Bond's Broadcast

Attention Doom-sayers – the newspaper industry is not dead.

Kevin Slimp our guest editorialist to the right in today’s edition of the Sun-Telegraph goes to great lengths to point out that his personal experience and research affirm my claim. He got terribly upsent with a television news segment dedicated to spewing this opinionated rubbish on CBS’ 60 Minutes.

Let’s take a look.

When radio first emitted its first signal there came a speech from the mountain top that the newspaper industry would die out. There would be no more print: No more pages filled with stories and pictures of America’s communities.

That first radio broadcast in 1910 did not, I repeat did not, kill the newspaper industry. In fact, the industry grew by leaps in bounds.

Then in 1928 the first broadcast signal in the television industry hit the airwaves and in 1936 the BBC’s first true telecast followed eight years later and it was again announced of the impending doom of the newspaper business.

It simply didn’t work out that way. The newspaper industry flourished.

In my opinion between radio and print the Second World War prompted the success of newspaper growth. A trend which continued until the 1970s. In-depth articles, pictures and personal on-site commentaries led to this success.

Large newspaper companies and that scheme of management continued to try and operate without adjustment.

The old school operators failed to recognize the growth of the mass media.

Television and radio began to dig away at the strengths held by the print media.

Then, as early as 1971, what is now known as the Internet began to spread news and information between companies along with the growth in personal computing over the next decade.

Then, with little fanfare, direct mail of advertising supplements and some news products began to dig into the revenue base for all forms of media – then as the Internet began to be expand from desktops to laptops to tablets to watch size computers the diversity of information dissemination grew at an explosive rate.

Open a smart phone or relative ilk and the world can be in your hand for a small investment.

So, then did the packaging of news. A problem many metro newspapers did not address and ultimately saw as their demise.

Look at Denver, the Rocky Mountain News closed its doors in 2009 after winning Pulitzer Prizes in the 2000 decade, along with countless state and other national awards.

So what exactly is the problem as newspapers across America close their doors in large metropolitan areas? What causes other large daily newspapers to cut production back to three days a week, while trying to supplement an already failing news and advertising package with an online presence.

Helen Thomas in her book, “Covering the White House,” explained that wire services failed because they continued to try to do things the same way it had been for decades with no recognition of the changes in the news industry.

It’s the same in the newspaper industry today.

There are so many out there in the newspaper industry that believe the only way to run a paper is the same way it was 25 years ago...or longer. This is true of the news packaging as well as the sales, production and distribution efforts. Same old, same old.

That, in my humble opinion, is what is wrong. That shut the door on large papers and has cost thousands in this industry jobs or at the very least reduced annual incomes through furloughs.

Many of the Metro daily newspapers and even some of the mid-range daily papers try to run a national and international front page in the manner of 20 years ago when with little effort those who want that sort of in-depth coverage can move to any number of electronic and Online sources for far more up-to-date coverage.

There are certainly some national news stories that probably deserve a place on the front page of small and large daily newspapers.

Why are these papers failing will continue down this path? Here is the answer.

These papers scurrying to stay alive have abandoned the concept of pridefully providing Exclusive Content.

We offer at least two and oftentimes three pages of exclusive content in the Sun-Telegraph every day we publish.

We couple that with the most current state and national issues as timely as possible and keep our sports coverage absolutely as local as possible. That is what it is all about.

The faces, the names and the facts of Sidney and Cheyenne County, are our priority in publishing this paper.

We do not want to try and provide news that is 18 to 24 hours old every day in the effort to just put out a product, or make that appearance.

As I said when we rearraged our printing schedule we want to hand you the latest news from today – today as often as humanly possible.

We want our readers, the community we serve, and anyone who looks at our online site to get the freshest, most comprehensive view of what we do. A glimpse of the life in Sidney. That’s our responsiblty to record life there. It’s not just about flashing a headline out there it’s about as much substance as possible.

That is why we now have each writer on our staff to produce regular columns, along with this one, as frequently as possible.

For those in the newspaper who ignore the intensely local content mandate of today’s local readers will ultimately fail.

The failure has taken on several forms: employee furloughs for days or weeks a quarter; reduction in the number of production days; elimination of entire press lines; and, closing or merging of papers.

In my opinion the merged papers will face the same fate as others without new thinking. Can’t just keep doing the same thing and expect a different result.

We appreciate the readership and contributors to the Sun-Telegraph. We will continue to cherish those who support us and do our best to win over those who are not regular readers of the paper.

Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to write this column. Our staff will continue to attempt to live up to these expectations.

And so, for another week, thanks and thirty.

Contact Hank Bond via email at [email protected]