Bhatia was talking about the future of newspapers at City Club today:
“Newspapers will get smaller in size,” said Bhatia. “They will be more local, analytical, and focused in content. I think you’ll see the further migration of breaking news to the web. We’ll move away from traditional sectioning and our long established model of reporters on beat. We’ll have areas of expertise and depth, but fewer areas, and even more depth.”
Sound familiar?
“Let me make this simple and clear,” said Bhatia. “The Oregonian is not going away.” “The Oregonian has had one bad year,” he said. “This last year, and as far as we know, it’s the first bad year we’ve had.”
Bhatia said he thinks the idea of nonprofit foundations and charging for content aren’t viable models for keeping newspapers alive. But: “Serious efforts are underway to help newspapers recapture revenue lost to the web,” he said. “Will it be enough to recoup the losses we’ve made? No. But these efforts will lead to some hybrid.”
You can listen to the whole remarkable discussion tonight at 7pm on OPB. “Heck, even I have a Facebook page,” he said. “We’re not perfect. But we’re here, we will be.”
Inspirational.
Bhatia also said the invention of the “Kindle” device, which lets readers view newspapers and books electronically, is part of the “baby steps” in the right direction. “There is still a group of people, admittedly most of them over 40, who still like to hold a newspaper in their hands,” he said—looking forward to a new Kindle innovation that may recreate the sensation of turning an actual newspaper page. “My mother says you can’t take a laptop into the bathroom,” he said. For reals. More apres le jump.
“Sites like Digg are especially popular with young people,” said Al Stavitsky, associate dean of the University of Oregon’s school of journalism. “But sites like Digg are essentially parasitic.”
“You might have seen me tapping away on my iPhone, I wasn’t rudely checking my email, but I was Tweeting,” said Stavitsky. “So the news is out there in what’s called these days, the statusphere.”
“But citizen journalism is no substitute for on the ground reporting,” Stavitsky said. “And citizen selection of content on sites such as Digg is no subject for the judgment of professional editors who take their role as society’s watchdogs seriously.”
Former primary candidate for Senator Jeff Merkley’s seat, Steve Novick, asked Bhatia whether the fact that “old fogeys like me” are less willing to pay for news might lead to the Oregonian running more “headless body in topless bar type stories.” Novick said he would support such a model, since “the future of democracy is at stake.”
“Why yes,” said Bhatia. “We’re going tabloid Sunday.” Kidding! “Readers tell us all the time, give us more and charge us more,” he said. “But at the same time, every time we raise the prices, the phones ring off the hook. The reality is that in today’s society, people will pay $75 for their high speed internet but when the time comes, $15 a month for the newspaper is the first thing that gets cut.”
Bhatia also said that “Headless Body in Topless Bar” is “the best headline ever written.” So at least we agree on something. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to take my laptop into the bathroom.
I wonder if Prof. Stavitsky has his Ducks basketball season tickets yet? It’s certainly going to be a tough ticket to get once that awesome new arena opens up next year. For reals.
“”Sites like Digg are especially popular with young people,” said Al Stavitsky, associate dean of the University of Oregon’s school of journalism. “But sites like Digg are essentially parasitic.””
Yeah sending all that traffic to your content is quite the drain on your life-systems.
I readily believe the guy is complaining about opportunities for old media, but ignoring them or labeling them as parasitic.
buh bye old media/paper.
Asking Bhatia (or anybody representing S.I. Newhouse) about the future of journalism is like asking Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin about the future of air travel.
It’s the arrogance of statements like the “future of democracy at stake” that’s part of their hemorrhaging. The fact is the Internet has crashed the barriers to public accessing information and does not need ivory tower mumblecrusts to tell us how and what to think anymore.
(PS – under way is 2 words)
http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ss…
lulllz
There are three key services newspapers can provide which, if adopted by the Oregonian, would save their sorry ass business.
1. hooker ads
2. reporters willing to receive expletives from local politicians instead of reasoned responses
3. pay arts reporters more than $120 a month
Well, Bhatia is one up on the Mercury.
I actually agree with D.
Excuse me, I’ve got to go put a coat on Hitler.
D – see this! http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090406/nich…
I’d like Bhatia or someone at the O to explain why they keep renewing their contract with Oregonlive. Why did they hire a third party company to manage their online presence? And one with crap for code, with permalinks that are anything but perma, and with its own batch of content writers who totally fuzz the line between what is Oregonian content and what isn’t? Oregonlive is a terribly crappy website, and it’s the number 1 reason why I can barely stand to read the Oregonian.
For whatever it’s worth, Stavitsky says in a tweet that he was quoting a media critic when he said Digg-like sites were parasitic. Also, OregonLive and The Oregonian, even though they are separate corporations, are under the common ownership of the Newhouse family in New Jersey. Combining O-Live and The O would solve most of the content and technical problems, so it’s inexplicable why they don’t take such a simple, obvious step.
Oregonlive is not really a “third party;” they’re a sibling company with the same parent (Newhouse). All of Newhouse’s papers are stuck with this kind of arrangement.
How about if they stop running “THE BARCOLOUNGER OF DEATH” on the front page? Huh?
Anyone?
Thanks Kiala. Be careful of that Hitler kook, he’s a national socialist you know.
I was listening to this last night, and I heard someone — not sure who — say something that I think really gets to the heart of why people think newspaper people are dinosaurs. In response to a question about the Kindle, he said that he had found out about a new innovation in flexible flat displays that simulate the effect of turning a page, saying or implying that that would get the mainstream public interested in the digitization of news content.
Yeah, I’ll switch right after they invent an e-reader that gets ink all over my hands.
I think I’d like to see the Oregonian get a little more softer and pliable, and, if they put it on a roll, that would save me a lot of time.
The internet hasn’t killed the newspapers, cable news did that. The internet is just the nail in the coffin.
Newspaper is a dead medium and it needs to be buried. It’s a waste of resources in an age where nearly everyone has a computer and a smart phone. We still need a daily newspaper, not just weekly tabloids, but without the paper. The Oregonian should quit being a conduit for the AP and focus on local, daily, in-depth reporting.
The only thing I worry about is having a physical archive of the news for historical purposes. I don’t trust that digital media and records will last 100 years, but paper has been a surprisingly durable source of information.