Regular readers of this blog know I'm a newspaper junkie and a big booster of papers. I keep hoping -- against the odds, I suppose -- that newspapers will forever continue to publish in their traditional newsprint format so I can enjoy the day's news over a cup of coffee or as I ride into work on the train.
Yes, papers will have to make changes to adapt to the round-the-clock demand for instantaneous news. But is the demise of the printed daily paper as imminent as some pundits predict?
I hope not, and I was given some optimism as I read an interview, published in MediaLife a few days ago, with John Morton, head of Morton Research Inc. and for 30 years until last April, publisher of the Morton-Groves Newspaper Newsletter.
Two key points came out of the interview, which fly in the face of the gloom & doom scenario that gets so much media attention.
1) Newspapers remain the dominant media in local markets with their print product, and they are having an increasingly important presence online. Thanks to brand name recognition, newspaper web sites generally deliver the second-largest audience to local advertisers, outdone only by the newspapers' print editions.
2) The biggest misconception is that newspapers are in deep financial trouble. Morton says they are not. For the first three quarters of 2007, newspapers publicly reporting earnings had an average operating profit margin of 15 percent, which is better than most businesses hope to achieve.
A problem, Morton says, is that 15 percent is down from an average margin of 22 percent just five years ago. Newspapers have fallen out of favor with Wall Street, partly as a result of the negative hype papers have had.
Good news is that smaller local papers continue to lose circulation at a lower rate than the larger market papers. The internet, like other changes in media, impacts the bigger market papers earlier and heavier than it effects the smaller ones, says Morton.
He says newspapers are learning, albeit slowly, how to embrace the web. In the past two years, more papers have realized that major changes will be needed to meet the challenges of conventional newspapering, which remains centered on the printed product.
Newspapers cannot treat revenues from the web as found money, Morton says. "The should use it to shore up the economic model that supports journalistic efforts," he says. "Failure to do this would be a catastrophe."
Morton says a key strength that newspapers still have is that they are the only medium economically organized to provide mass coverage of local, national and world news. It's not about entertainment, but about news and information. "This capability is the one enduring strength of newspapers, however delivered," he concludes.
I'm keeping my fingers crossed.