Economist tolls death knell for newspapers

The Economist is one of the most successful weekly magazines in the world, with a worldwide circulation of 1.1 million; it sells more than 55,000 copies every issue in Canada. It's popular and influential and when it talks about a trend, people listen. So it is (startling/depressing/nerve-wracking) to have this week's one-two punch (a leading article and the feature that backs it up) about the impending death of newspapers. This doesn't mean that magazine will or must go the same way; they have proved far more resilient and adapatable. But as newspapers go, so goes the attitudes towards print among the chattering classes.

As the leader, or editorial comment, says: "The business of selling words to readers and selling readers to advertisers, which has sustained [newspapers'] role in society, is falling apart."

The magazine ruminates on the loss of public accountability as papers, desperate to hold onto younger readers (and save money) shift away from covering international affairs and politics in favour of softer, lighter, less challenging entertainment, lifestyle and service. But in the end, the editorial says that internet commentary, particularly blogs and "citizen journalism" will take over the role of holding government accountable.

(Come to think of it, the shift about which The Economist is talking is one that magazines have made already; moving from mass vehicles to narrow, specific niches in consumer and b-to-b, providing "news you can use" for the everyday work and leisure lives of their readers.)

The main feature article says that part of the issue for newspapers was complacency:

"Even the most confident of newspaper bosses now agree that they will survive in the long term only if... they can reinvent themselves on the internet and on other new-media platforms such as mobile phones and portable electronic devices. Most have been slow to grasp the changes affecting their industry—“remarkably, unaccountably complacent,” as Rupert Murdoch put it in a speech last year—but now they are making a big push to catch up. Internet advertising is growing rapidly for many and is beginning to offset some of the decline in print.

"Newspapers' complacency is perhaps not as remarkable as Mr Murdoch suggested. In many developed countries their owners have for decades enjoyed near monopolies, fat profit margins, and returns on capital above those of other industries. In the past, newspaper companies saw little need to experiment or to change and spent little or nothing on research and development."

Of course, complacency is never an accusation that could be made about magazine publishers...

(One thing more that's funny is that The Economist, though in classic magazine form, has always called itself a newspaper.)