The Slow Death of Old Journalism

I spent Memorial Day weekend in Atlanta and saw something shocking.

One of the great urban newspapers of the nation, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution had completely transformed itself. The once stately masthead with respectable headline font had now degraded into lowercase Times New Roman. Its size had shrunk into weekend same guide territory. This newspaper, once one of the premier dailies of the South, now looked much less respectable than our local and regional papers. It carried about as much news, too.

There is something to be said about a newspaper's audience and market. The New York Times and Washington Post struggle while the Washington Times and Wall Street Journal have avoided some of the same problems. It seems that conservatives tend to like actually holding a newspaper in their hand, turning the pages to read the news, in larger numbers than liberals. Our nation's capital actually supports two conservative dailies ( the Washington Examiner also seems to be doing well.)

The problems associated with newspapers lie in the fact that they continue to rely heavily upon their reporting of current events. By the time a major city newspaper has published and delivered, most people have either seen the news on television or read about it on the internet. Small town papers have always operated on tight budgets, but will probably survive because who else will report on doings in Cumberland, Moorefield, or Keyser? Who else will publish the picture of the Kelley and Church Award winners so that their parents can buy fifty copies apiece? The Mineral Daily News Tribune has a much more encouraging future than the Boston Globe.

Big city papers need to redefine their niche by focusing more in depth. The internet and TV will never be able to give its audience the kind of information and detail that print journalism offers. In the 1980s many papers moved away from such stories towards flashy colors and more concise writing to mimic the success of USA Today. Papers following this model give precisely the same quality journalism as the internet, but much more slowly. Also the hysterical liberalism adopted by many editorial boards seems to only sell in Charleston, West Virginia. Try moderating to the level of the market.

It's time for print journalism to remember that they are capitalists and act accordingly. It would be a real shame to see some of these old publications die off.