Changes at The Times-Picayune lay bare the roots of a national trend:
The
recent changes
at the Times-Picayune to stop publishing a daily paper and instead publish three
days a week are unfortunate for the residents of the city and surrounding
areas. However, it was only a matter of
time before this or something similar happened given what’s been happening to
newspapers across the country for the past couple decades. Lots of people claim that this is a result of
the growing popularity of online news and the glut of information in general available
on the internet, or of not enough people subscribing to the paper and paying
for content. While this is partly true,
it’s important to see this change in its broader context. There are two other,
very important things to note that help explain what happened to the TP:
changes in policies relaxing media ownership regulations and the cost of
producing and distributing news. Once we
take these into consideration, we can better understand the role of consumption
patterns and the internet in the changing news industry and the likely
consequences of current policy decisions.
Starting
with Reagan in the 1980s and continuing with every president since, the Federal Communications Commission (or FCC),
which is the federal agency established to regulate communications systems
across the country, has taken part in a long-term practice of loosening ownership
regulation policies. Framed as
“deregulation” and based on the argument that changing ownership rules would
facilitate increased competition and better reflect the demands of consumers,
media conglomerates and many citizens sought to loosen up the nation’s
ownership laws. There were a number of
momentous occasions for relaxing media ownership rules, including the Telecommunications Act of 1996
and a more recent
ruling in 2003. The
results were to allow a single company to reach a larger market share of a
particular region than previously allowed, and to allow companies to own and control
content across media platforms (print, television, radio, and internet). This has resulted in a handful of companies
owning hundreds of media and news outlets across the country.
Advance
Publications, owners of the Times-Picayune, is one of these media conglomerates. Advance Publications is headquartered in New
York City (in Times Square) and according to Forbes
Magazine, in 2009 it was ranked the 46th largest private company
in the U.S.
Advance
Publications owns more than 100
media outlets across the country, including the TP. Under these conditions, individual newspapers
are simply seen as sources of debt or revenue on an accountant’s ledger. They are sold, changed and closed with little
thought to the people they service or to their employees.
One
way profit-driven media organizations seek to generate income is by increasing
the number of consumers whose “eyeballs” they can then sell to marketers. However, they don’t expect to reach everyone
and consumption patterns tend not to fluctuate very much from year to year. Yet, these companies must continue to
generate profit and grow. This means
they have to find other ways to make money.
Mergers
and acquisitions made possible through deregulation policies are some of the
ways companies have dealt with this problem. But they also seek to reduce their
expenses. News, especially investigative
reporting, is expensive. It’s never paid
for itself and, in newspapers, was often subsidized through the selling of
classified ads and the income generated through sports reporting. In an attempt to continue generating profits
when market share and consumption rates are stagnant, media conglomerates will
lay off employees and change production and distribution practices. In many cases, media conglomerates will close
down entire newspapers. In fact, only a
few decades ago most cities in the U.S. had multiple newspapers. Not anymore.
And many of the remaining papers are only hollow shells of what they
once were.
This
is what we’re dealing with in New Orleans and the surrounding parishes with the
recent changes at the TP. As we’re
experiencing in this city first-hand, the long-term result of increased control
of market share by fewer and fewer owners brought forth by media deregulation,
coupled with the expense of producing quality journalism, is a reduction in the
number of media and news outlets servicing a particular area and a drop in the
quality of reporting citizens of these areas can enjoy. (Here is some relevant
research on local news media trends and policies).
Many
people see the internet and drop in consumption (e.g., declining circulation
rates) as the key influences affecting the Times-Picayune. They’re not alone. Many people in cities across the country that
are going through similar changes with their newspapers make the same argument. The internet has no doubt radically changed
how we produce, disseminate and consume information, including news, but it’s
really just the final straw—albeit a very heavy straw—that broke the proverbial
camel’s back.
The
decline of newspapers is rooted decades earlier in FCC changes in media
ownership policies and the economic models that seek to generate maximum profit
from news. In the name of deregulation
and under the guise of greater competition, changes in media ownership policies
allowed one company to own more and more media outlets and control a greater
share of regional markets across the U.S.
In the continued search for profit they increase their income by
acquiring more and more media outlets and reduce their expenses by producing
cheaper, less costly content (e.g., a news story that reports merely what was
said at a press briefing rather than one that investigates the truth of those
claims), reducing production frequency, laying off journalists and closing entire
papers.
More
recently FCC and Congressional debates are focusing increasingly on the
internet. The decisions made here
will no doubt have implications for how New Orleanians get news and what news
they can access. One of the big topics
of debate today has to do with net neutrality,
or the requirement that all communications companies (e.g., Verizon, AT&T,
Cox, Time-Warner, etc.) treat all content and all websites equally (thus the
neutrality part). The concern is that policies
currently in place protecting this type of neutrality may be altered or lost
entirely.
These companies could then influence which websites
people visit by affecting the speed at which they can access them. Buy a more expensive package and you’ll get
faster speed to all sorts of websites; buy the cheap package and it will take
you forever to access some of the sites you rely on, particularly if they are
competitors of your internet service provider’s partners or subsidiaries. Like the deregulation policies of the 1980s, ‘90
and ‘00s, the decisions made now will affect the news environment that we enjoy
or that we disparage for decades to come.
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