The Downfall of a News Kingdom

The New York Times ran a detailed analysis of the downfall of newspaper publisher Knight Ridder, which was sold to McClatchy Co. in June.  The report is a good case study of a company and an industry that have been disrupted. Most of the analysis centres on recrimination and the specious debate of "quality journalism" vs cost-cutting:

“(The) deep cuts in expenses to satisfy Wall Street will not necessarily save a newspaper company, and may not even bring financial gains to shareholders or buyers.”

“The real story of the fall and decline of Knight Ridder is not (major shareholder) Bruce Sherman,” said James M. Naughton, once executive editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer, formerly a Knight Ridder paper, and a retired president of the Poynter Institute for Media Studies. “It’s the notion that you can continue whittling and paring and reducing and degrading the quality of your product and not pay any price. CEO Tony Ridder's legacy is that he destroyed a great company.”

This mistaken focus on quality, as defined by the vendor rather than the customer, as well as the perceived need to maintain a legacy business, are at the center of every industry that is disrupted, whether it be in minicomputers, horsecarts or traditional telecommunications.

However, this question of quality raises the entirely wrong set of questions because it is fixated on past definitions of quality, as illustrated by Knight Ridder's collection of 85 Pulitzer prizes, for example.

Four key questions are notably absent from the New York Times analysis:

• How do customers today define "quality journalism?"
• What services can Knight Ridder or any media company deliver that are valuable and that customers will pay for?
• What should the company become to deliver these services?
• What aspects of the current business should be sloughed off because they are inconsistent with customer needs?

** Other Views/ Late Addition**

BivingsReport lists nine ways newspapers can improve their websites, such as using tags and partnering with bloggers. These aren't really game-changers for newspapers but they are easy to implement and will help.

TwoPoinTouch comments on the need for old media to adapt to the new world.

Comments

[David Murray]

Of course this is an issue for all media companies as they come to grip with the information age. I wonder though if the printed media, while vulnerable, has more time to adapt than say video or audio. In these latter cases, the ipod and the like makes portable on demand content so much more convenient. A newspaper, or book, is still far easier to read in hard copy, and so currently preferable. The trend in Europe, and particularly in London, is towards free (ad driven) newspapers which adopt the internet free to the end user model, but persist with the old world use of trees. I describe a little bit whats going on in London on my site.

[Ian Delaney]

You may want to remove the link to my story which appears to be erroneous. I'm sorry I reported this without more investigation, odd as the emerging story seems.

Nonetheless, the debate goes on about how old media companies can continue to offer value and remain viable businesses. I think we've agreed that in-depth journalism remains a substantially print-oriented affair. The costs around a detailed investigative feature remain prohibitive for most online-only operations which sometimes substitute volume and opinion for investigation and proof. Maybe that's what most people want...