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This interview is part of the Future of Journalism interview series.
Interview with Prof. Michael Ray Smith , professor of communication studies, Campbell University , Buies Creek, N.C.
 The San Diego paper is up for sale, the Miami paper is up for sale, the Minneapolis paper has missed an interest payment, the Chicago Tribune empire is in bankruptcy ... on and on we could go ... can you foresee major metro areas in the U.S. suddenly being without the printed word as their primary reliable source of information? If so, is this something terrible and deplorable or just an economic fact of life?
MRS: No. Here’s the benefit of a city. As long as we have cities, we will have commuters, who will want to read the news on the bus, train and subway. They tend to read on the way into work and the way home from work. Those commuters represent a strong, repeat audience.
Can adjustments be made to fill the gap and if so what would they be?
MRS: Absolutely. Content providers, once called newspapers, are experimenting with on-demand delivery particularly to mobile telephones. Telephones are computers and computers make moving information more convenient than ever. In some cases, information alerts and bursts can be downloaded from a source at work or home or even in transit and then read while on the road. As you know, reading now includes listening and viewing with the added feature that audiences can do their own indexing or searching to add to their interest in an audience.
Are there any metro areas that you think will always have papers, and if so which ones and why?
MRS: Two or three come to mind. 1) Washington, D.C., is the political capital of the nation and it is ripe not only for competing voices but as a nexus of political news that may be shared or sold to others as part of their news package. 2) New York City is the financial capital of the nation and the intersection of entertainment, popular culture, wealth and power, which makes it a city that will attract an audience that is restless to be in the know. 3) Los Angeles is the entertainment capital and it is hungry for information that will help audiences sense the direction of its No. 1 export.
Just as one possible scenario ... is it plausible that USAT, the WSJ, NYT and WaPo will survive as national papers ... and the latter two as local ones as well ... and that for them to flourish they would form an economic consortium with bureaus in the major metro areas of the U.S. and the world ... but they wouldn't have separate reporters, they would have reporters doing the same story for all four to make it pay off?
MRS: What may be more likely is that the WaPo will be the headquarters for all the news from Congress and all the other newspaper operations may depend on it for content. In return, other newspapers such as the WSJ or the NYT would be the dominant player of financial news and supply the Post and others with content. Newspapers could enter into quid pro quo relationships that emphasize their strengths.
What do you think of the Detroit papers deciding to stop home delivery on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Saturdays?
MRS: This move is a gradual way to wean readers off the printed product. What they may want to consider is using the print version to be an index with snappy promos that drive readers to the Web for the in-depth read. To paraphrase Cicero, this content must instruct, delight and persuade as well as inform. Indexing with coupons and other print offers could come in the form of a fax or other easy-to-deliver breezy product.
If many of its member papers fold, do you think the Associated Press ... America's major press distribution service ... can survive?
MRS: Yes. The AP appears to be the most conversant at convergence. You may be familiar with the Next Newsroom. It has a mantra, which reads, “This new era of journalism is creating many versions of the Next Newsroom. But there are six principles we believe all newsrooms should embrace: 1) Place community at the center. 2) Make innovation a priority. 3) Publish to all platforms. 4) Collaborate with others. 5) Promote transparency. 6) Create a sustainable business mode.” The AP is doing much to publish to all platforms.
Do you think papers in smaller metro areas and smaller towns have a better shot at survival? For those that don't, might they be replaced by a pricy online newsletter in the same way that an investor in Fidelity who wants reliable news and advice about Fidelity funds would probably take a newsletter focusing on it?
MRS: I sense two trends.
1) Family-owned newspapers, which tend to be smaller, community newspapers, will survive because they seek the community voice. They want the conversation and they are doing the most to help communities set up neighborhood blogs and Web sites to post their photographs, comments, scores from athletic events, even home videos. Small-town newspapers are reviled as the lap dogs of journalism but they may survive to be the dominant players and avenge themselves on the behemoths who abandoned their core readers decades ago.
2) Small-town newspapers that are going hyperlocal are stimulating their audiences. The hometown newspaper is back and the big city dailies represented by group-owned newspapers are suffering from decades of hubris when they didn’t want to open their pages to the small-town achievements of ordinary people. Small papers and some metros are opening their pages to readers like never before. Charlotte is a good example of using the print product and the Web to give readers access.
Newspapers were once the medium that united a community like nothing else. We all go to different schools, houses of worship and shopping centers but we once all had one source of information and we enjoyed the shared experience of reading the news together. Have we lost that precious unity?
The Wall Street Journal used to charge for its electronic version. When Murdoch took over, he made it free. The Little Rock paper is perhaps the only even remotely metro paper that charges. What do you think of the decision by almost all major papers to make their content available online for free?
MRS: Since the days of videotext and audiotext in the late 1980s and early 1990s, readers became accustomed to free content ... except for premium services. Business and financial information is still an area that some are willing to pay to get on-demand and in a personal portfolio. Some readers may pay for a customized update of favorite sports teams. Gamblers and others may be willing to pay for that kind of content; however, most readers will rebel at having to pay for content that most of us think we can get free on the Web. If we know the information was proprietary and exclusive such as the fly-on-the-wall inside an Obama meeting, some of us would pay for that content.
Some newspaper subscribers, anecdotally, say they love having a printed product delivered to them every day and love holding it in their hands and love having it as part of their daily routine. Is this a significant factor for newspaper economics or is it disappearing like the dodo bird? Is it a deep-seated habit or one easily broken?
MRS: No, the tactile sensation is important but life is a tradeoff. If a reader can get a product for free but sacrifice portability and the sensate, he/she may do so. However, the newspapers that survive as a print product must make it predictable and as easy to navigate as the Web with at-a-glance features that are intuitive and help for every article to make the newspaper worth keeping around. Articles must include directions from here to there, telephone numbers, color-coded suggestions for this and that.
What do you think of Pro Publica (foundation-supported investigative reporting venture that offers its stories for free)?
MRS: Independent news sources are great but they must be on guard against the sense that they know best. That’s the curse that still clings to newspapers. When readers carped about unfairness or bias, the mainstream press often resorted to denial and became defensive. If this project can invite the community to participate, it could be a force to help the public good.
You worked in newsrooms for 10 years. Are you glad you did? What were your tasks?
MRS: I worked for community newspapers including a newspaper owned by Gannett. I worked for Lancaster Newspapers, a family-owned operation that led to a JOA in York, Pa. I was general assignment but worked as a government reporter, court reporter and took on the religion beat everywhere I went ... mainly because no one wanted it! I also did some work for the Grit, the Sunday Grit and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. (Around since 1882, the Grit is still in operation as a four-color periodical in Topeka, Kan.). I loved my days in the newsroom. From time to time, I return for a week here or there and the pace is thrilling. I sometimes work with an editor from the Miami Herald and both of us can feel our nostrils flare and our eyes dilate. The newsroom has a novel rhythm.
Some bloggers delight in the demise of newspapers, saying journalists are elitists who care profoundly about themselves but not "the common people" and that when a paper lays off 50 reporters it's laying off 50 Obama-ites who slant the news. Some conservatives say they have no problem getting their news from various sites on the Web and that they simply don't trust the honesty or the competence of the reporting in their local paper. Of course, papers also get it from the other side ... liberals who complain of coverage and editorial policy. What is your take on that?
MRS: Over the years, I’ve had a chance to study this idea. Here’s what we know. Newsrooms possess a culture. Reporters tend to be reform minded. They are very good at asking questions. Most want to see the community flourish and think that more information tends to add to the strength of a democracy.
What I’ve seen in the seven newsrooms where I’ve worked, small and large, is that reporters are not monolithic. Many are passionate but reporters are not passionate about the same issues, whether social issues or financial issues. Reporters work hard to be accurate. They have strong opinions but the newsroom culture works best to teach reporters to reign in impulsive commentary. Readers may not appreciate the reporter-editor dynamic but it is this tension that helps make the article retain the tension of the conflict that is under review while working to include as many voices as possible. News reporting is demanding, deadline-driven work and bloggers who casually make their comments are not doing the hard work of checking out sources and verifying information, the kind of check-and-balance every rookie first learns to loathe and then learns to revere.
What do you think of bloggers and citizen journalists? Do you have many in your community of Buies Creek or on campus and if so, what's their impact?
MRS: Bloggers are great and unread. Less than 20 have any large following; however, the few that work in a small community such as Buies Creek can have influence. Dr. Edward Johnson, my colleague at Campbell University, is a lively writer. He takes local, regional and national issues and applies the philosophy of Adam Smith or the theology of Francis Shaeffer to a public policy problem. In short, bloggers on the local level can make a rich contribution.
We've just elected a presidential candidate whose one-word mantra was unspecified "change." How can we so easily accept change at the very top of our political structure but fear it so much when it is applied within the news media?
MRS: While journalists are reform-minded, they are trapped, in some cases. This sense that we are gifted with super powers is as old as WWI when the Department of War learned that it could change public opinion with an organized information campaign. After the war, those writers turned to public relations and threatened to put journalists out of a job. Journalists responded by announcing that they gave readers something that PR men and women couldn’t. Journalists had no allegiance and did not advocate one policy over another, so the newsroom mantra goes. Now we have witnessed WWII and countless other conflicts including the culture wars and an economic tidal wave and journalists again are wondering what sets them apart from anyone with a laptop and an Internet connection. It’s a bit frightening but the press will rebound and rediscover that it is uniquely qualified to offer content like no one else. The stretch will come in responding well to these inevitable changes.
Are there any other points you would like to make?
MRS: Yes. The Internet is a giant library without a catalog. Vandals have trashed the information so that unsuspecting readers aren't sure what source to trust. Journalists have a spotlight, a torch that can throw some light on the piles and piles of information. News reporters will help us find out way and, in the process, they will find their way, too.
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