By Ray Appen
(This column originally appeared in Appen Newspapers Inc.鈥檚 publications on Wednesday, Jan. 31, 2007. It is being reprinted with the permission of the writer.)
I just read an article about the Internet. The article described the volume and growth of data on the Internet in terms that shocked me. That, in turn made me question, yet again, if newspapers will survive the continuing evolution of the all-pervasive Internet. Check it out.
According to the article, if you added up the world-wide content from all programming on radio, cable, and television for an entire year, it would be about 75 petrabytes of data — or, 10 to the 15th power. It then stated that if estimates are correct 鈥渢he 2-year-old YouTube (Web site) streams that much data in about three months.鈥?
That鈥檚 one Web site from one company — a Web site that didn鈥檛 even exist a couple of years ago producing more programming than all the mainstream media in the world combined.
And how many writers, editors, proofreaders, cameramen, sound men, content creator-employees, etc. does YouTube employ? Zero. None. Zip. All the content is viewer-submitted.
Google indexes how many billion Web pages daily now and how many new Web sites are created every minute? And you know what, just as YouTube.com has supplanted MySpace.com, YouTube.com will be yesterday鈥檚 Web site tomorrow. How can newspapers possibly compete with something this pervasive and expanding so rapidly?
At Appen Newspapers all told about 10 people go out every day and listen, question, observe and think about 鈥渘ews.鈥? That word 鈥渘ews鈥? actually could be replaced with the words 鈥測our lives.鈥? Then they come back to an office and write articles on about 10 computers linked together on a network of about 30 other computers.
Then six people take those words and digital images and organize them, and then that organized 鈥渘ews鈥? is e-mailed to another city where those words and images are imprinted onto this material called 鈥減aper鈥? — which is made from ground-up trees, and lots of copies are made. Then, using big machines that burn fossil fuels and emit poison into the air we breath, all those copies are transported back up to Alpharetta where each individual copy is then placed by hand into a blue petroleum-based containers (bags) made in China, and then personally hand-delivered to each of your (about 75,000) homes by about a dozen people using machines that burn fossil fuels and emit more poison into the air we breath.
What a conundrum newspapers seem to be. Can鈥檛 we get anything we want from the Internet? In this answer may lie the future of newspapers.
Many aspects of the Internet trouble me. The Internet is a massively powerful tool in the hands of everybody. That is almost as bad as it is good. I am uncomfortable with the anonymity for one, as well as related issues including trust, accountability, reliability, safety, and credibility. And many of the impersonal characteristics of the Internet are also troublesome. The potential for abuse in areas such as our privacy and our basic freedom can鈥檛 be underestimated — and, in fact, it is probably too late to repair much of the damage that has already occurred in these areas.
I鈥檝e come to believe, however, that in the middle of this information hurricane that we call the Internet, there may very well be, possibly now more than ever, a critical and long-term need and support for what newspapers do — even with all their inefficiencies — or, possibly because of them.
It may be that society needs lots of little anchors — anchors that do have faces and can be trusted to tell the truth; anchors that you can recognize in your grocery store or at school — anchors that know who you are and anchors that want to report your 鈥渘ews鈥? and be accountable to you personally and professionally — in the sunshine — for the accuracy and objectivity of what they write.
The Wikipedias, bloggers and media skeptics of this world notwithstanding, newspapers may just be these 鈥渓ittle anchors鈥? that we still need and will continue to need. Newspapers aren’t perfect, but I think most of the time you can count on them, and, while they can鈥檛 always provide for us everything that we want, they can almost always give us what we need — the truth. And that is a very big deal.
***
(Ray Appen owns and publishes a group of weekly newspapers on the
north side of Atlanta. Included in the Appen Newspapers Inc. group
are the (Alpharetta & Roswell) Revue & News, the Forsyth Herald, the
Johns Creek Herald, the Milton Herald, North Atlanta’s Real Estate Report, and North Atlanta鈥檚 Business Post. Previously, Ray worked at the Miami Herald and the Suburban Journals in St. Louis, Mo. Ray can be contacted by email at appen@northfulton.com, and his company鈥檚 website address is www.northfulton.com.)
January 31st, 2007
By Ray Appen
(This column originally appeared in Appen Newspapers Inc.’s publications on Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2006. It is being reprinted with the permission of the writer.)
Assaults by new technology to the contrary, we here at Appen Newspapers - like thousands of weekly newspapers in the United States - have continued to plug away in our niche successfully.
Newspapers have always had an appeal to me that no other sector of the media has been able to approach. Newspapers are colorful, you can hold it in your hands and you can cut out the relevant parts and send them to Grandma or tape them to the refrigerator door.
And there is something about reading the news in black and white that gives it not only the ring of truth but of permanency. So I was more than a little excited about a report in the National Newspaper Association’s (NNA) most recent issue.
I know, large daily newspapers such as the Atlanta Journal-Constitution are having difficulties with dropping circulation, but non-daily newspapers such as the Revue & News, the Johns Creek Herald and the Forsyth Herald are thriving.
According to the NNA report, the number of daily papers in the U.S. has declined from 1,700 in 1,950 to fewer than 1,500 today. Non-daily papers, however, have increased by 7,000 and the number of people reading non-daily papers has doubled since 1965.
Potential advertisers ought to take note about the following facts gleaned from the NNA report:
路 81 percent of adults read a newspaper every week
路 75 percent of those readers share their paper with friends, family and others
路 On average, readers spend 38 minutes reading an issue of their paper
路 25 percent of readers keep their paper for more than six days
The NNA and the University of Missouri School of Journalism recently conducted a survey of markets of less than 100,000 population to find out the relationship between merchants and local newspapers.
Granted, the North Fulton-Forsyth market, when combined with the metro Atlanta area, is much greater than 100,000, but there are some gems that could be gleaned from the study:
路 Local community newspapers are the primary source of information, including news and advertising, for communities by a 3-1 margin.
路 95 percent of readers read local news
路 92 percent read school news
路 76 percent read sports
The survey showed most (78 percent) of the readers questioned said the overall news coverage of their local community by the newspaper was good to excellent.
On the advertising side, the NNA and University of Missouri study showed the following:
路 80 percent of community newspaper readers read the grocery or supermarket advertisements
路 Half of all readers rely most on their community newspaper for grocery shopping information. That’s 10-times more than the next most relied upon source - direct mail.
路 82 percent of community newspapers read the hardware and home improvement advertisements
路 Nearly one-third of all readers relay on their community newspaper for home improvement shopping information. That’s four times more than the next most relied upon source - the Internet, according to the survey.
n 80 percent of community newspaper readers read the discount store advertisements
路 78 percent of community newspaper readers read the classified advertisements
路 76 percent of community newspaper readers read the department store advertisements
路 About 67 percent of all adults surveyed said they rarely or never used direct mail to make purchasing decisions; 57 percent said they rarely or never used the Yellow Pages to make purchasing decisions.
Other findings:
路 75 percent of those surveyed said they plan to purchase health or medical products or services in the next year.
路 72 percent said the plan to buy women’s clothing
路 44 percent plan to purchase lawn and garden supplies
路 35 percent planned to buy financial or insurance products and services
路 31 percent planned to buy cell phones or cell phone service
路 25 percent plan to buy furniture
路 27 percent rely most on their community newspaper for used vehicle shopping information. That’s nearly three times more than the next most relied source, the Internet.
路 20 percent relay most on their community newspaper for new vehicle shopping, compared to 14 percent who rely most on the Internet.
路 15 percent planned to buy a used vehicle in the next year
路 11 percent planned to buy a new vehicle in the next year
The newspaper industry is changing, particularly to take advantage of the Internet.
One-fifth of the readers surveys said they visiting their paper’s Web site in the last month and about 87 percent of those said they visited the Web site in the past week.
The report by Brian Steffens, the executive director of the NNA, indicated the niche of weeklies such as those in Appen Newspapers will continue to flourish as long as they adjust to the changing times.
That is good news for my children’s college funds.
* * *
(Ray Appen owns and publishes a group of weekly newspapers on the north side of Atlanta. Included in the Appen Newspapers Inc. group are the Revue & News, the Forsyth Herald, the Johns Creek Herald, and North Atlanta’s Business Post. Previously, Ray worked at the Miami Herald and the Suburban Journals in St. Louis, MO. Ray can be contacted by email at appen@northfulton.com, and his company’s website address is www.northfulton.com.)
February 28th, 2006