The New Meaning Of News Competition   

There are still plenty of rivals in a one-paper town.

Now that traditional editorial competition between daily newspapers, including joint-operating agencies, is down to 29 markets and falling, it is time to reevaluate what newspaper competition really means.

Too many journalists are trapped in the terminology of 50 years ago, when there were 73 editorially competitive markets, including joint agencies. This outdated mindset, which deems significant only head-to-head daily competition, is destructive to the real task facing newspapers. Reporters and editors who fail to update their thinking are part of the problem, rather than the agents for improvement they ought to be.

True, nothing feeds aggressive journalism better than two dailies battling over the same turf. But the economics of daily newspapering is rapidly making that kind of competition a subject for "remember when?" nostalgia. Instead, the competition facing dailies has become diffused, spread out to different kinds of media. Collectively, this new competition is just as important and potentially damaging to a newspaper's health as the long-gone daily competitor across town ever was.

Fortunately, there are signs that journalists are becoming more aware of how competition has changed and what it means for newspapers, readers and the quality of public discourse. The recent Society of Professional Journalists' national convention in Baltimore, for example, featured a well-attended seminar on how competition has changed and what it might mean for the quality of journalism.

At the seminar, John Carroll, editor of the Baltimore Sun, recalled his days in Philadelphia in the late 1970s when four dailies were battling for readers. One slow news day, the flamboyant – and now defunct – Philadelphia Journal desperately seized on the arrest of a farm lad caught in an unnatural act with a cow, headlining the story as a case of "moolesting." That shows, said Carroll, that good competition does not always produce good journalism.

The Baltimore Sun, no longer burdened by competition from the News-American, is now pouring its resources into an elaborate zoning effort to compete with weeklies and small dailies in the counties beyond Baltimore. To do otherwise, Carroll said, would sentence the Sun to presiding over a shrinking urban market.

The point is that when the Philadelphia Inquirer, for example, is beaten on a story by the Camden Courier-Post or one of the other 23 dailies competing in the Inquirer's overall market, the dismay should run just as deep in the Inquirer newsroom as when years before the old Philadelphia Bulletin got a scoop.

These changes in the competitive makeup of newspaper markets reflect that daily markets have expanded along with their urban areas to include many communities that before relied on their own publications, weekly and daily, for information. Competition for readers' time and for advertisers has become a web that a metropolitan newspaper must get tangled in to prosper.

What of the community newspapers that face increased competition from the zoned sections of a daily that might be 50 or 60 miles away? One favorable result of the big dailies' efforts is that for the first time since the early decades of this century some of these local papers will have real competition that might force them to do a better job. For his part, Carroll of the Baltimore Sun said he has no desire to kill off any of the newspapers whose markets the Sun is invading, but he would not let them keep him from doing what is best for the Sun. Nor should he.

I also participated in the seminar and told one small-town editor facing big-city competition that there are three important rules for a community newspaper to follow if it wishes to prosper: local news, more local news and even more local news.

If one afternoon a reader hears an ambulance or firetruck siren roaring down a nearby street, he should find out why in his community paper the next day. Even if it is a false alarm. Neither the Baltimore Sun nor any other big paper is likely to provide this kind of detail.

Still, a question remains: Has the decline of daily competition lowered the quality of journalism available to readers? Can smaller papers, which will inevitably capture some of the readership given up by failed junior papers in bigger markets, do a good job of providing all of the information necessary to inform the public?

The answer lies not in journalism driven by competition, but in journalistic quality driven by professionalism. Owners, publishers, editors, reporters and everybody else involved in producing newspapers of whatever size should know what a good newspaper is and what it takes to provide one.

Pride in product and effort must now rule, in newspapers as much as in any other business. Getting a story early and right should be reason enough to drive quality, even without the edge that traditional daily competition provides. l