Passing Comments

Finally, some promising numbers for U.S. newspapers, according to Nielsen Online, as reported this week in Editor & Publisher. The online audience rose more than 12 percent in the most recent quarter, compared to the same period last year, E&P reports (”Newspaper Sites Gain Audience in Q2″ by Jennifer Saba, July 29, 2008).

More here.

In a concise piece in The Nation online this week, journalism professor Eric Alterman, lists the series of mistakes some “clueless media moguls” are making that, rather than slowing the rapid slide of newspapers into extinction, are ensuring that the demise will happen (”I Read the News Today… Oh Boy” July 16, 2008).

Alterman names some of the bigger villains by name and itemizes errors.

Overall the picture Alterman paints isn’t pretty. Especially depressing is his conclusion that any good ideas to rescue newspapers so far haven’t appeared.

Sure makes me want to believe in that old saw, it’s always darkest before the dawn.

It’s not difficult to find a lot of discussion online and elsewhere these days about the current rapid decline of newspapers in the U.S. and elsewhere. It’s also not too difficult to find a lot of blame being tossed around at times in those discussions about who or what is at fault.

Writing recently in his regular column for L’espresso, however, Umberto Eco says it’s not anyone’s fault, no more than the hole in the ozone is. The decline of newspapers is a result of our technological development, according to Eco, and it’s just a fact. But, he adds, it’s an embarrassing one (”Parlare in ritardo” La Bustina di Minerva, April 17, 2008). Note - in Italian only.

Describing what the newspaper has become these days, Eco writes:

Così il giornale diventa come una serata in famiglia, dove il nonno ripete per la milionesima volta la storia di quando aveva subito i bombardamenti, il babbo snocciola i suoi luoghi comuni sulla situazione economica, poi si parla un po’ male del vicino notoriamente cornuto, o si commenta la trasmissione televisiva appena vista. Niente di male, anzi bellissima situazione di socializzazione, ma non era questa, all’inizio degli inizi, la funzione delle gazzette, finestre che di colpo e inopinatamente si spalancavano ogni mattina sull’imprevisto.

(Translation, roughly: Just so the newspaper becomes like spending an evening with the family, where the grandfather repeats for the umpteenth time the story of when he was caught under a bombing attack, the father rattles off his usual opinions on the economic situation, then there is some mildly unkind talk about a neighbor who is notoriously being cheated on, or comments about a television program that was just watched. Nothing bad, on the contrary, a wonderful social situation but this wasn’t, at the very beginning, the function of the newspapers (which were) windows suddenly and unexpectedly thrown open each morning on the unforeseen.)

If this excerpt whets your appetite to read more Eco, I also found this reprint of an interview (in English) he gave to a reporter in New York last December (Interview with Umberto Eco, “The Armani of Italian literature,” Umberto Eco talks to Ben Naparstek, Dec 8, 2007, The Sydney Morning Herald).

UPDATE: Questo post in italiano (parziale)

Weep, probably, judging by some conclusions in a series of articles beginning today in Advertising Age. Taking a look at the ongoing decline of newspapers, the report focuses on what’s being done to forestall collapse (”The Newspaper Death Watch” by Nat Ives, April 28, 2008).

One expert quoted in the article predicts that newspapers will survive only about 20 to 25 more years:

Of course, newspaper owners aren’t going to just give up and wait — and that’s why Ad Age is launching this series about the 1,437 dailies still working hard in the U.S. It’ll look at the thought leaders in the industry, their attempts to leave the past — and even formats — behind and their strategies for finding new business models.

(Link to this story came from mediabistro.com).

The Internet will edge past magazines, now ranked third behind newspapers and television, as a favorite for advertisers by 2010, according to an article in the Guardian online yesterday (”Net to become third biggest ad medium,” by Mark Sweney, Guardian Unlimited, Dec 3, 2007) .

The report on global advertising was just released by the media agency ZenithOptimedia, according to the Guardian article, and it projects that by 2010, the Internet will lay claim to 11.5 percent ($61 billion) of the total global spending on advertising ($530 billion). For the same time period, the top two favorites for advertisers, newspapers and television, will have a 25.4 percent share and a 37.5 percent share respectively.

The Internet currently ranks behind radio on the list of advertising mediums, but is projected to surpass it next year, according to the newspaper article.