How Cities and “Home Delivery” Weakened the Newspaper Model
Decatur Metro | December 28, 2009
Editorial
There’s been a lot of talk of late, both here and in much larger discussion circles, about how the erosion of urban centers has permanently changed entire industries. The sacrifice of the corner market at the alter of supermarkets is a frequently cited example. Simultaneously, there’s also been a sickening amount of narcissistic talk about the demise of hometown newspapers.
Yet rarely do these two concurrent discussions overlap.
To my knowledge, urban planners and journalists don’t spend much time tracing the connections between the city one builds and the city the other covers. Yet it’s no secret that a city’s layout can have important implications on its methods of communication, so it stands to reason that newspapers may also have been affected by their urban environments.
At first, the dramatic changes in a city’s landscape during the 20th century, from dense to dispersed, didn’t have an immediate or recognizable effect on newspaper health. As residents left the downtown core and resettled in the suburbs, the newspaper industry put greater reliance on a newer method of distribution. Instead of depending on residents to pick up a paper at the corner store, which was becoming an increasingly rare act, newspapers began pushing a seemingly more convenient option: “home delivery”.
For the suburban dweller, home delivery seemed the perfect and only real option. Living in a purely residential environment, the thought of obtaining a paper at a store every morning was downright ludicrous idea for any 9-5er. The newspaper industry’s answer to this problem was the paper boy. Instead of the new inconvenience of stopping off to buy a paper every day, you just had to fish it out of the bushes.
With no alternative means of distribution and a low price, this model served the industry well for a very long time. However, with the advent of free, easily accessible news over the internet, it may be that those newspapers that rely most on home delivery have inadvertently become some of the most vulnerable in the industry.
Why? Because even though a paper on the doorstep is a wonderful option for many die-hard readers, compared to a newspaper box or a rack inside your coffee shop, it’s a very inflexible business model. Gone are the days of only picking up a paper when you have time to read it. Instead you pay for and receive a paper every day, regardless of your fluctuating schedule. For many years this loss of consumer control was a small price to pay for home delivery. However, in an age of free digital content, a stack of unread papers piling up in your recycle bin can easily push a once-content consumer across the line to become a canceled consumer.
And if this loss of consumer freedom isn’t enough to push many a news-junkie online, the loss of available time (again attributable to city infrastructure) could be the other nail in the industry’s coffin. In many cities with a vital public transit system, physical newspapers remain an important part of the daily ritual. After picking up the paper at the corner newsstand, a news consumer takes it onto the train, folds it into 16ths and gets their daily news fix on the way to work. But in a nation of car-commuters, it’s difficult to flip to the Funnies while driving 75 mph down a 6-lane highway without endangering the guy next to you.
Am I arguing that every dense city is going to have a thriving newspaper business? No. (San Francisco is one example that can be used to counter that argument) Am I saying that digital media won’t soon find a way of becoming just as mobile and readable on the subway as an inky newspaper? No.
I’m only proposing that by spreading our cities out and becoming dependent on more rigid forms of communication, we may have inadvertently made our newspapers more vulnerable to new technology, placing them even closer to the precipice of extinction, with less time to adjust to the new, cheaper, and more convenient realities of communication in the 21st century.
Just a thought.
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All true. However, any business where your competition is offering their product for free is going to suffer no matter how efficient the distribution model is. I think this is especially true in the case of Craigslist destroying the classifieds revenue, which is really what hurt newspapers.
Interesting post, DM.
Ditto what LA wrote about Craigslist.
If you are interested in the UK context (where corner newsagents still thrive, although they also sell cigarettes and whatnot), check out Roy Greenslade’s online column in the Guardian. Also see what Lebedev did to the London Evening Standard (took it free). There has been a bit of a freesheet war in Central London over the past few years. I’ve lived in rural England and central London. In both places people seem to use corner shops / newsagents.
All that being said, if I could get a Sunday NY Times delivered to my Decatur house with pastries and a carafe of hot coffee, I would reconsider a home newspaper subscription.
You would think some local entrepreneur would start something like that.
I always thought that a similar home delivery of condoms ought to be profitable too, only with oysters and margaritas instead, with 24 hour, 15 minute service.
Thanks for the references Russ. I’ll check ‘em out. The impetus for this lengthy diatribe actually came as a result of a conversation with a Berliner about why that city could still support 6 newspapers and many major US cities could only support one or none.
I certainly don’t disagree with claims that Craigslist did a real number on newspapers, I just think that in many ways, newspapers actually became less accessible in the last half-century or so thanks to our transportation habits, and that put the industry in an even worse position once Craigslist came along and sapped all that revenue away.
I would love a home delivery newspaper subscription. But the fact is the AJC is a dreadful paper. Gave it a last go for a 3 month trial and once again the only articles of quality writing were not from this city. When I go to Pittsburgh I devour their newspaper so I know cities other than New York, D.C., etc can and do have quality newspapers.
Ironically enough, an online newspaper especially for Decatur will hit the stands, so to speak, on January 1st. decaturnewsonline.com is the site.
Interesting observations all around … how about this one? Audiences have become more diverse and therefore harder to please with one static piece of tree pulp with dried (mostly dried) ink.
Think about literacy rates, total metro populations, “minority” demographic growth, languages spoken, AND technological trends. How can a daily, one-size-fits-all “fish-wrapper” serve a population as diverse and large as those found in a major U.S. city? Perhaps in Pleasantville but not here!
With technology, the target demo is equal to 1 and content is driven by the individual reader not by the editorial staff. I have said it before but love repeating that I’m a red-blooded capitalist who is a communist when it comes to public information. Long live the proletariat!
I wonder if there were similiar misgivings when printed newsheets suplanted the town crier.
It’s the replacement of an outmoded delivery system.