Uncertain future of newspapers
Former editor dissects past, present of print media and ways forward
John Stackhouse, former editor-in-chief of The Globe and Mail, explores the decline of newspapers in his new book Mass Disruption: Thirty Years on the Front Lines of a Media Revolution.
Although more people than ever before are reading newspapers, the business model that has sustained newspapers for more than 100 years is in trouble as advertisers move online, where ads sell for far less than in the printed product.
“The second decade of the new millennium rattled just about everything to do with newspapers, except perhaps their influence,” Stackhouse writes in the book. “For all the red ink splashing around the advertising and circulation departments, the editorial side of the business enjoyed a cachet that was less diminished.... When journalism made a lasting difference, it continued to do so, more often than not, through a newspaper site.”
Stackhouse worked for 30 years in newspapers, beginning in the 1980s. He started at the London Free Press, where there were about 150 journalists. Today, there are less than 50, he said.
“The economic duress of serious journalism-based organizations is putting in jeopardy the quality of the information and that is something that has a risk of eroding until it’s too late and we realize what we’ve lost,” Stackhouse said. “We’re seeing a severe diminution of quality journalism and reporting, more at the local level than at the national level.”
This becomes a significant problem when, as found in one study in the U.S., the most significant source of news is the local politician’s Facebook page or the most significant provider of news about crime is the police department, he says.
“I don’t think that’s how, as citizens, we want to be informed about crime, exclusively by the police,” Stackhouse said. “We’re sliding into a very risky era, where, especially at the local level, the coverage of institutions, which I think we’d all agree is a public good, is being taken over by individual private interests.”
Nonetheless, he’s hopeful. He said the demand is high for quality journalism, all that’s missing is the economic formula to sustain it.
He’s found a couple of emerging business models that might work, including an advertisingbased model used at The Atlantic and a non-profit model used at the Texas Tribune.
Newspapers can charge more for advertisements online, if they can prove the ads will reach a quality audience, Stackhouse said.
Also, getting regular readers who will revisit a site again and again is critical to getting subscribers, which Stackhouse is convinced newspapers are going to need in the future.
“One of the things that gives me hope is that there is more and, I would argue, better information about current events than ever,” Stackhouse said. “There’s more variety. We saw that in the recent election. It would be hard to argue that we all did not have access to good information and a good debate.”
Stackhouse also wrote Out of Poverty: And into Something More Comfortable, and Timbit Nation: A Hitchhiker’s View of Canada.
After five years as editor-inchief at the Globe, he is now a senior vice-president in the office of the CEO at the Royal Bank of Canada.