Newspaper industry fights back

In recent weeks the struggling newspaper industry has become something of a pet topic over on my personal blog.

Crippling economic circumstances and the dawn of online news and blogs have put the industry in a very difficult position, with job cuts taking place at regionals across the UK and USA. The decline in print puts pressure on outlets to fine-tune their online offering but advertisers don’t get print-level results from any online business model. Journalism is under threat.

The newspaper industry has taken a bit of a kicking in the blogosphere lately, but has introduced a couple of campaigns to show that it won’t go down with a fight. I picked both up from Paul Gillin’s excellent Newspaper Death Watch blog.

Monday, as well as being a so-called Snow Day in the UK (some of us, of course, just went to work as normal), was National Buy A Newspaper Day in the United States. According to Gillin, the campaign centred on Chris Freiburg’s 20,000-strong Facebook group. Pretty small-fry, I’m sure you’ll agree. But it shows that there is at least a modicum of grassroots support for the ailing newspaper businesses Stateside.

Far more high profile is the Newspaper Project, a group launched by various newspaper folk with a website and ad campaign declaring that more people would buy a newspaper on Monday than watched Sunday’s Super Bowl.

It’s a nice slogan, and a bold campaign. Again, it shows that there are elements of the industry willing to put up a fight. But I agree with the following contention from Gillin:

“It’s good to see the industry standing up for itself, but it’s depressing to see this initiative so focused on print. We agree with Ken Doctor, who was quoted applauding the project by the AP but who pointed out correctly that a name like “Newspaper Project” demonstrates a backward-looking perspective at a time when the industry really needs to talk about the future.”

Without looking to the future, newspapers will have an even more difficult job staying alive. While good strong publicity always helps, the industry needs to allocate resources to defining a workable print-and-online business model.