Robust civic life depends on good local newspapers. Private equity has been gobbling up newspapers across the country and systematically squeezing the life out of them to produce windfall profits, while the papers last. But it leaves out one major player: the private equity industry.
This story is all too true as far as it goes.
Local web-only media are feisty in a few places, but no substitute for a robust newspaper, whether print, web, or a blend. Operating losses cause owners to lay off staff and shrink content, further depressing readership and ad income, leaving little to reinvest in digital. Local dailies and weeklies are in a slow death spiral. They will survive, even thrive.īut the real tragedy for the civic commons is occurring at the level of regional papers. The crash of 2008 only hastened the decline.Ī few national newspapers with unique franchises- The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post-have begun to figure out the digital transition, using paywalls, new digital content, and complementary business strategies to realize income from other sources.
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By the time owners figured out how to monetize web content, Google and Facebook had gotten there first, and were taking an estimated 80 percent of digital ad revenues. The expenses of paper, printing, and delivery-“trucks and trees”-made them increasingly uncompetitive in a digital age.
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Free information on the web cut into their core audience, especially among the young. After decades of enjoying easy profits from print ad income, publishers were blindsided by the internet revolution. There is a standard story about the death of newspapers. This article appears in the Winter 2018 issue of The American Prospect magazine.
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