Newspapers are still on the extinction timeline – of course
Welcome to a midweek edition of Unmade. Today: Rupert Murdoch gives newspapers 15 years, but the thing that will matter is the quality, not the medium.
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Interesting read, and confronting premise for me as a communications pro. Coincidently yesterday I was watching a super-old live set of the Smashing Pumpkins (Siamese Dream era) at a record store in Chicago, where Billy ranted early in the set “F**k the Sun Times”, obviously disappointed by reviews of their latest LP (no longer such an issue when Spotify Playlists and rankings often determine/guide album success). The Chicago Sun Times was a big US masthead in my early career years (also the home of celebrated film critic Roger Ebert), and when I thought “…where are they now” I discovered that the Time is now an NFP, vs a commercial business. The masthead doesn’t sustain its business on digital subscriptions and asks readers to pay however much they feel is worthwhile. Murdoch’s prediction of newspaper’s going out of business in less than 15 years considering the CST example, isn’t an impossibility.
On this thread, I’d recommend a read of Influencing CEO Phil Sim’s take on the importance and role of tech media as a fourth estate to the industry…similarly, he puts forth the premise that commercial support for media could start to move into ESG territory…a kinda wild notion when you’ve grown up professionally with news media as a viable platform to report on the good and bad of business, politics and society. An interesting read: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/aus-tech-media-too-important-save-phil-sim-ma4bc/?trackingId=Sr0cmu4lSfKp3dEma47F%2Fw%3D%3D
I’m 37 now and I haven’t read a physical newspaper in years. I much prefer websites or apps with headlines, bylines, mini descriptions and then articles to read on my smartphone and tablet. I enjoy subsequently comments sections arranged by most popular comments.
I have The Nightly bookmarked and never read the digital today’s paper edition. I’m more likely to be driven to their articles by the massive amount of notifications they send out.
I don’t know if physical newspapers will last another 15 years but they seem to have a diminishing fanbase. I used to love reading physical newspapers, physical magazines and physical books but I’ve completely gone digital on all three fronts as of a few years ago.
The only problem now is coming up with the money to pay for all the news subscriptions that I subscribe to. And if I can’t come up with the money for a given subscription on a yearly or monthly basis usually discounts are forthcoming. Which keeps the hamster wheel rolling for me but at what costs for the sustainability of the news businesses who are desperate to keep the funds coming in to fund their operations?