The Kansas City Kansan, a GateHouse Media publication, is going online only starting Jan. 10, 2009. All print production will cease. According to an article posted to the newspaper’s web site:
The new KansasCityKansan.com Web site will offer greater opportunity for reader participation through comments and posting their own news and announcements. Businesses and civic organizations, for example, will be able to post their own press releases. Readers will find it easy to share community photos or their own stories and opinions.
As a former employee of Gannett, which has suffered its own economic turmoil over the last few years, I’ve consistently believed in the necessity for newspapers to adapt to the digital age. It’s true, the housing crisis has meant fewer real estate ads and forums like craigslist.org are surely eating into newspaper advertising dollars. Without that stream of revenue, it’s hard for newspapers as we know them to survive. But long before the housing market fell and small businesses were short of cash to spend on ads, the newspaper industry had an opportunity to adapt to the changing times. Now, as the Kansan is demonstrating, they are being forced to go digital and they are cutting jobs in the process. The Kansan is cutting its staff in half.
I don’t see the switch to new media as automatically equating with the loss of jobs. The news still needs reporters, photographers, editors, and now more web designers, graphic designers, programmers, and social media analysts. If anything, the new media revolution should be creating as many jobs as it eliminates.
At Gannett owned Lansing Community Newspapers we heard a lot about community journalism. The community aspect was part of the day-to-day life in the newsroom, as community contributions accounted for a good chunk of each issue. I sense a bit of fear from some that web-based community publishing will cause job cuts in the newsroom. And certainly their fear is warranted – it seems that those running the show can’t envision a world where professional journalists publish along side community members in an online environment.
At the Community Newspapers, people submitted their news and their pictures and we published it with the news stories from the professional reporters. I haven’t yet figured out why that can’t work on a web site. Of course, with the Gannett cutbacks, it’s likely that the Community Newspapers in Lansing will also cease to print, and eventually cease to exist, as their current web presence is swallowed up whole in the online version of the Lansing State Journal. In a deliberate play on semantics, I assert that the World Wide Web gives us a remarkable power to localize our communities – it is unfortunate that it’s not taken advantage of to its fullest potential.
I appreciate your comments and thoughts on the death and rebirth of newspapers.
As a closing thought, I am reminded of a blog post from this summer by Vishal Iyer, an interaction designer and contributor to beyondwords.
Tags: new media, newspapers
I’m not sad about the loss of the ‘printed word’ as long as words continue to flow. The web is an great enabler for people to express & communicate, so that’s a step in the right direction. Evolving business models will cause some short term pains, much like the recording industry- but media is better & stronger because of the Internet.
Journalism is an integral part of democracy, while it may not be the same tomorrow, I’m hopeful it will be more effective at the other side of the bridge.
What I am most interested to see here is that in the design sense, they are not going to make the mistake that many newspapers have made and simply put the print version online. It sounds like they are thinking through what an online paper should look like to meet the customers’ needs, and that’s smart.
There will always be people who prefer print publications over web publications, but in the long run it saves money and makes the publication much more flexible in terms of content since it changes deadlines entirely.
I think you are right though, in that the move to online shouldn’t equate with layoffs. Just because a publication is online doesn’t mean it’s less time intensive. It will be interesting to see how the Kansan works through this transition and how their audience responds to make this community journalism.
Advertising has changed in its culture, now a days we can see that media advertising is playing a vital role in growing many businesses. Top media advertising companies are mainly focusing on magazine and newspaper advertising.
Here is some interesting news about Gannett’s plans to unveil a “national/local hybrid site”
Check out this great example of community journalism + Twitter from journalists in Washington.
Another great read, Seth Godin’s “When newspapers are gone, what will you miss?“