Death Watch of Daily Newspapers

I’m recording the final years of a once almighty medium, the daily newspaper. In one sense, it’s sad for me to predict the end. My first job out of college was with a daily newspaper. My entire career (up to two years ago) has been in publishing. But the funny part is, and what makes this easy to record, is that the journalists, editors, advertising, circulation and production directors and most of all, the publishers are unanimously so arrogant, they are blinded by their long monopoly status to see the signs. Am I exaggerating? Look at how many billions the Tribune Company paid for Times Mirror. (I’ll look that up for you later.) The dust is still clearing from the biggest rumble, the sale of the Knight-Ridder newspaper chain. I can tell you their board of directors did some research and saw the deep darkness at the end of the tunnel. School kids know that Ben Franklin founded one of the first American publishing empires and for the next 200 years, newspapers multipled and prospered. Each small town had it’s own royal press. Big cities had a dozen or more daily mastheads to choose from. There have been threats to topple the press with each new technological invention starting with radio’s roar in the twenties. By mid-century, television had captured the interest of the culture. But, newspapers were still in their hay day.  The TV sets were tiny boxes in black and white and there were only three networks. The first signs of serious decay had actually started in the 1970s with the failures of big city afternoon newspapers, the Chicago Daily News and the Philadelphia Bulletin, the San Francisco Call-Bulletin were among the biggest to fall. It was called “death in the afternoon.”  People were too busy in the evenings and had so many entertainment options, the evening paper reading habit went the way suspenders.

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