Washington -- World-renowned
newspaperman Ben Bradlee says daily print newspapers are
vital to the public and will continue to operate, despite
doomsayers predicting their ultimate demise within the next
20 years.
Bradlee, who became famous for guiding the
Washington Post's investigative reporting of the Watergate
scandal in the early 1970s, tells America.gov that statements
forecasting the end of newspapers are "ridiculous."
Bradlee, the Post's executive editor from
1968 to 1991 and now the paper's vice-president at large,
says newspapers provide readers with information they consider
very valuable -- such as "who won the ballgame ...
[prize] fight ... an election ... or how your stock did"
that day.
Other forms of media, including television
and the Internet, provide that same information, he said,
but the "guy who gives" the information first
"won't always be the one who did it the best."
"The idea that any society, but especially
this [U.S.] society, could function without a daily news
update of some kind in some form" is not plausible,
said Bradlee.
Bradlee's leadership in uncovering Watergate
led to the Post winning a Pulitzer Prize in 1973 and to
the 1974 resignation of then-U.S. President Richard Nixon.
Bradlee is also the author of a best-seller memoir called
A Good Life: Newspapering and Other Adventures.
"There's no question in my mind,"
said Bradlee, "that despite a declining number of newspapers,
and despite the declining audience" for major television
network news, Americans are "much better informed"
than ever before because of the myriad types of media available
to the public.
Bradlee said he agreed that fewer of today's
young people (defined as those under 30) are reading printed
newspapers -- instead getting their news from new media
such as the Internet -- as opposed to his "crowd"
from the older generation. Bradlee, now 86, said that as
a child he learned how to read from going through the sports
pages after his father had finished with that section of
the newspaper.
Regarding the drop in the number of daily
newspapers, Bradley said he understands how some observers
think the United States eventually will have only four newspapers
that “make any pretense of being national or international
papers."
But Bradlee said local news will keep newspapers
a must read. He cited, for example, residents of such U.S.
cities as Frankfort, Kentucky, or Pittsfield, Massachusetts,
who still are "going to want a newspaper that has a
lot of local news in it."
Bradlee also said newspapers are much better
than "anybody else" at doing "investigative
reporting," which he defined as a "reporter or
editor who gets a bee in his bonnet [becomes motivated]
and decides to look into something in a major way."
Because of budget cuts or reductions in
the number of staff reporters, Bradlee said the use of investigative
reporting "maybe" will decline at some newspapers.
"But it won't at" the Washington Post, he said.
NEWSPAPERS A GOOD PLACE TO ADVERTISE
Larry Kilman, director of communications
at the World Association of Newspapers, which represents
the newspaper industry, echoed Bradlee's reaction to reports
that printed newspapers are dying out.
"I think that's absolute nonsense,"
Kilman told America.gov from his group's headquarters in
Paris.
The consumer market "still tells us
that an enormous number of people continue to prefer print
[newspapers] and will continue to do so for years and years
to come," he said.
Kilman acknowledged that fewer people under
age 30 read printed newspapers than "perhaps they have
in previous generations. But I think that's a vast oversimplification"
to say young people are not reading print newspapers.
He said a new free printed newspaper distributed
to mass transit commuters in more than 100 cities worldwide
called the Metro is "bringing new readers to newspapers
and that really goes to the point that people like print."
The Metro, he said, generally does well
in cities with a good public transportation system, which
is why the paper is read more widely in Europe than in the
United States, where mass transit is not as available or
popular.
Many of the Metros are paid for by newspaper
companies, Kilman said. The newspaper companies find that
the Metro is not "cannibalizing their product at all,"
but rather increasing their reach to consumers, he said.
Kilman said newspapers remain the world's
second largest advertising medium, after television.
Reports by Internet journalists would have
the world believe that the Internet is "killing newspapers,
with vast amounts of advertising," Kilman said. Although
"it is true that the Internet has a double-digit growth
rate [in advertising] in dollar terms," said Kilman,
"the amount is a tiny percentage of what print journalism
generates" in advertising. "That is not going
to change anytime soon."
"To say that newspapers are dead or
dying has become conventional wisdom," said Kilman.
"But it's based on a myth."
Figures on world
press trends are available on the World Association
of Newspapers' Web site.
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