Newspaper Executives Look to a Brighter Future
A New York Times article has newspaper executives, looking for the bright side of a rather gloomy situation.
This from the Amanda Bennett, editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer, who recently was asked to cut 75 newsroom employees:
“This is a chance to hold everything up to the light and say, ‘What value does this give to the readers?’ ” she said, adding that she would rethink everything from the concept of local coverage to the formats for delivering the news.
“If we miss this opportunity to change ourselves from a newspaper into a news organization,” she said, “shame on us.”
Arthur Sulzberger Jr., publisher of The New York Times and chairman of the Times Company:
“We will follow our readers where they take us, If they want us in print, we will be there in print. If they want us on the Web, we will be there on the Web. If they want us on cellphones or downloaded so they can hear us in audio, we must be there.
“At the end of the day, it is the audience we collect and the quality of that audience that is the critical factor, not the means by which we collect it.”
Dean Singleton, chief executive of MediaNews Group, which publishes The Denver Post and The Salt Lake Tribune:
“Don’t cry for the newspaper industry. They’re making a lot of money, and many are reinvesting it in a dynamic online future.”
Janet L. Robinson, chief executive of The New York Times Company:
“Newspaper companies may be going through difficult days but they are reinventing themselves. As the secular and cyclical changes level out, these companies are positioned for future growth. We’re not just a newspaper.”
New York Times media critic David Carr, to whom I wrote an open letter recently, is also taking a forward look.
Check out Romenesko where there are other stories today of the big changes and how media companies are coping, including this gloom and doom piece in the Los Angeles Times that says, according to independent analyst Harold L. Vogel :
“This is the same thing that happened to other legacy industries like the steel mills and textile industry. The only difference in newspapers is everybody has a college education and can express themselves, so they can moan and groan and go on and on about it.”
