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Weekly UpdatesThis spring, Princeton economist Sam Schulhofer-Wohl and his colleague Miguel Garrido issued a paper of vital importance to print journalists desperate for a sliver of good news: "Do Newspapers Matter? Evidence from the Closure of The Cincinnati Post."
The economists noted their findings were "statistically imprecise," yet concluded that newspapers, "even underdogs such as the Post, which had a circulation of just 27,000 when it closed--can have a substantial and measurable impact on public life."
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The Cincinnati Post, a former E.W. Scripps Co. paper that expired December 31,2007, and its Kentucky Post edition dominated circulation in the northern Kentucky suburbs, where the economists focused their inquiry. They concluded the Post's closure lowered the number of people voting in elections and the number of candidates for city council, city commission and school board in those areas. It also increased incumbent council and commission members' chances of staying in office.
"What most surprised me is I actually did find evidence that newspapers matter," says Schulhofer-Wohl, an assistant professor of economics and public affairs. At 32, he is on his second career. His first, as a journalist, included stints as a copy editor at Alabama's Birmingham Post-Herald, another now-defunct Scripps paper, and as a copy editor and reporter at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. "I was very worried when I went into this [research] that what I would end up proving is my whole career had been kind of pointless."
Instead, Schulhofer-Wohl added to a small but growing body of economics research supporting the notion that newspapers make a difference in their communities--evidence emerging even as the industry struggles in a radically changing media environment during the worst recession since the Great Depression.
These attempts to quantify newspapers' impact on public life come as a handful of major American newspapers close and others barely cling to life. The unsettling possibility looms that some big cities could lose their sole remaining daily newspaper--and that the public won't care. If the dead-tree edition of a newspaper falls in a crowded media forest, will it matter, except to the journalists who work there? Are newer, hipper online news outlets poised to fill the void? What, if anything, will be irrevocably lost?
Journalists have long touted the indispensable role that newspapers play in a democracy, shining a bright light on the activities of elected officials. Journalism professors and political scientists have studied the way newspaper content affects readers' knowledge about local and national events.
Despite lots of legal, political and economic theory, though, "what we actually know" empirically or directly about the impact that a newspaper--or its death--has on a community "is relatively limited compared to its importance," says Matthew Gentzkow, an associate professor of economics at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business. "What's exciting is there's been an upsurge of work on that question."
Gentzkow's own research, with colleague Jesse Shapiro, probes the impact on voter turnout in elections where U.S. newspapers have closed from the 1870s until modern times. Though they are still analyzing the data, some preliminary evidence suggests that turnout may drop significantly in communities after a newspaper closes.
At MIT, economics and political science professor Jim Snyder teamed with Stockholm University economist David Stromberg and found that members of Congress who get a lot of newspaper coverage work harder for their constituents than those who don't: They funnel more money back home and testify at more committee hearings; they also are less likely to vote along party lines.
A second project the duo is launching with a Stanford business professor explores the impact of newspaper coverage on judicial behavior. They will examine whether judges who are elected and receive lots of print coverage hand down sentences that reflect the political outlook of their area. "There is some evidence [from previous research] that judges who are elected, especially in conservative areas, are tougher in their sentencing," Snyder says. "The idea is to see whether [newspaper] scrutiny, the watchdog role, matters for judicial behavior."
Pollsters at the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press have exposed an alarming disconnect between newspapers' role in civic life and the public's appreciation of it. A Pew survey conducted in March of about 1,000 adults found that only 43 percent of Americans say losing their local newspaper would hurt civic life in their community "a lot." A mere 33 percent said they would miss reading the local paper a lot if it were no longer available.
"In our media surveys, you get the sense that many people don't recognize the source of their news, especially when it comes to online news," says Carroll Doherty, Pew's associate director. "They may be following a link, they may be forwarding a link, they may be on Facebook and click on a link. People may be getting more information from newspapers than they realize."
Notes Conrad Fink, a former journalist who teaches newspaper management and strategy at the University of Georgia: "The American public doesn't realize it, but they're going to miss us if we're gone."
The notion that newspapers actually might be gone in the foreseeable future is the subject of much anxiety on media blogs and even in major news publications, where predictions of newspaper deaths were en vogue early this year.
In a February 16 Time cover story, the magazine's former managing editor Walter Isaacson breathlessly declared: "During the past few months, the crisis in journalism has reached meltdown proportions." Isaacson, now president and CEO of the Aspen Institute, added, "It is now possible to contemplate a time when some major cities will no longer have a newspaper and when magazines and network-news operations will employ no more than a handful of reporters."
In a front-page New York Times story March 12, Mike Simonton, a senior director at Fitch Ratings who focuses on media debt, predicted: "In 2009 and 2010, all the two-newspaper markets will become one-newspaper markets, and you will start to see one-newspaper markets become no-newspaper markets."
Simonton was at it again six days later, when my own newspaper, USA Today, published a Money section cover story: "Extra! Extra! Are newspapers dying?" The article forecast that at least one city likely will soon lose its last daily newspaper and quoted Simonton as saying that newspaper deaths "could be a lot more widespread than people have been predicting."
While some of these dire prophesies seem a little overwrought, it's hard to argue with the perception that the industry is vulnerable.
Since December, six companies that publish daily newspapers have sought Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, among them Tribune Co., which owns eight daily metro papers, including the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune; Star Tribune Holdings Corp., which owns Minneapolis' Star Tribune; the Philadelphia Newspapers LLC, owner of the Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News; and the Sun-Times Media Group Inc., anchored by the Chicago Sun-Times.
Scripps' 150-year-old Rocky Mountain News in Denver published its last edition February 27. Hearst's Seattle Post-Intelligencer followed 18 days later with its last print edition. The 146-year-old paper with an editorial staff of 165 is now an online-only publication with an editorial staff of 21. Gannett's Tucson Citizen in Arizona published its final print edition May 16; the 138-year-old paper will linger as an online-only opinion site.
Hearst has threatened to close or sell its San Francisco Chronicle, the city's sole remaining paid-circulation daily, if the newspaper can't dramatically cut expenses. (Philip F. Anschutz's San Francisco Examiner is delivered free to targeted homes. See "Home Free," April/May 2007.) Hearst said February 24 that the Chronicle lost more than $50 million in 2008 and "this year's losses to date are worse."
In March, the paper's largest union agreed to drastic cuts to meet management's demands, including allowing the Chronicle to slash at least 150 union jobs. "The immediate goal is to reduce staff, and we may not know until later in the year whether other factors," such as contracting out the printing of the paper, will help keep the Chronicle alive, says Doug Cuthbertson, executive officer of the California Media Workers Guild, which includes editorial, advertising and circulation employees.
The following month, even the nation's premier newspaper company stepped into this maelstrom of uncertainty. The New York Times Co. threatened to shutter its prestigious Boston Globe unless the Globe's unions agreed to $20 million in concessions. The paper was projected to lose $85 million this year without substantial cost reductions, according to the Times Co. After a turbulent month of negotiations, Globe Publisher P. Steven Ainsley told his newspaper in a front-page story May 8 that the threatened closure had been "extraordinarily difficult" for readers, advertisers, employees and him. He said he expected further job losses but predicted the Globe would still be publishing a year from now if union members ratify wage cuts and other concessions.
Newspaper stock prices are dismal. McClatchy, which showed great faith in the industry's future by boldly buying the Knight Ridder chain in 2006, hovered around 70 cents per share in early May. Among its 30 newspapers are the Miami Herald, Sacramento Bee and Raleigh's News & Observer. Lee Enterprises, which in 2005 acquired Pulitzer and its 14 daily newspapers, including the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (see "Lee Who?" June/July 2005), was barely above 30 cents per share in early spring before creeping past $1 in May.
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