22 February 2008
Celebrated Editor Ben Bradlee Says Newspapers Here To Stay
World newspaper group cites popularity of print media
This is the second in a series of two articles on the future of newspapers.
Washington -- World-renowned newspaperman Ben Bradlee says daily print newspapers are vital to the public and will continue to operate, despite doomsayers predicting their ultimate demise within the next 20 years.
Bradlee, who became famous for guiding the Washington Post's investigative reporting of the Watergate scandal in the early 1970s, tells America.gov that statements forecasting the end of newspapers are "ridiculous."
Bradlee, the Post's executive editor from 1968 to 1991 and now the paper's vice-president at large, says newspapers provide readers with information they consider very valuable -- such as "who won the ballgame ... [prize] fight ... an election ... or how your stock did" that day.
Other forms of media, including television and the Internet, provide that same information, he said, but the "guy who gives" the information first "won't always be the one who did it the best."
"The idea that any society, but especially this [U.S.] society, could function without a daily news update of some kind in some form" is not plausible, said Bradlee.
Bradlee's leadership in uncovering Watergate led to the Post winning a Pulitzer Prize in 1973 and to the 1974 resignation of then-U.S. President Richard Nixon. Bradlee is also the author of a best-seller memoir called A Good Life: Newspapering and Other Adventures.
"There's no question in my mind," said Bradlee, "that despite a declining number of newspapers, and despite the declining audience" for major television network news, Americans are "much better informed" than ever before because of the myriad types of media available to the public.
Bradlee said he agreed that fewer of today's young people (defined as those under 30) are reading printed newspapers -- instead getting their news from new media such as the Internet -- as opposed to his "crowd" from the older generation. Bradlee, now 86, said that as a child he learned how to read from going through the sports pages after his father had finished with that section of the newspaper.
Regarding the drop in the number of daily newspapers, Bradley said he understands how some observers think the United States eventually will have only four newspapers that “make any pretense of being national or international papers."
But Bradlee said local news will keep newspapers a must read. He cited, for example, residents of such U.S. cities as Frankfort, Kentucky, or Pittsfield, Massachusetts, who still are "going to want a newspaper that has a lot of local news in it."
Bradlee also said newspapers are much better than "anybody else" at doing "investigative reporting," which he defined as a "reporter or editor who gets a bee in his bonnet [becomes motivated] and decides to look into something in a major way."
Because of budget cuts or reductions in the number of staff reporters, Bradlee said the use of investigative reporting "maybe" will decline at some newspapers. "But it won't at" the Washington Post, he said.
NEWSPAPERS A GOOD PLACE TO ADVERTISE
Larry Kilman, director of communications at the World Association of Newspapers, which represents the newspaper industry, echoed Bradlee's reaction to reports that printed newspapers are dying out.
"I think that's absolute nonsense," Kilman told America.gov from his group's headquarters in Paris.
The consumer market "still tells us that an enormous number of people continue to prefer print [newspapers] and will continue to do so for years and years to come," he said.
Kilman acknowledged that fewer people under age 30 read printed newspapers than "perhaps they have in previous generations. But I think that's a vast oversimplification" to say young people are not reading print newspapers.
He said a new free printed newspaper distributed to mass transit commuters in more than 100 cities worldwide called the Metro is "bringing new readers to newspapers and that really goes to the point that people like print."
The Metro, he said, generally does well in cities with a good public transportation system, which is why the paper is read more widely in Europe than in the United States, where mass transit is not as available or popular.
Many of the Metros are paid for by newspaper companies, Kilman said. The newspaper companies find that the Metro is not "cannibalizing their product at all," but rather increasing their reach to consumers, he said.
Kilman said newspapers remain the world's second largest advertising medium, after television.
Reports by Internet journalists would have the world believe that the Internet is "killing newspapers, with vast amounts of advertising," Kilman said. Although "it is true that the Internet has a double-digit growth rate [in advertising] in dollar terms," said Kilman, "the amount is a tiny percentage of what print journalism generates" in advertising. "That is not going to change anytime soon."
"To say that newspapers are dead or dying has become conventional wisdom," said Kilman. "But it's based on a myth."
Figures on world press trends are available on the World Association of Newspapers' Web site.
See also "Drastic Decrease Predicted in Number of Major U.S. Newspapers."
