Tim O'Brien on the Future of Journalism

The following is a Q&A e-mail interview by OurBlook about the future of newspapers with Tim O'Brien, owner of O'Brien Communications.

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?

TO: I do not foresee major metro areas suddenly being without the printed word as a source of information, but over the course of time, it is quite possible that the frequency of that printed word will be spread out according to a non-daily schedule. In such a scenario, the newspaper organizations would deliver their breaking news on the Web, while refocusing their print editions for less urgent news content. The Christian Science Monitor recently decided to forego a print edition while focusing on its web operations. Meanwhile, business news weeklies in major metros have followed this model for quite a while.

There are many things not to like about this trend. Not everyone has access to the Web, and even for those who do, the impulse for the vast majority is not to log onto the Web sites of their local newspaper on a daily basis. This means that over time, it will be much more difficult for the news organizations to maintain the large levels of professional reporting staffs necessary to cover the major sectors of society. Along these lines, sectors that would do well to have a media watchdog may find themselves operating under less and less scrutiny and therefore could feel free to operate with less of a sense of accountability. This is not good for a democratic society.

At the same time, the Web cannot take all of the blame for the decline in newspaper readership. Society in general has shifted away from reading as a means to follow news and world events. Television and other broadcast media became the most dominant source for news and information decades ago. While the influence of television could not be argued, the substance behind most major news stories has continued to be found in print, providing the de facto public record of the news of the day. As news organizations continue to reduce their size and close altogether, society will lose many of its “current historians.”

Can adjustments be made to fill the gap and if so what would they be?

TO: Adjustments can be made to fill the gap, but newspaper leaderships need to be much more progressive in their thinking than they have been to date. They have to recognize that the Internet and the electronic delivery systems are the future, and the print model is fast fading. They need to apply tremendous innovation to their Web channels and take advantage of the large news-gathering organizations they already have in place before they lose them. They need to keep their Web channels interesting, detailed and locally focused so that their local constituencies are drawn to those online destinations with great frequency. They need to expand into mobile media, so that their audiences can access and carry the news product anywhere and everywhere. And they need to build marketing messages into nearly every product to capture advertising revenue.

On the cost-management side, newspapers will need to get out from under the overhead they carry with production and delivery systems that are fast becoming obsolete.

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

TO: The largest metro areas, New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, will always have newspapers, but I would add that I think most major metros will have newspapers, but they may not always be dailies and they may not always focus on breaking news. And the formats may not always be broadsheet. I think there will always be a place for the printed word, because ergonomically, it’s easy for people to handle. It will just evolve.

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?

TO: There will likely be consolidation in some form. Wire services will play an expanded role.  New news organizations may emerge.  And new online news organizations will be formed around particular geographic, social, or business beats.  Politico.com is a great example of what a group of former newsprint political writers decided to do after leaving the newspaper business. They continue to cover politics, and do an excellent job, and the influence of their organization rivals those of their former employers at major daily newspapers.

Regardless, there will be consolidation in the industry.

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

TO: I think it was a mistake. They should either keep home delivery or eliminate it entirely. The only reason they are keeping Thursday and Sunday is because those are the days of the big advertising supplements. The decision to stop home delivery on selective days says the newspaper is not rethinking its overall business model and strategies. This says little about the vision of leadership.

If many of its member papers fold, do you think the Associated Press ... America's major press distribution service ... can survive?

TO: Yes, it can survive, but like the industry it serves, it will need to rethink its business model, where it gets its revenue and how it can use its vast news gathering resources to find new ways to generate income.

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?

TO: Small town newspapers will continue to survive because they had to confront these economic issues long before major dailies did. They learned how to preserve local value. They adjusted their distribution schedules and channels, and they made changes to content. While some may not survive, the vast majority will. Local people love to read about local news. Local advertisers look for ways to gain exposure locally. In several years, perhaps the printed word may be replaced by online destinations locally, but not in the near future.

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?

TO: It’s all about competition. Charging readers for access is an inhibitor to broad access, and thus an inhibitor to growing readership. The real money has to be found elsewhere, most likely through measurable traffic.

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?

TO: Some may feel this way, but many current newspaper subscribers get the papers and never open them. Out of habit, they buy the paper, but their newly developed habit is to check the news online. Parallel to this is the old-fashioned land-line telephone. An increasing number of households are discontinuing their land-line telephone service because most of their communication is now done on a cell phone, equipped with text, pictures and in many cases e-mail. A large number of households continue to have a land-line, and subscribers continue to pay for the privilege. But as they realize that they hardly ever use the “home phone” except to field calls from telemarketers, they will start to cancel service. To their credit, this is why the phone companies have begun to sell bundled service over high-speed access lines and through wireless subsidiaries. They are changing their business models in advance of the real trends. Newspapers could learn from this.

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 criticized by liberals for their coverage or editorial policy. What is your take on all this?

TO: As the media consumer has fragmented his or her consumption across several print, broadcast, cable and Internet sources, news organizations have decided to compete on the basis of message. The assumption was that objectivity is harder to sell than a moderate level of opinion/analysis that speaks to the predisposed leanings of the audience. The vast majority of the mainstream media followed its natural instincts and built its opinion, analysis and in-depth reporting around a progressive worldview. Meanwhile, a smaller number of more conservative mainstream media outlets fortified their conservative tone in their coverage. Against this backdrop, the Internet allowed people from all walks of life and all points of view to enter the dialogue.

I talked to a reporter from a major national daily once, and I asked him why even in the face of the facts at times, he decided to push for a certain social agenda in his articles. He told me flat out, “We don’t look at the world the way it is and report it that way. Instead, we look at the world the way we think it should be and write to that end.”

This may have worked in an environment where the major newspapers had no competition, but today, unpopular positions on social issues and an attempt at social engineering (rather than simple news reporting) on the part of editors and reporters is a huge risk. The risk is that they may turn off their readers and lose them for good. I fear this has happened in many cases, for too many senior people at newspapers refuse to see that in some cases their progressive agenda is indeed turning people away.

What do you think of bloggers and citizen journalists generally? Do you have many in your community and if so, what's their impact?

TO: I’m not sure who said it, but I liked the quote, “The best way to counter misinformation is through more information.” I think bloggers serve this purpose. One needs to always remember two things about bloggers, however. First, most are not trained as journalists. And second, left or right or specialty, most have an agenda. We have many in my community, and ironically, their impact is mostly on the existing print media. It seems that the most popular or influential bloggers are frequently quoted in the print media. And news that breaks on the blogs more often than not leads to newspaper coverage that validates the bloggers' instincts and initial reports. Without a strong print media, bloggers would find few platforms on which to promote themselves or their sites.

Mr. O'Brien is the owner of O'Brien Communications, a company he formed in Pittsburgh in 2001. Among his positions before that, he was communications director and chief investor relations officer at Tollgrade telecommunications and a vice-president at the Pittsburgh office of Ketchum, a PR agency. This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

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