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How Newspapers Are Killing Themselves

By Caroline Miller, Newser Staff

Posted Aug 13, 2009 2:37 PM CDT

(Newser) – In the avalanche of reporting and commentary on the collapse of the newspaper business, a number of salient, none-too-flattering facts have been overlooked about how newspapers contributed to their own demise, Bill Wyman writes on Splice. First, there's the misunderstanding that readers pay for news. It's advertisers who pay, and in the boom years, rich profits from that advertising were devoted to pleasing Wall Street, not preparing for inevitable threats to the papers' monopoly in delivering those ads.

"The papers were taking their profits and investing in a future not of technological change and institutional challenges," he writes, "but one defined only by the search for more profits." Then there's the misunderstanding that newspapers are civic watchdogs. In fact, in the interests of defending their monopoly positions, Wyman argues, most newspapers became "lapdogs" that pander to the sensibilities of readers they can't afford to offend. "A large part of what we called 'newsgathering' was basically providing additional promotional coverage for its advertisers."

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CHICAGO - APRIL 02: Chicago Sun Times and Chicago Tribune newspapers are offered for sale April 2, 2009 in Chicago, Illinois. Both newspapers are operating under bankruptcy protection. (Getty Images)

CHICAGO - APRIL 2: Commuters pass by a stack of Chicago Tribune newspapers ready to be delivered to the train station April 2, 2007 in Chicago, Illinois. The Tribune Company today announced the company... (Getty Images)

NEW YORK - JULY 23: Copies of the New York Times sit for sale in a rack July 23, 2008 in New York City. The New York broadsheet announced it posted an 82 percent decline in second quarter profits as... (Getty Images)

Patrick Sheldon, of Bainbridge Island, Wash., reads a special commemorative issue of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer newspaper Tuesday, March 17, 2009, on a Washington state ferry. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

Gary Johnson, left, of Bainbridge Island, Wash., reads the final edition of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer newspaper Tuesday, March 17, 2009, as he commutes to Seattle on a Washington state ferry. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

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Most newspapers in the US aren’t watchdogs. Most are instead lapdogs, and the metaphorical lap they sit in isn’t even that of powerful interests like their advertisers. The real tyrant was the tender sensibilities of their readers. - Bill Wyman

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