To Grow Circ, Newspapers Must Take More Chances

By: Tom Rosensteil The central question facing newspapers is sur-prisingly basic: In the future, can they attract new readers and grow their circulation? After taking an extensive look at trends across journalism for the first of what the Project for Excellence in Journalism intends as an annual report called The State of the News Media, two answers seem clearer than ever.

The public appetite for getting news by reading seems much more secure than it did even a few years ago. Yet today's readers may not want a one-size-fits-all newspaper, and history raises questions

about whether the industry will make the speculative investments required to create new products and new coverage to chase these readers.

The State of the News Media Report, released on March 15 (and available at www.stateofthenewsmedia.org), is a detailed look at eight different sectors of American journalism. The full report, more than 500 pages long, examines long-term trends in audience, economics, public attitudes and newsroom investments for each sector.

The results show three areas of dramatic growth in journalism, and all of them involve reading: online, ethnic media and alternative weekly papers. All three offer audiences something traditional media cannot offer ? targeted content, and in the case of the Internet, offering it on demand.

Had we done this report in 1994 rather than 2004, the conclusions might have been much more dire. A decade ago, there were growing questions about how much Americans in the future would care about news at all, and in particular whether people would get their news by reading. New studies were showing that young people were less interested in news and the world around them than previous generations. New immigrants were not becoming newspaper readers the way those in previous waves had. Circulation began to drop in absolute terms in 1990, after years of stability.

Today, we know more, and despite continuing circulation declines, the picture is brighter. Young people may not be gravitating to the dominant news media of the past, like their elders, but they are flocking to new media. And while English-language circulation has dropped 11% since 1990, Spanish-language newspaper circulation in that time has nearly quadrupled, from 440,000 to 1.7 million.

But here's the rub: The newspaper industry has known about its problems for years. A report titled "The Age of Indifference" by The Times Mirror Center for the People and the Press received enormous attention in June 1990, pinpointing how young people had very different attitudes toward news providers than earlier generations. Yet the first experiments with new newspapers aimed at these young readers, like Red Eye from the Tribune Company, didn't appear until more than 10 years later.

And it was not until the last couple of years that the industry began to move toward the Spanish-language audience in a significant way ? after others had proven the viability of the market.

Privately, some former executives tell bitter stories about trying to get their companies to invest in coverage to build new readership, and being told it was a waste of money. Former editor Paul Janensch told USA Today, "Daily newspapers owned by large chains ? and that is most of them ? are no longer interested in circulation."

That may be too broad a brush, I suspect. There are many cases of heavy investing in the 1980s and 1990s, though usually it took the form of "zoning" local coverage for key demographic neighborhoods.

It has been an unspoken question for the last decade: are newspapers a mature industry on a suicide spiral toward long-term decline? The answer we glean in 2004 is no. The audience for what newspapers offer can grow. Yet we now live in an on-demand world. People want the news they want. And they want it when they want it.

To provide that will be more difficult, and will require new products, and investing in new coverage.

The newspaper of the future may not be one newspaper, but many ? targeted for different groups the way that beer companies now make many brands. Perhaps in some cities this may mean different nameplates, and different personalities. Or maybe readers will indicate their interests and get a paper printed on a device in their house that is customized to those interests, including custom ads.

Or the newspaper may be some combination of paper and online?or a subscription that grows with use, like a phone bill. Perhaps homes may get more than one paper with a subscription ? one paper for my kids and, as my kids' might put it, an old person's newspaper for me.

To accomplish this, however, it seems certain newspapers will need to experiment, take risks, and, sometimes, make mistakes. But the evidence suggests the demand is now there. If the supply doesn't come from the newspaper industry, it will come from someplace else.