heavy debt load broke down, executives said. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
• The Associated Press (February 22, 2009). "Journal Register Seeks Bankruptcy". The New York Times. Retrieved 2009-03-18. The Journal Register Company, publisher of The New Haven Register in Connecticut and other newspapers, filed for Chapter 11 protection on Saturday. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
• Sanders, Eli (February 24, 2009). "Anger and Aggregation". The Stranger. The P-I's Online Plan and Its Discontents Seattle Post-Intelligencer as possible online only newspaper.

Consider this one. Although I would recommend getting a hard copy. I was reading one today, and I think the article had some good charts about revenue that are not available in the on-line version. - ¢Spender1983 (talk) 23:14, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

• Isaacson, Walter (February 16, 2009). "How to Save Your Newspaper". Time. It is now possible to contemplate a time when some major cities will no longer have a newspaper.
• [NEW] Ventura, Michael P. (July 28th 2009). "You Just Graduated From Journalism School. What Were You Thinking?". The Village Voice. Retrieved 2009-08-02. In a down economy, the smart play is to go to school to learn new skills, network, and ride it out. At least, that's the case in a normal industry. But conventional wisdom has it that planning for a future in journalism makes as much sense as signing up for a career as a Pontiac dealer. That's not how members of the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism's just-graduated class of 2009 see it, though. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
• [NEW] Rayman, Graham (September 29, 2009). "How New York City's Seven Newspapers Are (Nearly) Surviving". The Village Voice. Retrieved 2009-10-06. Print is undead—and NYC is the only city where you can still read all about it {{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help); Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)

To do list

This is my quick list of immediate things to do. Feel free to add. — Becksguy (talk)

1. Add more inline citations (important)  Done
2. Restructure to separate out US trends from other countries/regions
3. Organize article into other subsections  Done
4. Add short list of major/important defunct papers
5. Add short list of major/important papers changing to online edition only (e.g., Seattle)
6. Add short list of major/important papers initiated as online only (eg - Salon.com)
7. Distinguish clearly between long-term/cyclical issues such as rise of TV, changes in commuting patterns, etc., and the current economic situation.

Comments

You might also have a look at the various links and sources I've posted both to the general newspaper article, as well as to The New York Times piece. MarmadukePercy (talk) 22:31, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

I included the NYT piece as a ref in this article, and yes, I was going to "steal" your various comment links and sources in the main article and the NYT article talk pages. Most of those seem right on target. Thank you. We need to add more refs to keep this article from being speedied, but I've got to go and get a bite to eat. — Becksguy (talk) 22:39, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know, and glad the 'sources' could be 'stolen' for this worthy cause. :-) I have to run for a bit myself, but I'll try to chip in also. MarmadukePercy (talk) 22:41, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

All great stuff. I've put in a Globalize tag to remind us that the article needs to look beyond the U.S. as well - please don't take this as a criticism of your sterling efforts, more a reminder to myself and anyone else who stumbles across the article! I'll try to get working on that in the next couple of days. Barnabypage (talk) 20:06, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

The Globalize tag is appropriate and fine. I added a few cites, but MarmadukePercy has really done a wonderful job in adding more than sufficient citations to keep this article from being deleted for that reason, I believe. As well as his improving the content. Next is restructuring, I think. — Becksguy (talk) 06:35, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Wow, this thing is massive. There are a lot of quotes in the article, I would suggest getting rid of some of them, leave the info the quote suggests and let people link to the articles instead of pasting them here. What do you think? Thedudejessemullen (talk) 00:15, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Britain?

I don't agree with use of the phrase "especially in the United States" when it comes to job cuts for journalists. British newspapers had shed thousands of jobs in the last two years, and scores more posts are being cut each week. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Myosotis Scorpioides (talk • contribs) 21:32, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

The Evening Standard (of London) reported on September 1, 2008 (about six months ago) that the British newspapers were not close to being in as bad shape as the US newspapers. [1]. I have no doubt that the British newspaper industry has problems, but do you have a source(s) that reports the extent of the job losses there? Note that this article was created just two days ago, and is still under major construction. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks. — Becksguy (talk) 23:03, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

I think that's a reasonable point for the Standard to make - especially bearing in mind, with regard to this article, that it's Future of newspapers rather than Future of journalism jobs! There haven't - at least yet - been any out-and-out closures of high-profile UK titles due to the current economic crisis (though some have disappeared over the years as part of the long-term contraction of the industry, of course).

Another ref that might help: [2] - Trinity predicts closures.

I'm recovering from an op at the moment but when I'm a bit better I'll do some work on the British side of things. Barnabypage (talk) 11:31, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

• Hope these refs help a bit with the British side:

[3] - 4,000 media jobs gone in UK since July 2008 [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10]

And so on...-- Myosotis Scorpioides 14:12, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Another for you, an opinion piece in the Guardian from a couple of days ago on the viability of local newspapers: [11] Modest Genius ^talk 23:54, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

And there's another useful link here summarising effects on regional newspapers - http://www.holdthefrontpage.co.uk/081121jobscrisis.shtml - a bit more up-to-date than the journalism.co.uk source we're currently using. Barnabypage (talk) 11:31, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Another interesting piece on the British situation - http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/mar/01/regional-abcs - particularly with regard to greater viability of newspapers in more remote cities with more sense of identity, and comparative strength of weeklies. Barnabypage (talk) 12:17, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Article title

I think that the article title is going to need some reworking. Future of newspapers has an implication that the entire article is focused on events that might happen. This means the article would be deleted for failing to follow the policy that Wikipedia is not a Crystal Ball. Specifically the policy says "Articles that present … "future history" … are original research and therefore inappropriate." Perhaps the title of the article should change to something that does not suggest future history. Maybe Modern trends in newspaper publishing. The article can then focus on specific reports of what is occurring in print journalism and also focus on quotes people are saying about where it is going. This maintains the encyclopedic nature of the article.

This is just a thought, because my first inclination was to nominate for deletion because of the Crystal Ball policy. However, when I saw Walter Isaacson's quote in Time (see reference suggested above), "It is now possible to contemplate a time when some major cities will no longer have a newspaper", I realized that there is current verifiable material to support an article that discusses what is happening to newspapers. You just have to stay away from presenting future events in the article, focus instead on documenting other peoples conclustions. - ¢Spender1983 (talk) 00:06, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

One other thought - What were the market forces that caused the demise of evening editions? All large cities and many medium cities used to have at least one morning and one evening newspaper. Did the advent of television news cause the evening edition papers to go out of business? This could add meat to this article. - ¢Spender1983 (talk) 00:13, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, Trends in newspaper publishing works better, I agree. (Aren't articles implicitly about the "modern" unless otherwise stated?) I agree to that we need more on the long-term and cyclical issues such as the demise of evenings - I'll add this to the to-do list. Barnabypage (talk) 11:34, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

The only thing about the demise of evenings is that it happened a couple of decades ago, at least in the States. So it's pretty old news here, although there should be a sentence at least referencing the development. I do agree, though, that there are other trends which could be added. As far as the title of the piece, I guess I have to say that I sort of like Future of newspapers. Just my two cents. Thanks again, Barnaby, for getting this thing up and running. Regards, MarmadukePercy (talk) 14:40, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

"Future of xyz" is a bad title, and implies a straight violation of WP:CRYSTAL. I suggest Trends in newspaper publishing, if not History of newspapers or History of newspaper publishing. ninety:one 22:13, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Ninetyone in that "Future of newspapers" is misleading and imprecise. I do not agree with either of his suggestions on the "History of" anything, since this article does not attempt to present anything like a full history. "Trends in..." gets closer to the point, but I think suffers still from a measure of imprecision, which could be eliminated with a time delimitation, perhaps "Trends in newspaper publishing, 1990-2010" or better yet "Trends in newspaper publishing in the internet age," since that is the major thrust of the article. More succinctly, I would therefore suggest "Newspaper publishing in the internet age". Otherwise, excellent article in such a short time, well-written and -sourced and of definite notability. Citizen Sunshine (talk) 23:50, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

The genesis of this article content and title arises from the Future section of the parent article at Newspaper#Future, as well as discussion at Talk:Newspaper#Future of newspapers. I agree, and also argue that, History of newspapers as a title is misleading and incorrect, as this article isn't about the history of newspapers in a traditional sense (as that would go back to the 17th century for movable type papers), although it does include the very recent history of the current crisis in journalism that is in the process of destroying the US press this century. Mainstream articles are discussing the death of American newspapers (and some others) in the last few years, as this article describes in gory detail. I'm not invested in the current title, but I haven't seen any suggestions that really seem to work quite yet. There are dire and well documented forward looking statements from industry executives, editors, mainstream media, and academic sources about the crisis and what it may mean to the future of newspapers. This article is not a WP:CRYSTALBALL, the reliable sources are making the conclusions and predictions. This is a sea change transformational period to newspapers, especially the print press, just as movable type was to publishing in the 17th century, and the power loom was to textiles and clothes in the 19th century. How do we capture that kind of concept in a title? I would not be adverse to using the word "crisis" in the title, because that is what it is. The crisis is not entirely due to the Internet, as the industry is being decimated by a 1-2 punch of the internet followed by the Global financial crisis of 2008–2009, although it's roots were earlier, per Financial crisis of 2007–2010 and Late 2000s recession. — Becksguy (talk) 01:00, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

This discussion begins with my admission that there is substantial material to warrant an article. The point is that the title fails to meet the crystal policy. If the article title was to be submitted to Wikipedia:Requested moves, it would surely be a concensus to rename the article. It is better to have the discussion here and meet a concensus, than to submit to those with less interest in the article itself and more interest in policy. Even an agreement to move to an interim title like Trends in newspaper publishing in the internet age is better than leaving a title that violates policy. - ¢Spender1983 (talk) 04:32, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

P.S. - you can always redirect from Future of newspapers - ¢Spender1983 (talk) 04:34, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

How about something like "Daily Newspapers: 1950's-today". Talk about the rise of papers post WWII and wrap up with the current "crisis". Skip all of the future stuff? Thedudejessemullen (talk) 23:43, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

"Newspaper crisis" redirects here, and I think it would be a better title. We should have an article covering the current problems in the newspaper industry and proposed alternative business models, but "Future of newspapers" isn't a Wikipedia-type article.--Bkwillwm (talk) 02:19, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

I think that one raises a couple of difficulties: (a) what if the crisis ends, does this just become a historical article on 2008-2010 newspaper crisis? and (b) what about those countries/business models that are not experiencing a crisis? While Trends in newspaper publishing is a bit horridly vague, I'd still favour that; or maybe something time-limited like Newspapers since 1950 (pick a date, any date). Barnabypage (talk) 10:15, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure there is any title that will address all concerns and yet be descriptive enough to adequately indicate the subject. According to the New York Times, the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, part of Arizona State University, a prestigious J-School, has changed a course title from “The Business of Journalism” to “The Business and Future of Journalism” [12]. That would add support for the existing title since the industry is well into thinking about and discussing the "Future" of journalism and newspapers. In other words, this article is about the forward looking statements and concerns that senior newspaper editors, executives, journalism professors, industry insiders, and others have made in reliable sources. It's not a crystal ball with speculation by our editors. — Becksguy (talk) 11:30, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps Decline of Newspapers is a more appropriate title? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.172.170.196 (talk) 02:53, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Onine newspapers

Online newspaper will not replace the normal newspapers on print because still not everyone has the Internet. In addition many people prefer newspapers, because reader there do not have the option to post comments while on online newspapers you can read someone's comments under the article.79.132.31.212 (talk) 00:55, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

London Evening Standard

I've been away from this article for too long to usefully edit it quickly, but we should mention the move by the London Evening Standard to go free - http://www.holdthefrontpage.co.uk/news/091002freestandard.shtml. This is the established paid-for daily in a major world city adopting the free model - surely a significant endorsement of that model. (Whether or not well-advised!) Barnabypage (talk) 11:16, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Many thanks, Barnaby. Will work it in later on today. Best, MarmadukePercy (talk) 11:39, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Zeitungssterben und Vorschläge dagegen

.. ProPublica Stiftung USA[13] onto the german "Zeitung" (newspaper)page - is that useful? Found in and other links in our too ununderstandable jargon would be p. ex. MMD-Studie 2009„Begrenzter Journalismus: Was beeinflusst die Entfaltung eines Qualitätsjournalismus“ via "news" on 2009: [14] Sorry, please if that was far fetched or so...thanks--Siebzehnwolkenfrei (talk) 16:54, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Category

Just to let you know, the reason I deleted Category:Journalism is because this is categorized under Category:Newspapers, which is more specific.

Category:Journalism has about 28 subcats and 60 articles outside of the subcats. I'm working on trimming the number that are outside the subcats. The more articles that are outside the subcats, the harder it is to find any specific one. Maurreen (talk) 20:18, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Okay, I see your point. Thank you for letting me know. MarmadukePercy (talk) 20:26, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

OK, thanks. Maurreen (talk) 20:43, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Research - maybe worth including?

Readership not declining as steeply as circulations, says Scarborough. http://www.scarborough.com/press_releases/Scarborough%20Newspaper%20Audience%20Readership%20NAA%20November%202009%20A.pdf Barnabypage (talk) 19:05, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Title: "Future" of newspapers

Am I the only one who feels the title "Future of newspapers" is a bit time-sensitive and should be changed to "Decline of newspapers" or something? -Ugog Nizdast (talk) 17:35, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia does not like crystal balls and I agree that it's better to call this "Decline of newspapers" or "threats to newspapers". However it's style is splendid. One can actually appreciate the ideas better when they are well written. I see no OR -- every point is made in the sources. It is a not a "personal essay" because it does not express someone's private thoughts but instead reflects very closely what journalists are saying & worrying about. Rjensen (talk) 19:25, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

Content copied from Wikipedia? Editorial tag

In the current version, I has found two instances which I thought were WP:COPYVIO from http://www.companiesandmarkets.com and http://www.scribd.com/doc/62428484/Cultural-Imperialism, which is also a Non-WP:RS. But I soon found that this content has been here for many years while those two sites have uploaded theirs only in 2011, a case of copying from Wikipedia, and I've restored it here. What confuses me is where is this content from? one citation given didn't mention any of it and the rest lacked inlines, am I missing something here? The article has a distinct tone to it and maybe be original research if not anything else. -Ugog Nizdast (talk) 18:09, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

good encyclopedia writing indeed has a tone...especially when dealing with the topic of how (newspapers) write to attract the public. that is to be celebrated in Wikipedia. OR is quite different--it means lack of a footnote to a RS. Rjensen (talk) 17:21, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

E-edition

I'm looking for information about the practice of print newspapers making one or more editions each week available only online. It just happened again. A month ago it happened with the newspaper I subscribe to and with other newspapers owned by the same company. "E-edition" is a red link, though it refers also to the idea of making the printed newspaper available online as well, which can be helpful in bad weather or when there are other reasons for delivery problems.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 19:31, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

Very Dated

Most of the references and quotes in this article are 10-15 years old. Due to the nature of the article, it makes the whole thing seem barely relevant. More up to date sources that reflect the *current state* of the newspaper industry would be useful, instead of quotes from people 15 years ago opining about a future which has already transpired. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 47.55.247.218 (talk) 22:46, 22 October 2021 (UTC)

Dated, lacking NPOV

As @47.55.247.218 mentioned, much of this article is very dated—I would guesstimate about 60–75% of all citations are from before 2010. While it is important to have historical sources for context, this article needs to reflect the news industry of today, including, but not limited to, the rise of internet journalism, oligopolization of the news industry, etc.

Not only is much of this article outdated, the vast majority of it is written from a journalist's voice and perspective. Almost every section, save for a few, is based on the opinions of journalists, or people that are high up in the news industry. Almost no scholarly sources are cited in this article outside of the Impact section.

In summary, this article needs vast changes—possibly even a full rewrite, in my opinion—to be relevant and/or useful to readers.

ComradePingu1917 (talk) 17:17, 6 July 2022 (UTC)

It's possible to copy the whole thing, put it into a sandbox, and do the rewrites yourself, then paste it back here. It could be something as drastic as eliminating the old info, or simply putting it into a new section headed "In the past," or something of the sort. BeenAroundAWhile (talk) 06:13, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

You are not logged in.to be notified when someone replies and receive 105.113.16.193 (talk) 20:50, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

Suggestion on name change and change of focus

This article isn't really getting better. Here are my recommendations:

• For the time being, change the title of the article to "Decline of newspapers (United States)"
• Remove the fairly minimal amount of content about newspapers declining in other countries and archive for potential future articles or expansion of this one into other countries
• Conceptually, make it clearer that when it comes to the decline of newspapers, there are (a) facts about the actual decline which show up in the areas of revenue (declining), jobs (declining), subscriptions (declining) and maybe some other declines as well; all easily supportable by citations to many dozens of highly reputable reporting and analysis; (b) theories about why this happened; there are multiple theories about why this happened; what are they; describe and summarize them; (c) why does it matter? Is this a bad thing or a good thing or doesn't it really matter? Multiple credible voices have had things to say about that; summarize and lay out the state of the conversation on that; (d) proposals to do something about the decline; there are several proposals; summarize them and lay them out. Novellasyes (talk) 11:13, 14 September 2023 (UTC)

It could have a section called "Types of decline" and under that, subsections for the declines in jobs, revenue, subscriptions and numbers of papers. Then, another section on "Causes". Then, another section on "Impact of". Finally, a section on proposals, suggestions, or attempts that have been made to remediate the problem.Novellasyes (talk) 21:27, 22 September 2023 (UTC)