Summary

Online or Not,
Newspapers Suck

I offer some quotations below. The article quoted is copyright © 1994 by Wired magazine.

This article makes many newspaper people angry. I wish they could swallow their anger and listen to what Katz is saying. What he does very well in this article is examine what regular people like about newspapers and what newspapers do that puts people off, even alienates longtime readers. Especially good are his comparisons of newspapers with other media. One of his strongest messages: Newspapers should concentrate on what they do best and stop playing catch-up with TV and radio. Some points Katz raises (in my own words):

• Newspaper readership is declining, partly because other media compete for and draw away potential newspaper readers. There is no indication that this decline will stop.

• Newspapers don't like change, and they (and the people who run them) tend to have a superiority complex. Unfortunately, you can't convince your audience that you're the best just because you think you are.

• The newspaper is not responsive, not interactive, not conducive to two-way exchanges. This puts it at loggerheads with people who enjoy being online, where they can communicate with others and to some extent pilot their own course through information. Efforts such as Time magazine's product on America Online get great reviews and win the affection of users because they are responsive, while closed-door, we-aren't-answering-you ventures such as The New York Times's @times, also on AOL, are panned and ridiculed.

• Reading a newspaper online is cumbersome. You have to click and scroll and open and close dozens of times. With the printed product, you just open and scan (not to mention that you can carry it anywhere and throw it away when you're finished).

• Newspaper fans rely on filtering: their paper tells them what's most important, what's good, what's best. If it's not in the paper, then it's not worth your time. How can an online paper reconcile this with "the bottomless news hole"? If the printed paper tells you to go online to get more information, then what is the online paper's mission -- to give you stuff that wasn't important enough to run in the "real" paper?

• Newspapers online are never going to be quite the same kind of interactive Mecca that a big online community (such as the WELL) is. But newspapers also are never going to bring us breaking news the same way that TV and radio do -- even in a paper's online version. What the newspapers need to do if they really want online success is to find a new model, merge the best of their traditional world with the best of the digital world -- discover and create the hybrid that will take them into the next century.

• The answer to newspapers' woes is not electronic. The structure, attitudes, and content of the printed version have not evolved in ways that would have kept the readers it used to have and attracted new audiences, the next generation. Unless papers take a close, critical look inside the newsroom, ventures out into the digital world will not guarantee their future.

Quotes from "Online or Not, Newspapers Suck," by Jon Katz:

"So far, at least, online papers don't work commercially or conceptually. With few exceptions they seem to be just what they are, expensive hedges against onrushing technology with little rationale of their own. They take away what's best about reading a paper and don't offer what's best about being online."

"Much of what still works about a paper -- convenience, visual freedom, a sense of priorities, a personal experience -- is gone.... [O]ne of the major selling points of a paper is its organizational and informational predictability."

"Online papers ... dangle the notion that they are now really listening, but that's mostly just a tease ... The real power, as always, lies not in online exchanges but in daily story conferences among a few editors who don't read e-mail. In fact, the newspaper model lurks behind every icon: You can write us as many letters as you want ... [b]ut we're still going to decide what's important, and then we'll tell you."

"We need something very close to what a good newspaper is but with a different ideology and ethic: a medium that gives its consumers nearly as much power as its reporters and editors have. A medium that isn't afraid of unfettered discussions, intense passions, and unashamed opinion. A medium that recognizes we've already heard the headlines a dozen times."

"Newspapers might begin to think about reversing their long-standing priorities, recognizing that everyone with electricity has access to more breaking news than they provide, faster than they provide it. They should, at last, accept that there is little of significance they get to tell us for the first time.... What they can do is explain news, analyze it, dig into the details and opinions ... all in greater depth than other media."

You can read the full text of Katz's article at HotWired. You no longer have to register.

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