During last week’s Senate hearing on the “Future of Journalism,” Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., observed that the newspaper industry appears to be an “endangered species.”
A chorus of senators rightfully expressed concern that newspapers’ role as watchdogs and cornerstones of an informed democracy is jeopardized by the wrenching recession that has toppled many economic pillars.
But the news industry doesn’t face a crisis of journalism. It is a crisis of advertising that affects all commercial media — including local television, magazines, radio and cable news. Like newspapers, other media companies have been enforcing layoffs, unpaid furloughs and pay cuts to reduce expenses as revenue shrinks as advertisers pull back.
The closings of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and Denver’s Rocky Mountain News stunned those within the media field and created national headlines forecasting the demise of daily newspapers. But those closings prolong a long, regretful decline of a second newspapers in big markets. The Seattle Times and Denver Post survive.
Last week, in another two-newspaper city, The New York Times Co. threatened to shut down the venerable but money-losing Boston Globe if its unions did not agree to major concessions. They did, and the presses of the newspaper founded in 1872 will keep humming.
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