Last Updated: July 28, 2000
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Newspaper leaders
The view from the top is optimistic
Despite shrinking market share and pressure on margins,
newspaper company CEOs have hope for the future; but all realize that news
is the heart and soul of who we are
By Will Corbin
Three guys are talking about the future of newspapers. They’re chief
executives of big newspaper companies: Gary Pruitt of McClatchy, Bill Burleigh
of E.W. Scripps, and, of course, Arthur Sulzberger Jr. of The New York
Times.
Under provocation and cross-examination from Harvard Law’s Charles Ogletree,
they tick off many reasons to be excited about journalism today. They also
offer plenty of cause for concern.
Here’s a selection of thoughts and quotes from the convention’s opening
session.
In a fragmenting media world, we’re the most massive — at least in
local market terms — of mass media.
Pruitt: “We are holding onto a mass audience locally that no one else
can, and that is going to be a huge advantage to us in terms of business,
in terms of marketing, and in terms of our public service mission of bringing
cohesion to a community…
“We want to remain a mass media. We think it is critical, we think it
is critical to our business success, we think it is critical to our public
service mission.”
Burleigh: I think what you have to concede is that it will be more difficult
because there are more options and more media outlets for everyone, and
everyone’s share is shrinking, and so as a result we can maintain the biggest
share. It is a huge advantage for us.
We know news.
Sulzberger: “We are about news. And it is not the ‘paper’ in ‘newspaper’
that defines us. It is the ‘news’ in ‘newspaper’ that defines us. We are
around because we continue to meet the challenges that each medium has
posed to us by doing what we do better. Every time we have gotten better.”
We tell stories.
Pruitt: “It is the narrative power of newspapers that connects at a
visceral level to all of us, and I think that as long as we do that, we
are going to do well.”
Burleigh: “I hope that newspapers don’t give up the one trump card that
none of the rest of them have, and that is the ability to tell a story.
And good newspapers still manage to tell stories exclusively.”
We have strong values. (This theme was recurrent.)
Pruitt: “We need to leverage off our strengths and our values. The journalistic
values that newspapers represent will help build value over time. And that
will be the strength we need to differentiate ourselves over time. And
not moving away from that strength but playing to it in the future will
be critical…
“We think that means maintaining standards and values, because to lower
them, I think, we also lose a key differentiator between newspapers and
Web sites and television and radio, etc. It may mean making it more accessible,
but that doesn’t mean necessarily lowering values. I think we need to maintain
that kind of civic life, and I think the newspaper’s obligation is to do
that...
”You know we talked about getting values on the Internet and extending
them to the Internet. That is a key differentiator. ... But the truth is,
it is a different medium, and the formats and techniques are going to be
very different. You can’t be a newspaper publisher on the Internet and
expect to succeed. It is going to be a very different medium.”
Burleigh: “People depend on good newspapers, and I think people have
a way of sorting out the good from the bad and those that do survive survive
for a reason. They have established their credibility.”
Sulzberger: “If you don’t adhere to the standards and believe as we
do that there is an audience out there, and a growing audience, that needs
and wants quality information in a timely way, then you are making a mistake.
That’s our future. Our future is to grow that quality audience…
“The minute we start saying, ‘Lower your standards, lower your standards,
there is a bigger audience out there,’ we are on the road to ruin…”
“I have never once seen a reader study that says, ‘Please give us more
on starvation in Somalia,’ never once. They are going to get starvation
in Somalia if there is starvation in Somalia. That is just our duty. That’s
our soul. You can’t give that up, and in the end the readers would know
it if you tried. And they would walk away from you…
“We are going to have to change the way we operate. We are going to
have to change how we define journalism to that degree, but I don’t think
we have to for an instant duck away from our values. I think that kills
us.”
We will face ever more competition for readers and their attention.
Burleigh: “I think it is clear that good newspapers are going to be
fine, but I think that the competitive stakes are as high as they have
ever been. The fellow who said that the sky is falling on us when radio
came along would increase those stakes many times with the Internet. I
was reading coming on the plane a professor at Northwestern who thinks
that we are at “the sweet spot of destruction.” I think he is absolutely
right if we do not adjust to these new things in ways that we have adjusted
in the past.”
Pruitt: “We may lose share, and I worry about that greatly. I don’t
think we are going to get as many readers in the next generation as we
have gotten in the last, even if we do everything right, because they grew
up with different habits, with more sources available to them. We just
are not going to capture as many of them. So you had better get used to
it. It is going to be tougher, and we are not going to get as many.”
Good news and bad about compensation, depending on your perspective:
Sulzberger: “There are pay issues. We have to address them as an industry.
Certainly we are trying to address them at The New York Times and for our
company. We are going to wind up paying these folks more, and we are going
to have to find other ways of paying them.”
Burleigh: “This new landscape is challenging us to be a lot more entrepreneurial
than we have ever been, and that includes … being willing to change and
adjust to reality through stock options and a lot of other things that
wouldn’t have been thought of not many years ago. What are we basically?
We are people and a few printing presses, and if we let the most precious
ingredient in a newspaper get away, then we have lost our quality and our
credibility and everything else.”
Pruitt: “Some (Internet operations) will be immensely profitable and
will be stealing journalists away. Many will not, and the playing field
will be more level. It won’t be that we have to worry about a brain drain
and everyone leaving. I do think it is good news for journalists in the
sense that I think it can increase compensation and give you broader audience
with the Internet.”
Operating at higher speed:
Pruitt: “We have adapted over time very successfully to the breaking
news aspects of radio and television. We are adapting to the Internet as
well…
“I think you get rid of that sort of one-time news cycle and think it
more on a 24-hour basis and try to take advantage of the Web and what it
offers. That’s not compromising our values. It is playing to the immediacy
and brevity, and it is doing it in a way that I hope brings more credence
to that immediate and brief information.”
Placing value on news.
Burleigh: “News is more and more a commodity, and we have not yet figured
out how we are going to get paid for it.”
Bottom lines:
Pruitt: “Newspapers are going to be here, and I think they are going
to thrive. The Internet will broaden your voice. It is a good time to be
a journalist.”
Sulzberger: “In a world where you are no longer limited by how far your
truck can drive, it seems to me that the quality of your information is
what is going to allow you to win or lose. So where does that mean smart
newspaper publishers should be putting their money? Right. In their newsrooms,
because that is what is going to make the difference. So I think it is
an exciting time to be a journalist.”
A final, sobering thought:
Pruitt: “As you look back historically, I think you have to recognize
that some of those new media that came along in the 20th century, radio
and television, were terribly strong and powerful competitors, so powerful
they bankrupted most newspapers. If you were a survivor — and you folks
represent the survivors, the fittest — you actually became very profitable
because your direct print competition died.
(For the record: Not most, but a frightening number. In 1920, in the
early radio days, there were 2,042 U.S. daily newspapers. In 1950, in the
early television days, there were 1,772. In 1998, in the early Internet
days, there were 1,489.)
A final, heartening thought: It could be worse: We could be television.
Pruitt: “The network affiliates lost more viewership last year than
the newspaper industry lost readership in the past decade. OK? So they
are on a much slipperier slope. They are the canary in the coal mine in
terms of the mass audience. We have got it.”
Corbin is editor of the Daily Press in Newport News, Va.
