Feb 04 2009
Rumours of the death of newspapers greatly exaggerated
Steve Yelvington voiced a complaint this morning that too many people are pronouncing newspapers DOA, pointing out that many newspapers are still churning out profits.
“A lot of media punditry comes from people who have absolutely no idea what they’re talking about,” he says.
But for the life of me I can’t figure out which media pundits he’s talking about. I’ve not read anybody – not even anti-print blowhard Jeff Jarvis – claim that newspapers are already dead. That would be stupid, given that there are still 1400 daily newspapers on the streets in the States (says Yelvington), and another 800 or so weeklies and dailies up here in Canada.
But that newspapers are in trouble as businesses is undeniable. Trouble in Canada’s media industry, as outlined in this list on j-source (plus 600 layoffs at SunMedia that are not on that list) continues this year. Just yesterday, more layoffs were announced at the Globe and Mail and the Halifax Chronicle Herald.
The situation is probably worse in the States.
As Vin Crosbie tweeted today, probably in response to Yelvington’s apparent burning of the straw man:
Newspapers aren’t dead is true, but those old enough to remember 6 months of news ‘Spain’s Franco dying’ remember that he never recovered.
I’m not sure what triggered Yelvington’s diatribe. Maybe he was making some other point, such as that nobody should throw out the print editions just yet (he alludes to that in his post). But maybe, in the name of journalistic transparency, he should tell us who pissed him off.
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