When Newspapers Eat Their Seed Corn   

The current wave of cost-cutting in the industry could hurt its future.

During the worst of the Great Depression, some farm families were forced to eat their seed corn. Farmers were less educated than now, but they were smart enough to realize they were eating their futures.

Now, 60 years later, newspaper companies should ponder whether they might learn some lessons from the plight of those farmers long ago.

Consider:

l The newspaper industry is contemplating a massive switch to narrower web widths – in effect giving the traditional broadsheet a long and skinny look at the expense of news hole and at the risk of offending advertisers.

l Knight-Ridder closes its flat panel research laboratory in Boulder, Colorado, a widely known operation that perhaps more than any other spoke to the newspaper industry's commitment to marrying newspapers to the electronic future. Other companies likewise cut spending on research into electronic publishing.

l Times Mirror abandons its Times Mirror Center for the People & the Press, a research organization that elevated the status of the newspaper industry with its serious inquiries into public perceptions of the press and current issues – this when the public's regard for the media has been steadily sinking.

l Newspapers across the nation – the Los Angeles Times, the Hartford Courant, the Richmond Times-Dispatch, the Winston-Salem Journal, and the list could go on and on – cut back on staff. Some papers kill special editorial sections that had been designed to strengthen readership in specific suburban and ethnic communities.

These are the actions taken by newspaper companies controlled by traditional newspaper families. I wonder what will happen when new owners with Hollywood attention spans get a chance, now that Disney is about to take over two major papers – the Kansas City Star and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram – and six smaller ones.

'he reason most often cited for the recent cuts is the soaring cost of newsprint – up 30 percent to 40 percent over last year for most companies.

A reasonable argument can be made that trimming staff and other costs is a rational response to rising expenses. It may be rational, but it may not be smart.

The newspaper industry is under siege. Circulation is down, coverage of households continues to decline, readership remains weak among young people, and advertisers increasingly are willing to try non-newspaper advertising vehicles. The worst thing any business can do when faced with so many negative trends is to cut back on the quality of product and level of service. But that is precisely what many newspapers today are doing.

Indeed, strategically, a more compelling argument can be made for increasing rather than cutting expenses. Improving and expanding the newspaper product resists negative trends eroding the industry's fundamental strengths. Shrinking newspaper efforts – eating the seed corn – feeds the negative trends.

At least the staff cuts and retrenching on news hole and special sections are actions that may be reversed when newsprint costs ease, which is likely to begin next year. Adopting a permanently narrower web width is a more serious step.

ýost daily papers are printed on double-wide presses. In other words, two newspaper pages spread flat are printed side by side, then cut apart at the end of the process. The web of newsprint that runs through the press for most papers is 54 or 55 inches wide, and the printed papers come out half that or, when folded, 13.5 or 13.75 inches wide.

Before the last general narrowing of web width in the early 1980s (again, the culprit was newsprint costs), most folded newspapers were 15 inches wide. The Wall Street Journal, bless its heart, still is.

Under consideration now is reducing the web width to 50 inches (and reducing a folded newspaper to 12.5 inches), the obvious attraction being that such a reduction will cut newsprint consumption 7 to 9 percent (the math works out the same for papers printed on single-wide presses). A special committee at the Newspaper Association of America is studying the reduction, with some newspaper companies strongly in favor, others willing to go along if everybody else does, and a few opposed.

The problem is, saving on newsprint is not the only effect. Narrower pages mean less space for news. That's bad. But potentially worse is the reaction of advertisers, whose advertisements will be narrower, although they will be charged for the same number of column inches (the top-to-bottom measurement of a newspaper cannot be changed without buying a new press). Advertisers will naturally view this as a price increase, at a time when newspapers are already battling heavy price competition from direct mailers and broadcasters.

Unfortunately, the corporate-think that has taken hold at many newspaper companies may cause this unwise shrinkage to be adopted. It will be one more bite out of the future. l