In this hilarious but sobering take on the demise of real news, Oliver takes on Tribune media’s human wrecking ball Sam Zell, and its ‘tronc’ rebranding (you cant make this stuff up). Then there’s Sheldon Addleson the casino owner who took over the Las Vegas newspaper and edits everything that appears about him in the newspaper. And there’s Jeff Bezos … Well, you’ll just have to watch it.
The Pew report Oliver mentions is at journalism.org. This was part of a long string of reports from similar institutions about the impact of the digital revolution on the news business. This are listed on a page at Revolutions in Communication. You might also want to read who killed the American newspaper. And, for some ideas about what might be done, see the article New Models for the Media.
The reaction from David Chavern of the Newspaper Association of America was a little thin-skinned:
Other than encouraging people to “pay for” more news, he doesn’t offer any answers. More particularly, he spends most of the piece making fun of publishers who are just trying to figure it out. Whatever you think of the name “tronc” and that company’s announced growth strategy, at least they are trying new things and trying to figure out how to create great news journalism in the digital era. John Oliver doesn’t seem to have any better ideas.
The fact is that we are in a transitional phase within the entire industry. People want, need and consume more hard news than they ever have. The core demand for the product isn’t decreasing at all, and based upon that we will find our way to the far shore where the industry is thriving and growing once again. But in the meantime, there is going to be a lot of experimentation and evaluation of new business models.
Washington Post writer Margaret Sullivan reacted with an article entitled “How Not to Respond…”
Then Chavern responded to the responses:
“I think it’s been over-interpreted as me being thin-skinned or annoyed with John Oliver,” Chavern said. “The only thing I was trying to get at was, when you get into talking about companies that are trying new things, like Tronc and The Washington Post, if you don’t get across that they’re experimenting, you fall into the trap of saying, ‘well, weren’t the good old days great?'”
OK, fine. But let’s get serious. There hasn’t been a new business model coming out of the newspaper business in a century. Tronc is a rebranding, not a solution to the problem.
Just for example, has anyone taken a serious look at companies like Taz.de, the daily newspaper consumer cooperative in Berlin? Of course not. Has anyone considered that publishing itself could be expanded to include a wide variety of media services? Has anyone in the mainstream media business thought to involve communities in creating news or in agenda setting?
In effect, the newspaper business has not moved past the Sam Zell “more kittens” stage of development. That narrow vision is not going to win friends, let alone save the business. But it will continue to attract howlingly funny videos by people like John Oliver.