‘Newspaper death spiral continues’

My friend Denise believes I should get out of journalism. She thinks I could make it as a fiction writer.

Making it as a fiction writer has long been a dream for me. For the rest of the world it’s been a nightmare, which is a crude way of saying New York and Hollywood haven’t beaten a path to my door. Yes, I’ve sold a few books, short stories and comic book scripts. But if you took every penny I’ve made from writing fiction and lumped it into a single check, I could probably muster a pared-down existence for six months.

Denise frequently e-mails me subtle reminders of the problems plaguing my industry. The latest, from TechCrunch, is titled: “Newspaper death spiral continues.”

I confess to a certain morbid curiosity about articles like this. I suppose there’s a kind of pleasure in being able to say “I told you so.”

I began to suspect something was wrong in 1995 when newspapers were making money hand over fist and increasing their circulation by healthy margins. Nobody wanted to hear the sky was falling.

But the web simply made too much sense. I couldn’t understand the logic, for instance, of publishing several pages of stock listings when the information was available with the click of a mouse. Or weather boxes. Or sports agate.

I was told that not everybody owns a computer, or that few people enjoy reading online. Computers are not portable, they said. You can’t take a computer to the beach, but you can take a newspaper.

Well, guess what?

People are reading at their computers. And they are reading on cell phones or devices like the Kindle, both of which can be taken to the beach. Habits change, and so do population demographics, which is a sterile euphemism for “death.” The generation that preferred receiving its information from a static artifact is dying off.

And the information transaction itself has changed. People are no longer willing to plod through long dissertations jumped to inside pages. They want their news quickly and efficiently, which is what the web is all about – the rapid and efficient delivery of information.

Fine, print media responded. We will simply migrate to the web.

It’s a good plan, and the virtues are obvious. Publishing on the web means no more circulation department. No more press crew, or press, or the staggering kilowatts of electricity required to run it. No more messy ink and no more warehouses filled with rolls of paper imported from China. No more mailrooms stacked with inserts and people to insert them. No more loading dock foremen or propane-powered forklifts to carry them to the delivery people who will hurl your morning newspaper into the azalea bushes.

The web is print media’s ace in the hole. As convergence ties together your TV, computer, radio, stereo and cell phone into a single device, newspapers will compete with – and conquer – broadcast media due to their superior information-gathering capabilities, i.e., their reporters.

But “Newspaper death spiral continues” confirmed a suspicion I have felt since the late ’90s: Are print media going about this transition the right way?

The gist of the article was this: Print media ad sales have been declining for 10 straight quarters. Total advertising revenue for newspapers in the third quarter of 2008 was down 18.11 percent compared to last year. More disturbing was that 3Q ad revenue for newspaper web sites was down 3 percent over last year, the second quarter in a row that such a decline was recorded.

This might be attributable to the overall economic meltdown for which 2008 will be remembered. But it might also represent a fundamental flaw in the approach to online migration by print media entities.

If my own browsing habits are typical of the web user, I would say this: Most internet users only skim the surface of what is available at a web site. They look at the landing page but rarely explore the innards of the site. Also, they are deterred from exploration by the site’s static environment, i.e., the appearance that not much has changed since the last time they visited.

That’s a problem for newspaper web sites because probably 95 percent of what’s available doesn’t appear on the front page. Link galleries and such don’t seem to make much difference, and I base this on being able to see what people look at on my newspaper’s web site.

What browsers respond to are images or story links that appear on the top half of the landing page. The headline must be written in such a way as to ignite curiosity. Everything else is doomed.

So. How do you get browsers to look at the remaining 95 percent of content?

Balkanize your web site.

In migrating to the web print media entities have tried to emulate their print products by placing everything under a single umbrella. The thinking is that web surfers seek information the same way print customers seek information. For decades the printed version of a newspaper has carried discrete sections – news, local news, sports, features, business, and so forth.

That probably works fine for a rolled-up and flung-into-the-azalea-bushes product, but it’s not the way people surf the web.

Search engines allow web browsers to find exactly what they want where they want it, and a site that specializes in a subject – say, prep sports in a particular region – will do better than a web site that tunes its attention to a multitude of subjects, prep sports among them.

This approach will give information providers a much more effective “bang for their buck.” It provides browsers with an opportunity to find what they want without having to explore a labyrinth of drop-down menus and links, and allows newspapers to charge more for their advertising – the primary revenue driver for print products (most people believe subscriptions bring in the most money for newspapers, but it is in fact ad rates that produce the lion’s share of income … this rate is usually determined by “page views” of the site).

The cost of hosting of separate web sites for each section of a newspaper should fall within the means of most print products. With proper care and culture they should prosper.

Also, newspapers should give some thought to the idea of changing up the presentation of their information on the web on a daily basis. It is a given that the front page of a newspaper will look different every day, depending on the stories and art placed there. Why should it be any different for the web? Variety in design, coupled with a standing architecture of surrounding elements, will give the site a daily freshness browsers will be unable to resist.

So I think it’s too early to declare the “death spiral” for newspapers. Given the right approach, newspapers should be able to position themselves as the dominant medium for information delivery.

It might not be a rolled-up stack of paper flung into the azaleas, but it should meet the needs of everyone involved.

About the author:

Del Stone Jr. is a professional fiction writer. He is known primarily for his work in the contemporary dark fiction field, but has also published science fiction and contemporary fantasy. Stone’s stories, poetry and scripts have appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Eldritch Tales, and Bantam-Spectra’s Full Spectrum. His short fiction has been published in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII; Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; the Pocket Books anthology More Phobias; the Barnes & Noble anthologies 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, and 100 Astounding Little Alien Stories; the HWA anthology Psychos; and other short fiction venues, like Blood Muse, Live Without a Net, Zombiesque and Sex Macabre. Stone’s comic book debut was in the Clive Barker series of books, Hellraiser, published by Marvel/Epic and reprinted in The Best of Hellraiser anthology. He has also published stories in Penthouse Comix, and worked with artist Dave Dorman on many projects, including the illustrated novella “Roadkill,” a short story for the Andrew Vachss anthology Underground from Dark Horse, an ashcan titled “December” for Hero Illustrated, and several of Dorman’s Wasted Lands novellas and comics, such as Rail from Image and “The Uninvited.” Stone’s novel, Dead Heat, won the 1996 International Horror Guild’s award for best first novel and was a runner-up for the Bram Stoker Award. Stone has also been a finalist for the IHG award for short fiction, the British Fantasy Award for best novella, and a semifinalist for the Nebula and Writers of the Future awards. His stories have appeared in anthologies that have won the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. Two of his works were optioned for film, the novella “Black Tide” and short story “Crisis Line.”

Stone recently retired after a 41-year career in journalism. He won numerous awards for his work, and in 1986 was named Florida’s best columnist in his circulation division by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. In 2001 he received an honorable mention from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his essay “When Freedom of Speech Ends” and in 2003 he was voted Best of the Best in the category of columnists by Emerald Coast Magazine. He participated in book signings and awareness campaigns, and was a guest on local television and radio programs.

As an addendum, Stone is single, kills tomatoes and morning glories with ruthless efficiency, once tied the stem of a cocktail cherry in a knot with his tongue, and carries a permanent scar on his chest after having been shot with a paintball gun. He’s in his 60s as of this writing but doesn’t look a day over 94.

Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .