Newspapers in fight for survival

By John Griffin

Hawai'i's newspaper war between The Honolulu Advertiser and the Honolulu Star-Bulletin is both part of a national struggle and an exception to it. Enjoy it while you can.

The Honolulu Star-Bulletin has improved, says John Griffin, since it began direct competition with The Honolulu Advertiser in March. Advertiser library photo • Nov. 9, 2000

"The simple fact is that the American newspaper industry finds itself in the middle of the most momentous change in its 300-year history, a change that is diminishing the amount of real news available to the consumer. A generation of relentless corporatization is now culminating in a furious, unprecedented blitz of buying, selling, and consolidating of newspapers, from the mightiest dailies to the humblest weeklies. Intended to heighten efficiency and maximize profits, this activity is at the same time reducing competition and creating new ownership models...."

While this is happening, the slowed national economy has hit the media. Newspaper revenues are down and costs are up. On the Mainland, spending and staff cuts are being made, raising more questions about the quality of journalism today.

In this national picture, Hawai'i is an exception because the giant Gannett chain, owner of The Advertiser, is slugging it out with the new owner of the Star-Bulletin, the much-smaller Black Co. chain of Canada, which also owns the prosperous Midweek giveaway.

The result so far is two improved newspapers. They could get even better as competition sharpens.

What the outcome will be — six months, a year, or more from now — will depend on a mixture of news and opinion content, circulation as influenced by reader preferences and, perhaps most vital, response from advertisers.

Several scenarios seem possible.

The national media situation and some of its local ramifications were discussed at the recent Freedom of Information Day Conference sponsored by the Honolulu Community Media Council.

Author-editor James Fallows, the featured Mainland speaker, updated some of the themes from his 1996 book, "Breaking the News: How the Media Undermine American Democracy."

Those include covering important news like sports events (think pro wrestling), an overemphasis on conflict and crises, news treated like entertainment or infotainment, a growing gap between reporters and their subjects, herd mentalities in coverage, the top-level trend toward celebrity journalists who get fat speaking fees (Fallows takes none), declining readership — and, of course, the concentration of media and decline of local ownership.

Fallows and others found a few bright spots, including world-class papers that are islands of excellence in the gloomy sea and the thought that both journalists and the public are not necessarily helpless in influencing change. Hawai'i is at least temporarily a case in the second point.

Whether Honolulu's dailies continue to improve depends on a mixture of news and opinion content, circulation and advertiser response. Advertiser library photo • Sept. 17, 1999

I've seen statements that newspapers are dying and doomed. One expert predicted the last print edition of the venerable New York Times will roll off the press about 2016. The new book, co-authored by Gene Roberts, says this:

"Despite what you might have heard, then, it's not a genuine question whether newspaper companies will survive in our ever-shifting, hypercompetitive communications landscape. They will, their genius for adaptation and self-preservation evolved to a level that Darwin would relish. They are that well-tested — and, it should not be forgotten, even better bankrolled."

At the same time, it's not enough to note that newspapers have, despite earlier predictions of doom, survived the coming of radio and TV. The digital age, when every medium and everybody can be wired together, presents a new magnitude of challenge.

So the question is how newspaper companies will change.

Today's newspaper Web sites, which electronically offer most of a paper's content before it is delivered to your doorstep, are a beginning — and a problem because they don't generate enough ad revenue. Much thought is going into how to change today's free lunch into something that produces money, possibly via "mini royalties" paid for reading stories.

TV is also in the equation. Today's cooperative deals between papers and TV stations, as we have in Honolulu, are mostly promotional. But it also may be a start toward some uncertain future when news and views can be available in many new forms.

So when does your now-delivered newspaper drop out of the bottom of your TV set or arrive in some other electronic manner?

That will depend on new technology, where you live, and preferences. It's likely press-printed papers and magazines will be with us for many years, at least for older and less-wired generations. The last Hawai'i newsboy or delivery person may not yet be born.

Still, ever more people are getting their news online, even via palmtop devices or PDAs. And much effort is going into developing an electronic reader that looks more like a newspaper. Some might even use "reusable paper" that feels like the real thing but is printed electronically.

At the same time, not only has the predicted "paperless office" failed to appear, the electronic age has also spawned the biggest paper-producing and printing boom in American history with faxes and printouts soaring.

Whatever happens, newspapers will have two vital functions. One is presenting the news gathered by large, professional staffs nobody else in town can duplicate. This can, and increasingly should, include objective analysis on what the news means.

The second is producing opinion, their own and those of others. I think this second, the so-called editorial function, is going to be more and more important for newspapers, no matter how they are delivered.

So to sum up and give my bias as a former editorial page editor who sees both older and younger generations with changing tastes:

Breaking news is more and more the domain of broadcasters or newspaper Web sites operating around the clock.

There's also a great need for analyzing the news and presenting opinions on developments and issues in an established and dependable forum. Increasingly over the years, editorial pages have evolved in that direction, giving more space to letters and to commentary articles from readers, as well as columnists.

I think it's even more a wave of the future.

John Griffin, former editor of the editorial pages for The Advertiser, writes frequently for these pages.