Turn and Face the Change -- With Newspaper Industry in Crisis, 'Everything's on the Table'

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from Editor & Publisher:



SPECIAL REPORT: Turn and Face the Change -- With Newspaper Industry in Crisis, 'Everything's on the Table'



By Mark Fitzgerald and Jennifer Saba

Published: August 21, 2008 11:50 AM ET

NEW YORK Something's happening here, in the newspaper industry, and as the old Baby Boomer anthem goes, what it is ain't exactly clear. Faced with an unprecedented crisis that combines cyclical turbulence with metastasizing digital technology that steals away revenue and readers at an alarming and seemingly accelerating rate (while offering newspapers only stingy payoffs), publishers and editors everywhere have thrown away their rule books — and, to find their way in this new and alien environment, are ready to implement previously unthinkable changes.

Or are they?

Ask any two industry observers and you'll get at least three views on whether the drastic measures under way at newspapers — the deep staff and page cuts, copyediting and ad design outsourced abroad, massive shifting of resources to the Web, getting out of the printing business — are harbingers of truly fundamental change.

"I think everything is on the table," says Earl Wilkinson, executive director of the International Newsmedia Marketing Association (INMA). One indication of his claim: INMA used to stand for International Newspaper Marketing Association. Another: In New York, two archrivals — the Daily News and New York Post — are reportedly discussing combining some key business functions.

There's one good reason for the industry's new openness to change — fear, says Drew Davis, president and executive director of the American Press Institute (API): "I have never seen so many senior newspaper executives so depressed and frightened for their future." .......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003841443