Two startling headlines surfaced recently: "New York Times Plans to Cut 100 Newsroom Jobs" and "L.A. Times Will Eliminate '100-150 Positions,' Job Cuts Across Tribune." Even though The New York Times currently has the largest newspaper staff in history, this is a scary revelation for anyone pursuing a traditional newspaper job. Both newspapers' plan for job cuts could signal a trend for large and small newspapers across the country, as more consumers begin to receive their news via websites, blogs, and television programs.
In 2004 I attended a student program at the Los Angeles Times, during which Senior Editorial Recruiter Randy Hagihara broached the issue of a growing web market for news. While I don't remember his exact words, Hagihara argued that there would always be a place for traditional print journalism, but that newspapers needed to become seamlessly integrated with their online counterparts in order to remain financially viable. In 2004, the student tour of the editorial department at the Times revealed an online department with than fewer than six desks in its corner of the building, and no more than four staffers manning the computers at any given time. One can only imagine how this working structure has changed since then to meet consumer demands and to remain competitive in an increasingly saturated news market.
What are your thoughts? Is print journalism on its way out?
2 comments:
I believe that print journalism is definitely on its way out. But, I don't think it's because of the "increasingly saturated news market", however, but rather because advertisers are finding more effective and efficient ways to place ads.
Think about it logistically. In order for an ad to be run in a traditional paper, an insertion order must be sent to the paper, the ad must be created by a designer, the ad has to be to sent to the paper, the ad has to be sent back to the designer and restructured if anything is wrong with it, before it finally is resent to the paper, proofread, and approved. I know this because I interned at a print advertising agency for a year and saw the process firsthand.
This whole deal can take days, and, furthermore, once the paper goes to print, the ad can't be pulled. It's just too much of a headache for advertisers to deal with when they have such viable alternatives in other media, namely the internet.
That's a really interesting idea. I agree with you about the inconvenience of print ads, although I have never seen the process of placing an ad firsthand.
This whole transition toward online advertising has interesting ramifications toward privacy in the US as well. Advertisers are able to track an internet user's movements with online ads in ways they can't with TV or print ads. They can tell if someone clicks on an ad and, if they do, what kinds of movements they make after clicking on the ad (Do they buy the product? If not, how much time do they spend on the product's website? etc...). While this "trackability" makes online ads more valuable, it also makes them a bit scary (in my opinion).
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