N.M. media struggle for viability online

We may well look back at 2008 as a milestone in the history of the Web as a news destination.
—Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism’s The State of the News Media

ALBUQUERQUE — While newspaper circulation is dropping, newspaper Web sites have seen their traffic skyrocket. But it’s not clear whether this new surge will be enough to save the print journalism industry as readers transition from reading newspapers to using online media sources.

In December, media analyst ContentNext reported that the New York Times could survive in a Web-only format with 1.3 billion page views a month — seven times the traffic the Times currently gets. The Times has the largest online viewership of any newspaper.

Illustration by Keith Lewis

This is a worrisome assessment of the future of national-tier newspaper Web sites but even more so for the Web realities of news organizations in New Mexico.

Web operations here are currently in their infancy. There are a number of high-profile, well-read blogs, including Joe Monahan, Democracy for New Mexico and Duke City Fix. But the number of state bloggers who make money blogging is minuscule — if existent at all.

And, outside of the New Mexico Independent, no other Web-only news operation employs multiple paid journalists.

Local media are attempting to bridge the gap from the old, dead-tree newspaper model to the newer online model. But  journalists and other experts are not optimistic about the economic sustainability of such ventures or even of their ability to match the scope of what traditional newspapers have been able to cover in the past.

University of New Mexico journalism professor Dennis Herrick said in an e-mail to the Independent, “New Mexico media have improved immensely in recent years in multimedia journalism – this is, transferring and displaying news, photos, podcasts, videos, interactive graphics, reader feedback and other content to the Web.”

The Albuquerque Journal, for example, has been experimenting with videos and blogging. The Santa Fe New Mexican has multiple writers who blog, including political writers Steve Terrell (Roundhouse Roundup) and Kate Nash (Green Chile Chatter). Nash can often be seen at events with a notepad, video camera, still camera and audio recorder all at the same time.

Albuquerque Journal science writer John Fleck said there are some advantages to using the Web in covering climate change, science, energy policy and other science topics. Fleck also runs his own blog, JFleck at Inkstain.

“It makes it much easier for me to research questions and track issues,” Fleck said, noting that the same information was more difficult to find 15 years ago. “I used to spend hours in libraries. Now it’s all on my desktop.”

[I]t also became patently clear during the year that the economic model largely responsible for financing journalism in the old media, advertising, will not do so in the new.
–Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism’s The State of the News Media

One concern about moving to an online-only medium for news is whether it is economically sustainable. For-profit online news organizations face significant hurdles – hurdles that so far no one has been able to clear.

“The notion that the enormous cost of real newsgathering might be supported by the ad load of display advertising down the side of the page, or by the revenue share from having a Google search box in the corner of the page, or even by a 15-second teaser from Geico prior to a news clip, is idiotic on its face,” concluded a 2008 research report from Sanford C. Bernstein & Company.

While the Wall Street research and investment company was speaking about national media making the transition to the Web, the point is just as relevant — if not more so — for the local media who have a much smaller audience.

UNM professor Richard J. Schaefer wrote in an e-mail, “Online news presents the opportunity of not carrying the expense of being in the ‘pulp delivery’ business, but finding the right business model for supporting an editorial team that can go out and cover events and do some investigation is difficult.”

Herrick was even more pessimistic. He cited the New Mexico Independent as an exception to the local rule in that it’s run as a nonprofit, not relying on advertising or subscriptions for its revenue. But even that, he said, is not enough.

“No web operation, including NMI, has the staff and other resources needed for major sustained efforts of original coverage on issues that can match what traditional papers have been able to provide in the past,” he said.

“Nonprofit foundations, such as the Center for Independent Media and the Poynter Institute, will only carry us so far,” Herrick continued. The New Mexico Independent is one of six news Web sites sponsored by the Center for Independent Media.

Raw numbers do not tell the entire audience story. Changes in strategy are at work that mirror the aspiration of newspaper organizations to transform themselves into diversified publishing ventures on multiple platforms.
–Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism’s The State of the News Media

For his part, Fleck still sees advantages in the dead-tree press. “The audience for the ‘paper product’ actually remains large,” Fleck writes in an e-mail. We’ve got a ton of paying customers who still want their news that way – far more than any New Mexico online publication.”

In 2005 the Albuquerque Journal had a circulation of 108,177 daily and 150,787 on Sundays, giving it the 98th-highest circulation in the country. As of the beginning of 2009 the circulation had dropped to 102,266 daily and 134,110 on Sundays. Despite the drop, the paper is now ranked 88th, according to the media monitoring firm Burrelles Luce.

And while there are some national online news organizations that thrive — Fleck pointed out Talking Points Memo — he said there is “little on the local-regional level.”

Herrick went further — and provided a bleak outlook. He said traditional newspapers are “the direct or indirect sources of almost all the news content that appears on the web today.”

“What happens if those major outlets disappear or are severely diminished?” he asked, proceeding to answer his own question:

The regrettable answer is that we will be largely left depending for our information on the growing ‘gift economy,’ in which businesses rely on public relations releases and the free labor of bloggers and so-called citizen journalists rather than paid, professional skilled employees. That is not a sustainable model for a democracy that depends on an informed America.