

Bill Wyman: Five Key Reasons Why Newspapers Are Failing - tptacek
http://www.splicetoday.com/politics-and-media/five-key-reasons-why-newspapers-are-failing

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tptacek
I don't think this submission is going to go anywhere, and that's too bad,
because I think this is the most Hacker-News-appropriate summation of where
the news industry is. It even ends with a a hacker-y prescription for how to
run a successful news operation today.

~~~
BearOfNH
Nice comment. The article is long but worth reading. Besides applying to
newspapers we may soon see the same logic apply to newsmagazines, and
ultimately all magazines.

The recommendations at the end of the article almost look like a startup
project -- not making a "local paper" but rather a _platform_ others can use
to create their own "local papers" without needing much technical knowledge.
The startup provides the hosting and tons of templates and pointers to clip
art, etc. The customer provides the content. The startup manages the finances
and takes a cut of the ad revenues in addition to renting the hosting and
software.

Or is that not an original idea?

~~~
tptacek
I was thinking exactly the same thing, how much fun it would be to have this
particular startup to run with for, say, Chicago. =)

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Semiapies
A few of these reasons boil down to "Newspapers _were never that good_ , and
competition is rough on them."

Something to keep in mind the next time you see a sob-piece on the poor,
downtrodden city newspaper.

~~~
tptacek
My library offers full-text search for the Trib's archives back to the 1890's,
and so I searched for my home address to see if, you know, anyone had ever
died in my house (answer: two people have! Jackpot!).

What I learned in the process of doing that search was how unbelievably biased
the newspapers were at the turn of the century. There was minute up-to-the-
minute reporting on every conceivable detail of the city, but it was laced
with political agenda. You were getting a whole lot of information, but it was
no more trustworthy than a blog post.

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viggity
He left out another important reason - roughly half the population
(conservatives) have stopped reading them because of a liberal bias (perceived
or otherwise).

While we'd like to think that journalists are going to be neutral, they simply
aren't, they are human and they let their biases creep into their stories. And
the circulation for papers that endorsed Obama was 4 times greater than those
that endorsed McCain
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspaper_endorsements_in_the_U...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspaper_endorsements_in_the_United_States_presidential_election,_2008))

I was on the Young Adult Board of contributors for the Des Moines Register and
one of the editors very much admitted to me that they were losing
subscriptions like mad because conservatives stopped reading their paper.
Consequently, I was published much more frequently than other members of the
board because I have a conservative view on things, while the other 48 people
almost all came from a liberal persuasion. I know it certainly wasn't because
of the quality of my writing, I know it sucked, but I'm an engineer not an
English major.

