Decline and Fall

David Carr wrote an article in the New York Times today which read like a list of people lost at sea on a wrecked ship:

- The Christian Science Monitor abandons its daily paper.
- Time Inc. to lay off 600.
- Gannett to lay off up to 3,000.
- LA Times to reduce newsroom my 75.
- Newark Star Ledger to reduce staff by 40%.
- TV Guide (the institution) sold for $1.

Carr says the collapse is not from lack interest, but because "more than 90 percent of the newspaper industry's revenue still derives from the print product." He adds that advertising is in decline and he repeats the old observation that revenue online is pennies to dollars compared to old media products.

All of this is bad news. Carr ends the piece raising the issue that the blogosphere without newspaper reporters' stories to annotate will be a quiet place.

But the point about the blogosphere is that it is a place where new trusted brands can grow. Those brands are able to publish news at a fraction of the cost of newspapers or broadcasting systems. So the pennies that they earn don't need to be dissipated on costly legacy publishing systems. Those pennies can go into reporting.

The challenge is for online media organizations to show they can produce better reporting than we see today in our legacy newspapers, and to do it at a cost that online revenue can support. Is that such a tall order?