Corona Daily 297: Morning Coffee without Newspapers: Part I

The Covid-19 pandemic is perhaps the biggest earth-shattering story in our life. Ironically, there may not be any good storytellers left by the end of it.

I am talking of the print medium - newspapers and magazines. They were already in bad shape. In the USA alone, since 2004, at least 1800 newspapers were shut. In 2008, an estimated 114,000 reporters, editors, photographers and videographers worked for newspapers. By 2019, the number declined to 88,000. The picture is similar or worse in other parts of the world. Earlier, newspapers competed with television, now they face an onslaught from real time viral social media. I don’t think our grandchildren will read newspapers with their morning cup of coffee.

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Newspapers survive on ad revenue. Spend on advertising is discretionary, in a pandemic recession you can’t expect companies to take up full-page ads. The national newspapers we receive in the mornings have become much thinner. But the bigger danger is to the local and regional press.

Local newspapers are critical for the community and for democracy. Extensive academic research shows that when a local newspaper dies, civic engagement declines, elected local officials lose their sense of accountability, corruption becomes pervasive, voters lose interest in voting. We now know more about the American presidential election or Brexit, but the potholes on our roads or when our child’s school will reopen is more relevant for us. Only the local newspapers and beat journalists investigating local affairs can offer this information. They are rapidly disappearing.

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Judiciary and the press are part of the checks and balances. Judges, as public servants, receive their salaries from the government. Journalists, for the survival of democracy, are as important as judiciary. Unfortunately, the business of news is left to the whims of market forces. Subscriptions can retain the independence of newspapers. But no newspaper can now survive on just subscriptions. Every other revenue source usually results in a loss of independence. The Washington post is a financially healthy newspaper, because it is owned by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos. But can it ever write against Amazon?

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Small lifelines have now been offered by Facebook and Google. In the past decade, ad revenue has shifted from press to FB and Google. Google news is simply an aggregator. If newspapers disappear, Google news will be a blank sheet. Google has pledged $300 million to news outlets, FB $ 100 million. This offers some hope for small independent press. But so far, I see reports about closures alone.

The print version of Playboy, now a 66-year-old Playboy, was killed by the Pandemic in March. Rupert Murdoch’s News corporation is in the process of discontinuing dozens of newspapers and the print version of more than 100 community publications in Australia. All thanks to the pandemic. Metro, the free newspaper in England distributed 1.5 million copies every day. It has come down to 400,000. A tsunami of layoffs, cutbacks, furloughs, closures has affected newsrooms across the world.

The printed word, whether in books or newspapers, commands more trust than a WhatsApp message. The decline of the newspaper industry is one reason why the world is becoming fuller of conspiracy theories and fake news.

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The mode of delivery and quality of content are two different issues. It is inevitable newspapers in print will eventually move online. That is not the worrying part. The quality of journalism is. More on this subject tomorrow.

Ravi