Alarmists have for decades now proclaimed the decline of the newspaper and forecasted its eventual demise. It’s heading in that direction: In 1990, America had 268 daily newspapers with circulation over 50,000 (43 of those had circulation numbers over 250,000). In 2003, there were 217 and 36 papers, respectively. The trend is an old one: In 1950, 1.23 daily newspapers were sold per household; in 2000, that number was 0.53.
The likeliest culprit is television: Not only a competing medium, its erosion of the American attention span leaves increasingly busy media-consumers much less inclined to zigzag their eyes down line after line of black-on-gray copy.
Worse, newspapers seem to have fallen out of touch with the consumer. When a January 2002 Pew poll asked which medium best covered the news, 38 percent named cable television and 29 percent named network or local television news, while only
10 percent named newspapers.
However slow or incomplete the decline, future historians might recall the late 20th century as the twilight of the daily news rag gods.
But the empire of televised news may be a short-lived one, as newer media move to inhabit niches unfilled by older ones (say, blogging) and overtake older media where it does a better job (up-to-the-minute special interest news). In 1994, 40.7 million Americans watched the ABC, NBC or CBS nightly newscast; by November 2004, only 29.3 million did.
Some of these inroads are no doubt due to the proliferation of cable and the Internet. After all, television cannot conceivably replace the spontaneity, casualness or everyman involvement of the blogosphere.
But if it’s facing stiff competition, television isn’t helping itself much: Viewers who track the news for entertainment fluff have little reason not to dial up to VH1 for an I-love-this-decade-for-which-I-am-unjustifiably-nostalgic special or to E!’s mind-bogglingly bad Michael Jackson trial reenactments. (CNN has even devoted undue time to the continued dethroning of the King of Pop in its broadcasts and on its Web site.)
Meanwhile, television news has largely abandoned those people interested in stories that take more than two minutes to hash out in
favor of more digestible material. If newspapers are struggling on account of attention span, television news might soon suffer from self-
induced irrelevance.
For all the trouble with attention spans and, more recently, credibility, further decline of the evening news is bad for the consumer. After all, television is a potent and vibrant medium. But just as the definition of the medium prevents it from replacing blogs, it guarantees that it cannot be duplicated. Neither blogs nor newspapers nor “podcasts” can manage the combined impressive production, raw visual stimulation, and the ability to do “journalism by show and tell” that television does so well.
If television news wants to compete with the newer and more agile media (and, for that matter, the older, more tangible media like newspapers), it ought to capitalize on these exclusive features. Use big-company resources to track more angles of a story. Give media consumers in-depth, visual discussion of stories and concepts that are difficult to flatten to the newspaper page or blog entry, and the evening news viewers may return.
Short of that, I’d still be willing to tune in more often if there was no more Michael Jackson.

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