Before persuading FORTUNE to let me write about sustainability, I covered the media and entertainment industry for the magazine for about 10 years. I don’t miss that beat, to be honest. After a while, I found it hard to care about whether Disney was going to move its TV shows to a digital platform, or who Sumner Redstone was going to fight with next.
But I do care about newspapers, and so I was pleased to be able to write a feature for the magazine about The Washington Post. The Post lands on my driveway each morning, along with The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, and I look forward to reading all of them. (I’m a big fan of The Post sports section, in particular.) Unfortunately, as anyone who’s paying attention knows, the news about newspapers has been grim lately. Even The Post—which is easily the best general-interest newspaper in America that isn’t The Times—is struggling. When it comes to the print edition (as opposed to washingtonpost.com), all the indicators are pointing in the wrong direction. Circ’s down. Classified and display ads are down, too. The paper’s literally shrinking in size (smaller page withs), in newshole, in staff. And yet the journalism remains really good, a tribute to the editors and reporters there. Investigative reporting, in particular, has been just great this year–there was the Walter Reed scandal, a series about how Dick Cheney wields power, strong reporting on the Smithsonian Institution, etc.
The plight of newspapers, the story says,
…is something not often seen in business. Newspapers remain important institutions, providing a valuable public service, but their business model is slowly, or maybe not so slowly, going away.
What will the model be for quality journalism, going forward? No one seems to know, as Don Graham, the chief executive of the Post Co., is honest enough to admit. (I pursued Graham for 18 months, believe it or not, before he agreed to be interviewed, perhaps because he knows that the news about newspapers is not good.) The hope at the Post Co. and elsewhere is that the Internet will save journalism. I’m skeptical. Internet ad revenues, while still growing, are not growing as fast as they used to and they’re certainly not growing fast enough to offset the slide in print.
As so often happens, I gathered far more material for this story than fit into six pages in the magazine. Maybe the most worrisome thing were a series of conversations I’ve had with several twenty-something people. Ari Levin has worked this spring and summer at The Brookings Institution, she’ll go to Duke this fall and she cares and knows a lot about politics. Isaac Goldstein is a political activist, whose first job out of college was raising money for progressive causes. Both are engaged in the world, and really well informed. My 22-year-old daughter Sarah works in microfinance, pays close attention to what’s going on in Africa and read Barack Obama’s autobiography. And yet Ari, Isaac and Sarah almost never read the $0.35 version of the Post or the $1.25 edition of The Times or any print newspaper at all. They get their news online, much of its from newspaper web sites, but they also spend time on aggregation sites like Huffington, blogs and the like.
I’ll post a link to my FORTUNE story about The Post here when it goes online. In the meantime, you can find it in the August 6 issue of the magazine, which also has a cover story by my friend and colleague David Whitford about the nuclear power industry. David took a 7,000-mile trip by car – a nuclear power trip, if you will – to take the pulse of the industry and its so-called revival. It’s a great read, a classic FORTUNE story.
I’d encourage you when looking at sustainability to look beyond the surface numbers. (A typical example – a “100 MW” windfarm is built. Well – not exactly. At typical 30 percent capacity factor, you’re actually talking about a 30 MW wind farm, and since you can’t store electiricity vary well, it’s an intermittent source.) Also, consider the impact of scaling up sustainability industries. (Example: what is the energy outlay and cost and industrial byproducts that would come from making 100X more solar panels, and how does that compare to the consequences of not doing it.) All obvious things I know – but I rarely see them in mainstream reporting.
I hope there’s also a lot of attention paid to conservatiion – which I believe should be the top priority of any energy plan. The cheapest, safest energy is that which you don’t use.
I agree Mr. Whitford’s story of nuclear power was quite good. (I’ve told him so via e-mail.) I should know – I’ve worked in the US nuclear industry for over twenty years. In his article, Mr. Whitford talks with Stewart Brand, noted environmentalist and founder of The Whole Earth Catalog. Stewart has also been kind enough to endorse my novel “Rad Decision”, which covers a lot of the territory of Mr. Whitford’s piece from an insider perspective, all within the classic “airport paperback” format. It’s available at no cost to readers at my website (RadDecision.blogspot.com) and is also in paperback. The intent of Rad Decision – beyond entertainment – is to provide a real world basis for discussing nuclear energy – which has its good and bad points like anything else. Current public discussion on the issue is very isolated from the on-the-ground truth, but there’s also few sources out there to illuminate what the actual conditions are.
Good luck!
James Aach
(Your comment field seemed to insist on centering all my text, by the way.)
I work at a p.r. firm (as you know, Marc), and one of my standard interview questions, especially for the young recruits, is ‘What papers do you read on a daily basis?’ I’ve actually rephrased that question over the years to say, ‘What media do you consume on a daily basis?’ because even I, an inveterate consumer of hardcopy media, have to confess there are a lot of other choices and sources these days. The answers I get, though, even from many people who purport to be interested in public relations, are sobering. One young woman could only manage to name Glamour magazine, and another young guy cited Sports Illustrated. They’re both great publications, and, I will always counsel young colleagues, you should read and watch as much as possible in order to be in tune with the entire cultural and political Zeitgeist. But a sole diet of Glamour and SI are, to say the least, not well-rounded meals. To be sure, there are plenty of young folks who are intellectually curious and getting their information from a wide range of sources, but they get them almost entirely online, which is a bad sign for the newspaper business because these young news consumers are learning news gathering is something that just happens and that they benefit from free of charge. There is also no sense of brand loyalty to one outlet vs. another because the same article can appear on so many different outlets.
I’m sure I’m not telling you a lot you don’t already know, Marc, but just seconding your point.
Jeff
To: Marc Gunther – unknown
From: Doug Skoglund – skoglund@pdmsb.com
Date: Sunday, July 29, 2007 – 01:00 am CDT
Subject: Hard News…
Marc, having read both sections of your “Can the Washington Post survive?” post, I go to your web site and find your “Hard News” post with the following paragraph:
“What will the model be for quality journalism, going forward? No one seems to know, as Donald Graham, the chief executive of the Post Co., is honest enough to admit. (I pursued Graham for 18 months, believe it or not, before he agreed to be interviewed, perhaps because he knows that the news about newspapers is not good.) The hope at the Post Co. and elsewhere is that the Internet will save journalism. I’m skeptical. Internet ad revenues, while still growing, are not growing as fast as they used to and they’re certainly not growing fast enough to offset the slide in print.”
Marc, journalists need to understand that they are a small, but important, part of a much larger group of people, more commonly known as the “media”. They also need to understand that the Internet WILL NOT save journalism. The Internet is a “thing”, incapable of “doing” anything. Journalism, if it is to be saved, will be saved by “people”, if you know what I mean.
Technology has upset the traditional view of the world with the introduction of the Personal Computer and the Internet, thus requiring all sectors of our civilization to re-evaluate their respective share of the total — and nobody should underestimate the magnitude of that task.
It is somewhat ironic that we are some thirty years into the PC era and the “watchdog” function is just awakening to the realities of the new life — it has been called, “Revenge of the Nerds”, in some quarters. As a matter of fact, the advance of technology has been facilitated by a large segment of that very same “media”, the tech journalists.
However, we need to recognize that the “nerds” have done a bad job — the technology needs a lot of fixing — and the media will need to cooperate in that task. I CAN NOT over emphasize the fact that it is dangerous to make plans based upon the present state of our technological knowledge. To repeat — it is ironic that the “watchdog” is now suffering because it failed to do its “watching” some thirty years ago.
Going forward, the “geeks/nerds” and the “math averse” will need to work together for the benefit of the larger society, and that both need to understand the full meaning of Lincoln’s “Of the people, by the people, and for the people.” The people are in charge!!!
Doug Skoglund — skoglund@pdmsb.com
http://nationalcomputerassociation.com
http://ifihadmyway.com
http://pdmsb.com
BTW Marc, a blog with comments is just another way of telling your readers that you are not prepared for any kind of two-way conversation — you have my email address.
Of course, the fact that young people are reading their media online rather than in hard copy does at least have an environmental benefit–fewer trees to cut down and fewer landfills to clog with last month’s newspapers.