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The Rebirth of 

Newspapers

Are newspapers dead or are they finallywaking up to the fact that readers are their 

most important customers?

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Americans have a love-hate relationship withnewspapers going back decades if not centuries. It’slike that love affair with a beautiful women we cannever quite understand. The one who inspires us andinfuriates us by turns. And yet now, in 2011, we havealmost managed to swear her off, as Internet blogs

with youth and beauty (and no journalistic ethics) takeher place. And then The New York Times,embodying all that the apple of our eye ever aspiredto be, goes and puts up a pay wall on their digitaledition. Is this one more death rattle or a fundamentalchange in our relationship to newspapers?

Why do we hate newspapers? Because they are rightwing (Rupert Murdoch) or because they are left wing(most of the major metros on the East Coastaccording to Murdoch)? No it’s because they aspireto keep us, as a society, honest. They aspire to tellthe deep, ugly truth. If there is an elephant in theliving room, their goal is to find it. If you ask any

 journalist, they care most about getting it right, not

getting rich. We love and hate these men and womenfor their heroism.

I was the Chief Financial Officer of The ProvidenceJournal Company in the mid-1990s, hired by Stephen

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Hamblett, the first non-family CEO in nearly twocenturies. Michael Metcalf , the prior CEO, diedsuddenly on his bike, riding up hill, just after the paper 

had written a long series of stories detailing theconnection between organized crime and certainRhode Island politicians. As his beloved paper reported at the time, “Another cyclist discoveredMetcalf lying in the road, unconscious and bleedingwith a head injury. He was next to his undamagedbike, about 1 1/2 miles from home. Surgery at St.Anne Hospital in Fall River could not save him, and

Metcalf died a week later, at age 54, never havingregained consciousness.” Many, including membersof the Metcalf family, were convinced then, andremain convinced to this day, that Michael died not byaccident but for telling the truth.

We also hate that this noble effort—the journalistic

impulse which brought down the Presidency duringWatergate and just killed photo-journalist TimothyHetherington, who did more than any Army pressconference to show Americans the truth of what hasbeen happening during the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan,and now Libya where he died covering combat—hasto get mucked up with business. I had the misfortuneof architecting the sale of The Providence Journal toBelo in 1996 for $2 billion. Even those who stood togain the most financially treated me as if I had daredkill their first-born. The community outrage led todeath threats. I had violated a community trust.

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Our collective disgust at mixing business with journalism has become even more profound as thelast decade and a half has ground the great old

newspapers of the country into a scrap heap of mush. The management of these organizationsreacted to the discomfort of mixing high-minded

 journalism and making money by maintaining a wallbetween the two. Amazingly, they have yet to figureout who their real customers are.

Historically newspapers have generated the lion’s

share of their revenue and profit fromadvertisements. So the thinking went: as ad dollarsdropped off a cliff the only way to continue to makemoney was to slash the amount spent on editorial.Papers got thinner and thinner on news, readers gotmore and more dissatisfied, and advertising dollarscontinued to plummet. A death spiral was born.

I know, I know: let’s get to the passionate kiss at theend of this love story.

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We all still want to read newspapers, even kids (my15 year-old son studies the Red Sox box score everysummer morning). We may want to read it online or to be able to comment on our favorite columnist’spiece or watch a video. But we trust that the

 journalists at the Wall Street Journal or The New York Times are cut from a different cloth than someblogger on Gawker . They are actually out to tell usthe truth, whether we like it or not. The only rub ishow to pay for it. For the first time my local

paper, The Boston Globe, is generating more revenuefrom reader subscriptions than from advertising. As itshould be I say.

As long as we continue to believe that advertisers

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should pay for news reporting the love our life isdoomed to certain death. Free news does not meanreliable news. It most often means schlock opinion.

Great journalism is something you and I are going tohave to pay for, like HBO or Cooks Illustrated (thebest food magazine there is pure editorial).

So yes, the Times pay wall is a fundamentalredefinition in our relationship with the newsorganizations that we have coveted for generations.But there is no longer an uncomfortable ménage à

trois between newspapers, readers and advertisers.It’s monogamy at last. Newspapers have to focus alltheir energy on producing extraordinary journalism–ina form and in substance–which thrills us asconsumers. The product is no longer a nicotinedelivery system. Taste and quality information,the truth as determined by rigorous reporting, is the

only objective. Not selling cars or sofas.

So fear not. Your paper is not dead. You just have todemand, and be willing to pay for, a news productworthy of your affections.

Fade to sunset as the doctor tells the beautiful young women that her water-melon-sized-malignant tumor has miraculously disappeared and husband and wifeembrace as if for the first time, kissing with openmouths and hearts.

Originally published in The Good Men Project

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PHOTO CREDIT HAMED ; HCL