Potts: ‘The entire industry is in play’

Another sobering thought about the future of the newspaper industry:

Ultimately, this is about much more than The New York Times Co., or Tribune, or Kinght Ridder. The whole industry is in play. Where does it end? Gannett doesn’t have the kind of stock protections that the Times has; some investor might eventually jump that company. McClatchy could be a target, if it can’t adequately digest Knight Ridder. Cox still is basically family controlled; so is The Washington Post Co., where the Graham family has an iron grip on the voting stock and happy large shareholders like Warren Buffett. Those two are probably safe. But these are very unusual times in the media business, with unprecedented competitive challenges and predators. If the New York Times Co. could be in play, anything seems possible.

These are very unusual times for the media business, but especially so for the paper business. The focus of this forum isn’t the vagaries of industry change, so I hope not to dwell too deeply on the economic implications of these sorts of moves, except to point out how it relates to college media: the job market is going to change.

We like to pride ourselves on preparing students to step out into the “real world” of news. But the “real world” we knew when most of us were reporters and editors is vanishing. It’s being outsourced, repackaged, refocused, and reinvented. The pressures are coming from numerous angles: readers migrating to the web; advertisers following; classified monopolies crumbling; a splintering marketplace for attention; technology companies doing a better job of delivering news; and stockholders looking for a better ROI.

The college media marketplace isn’t reflecting these changes because we don’t face all the same economic pressures. But once our students leave these bubbles, they will be face-to-face with an industry in the midst of the business equivalent of a mid-life crisis. We need to be up on these changes.

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