

Why local newspapers are worth saving - lloydarmbrust
http://alexdmoore.com/local-newspapers-preserve-our-culture

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bonaldi
Local _journalism_ is worth saving. Nothing he talks about is intrinsic to
print.

~~~
brandnewlow
True, but.....what else could replace them?

Good luck replicating the relationships that the local newspapers have with
the people in their communities who are able and willing to report on them.
It's true that we don't have to use newspapers to distribute local reporting,
but the only companies in most communities that have connections to the
journalists there happen to be called newspapers and happen to put out a print
product.

Any new service that wants to distribute local journalism will have a hard
time re-doing all the relationship building that the newspapers have.

When I started Windy Citizen two years ago, I thought we'd be able to give
people a better way to find news in their city. That's gone quite well, but
I've learned firsthand that the real value that the "newspapers" have is that
they're the ones that have all the journalists. There's a non-profit news
startup here in Chicago called the Chicago News Coop that also had a similar
goal when they started up. But instead of making a cool new product and taking
lessons from hacker culture, they went out and stole away the crown jewel
reporters from the Tribune and the local alt. weekly. They may be broke as a
joke, but good journalists definitely would like to work there, which means in
the end, they'll have a good product.

You know how people on HN talk about how hackers only want to work for and
with other hackers?

Most journalists only want to work for and with other journalists. I thought
that was one of the big takeaways from the NewsTilt post-mortem.

~~~
bonaldi
Websites. Hyperlocal websites are springing up, from nationals like Patch to
tiny town-focused sites. The business models aren't quite there yet in a lot
of cases, and in others they can't support huge staffs, but this is true of
everything from Twitter to the latest MVP here as well.

It's the journalism that matters, whether it's printed, posted, blogged or
uploaded.

~~~
mattmanser
How is a hyperlocal website ever going to generate any significant income
without classifieds?

Who's going to pay for the guy sitting in on council meetings? Or the guy
digging through seemingly trivial freedom of information requests?

Journalism has always been broken in a way, it's never paid its way, but the
internet is excaberating how broken it is.

We can pretend that some upstanding citizen will do it, but they won't. We can
pretend a blogger will be able to face a massive libel suit or a coordinated
smear campaign, but they won't.

We were lucky in the last 50 years, classifieds paid for our journalism.

Worse still for us here in Blighty, the bbc is massively funded by tax payers,
the Guardian by a trust fund, we're soon to be over-run by interest groups
while main streams die a death.

It's a worrying time, we can't stop it, but any free thinker greeting the
present situation for the print media with glee will be waking up with a very
bad hangover in 10 years time.

In the future where will be the expert in Mozambique when a crisis hits? Or
Serbia? How many dissenting critics will we actually have? Who will pay for
journalists to be essentially unproductive for months or even years at a time
on the off chance a major story breaks? How will a major story generate any
revenue anyway?

Maybe it will all work out for the best in the end. But it is still a very
uncertain time and trusting one man and his blog is very dangerous.

~~~
Groxx
> _We were lucky in the last 50 years, classifieds paid for our journalism._

In what way are classifieds + subscriptions not possible with websites? Any
kind of hyperlocal website can have everything any newspaper can offer, the
only downside is that they've got _competition_ , which they may not be able
to succeed against.

~~~
prawn
They've also got to overcome some resistance to online advertising, I suspect.

------
jobu
Perhaps I'm mistaken, but I thought that local newspapers were doing fine.
Most large city and metro papers are hurting, but small community papers are
entirely different. Typically they are supported by ads and distributed to
everyone in the community (no subscribers). They tend to have truly local news
that isn't or can't be covered by major newspapers and rarely makes it into
online news.

~~~
chc
Small local newspapers are in a better place than the big boys — mainly
because they don't tend to have as much debt — but they're actually harder hit
by things like Craigslist and Yelp murdering previously lucrative ad markets.

Incidentally, I blame the newspapers themselves for that. They could have
_been_ Craigslist, but instead they were too slow to adapt and got squashed by
a better product.

~~~
lloydarmbrust
Agreed. Newspapers aren't dying, they're slowly committing suicide.

~~~
dasil003
I don't. Craigslist took over a fat market and slashed several zeroes off the
end of it. In no way does it make sense for newspapers to have preempted
craigslist.

~~~
lloydarmbrust
Umm, it took seven years for Craigslist to become "an overnight success".
Newspapers knew about it--we did and I was working for a newspaper at the time
--but they ignored it.

If every newspaper in America would have gone to a free + paid model they
could have saved at least half of their revenue and craigslist would still
only be in 7 cities. But they wouldn't embrace change a lost big.

~~~
dasil003
I don't think it's reasonable to expect any business to cut their revenues in
half because they see something coming that _might_ hurt their business more
in the long term. Especially without any assurances that cutting revenues now
will defeat the new threat. It's so easy to sit here now and say "oh the
papers should have done x y and z", but even then you don't know if it would
have worked. I remain unconvinced.

~~~
lloydarmbrust
You sound like a newspaper publisher.

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jdminhbg
There are a lot of (sometimes very vague) positive effects of local newspapers
described here, but to be convinced that they're "worth saving," I'm going to
need to know what the cost is.

~~~
jeremymims
Right now, they just need to make the transition online. But if you wanted to
run a small online newspaper for a small town, the cost is low.

If a town of 20,000 people wanted to ensure that the newspaper stuck around
and produced solid quality news they could access online in perpetuity, they'd
need to subsidize it to the tune of about $1.25 per person per month.
Advertising would likely take care of the rest.

If one was worried about government interference, this fee could be bundled
this into cable subscription packages and it would basically work out the same
way.

------
alexdmoore
A lot of these points are valid. We are talking about local journalism. I use
the word "newspaper" to describe the business and staff which comprise the
folks that are creating the content, spending time with real people face to
face and creating culture. People can call this piece marketing, but I call it
supporting what I believe in. The fact is that SI and other companies are
finding newer and better ways for "newspapers" to thrive. This directly keeps
our nation's local journalists employed which equals more boots on the ground
reporting and informing us about local issues. It may be tougher for folks
from large cities to make the inter-personal connection I am discussing here,
but the main point is defending American culture is valuable in units of
measure beyond US Dollars.

------
boredguy8
"individuals who have delicate souls who are connected to each other through
local communities"

Ignoring the "Delicate souls" silliness, my community hasn't been defined by
the people I'm geographically near since I was 16.

------
bryanlarsen
I must be in the minority here, but I subscribe to and regularly read the
newspaper. I'd be sad if it went away.

~~~
jeremymims
At Seeing Interactive, our goal is to save the journalistic and community
building functions of the "paper" as well as keep the papers profitable.

The only way we know how to do that right now is to help newspapers make
significantly more money online.

------
xelipe
Journalism will continue to evolve, from newspaper to television network news
to blogs to Facebook pages to YouTube channels to mobile apps to whatever. We
have to make the distinction that newspapers is one form of journalism. It
would be sad for some if the newspapers went away, just as it was sad when the
stage coach or the floppy disk gave way to better alternatives.

------
jeremymims
This is exactly why we're proud to have Alex as an advisor.

Our job isn't easy. We're trying to help an industry at an inflection point.

Some "papers" will survive. Some will fail. The ones we work with will have
better chance at making the transition.

~~~
nowarninglabel
This actually seems like a rather thinly veiled marketing attempt for your
company, pulling on the heart strings of local paper lovers for the company's
profit.

There was a lot of subjective emotion and very little objective facts in the
blog. How about some sources and reality checks on costs and benefits.

~~~
jeremymims
Maybe what you're seeing is passion for solving the problem. We feel very
strongly about it. That passion is likely a big reason why Alex invested.

BTW, our customers are newspapers. I'm not sure how much "heartstring pulling"
we need to do for them to see that we objectively make them more money.

------
lefstathiou
I'm sorry but they really are not worth saving.

~~~
jeremymims
Whether the newspaper continues to be distributed on paper, the newspaper as a
service is incredibly important.

At Seeing Interactive, one of the problems we find is that people have
confused an old-fashioned method of distribution with the important journalism
and community building contained within. Sometimes the newspapers themselves
are troubled by this very point. It has merely been a coincidence that for the
last 250 years the best way to distribute news was on paper and that for the
last 150 years or so it has been immensely profitable.

So when people say they don't want to save the newspaper, they're merely
stating a preference that they'd rather read news online than on paper.

~~~
Travis
My two cents: I don't think much of the modern pseudo-journalism (and
journalists) are worth saving. Granted, I don't subscribe to my local paper
(the San Diego union is a noted piece of junk), but I can only think of a
couple of writers who have the integrity and ability to call themselves
journalists.

Most of the content produced nowadays has been chosen specifically to elicit a
strong emotional response from readers/viewers. It's not worth saving, in my
mind, because I disagree with the central precept of the linked article, that
the content they generate is worthwhile.

Besides, most of the stuff is just reprinted from reuters anyhow. Even the
comics stink nowadays. Ever read the sports section? Look at how backwards
(and intentionally so!) the sports sections are (if you're unfamiliar with how
wrong modern sports "journalists" are, read FireJoeMorgan).

In short, journalism already _has_ gone away. All that's remaining is to clear
the husk that remains.

~~~
natrius
There are plenty of non-profit news operations popping up around the country
that you might find more valuable than the pageview-centric for-profits. Check
out Voice of San Diego: <http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/>

------
nowarninglabel
This reminds me of a Wizard of Id comic where the local paper comes in to
interview the king.

Reporters: We'd like to ask you some questions on your environmental record.

King: How many trees are killed to print your paper?

-Reporters leave-

Squire: That was a quick interview.

