Is the newspaper dead?

Commentary by Dominic Graziano
(dgrazia1@mscd.edu)
Photos by Cora Kemp and Drew Jaynes
(ckemp4@mscd.edu)(ajaynes1@mscd.edu)

The last edition of the Rocky Mountain News came off the presses Feb. 27th. On opposite ends of the continent, the San Francisco Chronicle and the Philadelphia Daily News are both on the brink of the same fate. With advertising rates plummeting and the increase in Web usage for publication, one question is on the minds of publishers, writers and readers alike...

Is the newspaper dead?

Yes, and long live the Internet. Anyone can be a reporter these days and we’ve lost that crucial small-town feel. Soon the only thing left on the page will be car ads and classifieds — and Craig’s List hosts those for free.

The Internet is taking over journalism, and anyone with a pen and pad or a laptop can cover a story.

Bloggers can do the job of any seasoned reporter. Granted, the words are stilted and the metaphors are a little lacking, but who really cares when it’s offered up at a small, or nonexistent, price?

Subscription rates are dropping and ad rates are following suit. Why would a company pay for a full-page ad in an even widely circulated newspaper when anyone with an Internet connection can see the same ad online — a service consumers already pay for.

Speaking of paying, more and more newspapers offer snippets of their articles online and the complete story is available for a small fee, utilizing the Internet as well as they can and making some money along the way.

But those same stories are hosted free on another site for any tenacious Web crawler.
Even if papers like The Washington Post and The New York Times survive it won’t be in print. Their websites are already streamlined and content is updated as quickly and regularly as possible, but it isn’t enough.

Why buy a copy of The Post when the print edition’s story has already been updated, copied and pasted onto your roommate’s blog?

Dailies across the country are relying more and more on wire service stories. On any given day, a newspaper prints handfuls of stories available in any other paper or online.

Even if newspapers are seen as complete packages, marrying photos, non-narratives and stories for overall coverage, the Internet can do it better.

All too soon a paper’s website will be seen not as a supplement to the hard edition but as a replacement.

And what are the corporations that run these dying behemoths doing?

Rolling over.

Sure they fight the good fight for a little while, updating their sites as often as they can, and maybe hosting a few videos, podcasts and slideshows.

But all that does is showcase how much the print edition can’t do.

The same well-crafted stories can be hosted online, alongside the same perfectly framed images, at a much lower cost and without nearly the same space limitations.

Other than the romantic ideal of holding outdated news in our hands, newspapers are worth far less than the fish they are wrapped in.

News on printed paper will exist in some fashion for the rest of time, but the corporate cash cows that we’ve come to know and love will die.

No, but the big city dailies could be. Long, long ago the only cities with newspapers were the biggest and grandest in the nation.

Now, almost every city on a major highway publishes its own daily. Even a small mountain town like Aspen supports two papers, for the time being.

And that is the future of print journalism — the small town paper.

Those small town papers have the right idea. They run the big international news when they have to, but for the most part, every page is filled with what the high school football coach is doing differently this season and editorials about the speed bump on Main Street.

And isn’t that what people want to read — at least in those small towns?

Think of all the people who pick up the paper in small towns. They are the aunts, uncles, grandmas and grandpas of stellar athletes. They are the directors and stars of the town’s small plays. They are the everyday Joes who advertising should be aimed at.

Metropolitan dailies have inflated staffs and budgets and can’t cover everything the people want.
Denver itself could support a handful of small dailies that only print news based on vicinity.

The Capitol Hill paper wouldn’t touch the Five Points news and the Highlands paper would stay away from anything south of Colfax.

The major sports would still have to be city wide, but the prep coverage would be better than ever.

On top of that, the political coverage would actually be worth reading. Instead of big-billed items, every neighborhood would be able to see exactly what would be impacting them.
No more glossed over stimuli packages. They’ll be replaced by coverage-a-plenty of pothole fillings and playground rebuilding initiatives.

National and international news is still important, and wire services like the Associated Press, Getty Images and Reuters will have to stick around to provide their goods.

But when we take out watered-down national coverage presented at a local level we are left with what people really want to read: local coverage done right.

Another important change that needs to be made, on a local and national level, is the acceptance of new and different media.

Sure, that story on the speed bumps on Main Street is compelling, but what else do we do to engage readers?

Using multimedia like audio from town hall meetings, online message boards and even slideshows or videos can help explore the issue of speed bumps. All of which can be found on the newspaper’s website.

At this point we’re split — the big papers are focused on multimedia and forgetting local news, but the small town papers are sticking to their guns and staying away from anything technologically advanced.

Both types of papers have work to do, but both can be saved.