NBC NIGHTLY NEWS
July 8, 2008
THE NEWSPAPER INDUSTRY
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032619/ could be a fluid link tho....
NBC News
July 8, 2008 Tuesday
NBC Nightly News
Newspaper business beginning to cut jobs
BRIAN WILLIAMS
MIKE TAIBBI
BRIAN WILLIAMS, anchor:
The Internet age has ushered in lots of challenges for traditional media of all types, including the television industry, but nowhere has the rise of the Internet hit as hard as in the newsrooms and boardrooms of this nation's newspapers. Just today, the Chicago Tribune cut 80 jobs in its newsroom alone. NBC's Mike Taibbi has more on hard times for an American institution.
MIKE TAIBBI reporting:
It's long been an American ritual, part of how we start our day.
Unidentified Man #1: It's the first thing I grab in the morning.
TAIBBI: And millions of us still cherish our daily paper.
Unidentified Woman: There's something about holding it in your hand and actually reading the words.
TAIBBI: But the days are long gone when Orson Welles of "Citizen Kane" could crow that losing a million a year to publish his paper meant nothing.
(Clip from "Citizen Kane" courtesy Warner Home Video)
TAIBBI: Now the San Francisco Chronicle is losing a million a week and recent headlines suggest an industry in freefall. Nearly 2,000 more newsroom jobs to be lost. The Boston Herald the latest paper to dump its printing operation and printing staff. And Chicago's Tribune company putting Tribune Tower on the block, along with Wrigley Field and the Chicago Cubs. It's in that context that the new publisher of the four Palm Beach Post papers...
Mr. DOUG FRANKLIN (The Palm Beach Post Publisher): Last week was a tough week for everybody, a lot of sadness.
TAIBBI: ...announced 300 jobs will be cut.
Mr. BILL ROSE (The Palm Beach Post Managing Editor): It was like a bomb going off in the newsroom.
TAIBBI: It's why the paper's Web site now rules the day, not the print version.
Mr. TIM BURKE (The Palm Beach Post Vice President of Digital Media): Roughly 32 of our 41 reporters would now be classified as online news reporters.
TAIBBI: What does that make you think about your future?
Ms. ROCHELLE GILKEN (The Palm Beach Post Crime Reporter): It makes me think that my future isn't at a newspaper.
TAIBBI: No newspaper in print because people Rochelle Gilken's age and the digital age...
Unidentified Man #2: So I get these Google alerts, and I probably get like 20 a morning.
TAIBBI: ...are almost militant about how little newspapers mean to them.
Mr. DOUG MISKIE (San Francisco Resident): If I'm reading something in the newspaper, I feel like it's yesterday's news.
Mr. MORT ZUCKERMAN (New York Daily News Owner): People who had two jobs are now getting one job. People...
TAIBBI: One publisher bucking the trend, Mort Zuckerman of the New York Daily News, whose deep pockets and urban readership convinced him to gamble 150 million bucks on new full color presses to try to win back advertisers and readers for a while.
Mr. ZUCKERMAN: I don't know how long we'll be profitable. I mean, who knows what's going to happen in 10 years.
TAIBBI: All the trends now paint a grim picture for the ink and paper news business, the ticking of the clock impossible to ignore. Mike Taibbi, NBC News, New York.
WILLIAMS: When we come back here tonight, what does work when it comes to good health?
hum, sounds bad, but . . .
