We have been hearing about the impending death of the newspaper for almost a decade now. We have considered it as
inevitable. With the e-book and the iPad, we are even more sure
that conventional newspapers are doomed. I was too, until I read
this article in the Fortune
magazine, Profits are not
the only consideration for newspapers. It starts:"One of the challenges of discussing the besieged newspaper business is that it's not like just any business, or it shouldn't be. There is a public-service component to newspapering that is often at odds with the pursuit of maximum profits. That, in fact, is the industry's core problem as readership and revenue continue to dwindle: Many of the nation's newspapers are owned by corporations that are concerned primarily or solely with profits, which often isn't good for journalism. The only way to maintain profits in the short-term is to cut costs."
Recently, The New Orleans Times-Picayune, announced that it would cut production from daily to three days a week. The paper reportedly is profitable -- but not profitable enough for its owners, who want to squeeze out as much as they can in as short a time as possible. People can always read it online, one could say. Fact is, "... more than a third of New Orleans' population has no internet access."
If one third of a major city in the US has no internet access, what about Malaysia? I was asked recently, in a survey conducted on behalf of the Ministry of Culture, why I considered it important for local publishers and authors to have more support from the print media (namely, newspapers) in this country. Isn't social media good enough?
The latest audited reports for July to Dec 2011, by the Audit Bureau of Circulation, indicate that a little over 2.5 million print newspapers are sold in the peninsula in all languages every day (not including Sundays). If we assume a readership of 5 persons per newspaper, we are looking at 12.5 million eyeballs! Granted, local authors are not as glamorous as Lady Gaga, but to quote Harry Shearer of the Columbia Journalism Review: do the owners 'owe a little something back'? And '... at what point does the pursuit of profit begin to do serious harm to the communities served by newspapers?'
This is not to say that local newspapers are raking in the money, but they do get into an unwritten social contract the moment they decide to publish one, as opposed to, say, setting up a char kweh teow stall. Do print newspapers have a social responsibility more than any other industry? And which country's cultural landscape do local newspapers consider themselves to be part of?
