We ran excerpts from an interview with journalism professor Phil Meyer in the N&O's Q section two week ago. I thought some of you might like to see the longer version, so I'm going to post portions of it over the next few days. The subject was the future of regional newspapers like The News & Observer, though I asked hm some other questions as well.
Philip Meyer doesn’t pull punches.
He called his last book “The Vanishing Newspaper” and says if major metros like the N&O do survive, they may not look like what you’re reading now.
Meyer, 77, a professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at UNC-Chapel Hill, says newspapers need to move much more aggressively online, attract younger readers and create niche products to serve more segments of the market.
“If you’re looking for a way to do business as you’ve always done it, I’m sorry there isn’t any,” Meyer says. “The world has moved on, and the newspaper industry has awakened to that fact too late.”
N&O: What role does technology play in newspapers’ survival?
Meyer: The Internet is the ultimate in efficiency because it means you can distribute your product without having a fleet of trucks and without having to kill a lot of trees. You have the same advantage that broadcastings always had. So it seems like a no brainer to move as much content as you can away from ink on paper to the Internet.
Now the downside to that is there will be a period -- nobody knows how long -- where the advertisers will resist. They will not want to come along to the Internet. Advertisers have always been very slow to learn new stuff. That’s why it took USA Today 10 years to become profitable.
N&O: Is there any print component after this transition to the Internet? What can the News & Observer do make this transition? How long is the transition going to last?
Meyer: Nobody knows. All I know for sure is it’s going to be painful, and the winners are going to be those that took the most risks. And the newspaper culture is risk averse because newspapers had it so good for so long.
I once heard of a publisher who said “I love this business because I could be brain dead and still make lots of money” because having monopolies -- having owned the toll road through which information passes between retailers to their customers -- it was like having the power to levy a sales tax. But that monopoly no longer exists, and the problem with newspapers is they’ve been slow to realize that and they still try to charge monopoly prices for their advertising.
