(hardcore journalist Carl “The Night Stalker” Kolchak. His gig ain’t what it used to be)
It’s an unnerving time to be in the newspaper business. Circulation is dropping and papers are taking some drastic measures to keep up and stay profitable.
At the Akron (Ohio) Beacon-Journal, the standalone business section will be “relocated” and combined with the sports section Monday through Friday. That doesn’t sit well with some intellectuals, who apparently find stock listings more important than NBA standings.
Chris Roush writes (via Romenesko):
Let me ask all business editors where this is being considered to go to their editors and ask them this question: What is more important to people, knowing information about their jobs and the economy, or knowing whether their favorite sports team won last night? (And I went to the UNC-NC State game last night.) At some point, newspapers will have to decide whether they want to improve society or not.
If the business section was about “knowing information about their jobs,” wouldn’t they call it the labor section? Man, fuck a business section. For glib cheerleading (i.e. the sort of CEO Porn rubdowns/writeups Ken Lay and them were getting right up until they went bust) and dunderheaded ideological intractability (i.e. the “pro-business” chamber of commerce positivism that equates what big business wants with what’s actually good for the economy), it’s probably the only section of the newspaper that could match most sports sections.
I would bet very few people visit the newspaper for business info at all any more. My day job (no, blogging does not pay the rent) is with Standard & Poor’s, and when we need to research a company, we go online. The only possible use for a business section in most papers is to maybe give people local, in-depth news that an outsider might not be able to take the time with.
It’s kind of sad, but I think newspapers are probably dying. I certainly don’t see a need to wait for one to show up in my mailbox when I can just fire up the laptop and go to a site that is basically tailored to my needs.
In fact, it’s guys like us that are helping kill them. I’d rather cruise around the entertaining and well-written sports sites in your blog-roll than read a newspaper.