I don’t care how printed newspapers die.
I’ve read the pundit’s opinions on why they WILL die. Some of them make sense. Some of them don’t. Laurie Manny even pointed out that the New York Times publisher is predicting the death of print. I have a few opinions of my own I could add to the mix. But I don’t care.
I only care that the printed newspaper SHOULD die, and sooner than later. Sulzberger’s five year prediction is too long for my taste. Why?
Let me throw out some numbers. 38.9% of the waste stream in the United States is paper. (1) Paper! How much of that total is newsprint? I have no idea. The newspaper industry certainly isn’t going to tell us, but let’s just consider this:
Each and ever day in the USA, American’s trash 44 Million newspapers. (1) Repeat that out loud and see how it rolls off the tongue. Does it feel good? I read that number and thought to myself, “Holy crap!” And here I thought the number of napkins wasted at In-N-Out was a problem. It pales in comparison.
In November, the latest numbers I could find, total newsprint consumption was 719,000 metric tons. Newspapers accounted for 567,000 tons of that usage. (2) The way I was taught math, that’s 73%. It’s staggering.
I’m not even going to go into the environmental impact of pulp mill production, or the energy savings that comes as a result of NOT producing the paper in the first place. If you’re interested, you can read more about it here.
I haven’t purchased a printed newspaper in more than four years. I simply don’t have a reason to. I read newspapers online. The times I have picked a “real” newspaper up – on a seat next to me at the airport, or at my door in a hotel – my thought is always the same; I’ve already read about this. I’m certainly not alone in this thought.
What an incredible waste of natural resources.
I was talking to my neighbor, Mike Whitman, about this and he said, “Well yes, that’s fine for you and me. I don’t read printed newspapers anymore either. But what about the people who don’t have access to the internet? Isn’t there some level of responsibility to provide access to news?”
I could probably argue, but I won’t. That’s a fair question. What about them?
How about this... what if the newspapers took the savings generated from NOT publishing a printed version (the savings would be more than just the paper) and directed a chunk of those savings toward projects to provide access to the internet for those who can’t otherwise afford it? What if they spearheaded providing internet access points in homeless shelters and other public locations? What if they lead the charge to free public WiFi? What if they provided greater computer and internet resources in schools? What if?
I’ve tried hard to find a way to justify the need for 44 million trashed newspapers each day and I can’t. If you can, feel free to comment. (try doing that with a printed newspaper) Otherwise, let’s all keep doing our part to make sure printed newspapers go away sooner than later. The world will be a better place. Guaranteed.
Phil Hoover says:
Hi Jeff ~
The newspapers would be toast if Realtors would explain to their sellers how ineffective print media advertising really is.
The primary reason for agents running print media ads is to satisfy their sellers.
The good buyers are on the internet ~ a fact that’s well-documented in numerous surveys.
I still laugh when I see a newspaper ad proclaiming “Hurry, this one won’t last!”, followed by “Price Just Reduced!” ~ thereby proving that it did!
I haven’t run a print media ad in more than 5 years.
March 11, 2007 — 4:57 pm
Kaye Thomas says:
Jeff.. I suspect that this will ultimately happen but not for some time.. I think there are still far too many people who use computers for certain things but will not use them in place of a newspaper. I have friends who use e-mail and will even shop online but that’s it. People who are my parents’ age no matter how computer literate they are will not give up their daily paper. I don’t think just providing computer access is th answer… yet.
March 11, 2007 — 5:01 pm
Dave Barnes says:
Jeff,
Is is 0600 on a Tuesday morning. You just got out of bed and need to “take a dump”. What do you read whilst sitting on the crapper?
Newspapers (delivered at 0530) are perfect for this event/time of day.
Comics.
,dave
P.S. And, don’t tell me to read the Economist as it is tough slog at that time of the morning.
March 11, 2007 — 6:44 pm
Laurie Manny says:
Jeff,
Patience, we are in a transition phase. The Real Estate Book and Homes and Land are increasing their internet presence. Some of the industry is moving away from paper. It’s just gonna take some time for the rest of the industry to come to terms with it. You know how people resist change before they embrace it.
The only way it could be forced is if everybody just stopped advertising. Well, you are never going to get everybody to agree to do anything. So the leaders go first. My annual contracts with the local paper are coming up and I am not renewing. I will go on a week by week basis and may kick myself, but I do not want to renew for a whole year.
Whatever, I run print ad’s at this point because the sellers still want them. These ad’s used to be a phenomenal resource for lead generation, but no longer.
March 11, 2007 — 7:08 pm
Jeff Turner says:
Phil, I heartily support a movement to educate consumers on how ineffective ads are for actually selling their home. The newspapers already know it. One newspaper ad exec said to me, “Jeff, if it weren’t for homeowners demanding it, we’d have no ads in our real estate section.”
Kaye, I suspect you are right as well, but I can dream. My guess, however, is that if it were gone tomorrow, everyone would find a way to get the news. They may not immediately like it, but they’d find a way.
Dave… read a book.
March 11, 2007 — 7:27 pm
Jeff Turner says:
Laurie, I’ll be patient. 🙂 I’m not in control of this process. I’ve got no choice.
What do you tell the sellers who still want them? Does anything you say work with the majority?
March 11, 2007 — 8:38 pm
CJ, Broker in L A, CA says:
I’m just wondering how many newspaper-industry people would end up unemployed as a result … from press operators to delivery drivers to office clerks to advertising salespeople(!) … Unemployed people can’t buy real estate (which effects ~my~ business in the long run – not that all of them could afford Los Angeles real estate anyway)
March 12, 2007 — 4:04 am
Jeff Turner says:
CJ, of course all of the people associated with production and delivery would no longer be needed in their current jobs. I don’t see a dramatic loss of ad sales people, their energy would be redirected toward web ad sales.
You raise a good point. Yes, this would have a dramatic impact on the lives of the production people. Is it worth keeping them all employed to continue on a path that is so ridiculously wasteful and ineffective? I don’t think so.
What do we do with these displaced workers? This is one of the reasons why some creativity is needed to understand how the newspapers maximize their ability to reach as many people as possible, without print, maintain or strengthen profitability, and retrain employees for tasks that support a better, more efficient business model. As others have said, it can’t happen overnight. But it can’t happen at all if we don’t start wanting it to happen more.
Newspapers have shown their willingness to support employees in the past. When they made the switch from hot metal typesetting to electronic typesetting, they gave union employees lifetime jobs. I’m certain there is a solution that will insure that people are taken care of. But many will have to transition to another industry.
March 12, 2007 — 8:31 am
Jay Thompson says:
The best thing on-line news has over print based news?
You don’t get the damn ink all over your fingers with on-line news.
As for what to read during your morning movement, I highly recommend “Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader”. Infomative, funny articles that are just the right length. You my find yourself sitting there reading until your legs go numb…
March 12, 2007 — 11:36 am
Matt Carter, newspaper apologist says:
My wife and I get the SF Chronicle 6 days a week and the NY Times on Sundays even though we can read the Chronicle for free online. I spend all day at work in front of a computer screen. I think reading the newspaper should be a pleasure, not a chore. I like to plop down on the couch with it or spill coffee and Tobasco on it in the breakfast nook.
Our Sunday NY Times subscription lets us read the online version the rest of the week. If I am looking for stories on a specific topic, the Web kicks the newspaper’s butt. But if I am just reading for pleasure, browsing for stuff that’s interesting, I find the newspaper is a better format for stumbling onto things by accident.
Along those lines, I saw a great piece somewhere about how the way we consume news and information can restrict our world view. If I only read stuff that I seek out online through, say RSS readers or keyword searches, my interests would limit my knowledge (and my knowledge would limit my interests).
The Web actually offers a lot more potential to follow your curiosity wherever takes you — IF you have the time. You do have to sift through a lot of chaff, and spend a lot of time discerning the sources of the information you are finding.
Newspapers, for all the complaining we do about gatekeeping, provide an important function in that they don’t have the space for everything so they have to make some decisions about what’s going to be the most important news to you, the reader. Maybe if some of them demonstrated better news judgement they’d get more credit for this.
As far as the resources they use, they are considerable (mabye even rivaling the impacts of the power consumed by hundreds of millions of personal computers and the Internet server farms that feed them), but let’s not forget that about 3/4 of newspapers are recycled, not "trashed," and that the only reason those presses are still rolling is because people are still buying newspapers. Newspaper circulation, although it’s not keeping up with population growth, has been holding fairly steady at around 55 million for the last 10 years.
So if you don’t like newspapers, don’t buy them. But I ain’t gonna lose any sleep if you think I’m wrecking the environment because I like my Sunday paper.
March 13, 2007 — 6:09 pm
Teresa Boardman says:
Please don’t forget the bird cages. I write for a small newspaper, a community service for our many residents without internet access, and can just picture the stroy that took me hours to write and photograph on the bottom of tweeties cage. Depressing . . .
March 14, 2007 — 6:36 am
Jeff Turner says:
Matt, good to see a newspaper lover finally show up. I’m happy you enjoy your newspaper reading. I’m not going to loose any sleep over you doing it either. But your points call for new ideas about how information is presented, not hunkering down with the status quo.
Teresa, bird cages are now noted. 🙂
March 14, 2007 — 1:25 pm
Greg Swann says:
> But your points call for new ideas about how information is presented, not hunkering down with the status quo.
I don’t often get time to read purely at my will, but, when I do, I love to curl up with my Treo 650. It’s so bright, I can read in the dark, too. They love that when Cathy makes me go to the theater.
March 14, 2007 — 3:50 pm
Matt Carter says:
Hey Jeff, I love all the new ways we can get information, I just don’t think they have to completely displace the old ones. I still listen to my FM car radio, but I’ve never thought of myself as hunkering down with the status quo (although it’s true I am one of those annoying people who think LPs sound better than CDs, and that the audio quality of MP3s is just barely tolerable).
I worry that our increasing reliance on digital media could give us the illusion that all the world’s knowledge is at our fingertips, when it is not. Most of the world’s books, government publications and academic studies have not yet been digitized or are available only on a restricted basis.
Have you been following Google’s efforts to digitize the library collections of major universities? That’s only a fraction of what’s out there, and they are facing some serious legal obstacles. If they succeed, I don’t think we’re all gonna have free access to that material.
But back to my point about how your interests (and let’s also say your beliefs) can limit the extent of your knowledge, because you may seek out information from a limited number of sources.
To expand on that point: the Internet, while offering critical thinkers with inquisitive minds greater access to knowledge, also allows those who are only interested in confirming their beliefs to do so.
I am going to post this link, without comment, because I don’t want to get into a huge debate about Iraq.
In short, more information (electronic media, print, morse code, telepathy): GOOD.
REd herring arguments that exagerate the environmental impacts of certain forms of media to make the case that they should just go away even though millions of Americans still depend on them: BAD.
March 14, 2007 — 5:56 pm
Jeff Turner says:
Matt… I’m not going to disagree with you on where we are right now. We’re not at a place where we can do away with printed newspapers. My point is that we should work toward it. I don’t believe the massive waste associated with newsprint is a red herring issue. And I was not trying to exaggerate the impact. If anything, I didn’t go far enough to explain the manufacturing impact, the impact of delivery, etc.
Your points about how interests influence your extent of knowledge, make sense to me. But I fail to see how those interests and beliefs are somehow not involved in what articles you choose to read in a printed newspaper?
I have hundreds of feeds in my feed readere, including the full feeds from CNN & BBC. Those feeds provide me with nonlinear, random information about topics I might not other wise find via my industry and topic specific feeds. Of course you can choose to dramatically limit your intake of information. But you can also choose to dramatically expand your intake of information via the internet.
I’m not sure how the missing archives of information you mention is relevant to this discussion, but you’re obviously right. Not all of the printed historical documents are available on the web, yet. But one day they may be. That’s not the information I’m talking about. That’s not the daily news.
More information is good. Reducing the amount of information that is spread via printed materials is also good. Less printed material doesn’t mean less information.
March 15, 2007 — 8:53 am
Jeff Turner says:
Greg, I’m holding out for an iPhone. Then I’ll have absolutely no life at all.
March 15, 2007 — 8:54 am
Red Wagon Jay says:
The web is the best place to advertise listings to consumers.
Several years ago, the broker/owner of a major franchise that I worked for here in Southern California, asked me to run a full page ad in the Orange County Register for the office. The ad cost $1500 at the time. I used my 800 call capture number and recorded messages about each property. The ad received 18 calls and no one bought.
Had the owner chosen to spend $1500 on the web, I know she would have received a ton of leads.
Newspapers will continue to have an impact in people’s lives beyond real estate. Yes, there is life beyond real estate.
May 24, 2008 — 11:10 am