Finally, someone agrees with me that newspapers should survive. According to a story in the New York Times, Mortimer B. Zuckerman, owner of The Daily News, has spent more than $150 million into expanding the newspaper’s printing plant, installing advanced high-speed presses. Doing this reflects his hope that print will still be big business for another decade or two, if not longer.
But it also reflects a long-standing cliché in the business world: you need money to make money. And, that’s exactly what Zuckerman thought when he did what he did. He sought to improve the paper’s color photographs and graphics, making the pages crispier, less smudgy and devoid of pesky pinholes typically found around the borders. Yet, amid both declining circulation and advertising (what a surprise, right?), it’s obvious to deduce who this would benefit more.
News consumers will now be able to view a sort of mural rather than just a painting. O.K. But the Daily News and advertisers will be jumping for joy, or in this case, for green. In other words, circulation may increase a tiny bit, accounting for only a tiny portion of revenue, while money that comes from advertising will account for a bigger portion. What advertiser doesn’t want ads with color nowadays?
Color ads are a change in the right direction, but will never amount to online or television ads. But, that’s beside the point. What one can see here is that better, longer, more in-depth stories weren’t the driving force of making positive profit. There will always be a business side to journalism, a side where advertisers, local or national, will be waiting in the wing. I’m not saying that news companies don’t care about the editorial side of things (Or, maybe that they care less?) I’m saying that green is preferred over black and white. And, especially now, the latter is more dependent on the former.
