Do newspapers have any chance against online news?

Your question assumes an adversarial relationship between print and online news that doesn't exist. Maybe it did at one point, but now, both are on the same side. Digital native outlets, Newspapers  that publish on the web, TV news outlets that draw more web traffic than they do living-room viewers — it's all the same now. The struggle isn't against online news, it's against sweeping changes in the industry that are only partially about tech. The main issue is the disappearance of national advertising, the lifeblood of most news outlets, whether they started out as local papers or nationwide TV networks.

 

It's conventional wisdom that Craigslist killed Newspapers  by stealing the classified market out from under them, but it's a lot more complicated than that. Newspapers  and magazines were slow to adapt to the internet, considering it at first to be just a loss leader they'd use as free bait to sell print subscriptions; few realized 25 years ago that the internet wasn't going to be the sideshow barker, it was going to be the whole show. But the newspaper publishers never figured out how to monetize advertising on the internet, to the extent that they had been able to do so in print. People got used to reading online news for free and couldn't be persuaded later to pay for it. Profits fell, papers closed (some 2000 of them in the last 10 years alone), and journalists were laid off by the thousands.

 

Not that the digital-native outlets did any better at figuring out how to monetize online advertising. The web-only outlets dropped dead just as fast as the Newspapers  had, and those jobs were no more secure for journalists than print jobs.

 

Someone actually did finally figure out how to monetize web advertising: it was Facebook and Google. In fact, they sucked up almost all of it, leaving little for the Newspapers  and websites that, foolishly, thought they needed to partner with Facebook and Google to get traffic and ad clicks. So they gave away their content again, and again, and they got nothing back for it.

 

Of course, Facebook and Google are terrible at curating news. Their algorithms are a poor substitute for editorial judgment, and you wind up with a feed that contains little substance, lots of trivia, and lots of ads, all based on your own predilections. And since the social media giants don't want to pay for any of it, journalistic outlets that gathered and reported news the old-fashioned and expensive way fall by the wayside, while troll farms and propaganda mills that make things up on the cheap proliferate. In essence, the Newspapers  have, out of fear and desperation, ceded editorial judgment to everyone else — to social media, to the audience, the accountants, the sponsors, and even the politicians. But in doing so, they've abdicated from the one thing that gave them any value in the first place, their skill at distinguishing the important from the trivial, fact from fiction, and substantive from superfluous.

 

This is what the professional news media are up against. Not each other, according to arbitrary and meaningless distinctions based on whether they're online natives or not. But rather, an entire ecosystem of fake news has arisen in the vacuum created by the responsible media's own shortsighted management decisions. (Or, in the cases of private equity firms that bought up many of the struggling papers in recent years, outright managerial sabotage, looting the papers of their assets, firing the staff, and selling what's left for scrap.)

 

Unfortunately, I don't see these bad decisions improving anytime soon, certainly not enough to reverse the avalanche of Newspapers  and media jobs rolling downhill and tumbling into the sea. Look at the newly-announced Gatehouse-Garnett merger. They're trying to fight the last war by increasing scale. Watch how it'll play out, though. Citing the need for efficiency, they'll lay off reporters at hundreds of papers. With no one left to write, they'll fill those papers with nationally syndicated content. But why would anyone bother to read the Springfield Bugle or the Shelbyville Herald if they all run the same stories as USA Today? They won't, and those papers will fold. More towns will become news deserts, and without press watchdogs, local corruption will flourish, industries will wantonly pollute local resources, and local citizens will pay more in taxes for services not delivered and ineffectual protections from the rapacious forces no longer monitored by local papers.

 

What they should be doing is doubling down on local papers, hiring more reporters there, so that each paper can specialize in community news and offer a product that no national outlet can offer. They could create value that readers would pay for if they'd invest in the kind of local coverage that the internet doesn't do well (if at all). But they won't. The owners would rather manage their industry's slow decline and profit from the fire sale than spend money to build up the business for the long term.

 

New technologies always have a way of obliterating older technologies. Many Newspapers  around the country have already folded and gone completely online. Many of the large, major papers continue in print but have established an online version. Most Newspapers ’ management are still trying to figure out what works. Some online papers are free to read and make money with online ads. Others charge to read them online. I began working on dailies in the era of manual typewriters and hot type and continued through the introduction of cold type and computers. Change is inevitable. My guess is that in the future all news will be delivered online and perhaps even via some device that hasn’t even been invented yet. And you can bet that it won’t be free for very long, and shouldn’t be. Media delivering the news still need to earn a living.

 

Generally, Newspapers  are the best source of news. They show the least amount of bias, have consistent coverage, and build reputations with the communities they serve. There is some great internet news out there, but you have to be far more critical and selective when looking at those sources.

 

This line is getting more and more blurred, however, as paper publications are creating digital versions and properties. For the purposes of this question, I’ll group Newspapers  with their digital properties and consider internet sources as digital native publications like Buzzfeed.

 

The medium –– There’s no replacing the feeling of holding a warm off-the-press newspaper. Obviously, the first difference is that newspaper news is physical and printed. Newspapers  are offered at physical places like coffee shops, newsstands, and at home (if delivered). Internet news is available everywhere there is internet on any digital device making it more accessible, convenient, and efficient. You can search for news content online and get a variety of sources but you can’t search inside a physical paper except by looking through each page.

Newspapers  are generally more reliable –– For decades, Newspapers  were the primary way communities were informed about the world. Even now, they are still an important medium. Having long histories and engaged communities, their business model is based on trust and credibility. This makes them accountable as a sort of public property. If they aren’t reliable, useful, or trustworthy, they won’t last.

Newspaper news quality is generally better –– Internet news can be anything from the best (ProPublica, MIT Technology Review) to the worst (Infowars, The Daily Stormer) of what the Internet has to offer. It can be fake news, conspiracy, pseudoscience, hate publications, propaganda, hyper-partisan, etc. Newspapers  might suffer from being a little dry and boring, but they also maintain a certain level of quality. You won’t find a newspaper that makes its money off fake viral content from social media.

Internet news is better at using digital tools and technologies –– This is completely subjective, but overall I see a lot more success in integrating things like GIFs, social media embeds, funny memes, interactive graphics, etc. in internet media. Some print ones do this on their digital sites, but most present news like their print papers with a video thrown in.

Newspapers  are based on actual reporting –– Newspapers  generally focus on journalism and reporting (or getting breaking content from wire services like the Associated Press). Some digital publications do this, but many more simply aggregate or rewrite content.

Newspapers  have longer histories and a public reputation –– Some of the biggest U.S. papers were founded in the 1800s. Others date back to just before the country was founded. Digital publications at most go back a little over two decades and most major ones are about 10–15 years old.

Newspapers  have a more secure public record –– A copy of it is recorded forever as a matter of public record. You can access Newspapers  going back decades with microfilm at libraries. Good luck finding Gizmodo articles stored in hard copy there. Digital articles can be plagued by broken links, missing articles, and a variety of archive processes that make it hard to find all content.

Internet news is more diverse –– Most of the differences in one way or another relate back to this. Every Tom, Dick, and Harry can find their niche news or content on the web, from beekeeping magazines to conspiracy websites to mainstream news outlets. Newspapers are mostly generalists, covering the major news from every category. This also means that while the coverage of one topic or angle is better from internet sources (more in-depth, detailed, and frequent), it also leaves out a lot of news that isn’t relevant. It’s much easier to fall into a filter bubble online.