Shot In The Dark: Irrelevant?

March 13, 2006

Irrelevant?

McClatchy Media, owner of the Star Tribune, is buying Knight-Ridder, owner of the Pioneer Press, for a whole wad of money:

The deal, which is expected to be announced today, throws into doubt the future of daily newspaper competition in the Twin Cities. McClatchy could operate the Pioneer Press, shut it down or try to sell it off to another company -- and U.S. antitrust officials could have a voice in that decision.

The deal also comes as the newspaper industry is gripped by uncertainty as readers across the country have begun to drift away from printed newspapers.

In the short term, this sale is going to set media-watchers into a tizzy - but in the long term, it'll be more like the sale of Packard to Studebaker; before too long, it won't matter much.

The good news for McClatchy's Strib? It's in touch with its market.

The bad news? That market is inner-city liberals and coupon-clippers. As people discover other options (and/or quit taking freebie subscriptions to the Strib, which clutter their porches but drive up the Strib's "Circulation"), they will continue to drop the paper.

Five'll get you ten that in thirty years there'll be three newspaper companies in the US - operating out of three newsrooms, with a bunch of local stringers providing just enough "local content" to justify putting "Minneapolis" at the top of a "Star/Tribune" that's written and produced in New York and Chicago, and printed at the lowest bidder somewhere in the Twin Cities metro.

Posted by Mitch at March 13, 2006 05:32 AM | TrackBack

Comments

Apparently McClatchy has already decided to look for a buyer for the SPPP "in anticipation of antitrust concerns":

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/trib/pmupdate/s_432705.html

Hmmm. What kind of financial resources does the MOB have?

Posted by: Dave in Pgh. at March 13, 2006 08:42 AM

The strangest thing about print media is the lack of idealogical competition. TV news has conservative competition in Fox News, but no couterpart exist in the print media. As we know, Fox has blown away all of the cable competition, but is still overshadowed by "local" ABC/NBC/CBS news. It would be interesting to know the political slant of local Fox News channnels, and their respective view ranking in local markets. A lot of variables in the TV news, but still, conservative news has made an impact on cable.

The primary reason that local ABC/NBC/CBS news has prospered is that those stations give you "local" news, especially sports and weather. I don't know how many people care about their local city council meetings, but I suspect that most people are like me. I hate city council news. If you live in a suburb (again, like me), city council news of the predominate city is even more wretched. However, there is important local news that will never be on the cable channels, and you can still get weather and local sports. People care about that.

Cable news is really dominated by talking heads, and is the equivalent the editorial page for almost 24 hours a day. The actual news is really pretty small in the world. On all cable news outlets, those newsbreaks every 20 minutes or so only last about 4 minutes, and much of that has been repeated. So there really is not that much newsworthy "news" that happens every day.

So what does all of this have to do with print news? I think the reason that most people buy the newspaper is for local issues: ads, coupons, and sports. I don't subscribe to the newspaper in my city ( a fairly conservative rag, incidentally). But I still enjoy the leisurely pace of reading. Sports reporting in the paper is a lot better than sports reporting on television. Ads are much better in the paper. You can do comparative shopping in the newspaper that you can't do with tv ads. And no one is literally shouting at you from the paper.

News print has a future, but only if someone decides that news print has to be closer to public opinion than it currently is. Ads, coupons, sports, and the pleasure of reading still attract a lot of readers. Liberal bias seems to be the cause of reader alienation.

Finally (aren't you glad?), there has to be a Murdock out there who could do for print what Murdock did for cable news. Maybe another MacPaper only with a more conservative slant and less intent on libel and proselytizing. Think of it as a news franchise. The nation and international news, the editiorials,etc., with less liberal venom, and a lot of local input of ( even the wretched city council) news, ads, sports, and so on.

Posted by: Scott at March 13, 2006 08:59 AM

I think that thirty years from now the daily newspaper will have gone the way of the milkman and the blacksmith. Give me one reason why anyone would want what you describe to litter their front steps when we'll be able to check on what's actually happening, where it's actually happening, as it's actually happening anywhere in the country via the internet?

Either that or we'll be using smoke signals.

Posted by: MLP at March 13, 2006 12:33 PM

I have often wondered why there isn't conservative competition in newspapers. I live in the Twin Cities and it seems that I have one choice: The Star Tribune or nothing. The pioneer press won't deliver to me and they aren't much better. I KNOW that if an alternative paper with a conservative bent cropped up it would offer SERIOUS competition to the Strib. I think papers can and will survive because of the local perspective they can offer, the coupons, the variety type sections and sports in a throwaway, read in your barcolounger type format. For that reason I think they will stay. However, if there isn't another competition to the leftist stranglehold on the newsprint media they will keep suffering because people are much more aware of that now.

Posted by: Jim P at March 13, 2006 09:18 PM

Jim,

First, the VAST VAST VAST majority of the print media (newspapers) are very very conservative. The impression that it is otherwise comes from a handful of non-conservative, but very widely read papers like NYT and the LA Times.

Second, I'll offer, as a non-conservative, that the reason for the failure of newspapers is that we, as a society, no longer prefer in-depth stories, we prefer things in 10-30 second soundbites. Thus, the paper is antiquated, even if it still is the single best source of decent coverage.

Mitch's prognostications are notoriously innacurate, and his prediction here is hardly original, but it's most likely the case for the future of papers. Hegemony or Oligarchy seems the way of the future for the US, and newspapers will be no different.

What I find amusing is that Mitch harangues about liberal readership while failing to recognize most of the papers are small-town conservative papers, and they're dying just as surely and swiftly as anything on the scale of the Strib. Mitch might try to allay it all off to the "ineptitude of message and delivery" but that would be at least as much an idictment of his own ideology as any, and given his contempt for presentation of both sides of a story, probably a greater indictment of his approach cannot be found.

Posted by: pb at March 13, 2006 09:36 PM

By the time a newspaper arrives with "depth" on a story it's stale. If there is a story that interests me there is usually someone in my network who can provide more information quickly and in real depth.

I have been close to enough news stories over the years to see how badly reporters can screw up. They seem to get out of their depth quickly.

Posted by: Max at March 14, 2006 01:01 AM

"First, the VAST VAST VAST majority of the print media (newspapers) are very very conservative."
--------
Dammit, PB!! That was 18-year-old single-malt scotch I just garfed out thru my nose onto my brand spankin' new laptop. And since I'm all out of Duster spray, I had to resort to Q-tips and cotton swabs before I could ask you to please identify for us some portion of the "VAST VAST VAST majority of print media (newspapers)" you consider to be "very very conservative." And don't you be going out into the tall grass to fetch us some cornpone dispatch from Dogpatch either. They gotta be at least as big as the StarTribune or the Pioneer Press which are the subject of this thread or reasonably approximate in readership to The New York Times and the L.A. Times cited in your post.

Second, given the exigencies of our times, please explain for the rest of us how exactly you have determined "that we, as a society, no longer prefer in-depth stories" but instead "prefer things in 10-30 second soundbites" and how it could possibly be logical, given your assertion, that newspapers yet remain still "the single best source of decent coverage" as they are meanwhile dying like flies. A year ago stock in The New York Times Co. was worth nearly $50 a share. Today it's worth less than $30 and still falling, despite the fact they own The International Herald Tribune (the largest English-language newspaper in the world) The Boston Globe, and of course The New York Times, to name just 3 of their some 20 major market newspapers. And that's just one company in the newspaper business, not to mention its ownership of mainstream television and radio stations which are also losing marketshare in the regions they serve.

Seems any reasonable person would conclude it's all much quite the contrary to your blanket assertions. We, as a society, are simply no longer buying the newspapers' crappy product, which would explain why we have witnessed instead an explosion of electronic media that is almost entirely the result of people being disgusted with 10-30 second soundbites and the same old leftist agitprop from the same old leftist sources. People are more than ever before investigating, researching, and reporting for themselves and by themselves at a rate faster than mainstream media and are reaching a superior aggregate audience share every day. FOX News has eclipsed the 24/7 cable news market with nothing more than a new format, some slick graphics, and positioning a few pundits, commentators, and reporters who, while not exactly conservative, are at least near the center or at most center-right. That's why they call 'em "neo-cons." Then we have talkradio, upon which even our host, Mr. Berg, despite his "notoriously inaccurate" prognostications, has risen to some acclaim. Rush Limbaugh reaches an audience of 22 million. Add to that Stern and Imus, who, far from being conservative by any stretch of the imagination, have established a durable presence in the vast and fertile market of talkradio that the liberal product from Air America simply cannot even begin to match.

Why is this happening? Because the new media has a better product, that's all. They are providing for a market that has never been served. People like it. It's more accurate. It's more in-depth. It's more valid. It is the "hegemony" of quality over quantity central to every successful business since the discovery of the wheel. If you build it, they will come. It ain't rocket science.

The problem with newspapers is they're still selling their own ideology even in much greater abundance these days, which should give their readership some pause as to their motive. It sure ain't business, not by a long shot. Their product in general is simply not accurate. It is not in-depth. It is not valid. And people don't like it. Simple as that. They have something better to do with their time and some place better to go for their news and information now. Finally.

Hallelujah!

Posted by: Eracus at March 14, 2006 01:02 AM

Hey! I'm in the inner city....gawd I hope that doesn't make me a liberal :(

That'd suck hardcore.

Thanks for the nice blog...keep it up :)

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