Newspapers -- were heart of community building

What now?

As we think about community much of this blog is focused on Hartsville, SC. Today the focus is newspapers and their demise, which is being accelerated by business decisions that just don't make sense to this newspaper consumer.

Marsha Mercer's last column for Media General is at the bottom of the editorial page of the MORNING NEWS of Florence, SC, this morning. "Media General deacided a few weeks ago to close the Washington bureau March 27, joing the other media corporations that have taken that difficult step because of the sharp decline in advertising revenues." What are they thinking? What is THE STATE newspaper in Columbia, SC, and their parent McClatchy thinking when they lay off journalists -- the lifeblood of their product?

Media companies all over this country are laying off (firing) employees and particularly journalists to save costs because their ad revenues are down. Many of these media companies are also putting many of their reporters -- print, online and television -- on unpaid furloughs. What does all this mean? Well, the product that news organizations offer consumers is news. The product that news organizations offer advertisers is readership/viewership. When you take away the news that is unique to your medium you take away any reason -- at all -- for readers (consumers) to buy your product. And, generally, most of these companies are not only downsizing their news product they are raising the cost of the product. In my marketing communication classes we quickly cover the traditional 4-Ps of marketing -- Product/Price/Place/Promotion. Is there no one in the business offices of these major media conglomerates (usually the vanguard of marketing) left who remembers the basics?

But, for those of us on the outside this accelerating demise of the news and local news media is even more disturbing. Generally, you would be able to study strong communities and find strong newspapers at their core. What happens to the communities when the newspapers disappear? we know in the small city of Hartsville, SC, that when the news hole is compressed there is a lot less common knowledge of what is happening in the community. We had a recent example of that when the editor of the THE MESSENGER provided the community with a pretty comprehensive article about the serious problem of dilapidated housing that is plaguing the city, especially our South Hartsville area. The editor's article shows the power of the press in highlighting important issues. But, we don't get nearly as much of that any longer in Hartsville, in Columbia, in Charlotte and the list goes on.

My communication career started when I was 12 years old and I entered the communication distribution business in one of the greatest hands-on business training programs available -- the local paper route. So, there is no question that I am a big nostalgic about the way the newspaper companies are accelerating the death of this medium. At the same time, the concern comes in that currently there is nothing taking the place of newspapers in the communication leadership of our communities. That is distressing for the short run. For the longer term I am optimistic that we are going to see some caring, intelligent media mavens who find a way to craft community communication solutions using the multi-platform media that is quickly being perfected. (Think of blogs for example -- we have the ability right in this space to provide words, to provide video pictures and sound, to provide audio files when just voice will work and a wide variety of photos and graphics.) Doug Fisher with grants from the J-Lab at the University of Maryland and some funds from the previous Messenger owners developed Hartville's HARTSVILLE TODAY citizen journalism web platform. As it continues to develop, it might be one of the bridges to the new media.

But in the interim, what are the media companies thinking?