Paul MacArthur on future of papers

This interview is part of the Future of Journalism interview series.

This is an e-mail interview by OurBlook with Paul J. MacArthur , assistant professor of public relations and journalism at Utica College.

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?

PM: Broadcast news supplanted the newspaper as the preferred news source years ago. According to a recent Pew Survey, local broadcast news outlets are considered more credible. That's not a new development. In terms of credibility, local papers have lagged behind local TV news for a decade. So, we've been at a point where consumers do not perceive newspapers as their primary reliable source of information for quite some time.

Newspapers need to adapt to the changing realities of the marketplace if they want to survive. So far, most have not.

Is this deplorable? No, it's evolution. The emergence of radio changed newspapers. The emergence of television changed newspapers and radio. The emergence of the Internet is changing television, radio and newspapers. The newspaper business just hasn't figured out the puzzle. If current newspaper management teams can't figure out the puzzle, someone else will. If no one does, then the daily perishes. If that happens, then so be it. Not very many people buy reel-to-reel, cassette or eight-track tapes anymore.

Are there any metro areas that you think will always have papers, and if so which ones and why?

PM: I think the top 25 markets will always have daily newspapers, although the business models need to change. When you have a large critical mass combined with enough action, then a newspaper can survive. Also, I wouldn't be surprised to see dailies do well in some small markets that are underserviced by local broadcast and the net. Weeklies, actually, may have the best shot of survival in the long haul given their utility.

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?

PM: This is a variation of the original Associated Press model, actually. What you are proposing may very well be the future of the AP. The Baltimore Sun and the Washington Post appear to be attempting some version of this as well.

What do you think of the Detroit papers deciding to stop home delivery on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Saturdays?

PM: It makes them irrelevant. The Detroit papers are breaking the newspaper habit. They are telling their customers, "You can no longer trust us to deliver the news on a daily basis." As a direct result of this decision, many people will simply stop reading these papers and look to other sources of information. The end result? The papers will experience accelerated loss of readership and credibility.

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?

PM: Giving away information for free on the Internet while still charging 50 cents to $1 for the print version of the paper was one of the most fundamentally flawed business decisions of the past 25 years. Newspapers told their paying customers that the information truly had no value. They told their paying customers that they were suckers. Why would anyone pay 50 cents for something he or she can get for free? This poorly conceived and obviously flawed strategy has helped put the newspaper industry into its current financial condition and hastened the demise of many publications. Any newspaper that attempted this strategy deserves the consequential losses.

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?

PM: My feeling is that while people love the printed word, in the end, if the newspaper isn't there, people will find something else. Yes, the cycle can be broken, and in its place people will find something else to consume their time. Families used to sing around the piano in the evening. Radio, the Victrola, TV, etc. all contributed to that activity being far less popular.

You teach sports communication at Utica College. Do sports sections in newspapers face the same challenges as the news sections?

PM: Yes. The ESPN Networks provide 24/7 sports coverage. Sports talk radio does the same. There are well researched sports sites that feature breaking news and analysis, and, of course, there are the sports bloggers. But the sports section has been an integral part of the newspaper industry since the 1920s ... for many papers, it was much earlier, but the sports journalism boom period is the '20s. If the sports section is to remain vital, sports editors must present compelling content that can't be found on web sites, on radio, or on television. That may mean more local coverage.


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?

PM: Aside from obviously partisan news outlets like MSNBC or FOXNews, I think most organizations truly value presenting information as objectively as possible. Do reporters' biases sneak in? Of course they do. Reporters are human. But, frankly, the screaming from the left and the right about mainstream media bias is just a lot of elephant talk.

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?

PM: We consume media every day. We don't necessarily think about the president every day.

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