When newspapers are gone, what will you miss? | Hacker News Reader

When newspapers are gone, what will you miss?

sethgodin.typepad.com

30 pointsph0rque62 comments

The only newspaper I would miss is The Economist - global, comprehensive, opinionated (for good or bad), analysis in depth. But I won't have to miss it, since The Economist is doing very well, probably for precisely the same reasons that so many people like me would miss it...

The Economist is the only paper I subscribe to, actually. Other ones, like Financial Times, I pick sometimes.

It could be that the news industry is getting split in two. On the one hand, there is up-to-date breaking news where all that matters is how fast you can get it out. Prose, spelling, sometimes even accuracy can be sacrificed to get it out faster. On the other hand, there's in-depth news and commentary like the Economist does. These are things that can be a week late, they can take their time, they can make something truly good because people don't read it to be informed about the latest thing, but to get really informed about the important stuff.

Where this leaves many papers is unknown. In the age before 24-hour cable news and the internet, the New York Times could be both good and in-depth and fast. However, the NYTimes will always be behind what I can get from any number of other sources today. They still have good analysis many times, but it isn't the Economist and it isn't the speed of internet news.

Eh, maybe I'm completely off base, but that's why I too still read the Economist while not being big on papers.

The Economist is doing well I believe, as is the Atlantic monthly.

People are willing to pay for quality opinion.

People are also willing to pay for late breaking news from the AP and Bloomberg.

In addition to the option of paying for late breaking news, TV and radio both give it away for free.

The papers are just middle men. They add nothing of value to the AP feed that they just regurgitate.

And their editorial work is not anywhere near as good as that of the Economist or the Atlantic.

They add nothing of value.

It is oversimplistic to say that papers add nothing of value. Surely you admit that the NYT, Wash. Post, and WSJ do original investigative research? Others papers sometimes do this also, although this seems to be decreasing. Everytime I visit my hometown in flyover country, I am frightened by how worthless the local paper has become. But there was a time, not long ago, when that paper had a staff in most major cities around the world. I assume that we are simply missing stories that would otherwise have gotten broken with more feet on the ground. (We don't realize we're missing them since we are missing them...)

Maybe the economist et al. are adding staff, but I suspect there are simply many fewer total investigative journalists, and so less investigative journalism. Maybe if the Chicago tribune hadn't cut so much, they would have broken the Blagojevich story instead of the FBI?

The problem is exactly as you describe.

The papers could not find a good way to monetize the valuable investigative journalism and so they've cut it, and cut it and cut it.

> Maybe if the Chicago tribune hadn't cut so much, they would have broken the Blagojevich story instead of the FBI?

The Trib did break the Blago story - the FBI wanted to keep it under wraps for a while because they didn't have all the goods. The Trib wanted to sell papers today.

The Trib has had decades to address Chicago corruption. They didn't do it when they had lots more resources, so it's silly to think that they'd do it now if they still had those resources.

Foreign Affairs (by the Council on Foreign Relations) is great too, if you like The Economist. It goes even more in depth.

And I like the NYTimes, just for their investigative journalism and op-eds (except Krugman ;-)). Exposing the warrantless wiretapping fiasco a few years back bought them a lifetime of goodwill from me.

I'll miss the quiet "me time" of reading the newspaper in pyjamas in the morning, or at a restaurant on my lunch break (not in pyjamas).

I'll miss the local sports coverage, box scores, etc. All of this is online, more or less, but it's just not the same.

I'll miss the local news. Our local newspaper plays a valuable role as watchdog. They recently brought down a corrupt mayor, for example. But even the mundane news is useful: road construction, a new restaurant opening, what's playing at the local theatre, etc.

But, I was raised in a home where both my mom and dad read the newspaper everyday. So, I've been reading the newspaper for almost my entire life. Whenever I move, I leave one local newspaper behind and start reading a new one. It gives me a sense of place. A sense of community.

So it's hard for me to imagine a world without newspapers. Sadly, it appears to be inevitable. My local paper recently announced that they'll be cutting home delivery to 3 days per week...

Re: local news, here's an example of a local paper doing quite nicely:

http://www.7dvt.com/about-us

Like your local paper, this one isn't a daily. I think this could be a trend. Local papers will be weeklies, and they'll continue to exist. The switch from daily to weekly will be stressful.

(Related submission to HN, didn't get traction when posted, but gives a little more context: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=431498)

I'm not confident that blogs will replace professional commentators. I don't know any blogs that have the same kind of quality as the Financial Times comment section (except Willem Buiter's, which the FT publishes). The same goes for something like The Economist. These people are paid to write, and given budgets that allow them to research stories. They are a world away from unpaid blogging.

And there's also a fear factor. If you're alone guy, how can you fight against big corporation that is able to spend millions on lawyers?

However, I think it's more likely that someone in the possession of whistle blower information would contact a prominent blogger than some hot shot Pulitzer-prize winning investigative journalist at NY Times.

Also if there are a lot of bloggers out there, chances are greater that "someone" would feel that they have so little to to lose and lots to win from breaking a controversial story, even though some company would sue them.

What's left is local news, investigative journalism and intelligent coverage of national news. Perhaps 2% of the cost of a typical paper.

I'd like to see a citation on that "2%". I don't believe it.

What will we miss? Obviously, the basic reportage function of newspapers is what we'll miss--the boring research, interviewing, verifying, and so on. This is something that bloggers cannot reproduce without a news infrastructure and being on salary.

2% seems to me laughably low. I would think it is something like 50%. It might take up 2% of the space of a paper, but the reasons we will miss it is because no one else appears ready to do it. Why not? Expense.

How many investigative journalists do you think the NY Times employs? IIRC they have about 800 employees, so maybe 100 tops. Let's say the cost of employing them is 20M per year. Last year the NYT made 6 million on revenue of 748 million, which means their costs must be 742 million. This makes Seth's numbers roughly correct.

You seriously believe that 98% of the NYT expenses are consumed by movie reviews, the crossword guy, and David Brooks? Anyway, the fact is, Seth pulled that number out of his ass, and that is irresponsibly sloppy at best. (And, ironically, an excellent example of the kind of thing editors and fact-checkers are for...)

> You seriously believe that 98% of the NYT expenses are consumed by movie reviews, the crossword guy, and David Brooks?

You're forgetting the actual paper and the cost of distributing it.

We know the revenues (roughly) and that the expenses are about the same. How many actual investigative reporters do you think that the NYT has? Multiply that number by your guess of their average burdended cost and compare that to the total expenses.

My guess is that the NYT has at most 30 investigative reporters and they cost, on average, $200k/year. That's $6M. If there are actually 100, that's $20M.

Frankly, you are also forgetting about the actual paper and cost of distributing it! I can believe your kind of calculations only in the context of a plausible accounting for all NYT expenses. With out factoring management, lawyers, plane tickets, real estate, etc., you will be way off.

BTW 30 is absurdly low. The NYT has more than 30 offices!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_The_New_York_Times_empl...

According to Wikipedia the Times only has 350 writers total. It's clear that the majority of these are not doing investigative journalism, they are following the candidates around and rewriting press releases and such. I don't see how the number of actual investigative journalists could possibly be more than 100.

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/pr?s=NYT

Full Time Employees: 10,231

The question isn't "writers" but all of the employees involved in actual news creation. I have no idea what it might actually be, but a 1:10 ratio between "operatives" and "support staff" is my guess.

This is actually in reply to the entire thread, but I didn't want it buried deep in nested comments.

Anyway, some figures, taken from the New York Times Annual Report and 10-K filing for 2007: http://www.nytco.com/investors/financials/annual_reports.htm...

From the business.pdf ( http://www.nytco.com/pdf/annual_2007/business.pdf ) the overall number of employees are 10,231 (4,408 work for the New York Times Media Group---the rest for other newspapers across the country). I estimated the number of reporters at 650 (From here ( http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/a... ) people we find that people listed in italics are reporters for the New York Times and not wanting to count across 26 other pages, just counted the number of reporters here, which was 25, and multiplied that by 26 to get my estimate. Crude, but should get us into the right ball park). For just the New York Times that's about 15% of all employees are reporters. So, let's run with that figure.

Out of 10,231 employees (at all the newspapers run by this company), that means they have around 1,500 reporters. From the financial statements ( http://www.nytco.com/pdf/annual_2007/fin-stmts.pdf ) we can see that their total expenses are $2,928,070,000. Assuming an average of $200k per reporter (given elsewhere in this thread) that works out to be 10% of expenses (whereas total eages are around 22%). Obviously, an average salary of $100k (remember, these are reporters for various papers around the country) this makes reporter expense 5% of all expenditures.

2% is low, but not by much I would think.

I'll miss the attention to local politics. Not everyone who runs for office is honest - as the bush administration showed us. For local politics, the only attention comes from local newspapers - unless there has been some outrageous behavior so bad that the stink can be smelled hundreds of miles away.

There are some local issues I care about. Enough to make me run for office. These issues would get lost in the noise if I only had national media available. And that the folks who blog about some of them, well, they tend to be single-issue-cranks who only care about their own spin on things.

disclaimer: I ran for election this past November and lost. My estimate is that less than 1 in 1000 Americans ever run for political office at any time during their life.

Being able to read news on the subway where there is no wireless access for my phone.

Getting a wider net of news. Maybe others read more broad news online, but mine tends to be filtered down a lot and so I lose out on certain local stories and stories that I might not otherwise be interested in, but seem worth reading after I've read them as a captive audience of their editing.

look into caching rss readers. They're very nice.

I'll miss actually holding a newspaper in my hands. Folding it into the perfect size. Tossing a particular section over to somebody within my vicinity with articles circled. I'll miss ripping articles out and putting them on the fridge or a cork board. I'll miss taking silly putty, pressing it up against the sunday funnies and reading it off of the pink blob. I'll miss sharing a newspaper with somebody on the bus after I'm done with it. There's a bonding that happens when you're able to leave information with somebody else in a truly tangible manner.

There's a whole cognitive aspect to newspapers that Seth is deliberately ignoring. Maybe it's nostalgia, but still. That's what I'll miss.

Won't miss anything, haven't picked up a newspapers in years.

Likewise. I kind of felt like saying "I'll miss all the same stuff I missed already 10 years ago, like investigative reporting." But now I can't even remember if they were doing that 10 years ago.

Actually, I do know one thing I'll miss... I'll miss the cheap packing material for my dishes when I move.

I grew up with the family tradition of wrapping gifts in the comics sections. The kids would actually unwrap the gifts and then read any comics that were still legible too, haha.

I'll miss settling down in my favourite pub with a weekend edition full of analysis and commentary from people who are truly experts in their fields.

Casually reading a broadsheet on a Sunday afternoon is a decadent pleasure (pretty-much gone now that many newspapers have moved to a smaller format) and I will truly miss it.

Hmm... I guess that newspapers' collapse means mostly lack of deep analysis in one place; instead, you'll have to find them in many blogs, and sometimes it is hard to either find them or evaluate their credibility.

There's also a personal bit. My mother used to work for a small local newspapers for many years; she's not working there anymore but somehow I felt, especially in the small communities, newspapers integrated the people and them more aware about the local events.

I will miss the serendipitous discovery of information gained by casually browsing a newspaper. Kind of like reading a social news site. I rarely pick up a paper to read a particular article; I read for the sake of reading.

However, I disagree with the underlying assumption: newspapers are not going to go away completely. Instead, the industry will become strongly segmented into hyperlocal and national divisions.

Hyperlocal papers (the myriad 20k-circ dailies and weeklies) are doing great right now, primarily because they provide coverage of news and events that isn't available anywhere else.

A handful of national papers will survive, too, in order to satisfy those who still enjoy getting national news from dead trees (a segment that, while shrinking, is unlikely to completely disappear). My money is on The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and perhaps The New York Times weathering the storm.

Mid-level papers, on the other hand, are doomed. They are the "mushy middle," satisfying nobody's needs well.

I used to work at a newspaper, and I feel sentimental about them, but emotion does not change business reality.

Despite the financial weaknesses, Seth ignores one reason why newspapers remain valuable: influencing opinion. Look down the ownership of significant papers - it does not matter if they cost money, as long as they create goodwill / influence opinion in favour of their owning tycoon's other businesses and activities. Their readership figures may be dropping generally, but if you go to important opinion forming places - parliament's private chambers, college common rooms - there remains a vibrant newspaper reading culture.

There seems to be some confusion between the concept of 'newspapers' and 'news printed on paper.' This post jumps between talking about gasping for air under huge debt and tree farmers going out of business.

The only thing I will miss from 'news printed on paper' is the crossword puzzle. My grandmother would miss the obituaries.

I am confident that the news organizations which do a good job of keeping government in check will survive, though the delivery medium will likely become entirely electronic.

I work at a newspaper. If they do it right, they won't be gone, they'll just adapt.

What is "right", moving online, incorporating bloggers, interactive visuals? (legitimately curious)

Get small fast, hire hackers, leverage your position as a middle-man between a local audience and local businesses online, and capitalize on the decades of valuable content sitting in your archives. Forget breaking news in print, focus on investigative stories that no one else is going to do but some will pay for. Reduce your publishing cycle to one or two times a week. Adopt a "can't beat 'em, join 'em" mentality when it comes to Craigslist and other local competitors. Launch your own local self-serve ad network. Map your area to an insane depth and resell that content to local businesses and utilities. Watch what Google is doing with Google Local and Street View, mimic and surpass.

All of this is possible, but the change is so dramatic that most newspapers will not do it or will go into shock and instead of focusing on long-term recovery will destroy the one asset they have (a local audience) by adopting fast-money tactics (obnoxious banners and spammy marketing).

can i pick you to be on my team?

Our team is hiring: http://djangogigs.com/gigs/468/ :-)

"Experience with Smalltalk or a dialect of Lisp a plus."

Clever filter :).

Right on! And it's a good thing I agree with you, seeing as how we work at the same place and sit about eight feet apart.

I already miss watching my grandma do the crossword and crypt-o-quip puzzles. :`(

I don't know; when books are gone, what will you miss?

Or: when vinyl is gone, what will you miss?

Etc.

Seating on a porch and spreading a crisp newspaper with my two hands while sipping on a hot coffee. That I will miss, but certainly not the content.

That's quite some maneuver. Do you have a tail?

There is nothing like it on a sunday morning. Specially if you have a nice view (which I do not have).

perfectly sized and flexible dog poop bags.

relaxing morning read without getting sucked into internet. i still prefer the multiple perspectives and interaction i get from web 2.0 news, but i can imagine the nostalgia for simpler, more passive times :-)

also, nytimes is really annoying to read online because i have to find login info.

If your using Firefox just use the bugmenot addon so you just have to right click on the username field.

Being able to go around to my co-workers desks and get old WSJs to use as bird cage liner.

The serendipity of browsing for one thing and reading something else.

Research and less bandwagon reporting.

sunday funnies

That sounds like an idea for a web app... a comics aggregator. You can even have it be customizable for each user, and have something new every day.

There are a few of those.

They're actually quite vile: The webcomic artists depend on the ad revenue received from people visiting their sites, so the scrapers which aggregate other web comics end up leeching bandwidth while snatching revenue from the content creators.

Yes and no; IIRC the XKCD chap says he makes his money from merchandising. But you're right; people who want their content syndicated set up RSS on their sites and people who don't, don't.

Not unless they bring back gigantic Winsor McKay-style full-page illustrations. Or long-form Will Eisner-style comic tales. Otherwise I'll read 'em online. Small one-to-five panel jokes work just as well online.

The last comic I can remember that tried to take any real advantage of the print medium was Calvin and Hobbes.

How?

Watterson convered this in some of Calvin and Hobbes reprint books, but basically, a Sunday strip is at most 12 panels (call it 12 units) long. By modern convention, you have a 4-unit title panel, a 2 unit panel with a single throw away joke (or two 1 unit panels with a throw away joke), leaving 6 units left for the main Sunday joke.

A newspaper then has several options for displaying the Sunday comic. They can run the full 12 units. They can eliminate the 4-unit title and run 8 units. They can also substitute the 4-unit title for a 1-unit title and run a 9-unit strip. They can drop the 2 unit throw-away joke for a 10 unit strip. They can drop the title and throw away joke for a 6 unit strip (smallest they can run).

After Watterson's sabbatical in the early 90s (I think it was 1990), he fought for a full 12-unit (in a 4x3 layout), and won (since his strip was so popular), in which he was able to work without any constraint. He could basically do a huge 1-unit Sunday strip, or a 24 small panel strip, or strips without panels, or what ever he felt was needed for the Sunday strip. The artwork for the late Calvin and Hobbes Sunday strips was phenomenal and probably nothing like it had been seen for 60 or 70 years (and nothing like it since).

Thanks. I remember.

But didn't he remove a special limitation of newspapers instead of exploiting a special feature?

Mutts makes good use of color and space, but the local paper seems to determined to fuck that up, too.

Might be a viable business. Snail mail weekly full size newsprint filled just with comics from artists wanting to push the medium a little. Call it "The Sunday Funnies."

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