If It Is A Given That The Young Are No Longer Reading Newspapers, Then How Comes US Universities Continue To Enroll More Budding Journalists Every Year?

Philip Stone March 21, 2007

US journalism and mass communications university programs have enrolled more students each year since 1999. So if generalizations are true that the young aren’t into reading newspapers then the obvious question is, why do they want to work for them? Must be for the high pay and glory!

According to the Cox Center and Grady College, the number of undergraduates studying journalism is on the rise, a modest rise but a rise all the same, and in breaking down the categories those working on newspaper degrees are also increasing.

Which does present somewhat of a conundrum – the young don’t seem to want to read newspapers, but they do want to work for newspapers. It couldn’t possibly be that there are some young out there who actually do believe in the future of newspapers?

A good exercise for those budding new young journalism undergraduates  would be to have them write down now what the newspaper industry needs to do to survive the next 10 years. Do they believe, in fact, that there will still be newspapers  printed on dead trees or will newspapers have gone the way of The New York Times Reader? Will the Internet have burst its bubble again, what role will a newspaper play on one’s daily life, etc. etc.

For inspiration they could look at a fascinating column that appeared this week in the Midland Daily News, based in Midland, Michigan. It’s owned by Hearst, but with a circulation of some 19,000 it’s probably not one of that company’s big money makers; but it did increase its circulation last year and it does make money.

Editor John “Jack” Telfer ran a great piece in which he reviewed his predictions, written in 1992, about how he thought the industry would be at the turn of the century. Those were an interesting eight years – consider the Internet wasn’t around in 1992 as just one example – and yet much of what he wrote then about what newspapers would need to do to grow are as true today as they were back in 1992. And most of what he wrote today’s budding graduates could certainly put in their memos about the industry 10 years from now.

Talking about the technology revolution, the advent of 24-hour news and the like – in other words more avenues for people to get their news-- Telford wrote back in 1992, “I would hope those of us in the information business learned a lesson – readership cannot be taken for granted.” As he comments 15 years later, “What was true in 1992 remains true today – newspapers are not entitled to readers and will loose them if they do not fulfill a duty and serve a need.”

The big question in many newsrooms today is how many journalists does it take to fulfill that need and duty. The newsroom cost-cutting of the past few years has cut deeply in producing a local editorial product. Cutting the fat is one thing, cutting into the bone another, and newspapers must remember that the public is not stupid – they understand if there are less stories about the items they are interested in because there are less people to write them. It’s a fine line publishers walk these days and all the spin in the world about dropping bulk sales or reducing circulation areas and the like, does not explain why circulations of many of the country’s largest newspapers are declining. More readers are simply becoming more disenchanted with their daily newspaper. 

Telford also wrote in 1992, “A newspaper’s willingness to bend with the times, to show flexibility and innovation in its product, will determine its success.” In today’s world that must translate into how a newspaper converges with its web site. Also how much the newspaper now encourages contributor contribution to the news flow, and even on the advertising side how it is willing to converge ad rates for print and online.

He wrote further, “Through this period of change, I still see a pressing need for newspapers, particularly community newspapers. Newspapers offer readers written records of important events in their lives and allow them a vehicle to share those events with others. Births, Graduations, Marriages, Anniversaries, Promotions, Good Deeds. The list goes on, eventually ending in our deaths.”

It is widely believed the reason small circulation newspapers like the Midland Daily News continue to turn a profit is because they are so local in their nature. They report on the important happenings in the lives of their readers. There really is a place for good news in newspapers.

The problem metropolitan newspapers are having these days is figuring out exactly what they are. Are they local newspapers, or is their scope wider. The fact is the more local their news, the more they concentrate on what their readers and their neighbors are doing, the more important they become in the lives of their readers. But again, cuts in the newsrooms of metropolitan newspapers don’t help that type of coverage. It all really boils down to priorities, and the circulation declines at the metropolitan newspapers would indicate they no longer have those priorities right.

“And perhaps most important,” Telfer wrote, “I think people look at newspapers as being unique to their lives and their community. There is a sense of territorial privilege offered by newspapers that we would not want to lose.” Community newspapers have that one figured out – that’s why their circulation and profitability continues. Most others have lost sight of that territorial privilege.

The truth is that all of what Telfer wrote in 1992 could be saved again today, to be opened in 10 years time, and it should all be as true then as it is now.

It is an interesting exercise. Try it yourself and if you like send along your piece to Phil Stone and we’ll print what we think are the best thoughts to see newspapers in print through until at least 2017.

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