Comments on: A Decade Since Andy Grove’s Warning to Newspaper Industry

By: curmudgeon2000

curmudgeon2000 — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 05:22:56 +0000

Despite all the hand-wringing about poor journalism, entertainment
presented as news, and political bias in reporting, I’ve always thought the
reason for the ongoing demise of the printed newspaper is pretty simple.

As I understand it, the biggest piece of newspapers’ revenue by far was
the classified ad business. With the aid of the Internet, one man with a
plain, text-only web site just about single-handedly sucked hundreds of
millions of dollars away from them. Craigslist, and to a lesser extent
eBay, along with all other similar sites, are the biggest cause of the newspapers’ financial troubles today.

Starting in the mid-90s, newspaper pundits — including you, Mr. Gillmor –
wrote column after breathless column about how the Internet was going
to change everything. It would appear that newspaper executives and
owners don’t read their own product, or pay no attention to it if they do.

By: Nan

Nan — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 17:01:12 +0000

Well, what would Andy Grove have suggested? Were there ideas here aside from “come up with something?”
Doomsday predictions that end up being spot on are sometimes mere coincidences.
Hollywood at one point was lousy with people seeking microphones to forecast the end of the movie theater when VCRs came out. So?
I appreciate the shout-out from the last century but at this point it is starting to feel like piling on. Those of us in the newsroom were pretty much doing what we were paid to do. The fact that complacency and double-digit margins caught publishers and corporate “vice presidents of news” asleep at the switch doesn’t help me today. If the now-departing retail and classified ads were somehow returned to newspapers tomorrow, I have no doubt the world we now see imploding would simply be reconstituted. Secure establishments don’t upend the business if they can avoid it, even when warned.
What concerns me more is – now what?

By: Neil Gunther

Neil Gunther — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 21:04:34 +0000

I’ve only been considering this important problem peripherally, so please excuseany naivety in my comments. Noentheless, this might be a useful starting point for me to write them down. Being a physicist/computationalist by
training, Grove’s microprocessor analog (which I didn’t know about) caught
my attention.

I believe the differentiator may be even more straightforward than Grove
stated 10 yrs ago. It’s not what the newspaper (print medium) can offer in
contrast to the web (online media) but rather, it’s what *real journalism*
offers in contrast to the typically superficial commentary (both
professional and amateur) that is the current hallmark of the web.

In my view, the analog of the microprocessor is straightforward:
*investigative journalism*, and it matters not whether the results of that
form of journalism are presented in print or the web; in fact, I’d probably
prefer the immediacy of the latter.

I would claim investigative journalism is the most critical need today. I
cite your own piece: “The Media’s Role In The Financial Crisis,”
[tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com, January 23, 2009] in support of this claim.

In terms of journalistic transitions, didn’t we see a successful transition
into the new medium of TV investigative journalism, right through the
Vietnam war? TV plausibly improved some aspects of investigative
journalism, viz., moving images.

Part of the problem is that that level of journalism has degenerated
primarily because TV broadcasting and newspaper ownership has been allowed
to condense into the hands of just a few vested corporate interests. I
suspect this is also where your “Mega-Merger Thought Experiment,”
[boingboing.net, MARCH 19, 2009] breaks down too. Information wants to be
free, and to some extent the web gets around this limitation.

Unfortunately, the question of “Paying for News,” [boingboing.net, MARCH
19, 2009] remains unaddressed even after identifying Groves
“microprocessor” for news. The only thing I can point to there is
“HuffPost’s Investigative Fund” announcement yesterday
[www.huffingtonpost.com, March 29, 2009]. Perhaps this is one of your “thousand experiments” in progress.

This is a complex issue and many pieces will need to fall into place.

By: Subhankar Ray

Subhankar Ray — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 20:15:25 +0000

Short and to the point. “don’t give me length instead of depth” – I want to repeat it to the one who are replacing the newspapers, and to my local TV stations. Treat people as if they have a few brain cells.