US: "Will newspapers survive?" conference in Chicago
Posted by Alisa Zykova on June 20, 2008 at 10:41 AM
A conference called "Will newspapers survive?" was held last week in Chicago, featuring prominent journalists who brought to surface the arguable future of the newspaper industry, the Chicago Reader's Michael Miner reported.
Monroe Anderson from EbonyJet discussed the newspaper industry as it was around three decades ago, saying that with time it became "very corporate, very structured' and "they're looking to the bottom line."
Anderson reminisced about a Tribune editor with an eight-grade education, something that today seems "unthinkable", Miner reports. This was "before the suits took over", Anderson said.
The Tribune's Bill Adee mentioned that the "business model is broken" and the Herald's Eileen Brown said that she has to convince "the business side" to look for new things so as to save the print newsroom.
The Hindalaen is a weekly hyperlocal paper from Illinois and its publisher, Jim Slonoff, said that "the old way still does work."
Miner pointed out that Brown thinks one of the problems of newspapers today is the "middle ground," those stories about national and international topics that can be read online for free.
Miner mentioned the Tribune and how "just that morning almost every story" he read there was valuable because he said he would never think of looking for it online and because it would never had been written had it not been for the paper's commission.
Brown said that print journalism continues to offer more revenue than online journalism. Advertisers are not comfortable selling ads online and "are in the ice age", according to Brown.
"So it's this weird transitional phase where you'd love to say 'OK we'll move everybody over here,' but you can't because you still have to feed the mother ship," she said.
Adee mentioned online success such as sites like YouTube, who are user-generated, and the Tribune will not get "anywhere close" to that, Miner reports, because its aim is to provide professional "house-generated" journalism.
RedEye is the "fastest growing paper in the country", according to Adee, since it provides the news to an audience that does not think about paying for them.
"People want what journalists do more than ever. They want it in different forms. They can accept it in amateur form, semipro form, or professional journalism," Adee said.
Soource: ChicagoReader.com
Video:
YouTube (part 1)
YouTube (part 2)
Monroe Anderson from EbonyJet discussed the newspaper industry as it was around three decades ago, saying that with time it became "very corporate, very structured' and "they're looking to the bottom line."
Anderson reminisced about a Tribune editor with an eight-grade education, something that today seems "unthinkable", Miner reports. This was "before the suits took over", Anderson said.
The Tribune's Bill Adee mentioned that the "business model is broken" and the Herald's Eileen Brown said that she has to convince "the business side" to look for new things so as to save the print newsroom.
The Hindalaen is a weekly hyperlocal paper from Illinois and its publisher, Jim Slonoff, said that "the old way still does work."
Miner pointed out that Brown thinks one of the problems of newspapers today is the "middle ground," those stories about national and international topics that can be read online for free.
Miner mentioned the Tribune and how "just that morning almost every story" he read there was valuable because he said he would never think of looking for it online and because it would never had been written had it not been for the paper's commission.
Brown said that print journalism continues to offer more revenue than online journalism. Advertisers are not comfortable selling ads online and "are in the ice age", according to Brown.
"So it's this weird transitional phase where you'd love to say 'OK we'll move everybody over here,' but you can't because you still have to feed the mother ship," she said.
Adee mentioned online success such as sites like YouTube, who are user-generated, and the Tribune will not get "anywhere close" to that, Miner reports, because its aim is to provide professional "house-generated" journalism.
RedEye is the "fastest growing paper in the country", according to Adee, since it provides the news to an audience that does not think about paying for them.
"People want what journalists do more than ever. They want it in different forms. They can accept it in amateur form, semipro form, or professional journalism," Adee said.
Soource: ChicagoReader.com
Video:
YouTube (part 1)
YouTube (part 2)
Related Entries
- Power of Print Conference: the importance of newspapers knowing their audiences
- Power of Print Conference: innovating to boost circulation and profits
- Power of Print Conference: redefining newspaper format
- Power of Print Conference: more adults read a newspaper every day than people eat a Big Mac every year
- INMA World Congress: Jeff Jarvis insists "we have to redefine utterly what a newspaper is"
0 TrackBacks
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: US: "Will newspapers survive?" conference in Chicago.
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.editorsweblog.org/mt/mt-tb.cgi/7001
Leave a comment