"Newspaper Project" Stumbles Out of the Gate
I love the moxie and the passion. As Editor and Publisher headlined it this morning: "Newspaper Execs Launch Group to 'Fight Back'. The fight is good, the punches though a bit awry.
We're just at the beginning of schemes (in the British sense) being offered to save American journalism. Today alone, Romenesko has already pointed both to David Sharfenberg's call for a $100 million national journalism fund and Brian Tierney's dance with Ed Rendell to gain state "economic development" funds for the failing Philly papers.
Further, this morning we see a new effort, a News Exec counter-punch, led by Tierney, Donna Barrett (CNHI’s CEO), Randy Siegel, (Parade publisher), and Jay Smith (former president of Cox Newspapers).
The campaign site is named NewspaperProject.org.
Right there, you can see the problem. Yes, newspapers still reach tens of millions of Americans. Yes, they are vital to our democracy. Yes, there is a press emergency.
But, it's not about dead trees. It's not about news print and presses. It's about, simply, reporting and who is going to pay for it. It's about news, not newspapers. Haven't we learned that by now?
Look at the numbers and you see that news reading is still hugely popular; it's just shifted — generation by generation — online. So the old business model is busted, and we've got to invent a new one.
For journalism's sake, though, let's not call it "Newspaper Project." That just makes those still, tenuously, in charge of the "newspaper" industry look clueless and reactionary. Marketing people, led by marketer Brian Tierney, should know better.