[AEJMC Newspaper Division list] PEJ's Changing Newsroom study

[Susan Keith]

Perhaps of interst:

BC-Newspaper Study, HFR 4th Ld-Writethru,1030 
 HOLD FOR RELEASE UNTIL 12:01 a.m. EDT Monday, July 21. THIS STORY MAY NOT
BE POSTED ONLINE, BROADCAST OR PUBLISHED BEFORE 12:01 a.m. EDT Monday, July
21. 
 Study: shrinking newsrooms hurting papers’ quality 
 Eds: FIXES typo in graf 8. Moving on general news and financial services. 
 By JEREMY HERRON Ž
 AP Business Writer Ž

 NEW YORK (AP) — The many and deepening cuts at newspapers across the
country are starting to take a toll on their content, according to a study
being released Monday.
 The challenge newspapers must meet immediately is to find more revenue on
the Internet, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism’s study,
called “The Changing Newsroom: What is Being Gained and What is Being Lost
in America’s Daily Newspapers.”
 Newspaper managers need to “find a way to monetize the rapid growth of Web
readership before newsroom staff cuts so weaken newspapers that their
competitive advantage disappears.”
 Stories are shorter overall, the study found, and staff coverage tends to
focus on local and community news.
 “America’s newspapers are narrowing their reach and their ambitions and
becoming niche reads,” the study said.
 Even when foreign and national news makes it into the papers, it is being
relegated to less prominent pages.
 “To make the front page, it has to be a significant development or a story
that we can see through Florida eyes,” said Sharon Rosenhause, managing
editor of the Fort Lauderdale-based South Florida Sun-Sentinel and a
longtime newspaper executive.
 The reasons for the newsroom cutbacks are well known: Newsprint costs have
jumped, and advertising and circulation revenue have quickened their descent
this year as advertisers follow readers online. Newspaper Web sites capture
only a small fraction of the revenue lost as they sell fewer print ads,
which fetch more money.
 “The seams and threads are beginning to show in U.S. journalism even though
newspapers are by far the greatest source of news,” Lou Ureneck, chairman of
the journalism department at Boston University, said Friday.
 The PEJ study surveyed senior newsroom executives at more than 250
newspapers and interviewed editors at papers in 15 cities to document the
way these cuts have affected newsrooms and the quality of their product.
 The results show that papers carry fewer stories on foreign and national
news and devote less space to business, science and arts reporting, and many
have reduced the crossword puzzle and eliminated television and stock
listings.
 Many editors said they must ask reporters to cover more beats, reducing
their ability to produce authoritative stories. Others said, in what may
create a vicious circle, that staff cutbacks reduce their ability to shape
coverage to fit their communities’ needs, and Ureneck said that coverage is
shrinking.
 “This is a strategic move not driven by lack of demand but (by) a revenue
model that is broken,” Ureneck said.
 Still, 56 percent of the editors surveyed said their news product is better
than it was three years ago because coverage is more targeted.
 “There’s an improvement in enterprise, in investigations and in the
coverage of several core beats,” the study quoted an unnamed editor of a
large metropolitan daily talking about his staff’s coverage, not the makeup
of the paper overall.
 Local news is “very essential” to their product, according to 97 percent of
editors surveyed, and they said that’s where they’re putting a larger share
of their shrinking resources.
 “They are giving a greater piece of a smaller pie to local news,” Ureneck
said. That makes sense because where they can “develop the most expertise
and strongest bond with readers is covering the local community.”
 The newsroom is much younger than three years ago, and reporters are more
technology savvy and able to meet the demands of print and online stories,
according to the study.
 Editors once leery of producing content for the Web are increasingly
embracing its potential to diversify readership and improve journalism, even
if it sometimes saps print resources.
 “Editors feel torn between the advantages the Web offers and the energy it
consumes to produce material often of limited or even questionable value,”
the study said.
 The Web speeds delivery of news, allows interaction with readers and opens
nearly infinite space for news.
 “The downside is that is has eroded the advertising base in print
publications, and that is by far the main source of revenue to pay for large
news staffs,” Ureneck said.
 Editors see the ability to track readership of any specific story online as
an advantage for improving content. It provides an “indisputable link
between strong editorial content and the kind of higher readership that
attracts advertisers,” the study said.
 The editors, 97 percent of whom said they are active in trying to develop
new revenue streams, can then convince the advertising sales staff to become
more targeted in selling to the Web.
 Many said, though, that they were uncertain improved editorial content
would ensure a bright future — especially since most organizations failed to
anticipate the changes that have wracked newsrooms in recent years.
 Only 5 percent of the editors surveyed said they were confident they could
predict what the newsroom would look like in five years.
 “I feel I’m being catapulted into another world, a world I don’t really
understand,” Virigian-Pilot editor Dennis Finley told PEJ. “Things are
happening at the speed of light.”
 The results of the survey, conducted online by Princeton Survey Research
Associates International between Jan. 29 and Feb. 29, include responses from
over 50 percent of U.S. papers with 100,000 or more in circulation and more
than 30 percent of papers with 50,000 to 100,000 in circulation.
 AP-ES-07-20-08 1705EDT 

Susan Keith, Ph.D.
Assistant professor
Department of Journalism and Media Studies
School of Communication, Information and Library Studies
Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey
4 Huntington Street
New Brunswick, NJ 08901
(732) 932-7500, ext. 8235
susank at scils.rutgers.edu
www.scils.rutgers.edu/~susank
Office: CILS 106