Some thoughts on the change in news delivery in Detroit

The major change in news delivery in the Detroit market with the announcement by the Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News on the shift to online represents a sea change.

Across the nation the delivery model is certainly in flux. Ad revenues have dropped, circulation has declined. Some newspapers are losing money, others are not in the red but not as profitable as in the past worrying and irritating investors, and that has led to forced sales, and this downward spiral

As the home state of Dr. Kevorkian, we do know a lot about assisted suicide, and news companies across the country have been doing a very good job of killing themselves off. With buyouts, layoffs and positions remaining unfilled, the content has shrunk, the stories being covered (with the exception of the terrific job the Freep has done on the Detroit mayor and the $9M settlement) barely skim the surface of the news in the area. The editors and reporters with the experience and institutional memory of stories and background are now gone or soon to be leaving.

The delivery model is changing. The digital natives and immigrants are getting their news from a variety of sources and not through home pages of newspapers or news stations. They are going through aggregators.

I don’t have any answers. I do think the technology has not caught up with the need for change in the industry. In some of the Harry Potter flicks, the folks in the train are reading newspapers that constantly change. I foresee something like that in the future. MIT has already developed e-ink and Esquire used it on its October 2008 cover. Amazon’s Kindle is a first generation prototype of what may be coming down the road in a flatter, slightly larger, more “newspapery” looking device. I am keeping my fingers crossed. I also think more and more info will migrate to cell phones.

Well known “news brands” will continue to disappear (think Knight and more newspapers), but a new group of locally produced sites will take over some of the functions of our mile wide and inch deep legacy. Breaking significant news events, national tragedies or disasters, etc. may help solidify these new ventures as go-to place for news much like CNN earned credibility during Gulf I.

I am worried about the journalism as this evolves and how long the evolution/revolution takes. If you neuter and defang the watchdog, what happens to the nation? Just some ruminations on a snowy afternoon.