Newspaper Newsroom Investment

Philip Meyer’s “The Vanishing Newspaper” was published in December 2004 and drew attention all through 2005. In a series of case studies, Meyer, of the University of North Carolina , argues that quality and investments in news capacity help circulation and business results. The evidence is strong, but, he concedes, not airtight. As a matter of logic, he adds, newspapers that are the most authoritative and accurate gain the most influence, an attribute of value to advertisers.20

When newspapers instead cut investment in news, according to Meyer, they risk a “death spiral” in which circulation falls, revenue growth slows and those developments are the rationale for further cuts. The fit of Meyer’s thesis to the events of 2005 was uncanny.21

In less formal fashion, a second book, “Knightfall,” by W. Davis “Buzz” Merritt, charged Knight Ridder management with cutting the news core of its newspapers in self-destructive fashion. Merritt offered his own experience (as editor of the Wichita Eagle) as an example of how a mid-sized paper can lose its edge, public-service focus and statewide influence when the cutting gets too deep.22

Jill Geisler of the Poynter Institute took the measure of years of cutting at newspapers and local television stations with a survey and an open-ended question of what news staff members would tell their bosses. Her key finding: besides leaving fewer people to do the work, persistent cuts do their damage by leaving those who remain harried, with little time for ambitious work. The survivors also have difficulty getting much attention from stretched-thin editors, leadership that is especially essential in a period of managing change.23

In scholarly research, Esther Thorson and associates at the University of Missouri continued a series of studies of small and mid-sized papers based on Inland Press Association data. They again found a strong correlation between above-average news investment and advertising revenue per copy. Put another way, they estimated that news investment accounted for 20% of the variance among papers.24

Scott Maier of the University of Oregon continued his studies of error rates in news stories with a group of 14 newspapers. As in an earlier study, more than half the stories were found by their subjects to have some kind of error, from misspelling to lack of context. The more frequent and severe the errors, the greater the decline in the newspapers’ overall credibility.25

A contrarian study by Jack Rosenberry of St. John Fisher College took a broad sample of papers of varying sizes and found no correlation between content mix and circulation penetration. That would seem to dash some cold water on the thesis that intensely local coverage builds readership, though Rosenberry conceded that his methodology treated an investigative city hall story and a routine police report the same.26

For whatever reasons, the body of research on quality’s relationship to business results doesn’t seem to change minds within the business. Those in the pinching and cutting mode express occasional regret that they cannot afford more journalism while meeting financial targets, but they go right on cutting.