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WORDS AND PICTURES

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Advertising Age reported in 2013 that adult newspaper readership had fallen by 20 percent since 2001. Among major U.S. cities, Pittsburgh had the most adults—51 percent—claiming to still read a daily print newspaper; Atlanta ranked last with only 23 percent. (In general, the South and Southwest had adult readership numbers around 25 percent, with the Northeast and Upper Midwest around 45 to 50 percent.)1 More troubling may be the decline in the value of those newspapers. For example, between 1993 and 2013, the value of the Boston Globe and Worcester Telegram & Gazette fell 96 percent, from $1.8 billion when the New York Times bought the papers in 1993 to the $71 million paid by businessman John Henry in 2013. The same thing happened to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, which declined 93 percent—from $1.7 billion in 1998 to $122 million in 2013.2

Despite these numbers, some big investors have been picking up papers at bargain prices. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos paid $250 million in 2013 for the Washington Post—last sold at auction in 1933. Investment guru Warren Buffett bought more than sixty newspapers in 2012 and 2013—at a time when many traditional print companies, looking at the decline in readership, were trying to unload their papers. For example, in 2013, the Tribune Company—owners of the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune, two of the largest U.S. newspapers—tried to sell its papers shortly after spending $2.7 billion to buy nineteen local TV stations (adding to the twenty-three it already owned).3 And in June 2015, the Wolfe family sold the Columbus Dispatch—which it had owned since 1905—along with several suburban papers and regional magazines, to New Media Investment group, but kept the family’s TV properties.

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In other words, some newspaper executives are betting that good old television is the way to go—and they may be right. Though TV viewing has declined dramatically following the digital turn, broadcast programs still command a comparably large audience. Buying TV stations gives companies access to lucrative retransmission fees (which cable companies now pay local broadcasters and national networks, mostly for traditional prime-time programs on ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC) as well as a chunk of the lucrative political ad money that comes around to certain swing states every two years during election season. Although the Internet has long overtaken newspapers in annual U.S. ad revenue, TV and cable still led all media in advertising in 2014, with the Internet expected to catch up by 2016 (see Chapter 11).

So with newspaper advertising’s share declining dramatically over the past decade and digital media in ascendance, what will happen to newspapers—and why are Warren Buffett and Jeff Bezos buying them? In 2013, Buffett argued, “I believe that papers delivering comprehensive and reliable information to tightly-bound communities . . . will remain viable for a long time.”4 Bezos, on the other hand, had to be talked into it by the Graham family and its chairman, Donald Graham, longtime owners of the Post. Bezos told 60 Minutes, “Don thought that because the newspaper business is being so disrupted by the Internet that someone who had a lot of Internet knowledge and technology knowledge could actually be helpful.”5 While that is not a strong endorsement of newspapers, many observers believe that if anyone can turn a newspaper into a digital enterprise that makes a profit (even a tiny one), it is Bezos.

Just as the music and radio industries have adapted and survived over the years, newspapers will survive, too—by delivering a print version two or three days a week or moving to digital smartphone and tablet formats, where that advertising revenue is indeed growing. In 2012 and 2013, respectively, the New Orleans Times-Picayune and the Cleveland Plain Dealer reduced those papers’ print versions to just three days a week, while other newspapers, like the Christian Science Monitor and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, have gone online only. What newspapers have going for them is that news reporting is part of the business of telling stories. This is where Amazon is heading: getting into the digital-content-creation business with TV shows on Amazon Prime—and with the news stories in the Washington Post. In the end, the Buffett and Bezos purchases remind us that media businesses are ultimately about telling and selling stories—regardless of formats.

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DESPITE THEIR CURRENT PREDICAMENTS, newspapers and their online offspring play many roles in contemporary culture. As chroniclers of daily life, newspapers both inform and entertain. By reporting on scientific, technological, and medical issues, newspapers disseminate specialized knowledge to the public. In reviews of films, concerts, and plays, they shape cultural trends. Opinion pages trigger public debates and offer differing points of view. Columnists provide everything from advice on raising children to opinions on the U.S. role as an economic and military superpower. Newspapers help readers make choices about everything from what kind of food to eat to what kinds of leaders to elect.

Although newspapers have played a central role in daily life, in today’s digital age the industry is losing both papers and readers. Newspapers have lost their near monopoly on classified advertising, much of which has shifted to free Web sites like craigslist and eBay. According to the Newspaper Association of America (NAA), in 2013 total newspaper ad revenues totaled more than $38 billion, a decline of 2.6 percent from 2012, when revenues fell 6 percent. Of that total, $24 billion came from ads across all platforms, $11 billion came from circulation, and $3.15 billion came from “other sources.” In 2012, online ads accounted for about $3.4 billion in total revenue, while print advertising brought in more than $18.6 billion in ad revenue for the nation’s papers—less than half of the ad money generated as recently as 2006. In 2013, online advertising rose just slightly—1.5 percent to $3.42 billion in total revenue. The NAA reported in 2013 that circulation revenue for U.S. newspapers recorded a second straight year of growth, rising 3.7 percent to $10.87 billion (the first such growth since 2003). These two years of circulation growth provided a spark of hope at a time when the loss of papers, readers, advertising, and investor confidence raised concerns in a nation where daily news has historically functioned to “speak truth to power” by holding elected officials responsible and acting as a watchdog for democratic life.6

In this chapter, we examine the cultural, social, and economic impact of newspapers. We will:

As you read this chapter, think about your own early experiences with newspapers and the impact they have had on you and your family. Did you read certain sections of the paper, like sports or comics? What do you remember from your childhood about your parents’ reading habits? What are your own newspaper reading habits today? How often do you actually hold a newspaper? How often do you get your news online? For more questions to help you think through the role of newspapers in our lives, see “Questioning the Media” in the Chapter Review.