On Tuesday, Democratic U.S. Sen. Benjamin Cardin, from Maryland, introduced legislation [PDF] that he hopes will save American newspapers. Cardin wants to let papers operate as nonprofit organizations. The plan has its merits — ad and subscription revenue would be tax exempt — and its risks. Would large donors threaten newspapers’ autonomy? Exactly how the nonprofit scenario would help the O or the Statesman Journal or the Columbian is unknown. But it’s probably coming too late to do any good for struggling niche publications: small, local business, neighborhood and cultural newspapers. Publications, for instance, like Portland’s leading gay and lesbian newspaper, Just Out.
In mid March the paper made headlines when two employees walked out because of payroll issues. In an interview with Willamette Week, publisher Marty Davis said the health of Just Out is improving. I wanted to ask Davis about the well-being of niche publications like hers, but she didn’t return my messages and emails. So I turned to Byron Beck, a blogger and former author of the Queer Window column at Willamette Week. “I see this as more of a blip on the screen as opposed to the final straw. I wouldn’t count them out,” he says of Just Out. “But they may evolve. It may change.”
“Change” in the world of print publishing means “digital.” And should a publication like Just Out go completely digital, it’s unknown what it would mean for Portland, says Beck. “Will [the paper] play the same role? No. But that’s just conjecture.” He points to the Seattle P-I, which recently went digital. “Will it have the same impact now? Probably not. But maybe it will later.”
The problem is, print media is tragically unable to find online ad dollars. Tom Corbett, an analyst with Morningstar, estimates that in 2008, print publishers made 1.7 cents in online ad revenue for every dollar they lost. That’s like walking 1.7 feet forward only to turn around and sprint 100 feet in the other direction. Niche publications can barely stand to lose inches, much less feet. Those with viable digital revenue models are … I don’t know. I haven’t seen any.
Right now, some niche newspapers around the country are booming; others are disappearing. Print is still the main focus. To continue using Just Out as a model of what’s happening locally, there are several online-only media outlets intent on catching up to the paper. However, as Beck says, “Just because you have a domain name, doesn’t mean you know what you’re doing.” True, but are those sites making money? If so, then print-reliant publications should be terrified.
Saving the big and mid-range newspapers, the Os and Columbians, will dominate the headlines in the coming year. Niche papers will continue doing what made them strong: appealing to a core group of people. How many will find a way to turn that — inch by inch — into a profit? Your guess is as good as mine.
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Ok, maybe I don’t get it, but why can’t they operate non-profitably now? It seems ridiculous to add more laws to how a newspaper can operate. In addition, why are we encouraging a medium that is NOT environmentally friendly, nor economically sustainable? I know, there are good memories of newspapers and such, but seriously, move to the Internet, it’s better on both of the above accounts. In addition, it just so happens, about every child and under 30 person in the US (and Europe & Japan) has pretty much left newspapers to die, nonprofit or not.
I’m honestly just asking, not trying to be adversarial.
Adron
Nonprofit status simply means that a company falls under different, more lenient tax laws. To get that designation, you have to prove to the government that your company’s main intent is, for instance, educating the public. In this case Congress would have to tweak the law to allow a “normal” company to make the switch. It doesn’t sound like they’d need to add any new laws.
I don’t think letting newspapers become nonprofits would be subsidizing the print product. Everybody knows there’s a limited advertising base in print. Like you said, why focus on the old? Giving traditional news companies a tax break would allow them devote more resources to their online operations. Or maybe even give them a chance to come up with a way to make money online…
To answer your question – While many people may prefer the internet…there are times when you can’t get online. Also I know a number of people (under 30) that are not plugged in 24/7 by choice and prefer to sit down with a newspaper and a cup of tea/coffee. But while this is true – it also completely misses the point.
When a newspaper closes, we all lose something much more important than a few minutes of enjoyment. If the newspapers go away, so do the reporters. Newspapers have an obligation to the community:
- to provide complete information
- to verify the information before reporting it
- to report impartially
- to clearly separate opinion from fact
- to report what is important, even if the rest of us were not paying attention.
There are certainly variations in how successful a given paper is at achieving these goals. Bloggers and others who provide online ‘news’, however, do not have the same mandate. For the most part they are free to write whatever they want, with limited or no oversight and no responsibility to get it right. Ian Jack at The Guardian puts it very well:
If we lose newspapers, we become far more reliant on the Official Version of events. This is critical since much of what we think, feel and believe comes from our understanding of the world around us. Now imagine that everything we know about that world is only the version the government wants us to know.
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