We meet here near the end of 2013 to mourn the passing of yet another technology. This one has been around for centuries and perhaps it will find a way to become something else and not die out altogether, but only time will tell. This year I ended my subscription for the newspaper. No more Sunday ads, no more missed deliveries and having to call to get a paper dropped by later. No more questions whether we tip the delivery person. Newspapers and I have parted ways.
Thinking back on other technological changes, I didn’t miss rotary phones that much – touch tone was cool. Telephones gave up that coiled cord that never reached far enough, but if you did have a long one, it inevitably became a coiled mess that was annoying to use. Then, on to cell phones, never looking back. Once it became clear that the only people to call on the “land line” were solicitors and calls on behalf of political campaigns, the land line also went the way of the dinosaur.
On the music front we sometimes talk about the “warm sound” of vinyl – speaking for myself, I don’t miss the crackle and pops. I didn’t miss 8-tracks because a cassette tape was smaller, nor did I truly mourn the loss of the cassette in its time as we all moved happily on to CDs. CDs? When did you last buy one of those since you could just as easily buy an electronic download? I have a tote full of CDs somewhere, but one I ripped the music that I owned, there was no reason to mess with those again.
Of course, it was the same for video. Stacks of VHS tapes (Sony Beta, I never really knew you) made way for DVDs and thence in to digital form. Blockbuster (finally) went out of business recently. There was a business I frequented quite a bit when looking for a movie for me or the kids in the 90s. Haven’t been in one, to my recollection, in the 21st century. With Netflix and other digital delivery mechanisms, there’s been no need. In fact, I own a VHS player and a DVD player but they’re packed away somewhere only to be pulled out in case there’s something that needs to be ripped to digital.
On the entertainment front, the “Big Three” channels that I grew up with (okay, maybe 4 or 5 if you count local PBS and another odd channel or so) still exist though their audiences have fallen dramatically. The final episode of M*A*S*H was watched by 106 million people, the most ever for a TV series, a record that still holds today. Current television has fractured dramatically by comparison. The last episode of “Breaking Bad”, arguably one of the best television series recently, was only watched by 10 million people and was deemed a wild success. There are now many, many channels though only if you have cable. Even that form of delivery is being challenged by new content being delivered via Netflix and the content is good. YouTube is becoming a source of new content for the Internet savvy. Maybe the old guard televisions broadcasters will make the change and adjust and thrive in some form in the 21st century, but it seems clear the days of there only being a number of channels to watch measured in the single digits is behind us.
People want what they want when they want it. “Binge Watching” has become a real thing. There was no mechanism to record something on television when I was young, so VCRs were incredible because too often something might appear on television and would never be seen again. With a VCR it could be watched again or shared, albeit only by hand from person to person. DVRs did away with the VCR, though not with many of my generations tendency to talk about “taping a program” though there’s no longer any tape involved.
All of this brings me back to thinking about newspapers. Doing a bit of research, did you know that the notion of a newspaper dates back almost 2000 years? They appeared in an early form in China as early as the second and third centuries AD, though these really existed more as a way for the government to communicate public announcements. By the late 1500s the first references to privately published newssheets begin to appear.
In Europe, they don’t really start to make an appearance until the 17th century. Unsurprisingly, their rise is associated with the spread of the printing press.
I don’t know what the peak number of newspapers was, but Wikipedia says that in 2007 there were about 6500 daily newspapers around the world, publishing almost 400 million copies a day. But, as a result of the global recession back in 2008-2010 or so plus the growth of alternatives, typically via the Internet, that number is significantly lower today and I suspect it will continue to trend downwards.
I used to deliver newspapers when I was 14. It was not my favorite job by a stretch. I was delivering the morning paper which meant I had to be up early to get the papers. On cold mornings opening the bundles of papers by separating the nylon tie securing them was painful! Part of my route could be done on bike but part was walking and those damn papers were heavy! Don’t even get me started on Sunday papers. But, it was a job and I was able to make some money for the things I wanted to do.
Personally, my relationship with the paper growing up was more centered around the areas that I was most interested in: Comics were the start and then various other parts of the paper depending on how much time or focus I had.
Over the years, it seemed like newspapers became more partisan and no longer were perceived as being even handed in their coverage. This may simply be my perception, however. Editorial page, of course, were where you could really find out what the owners of the paper thought, not to mention various cranks and kooks. Not to take away from the well-meaning folks who would write in to the paper, but the kooks and cranks were more memorable.
I recall my mom used to make a point of scanning the obituaries. I never understood that and still don’t. When I make a cursory scan, it seems a mix of folks who passed too early and celebrations of life for people who did many things in their life and are survived by lots of loving family. At some some level this strikes me as not entirely representative of the cross section of folks who are no longer with us.
My own local paper has recently announced a plan to reduce its own circulation to less than daily. I know this is all part of their plan to try and retrench and they are launching a digital version but I suspect that’s going to be tough given they want to keep charging subscription rates.
It seems to me the main value of a local paper is to provide local insight, local stories and to provide a reasonable sampling from news at the national level and abroad. That’s the value add. But, it doesn’t pay the bills. What pays the bills, of course, is advertising and advertising is driven by numbers of eyeballs. As the number of eyeballs drops, whether because older generations transition from paper to other media or because the younger generations never pick up the habit, the rate that advertisers are willing to pay drops accordingly. That’s the free market at work. So, for the newspapers, it’s adapt or die.
There’s still a market for physical books – though I’ve largely transitioned to eBooks, there’s still a market for folks who want to lay out the newspaper and read it at the end of the day or to start their day. But, that market, like so many other markets build on consuming content, will likely continue to fracture in to smaller and more self-selecting groups. And those groups will likely share a common view, or background or interest. Niche sources are already a thing as you can see at Gaming sites, blogs about a particular television shows and customized news sources.
I know how I gather a sense of what’s going on has changed fairly dramatically over the last decade. Before it was the news, newspapers and some smattering of information from the internet. Now it’s swung pretty dramatically the other way. I read news on Google News and I read a variety of sources that I’ve chosen by hand and are delivered to me on the computer when and how I choose to consume them. How is a newspaper to compete with that? Even if newspapers transition to digital information sources successfully, the “paper” part of the newspaper will become an increasingly small (and increasingly more expensive as they give up reduction in cost due to scale of printing) part of the mix. So, I’m going to call it: Newspaper’s time of death – late 2013. It may take a while for the body to cool, but I suspect like 8-Tracks and Betamax, physical newspapers will become something my kids will have to explain at least to their grandkids, if not their own kids. Take a moment, raise a toast or pour one out for the newspaper, but its time has come.
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