Newspapers: Canaries

Newspapers are currently the media bellwether or “canary in the coal mine,” as the accelerating recession takes their decline in advertising revenues due to digital competition and pushes it into free-fall. Josh Marshall had a post on this today.

Folks (including myself) are bemoaning this development, because they know that the digital competition felling newspapers actually depends in large part on the content resources—reporting bureaux, wire services, columnists, and research—newspapers provide. Talking Points Memo needs its AP feed, originated and supported by newspapers, for much of its own content generation.

So what’s going to happen? Will (most) newspapers wither and die, drastically lowering the value of the content we get in the digital media that are left, without most consumers of news realizing it? I think so, yes.

But eventually the digital media should step up and rebuild; because there is a need for high-value news content. One NALM thing that usually goes hand in glove with bemoaning the demise of newspapers is bemoaning the eternal dumbing down of John Q. Public. But just because most news consumers won’t notice the difference doesn’t mean that those who are left won’t, directly or indirectly, be able to pay for better news content. It may just take longer than I’d like for this market need to reassert itself. It had to assert itself to begin with in order for these great news content resources to be built in the first place.

This is worth noting, studying, and learning from. Because what’s happening with newspapers now will happen with magazines shortly, television later, and eventually, in its turn, the Internet as we know it today as well.