We are not dying, we are evolving

There’s a Keanu Reeves film called Hardball that was released in 2001 to mediocre reviews but did manage to double its money at the box office. Reeves plays a sports gambler who gets in over his head and winds up taking a job coaching an inner-city Little League team to service his debts.

Early on in the film, a sports bookie and his thugs confront Reeves’ character over his debts. Reeves just looks at them defiantly and declares, “You wanna kick my a**? No one can kick my a** better than me.” And then he slams his head into a window.

We were reminded of this as we joined several of our peers from newspapers around the state at the California News Publishers Association Annual Press Summit this weekend. The theme of the weekend’s presentations, “Navigating a New Tomorrow,” certainly seemed relevant as applied to the newspaper business, but then again, that would have been the case at any point over the past two decades.

In a talk Friday morning, Hearst Communications Senior Vice President Lincoln Millstein observed the newspaper business for the last twenty years or so has been content to preside over its own demise. Even Arthur Sulzberger Jr., publisher of the New York Times, got into the act. Back in 2010, he told a conference in London, “We will stop printing The New York Times sometime in the future, date TBD.”

Mind you, the New York Times remains one of the strongest newspapers in America, so this pronouncement resounded through the industry like Coca-Cola declaring it really doesn’t see much future for carbonated soft drinks.

The perpetual death chant has taken a toll. Newspapers across the nation have folded. Others have seen their manpower and resources whittled and pruned down to wisps of their former selves. One staff that of the Denver Post, rebelled against its hedge-fund ownership with a series of articles on its commentary page April 8. Headlines ranged from “News Matters. Colo. should demand the newspaper it deserves” to “Who will step up and save The Denver Post?”

The rebellion followed a directive by The Post’s owner, Alden Global Capital, to cut another 30 jobs from the newsroom. Two interesting things have happened in the aftermath. One, the editorial page editor and his staff were not punished. Two, a civic group has formed called Together for Colorado Springs, which is attempting to raise enough money to buy out the paper. As of April 12, it had raised a reported $10 million.

The big takeaway from the Denver situation is that newspapers still have tremendous power, and they still matter. This is borne out by a recent survey for the National Newspaper Association by the Reynolds Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri School of Journalism.

The survey, now in its seventh year, was conducted in communities with a newspaper that has a circulation of 15,000 or less. Among those surveyed, 52 percent were daily newspaper readers, and 48 percent were non-daily readers. Overall, 71 percent read a community newspaper at least once per week.

Some other interesting tidbits the researchers learned:

• 75 percent read all or most of their newspaper.

• 43.8 percent keep their paper for more than 10 days.

• 77.4 percent read the paper for local news and information.

• 56 percent had clipped a story or saved a link from the newspaper’s website to share with family and friends in the past 12 months.

• 92 percent thought local newspapers were informative.

• 83 percent agreed that they and their families relied on newspapers for local news and information.

• 84 percent would look forward to reading newspapers.

• 69 percent though newspapers provide valuable local shopping and advertising information.

• 75 percent said local newspapers entertained them.

• 46 percent used newspapers for their political and voting decisions.

These numbers consistently demonstrate the importance of community newspapers, and yet the reality is many of them are struggling to make ends meet. There are a number of reasons for this, but chief among them is the poor job we’ve done standing up for ourselves. If it wasn’t bad enough we’ve got the digital whiz kids trying to throw dirt on us, we in the newspaper business keep offering them the shovel with forecasts of doom and gloom.

The truth is, though, newspapers do a lot of good work. And we had a chance to see a fair sampling of it at this weekend’s CNPA Awards. And those folks had a chance to see a bit of our own, as we took first place for front page design and second place for special section.

The latter of these, our annual High School Football Preview, is one of the most popular editions we put together every year. We love doing it. It’s a perfect example of what a newspaper and a community can do when they pull together.

As recently as 2007, vinyl record album sales in the United States were less than 1 million copies, and e-books were going to mark the end of printed books. Last year, vinyl sales topped 14 million, and publication of print books grew while downloads of e-books have plummeted.

There is an intimacy with physical media that is lacking in the digital experience. That’s not to say the two can’t be compatible — after all we’re in the digital business — but they aren’t interchangeable.

Ultimately, the death of the newspaper business is grossly overstated. We aren’t dying, but we have been evolving and finding new ways to serve our audience.