Walter Isaacson Is Dead Wrong About The Future Of Newspapers

Walter Isaacson is the former managing editor of Time, so I am unsurprised that his conjectures about the future viability of newspapers get so many things wrong.

He starts by pointing out that there is a crisis of ‘meltdown proportions’ but then makes the most bizarre assertion, that young people read newspapers.

[from How to Save Your Newspaper — Printout — TIME]

During the past few months, the crisis in journalism has reached meltdown proportions. It is now possible to contemplate a time when some major cities will no longer have a newspaper and when magazines and network-news operations will employ no more than a handful of reporters.

There is, however, a striking and somewhat odd fact about this crisis. Newspapers have more readers than ever. Their content, as well as that of newsmagazines and other producers of traditional journalism, is more popular than ever — even (in fact, especially) among young people.

The Pew Research Center For The People And The Press reported in December that television was the number one sources of news for Americans, and for the first time the Internet has supplanted newspapers in the number two spot. The younger the individual, the less likely they are to read newspapers, and the Internet is starting to rival television for this demographic:

[from Internet Overtakes Newspapers as News Outlet]

For young people, however, the internet now rivals television as a main source of national and international news. Nearly six-in-ten Americans younger than 30 (59%) say they get most of their national and international news online; an identical percentage cites television. In September 2007, twice as many young people said they relied mostly on television for news than mentioned the internet (68% vs. 34%).

Figure

The percentage of people younger than 30 citing television as a main news source has declined from 68% in September 2007 to 59% currently. This mirrors a trend seen earlier this year in campaign news consumption. (See “Internet Now Major Source of Campaign News,” News Interest Index, Oct. 31, 2008.)

Considering he gets these core facts wrong, it follows that his conclusions and conjectures zoom off into lala-land.

His answer is paid content. He suggests that the NY Times should follow the Wall Street Journal in erecting a paywall for at least some of its reporting, and make people pay to access through a micropayments scheme.

I find it particular obnoxious that he equates reading the NY Times for free with stealing ice from gas stations in his childhood, but leaving aside the misdirected analogies the simple fact remains: even if the NY Times could successfully erect a paywall, that will not be the case for all the local dailies in 100 metropolitan centers. It is not a scalable model, even if it were to work for the old Gray Lady.

My view is that the thinking about the existing newspaper business, as delimited by the existing models of operation, is unhelpful.

I don’t need the NY Times to write about sports: there are a bazillion sources for that. Likewise, food and restaurant reviews, which are overwhelmingly NY-biased, don’t offer much value to me as a VA/SF resident. The thing that the NY Times does well is it’s national and international coverage, and it should focus on that, and cede the Escapes page to Conde Nast and Fodors.

Couldn’t the NY Times become like a Techcrunch or Huffington Post for national and international left-learning reportage on politics, economy, and society? It could be the best. Drop the dross, and focus. Move online and drop the hardcopy.

Get over it, or go down in flames.

Oh, and as an example of the wrong thinking in the modern day, his Times piece didn’t link to anything in the entire world except other Times’ pieces.