Who dunnit?

I've been blogging a lot recently about the Rocky Mountain News, partially out of morbid fascination and partially because I believe that there are some scary parallels between it and the future of some of our own markets.

Denver has a population of just over 500,000 and Colorado a population of just over 5 million, yet the market couldn't support two quality newspapers.

So, who killed The Rocky Mountain News? Was it the internet? In short, yes and no. Or was it massive mismanagement by incompetent ownership, in conjunction with the Internet?

For the long answer, check out John Temple's follow up to his talk in Berkley, which he gave at the 2009 Webcam conference. There's some overlap in content, but it's well worth watching.

Did the Internet kill the Rocky Mountain News? And, if it did, what can we learn from its death? from John Temple on Vimeo.

Lessons from the death of a great paper

John Temple was the editor, president and publisher of the Rocky Mountain News which closed down a little over a year ago after almost 150 years in business. You may recognise him from Matt Robert's excellent 'Final Edition' video which I blogged on last week.

Under his leadership, the paper won four Pulitzer Prizes for journalistic excellence; despite this, and despite the prospect of the paper being profit-making in the future, the publicly-quoted owners, EW Scripps (worth about $6 billion) shut the paper down.

John gave a talk at the UC Berkley (Go Bears!) Media Technology Summit at the Google Headquarters in Mountain View, California on September 30th, 2009. You can read the text of the talk here, or you can watch the slideshow and listen to the talk in the video below.

I don't agree with all of John's observations, but he is extremely honest about the mistakes that he made as well as those made by the owners of the paper.

Managing Directors and Managing Editors of newspapers on this side of the Atlantic would be wise to listen to what he has to say. Before too long, they may find themselves in the same position that 'my Rocky' was in 2009.

How to run a newspaper

Most news organisations are now owned by publicly quoted companies, whose sole aim is to generate profit and shareholder value for it's owners.

The result over the past number of years has been newspaper closures, job losses and less journalists reporting on a far smaller pool of stories.

Were there ever 'Good Old Days' in the news industry, or have things always been going to the dogs?

Whatever the case, it's highly unlikely that news owners are going to continue ploughing money into papers which continue to generate minimal profit from what is undoubtedly the news delivery system of the future (i.e. the internet.)

Is there a Citizen Kane in every market, or are we going to have to look at new ways of funding our news oganisations?

What is evident is that the shareholder model does not work for news organisations and benevolent billionaires notwithstanding, the non-profit model is the only way to guarantee a free and fair press.

Final Edition

I've posted an interesting video below, a short piece documenting the final days of the Rocky Mountain News, a fine newspaper that existed for 149 years, 311 days before closing it's doors on February 27th 2009.

To give a local perspective, the paper was founded just 24 days after our own Irish Times was and was one of the top 'quality papers' in the States, winning 4 Pulitzer prizes under the leadership of it's final editor alone.

Despite this, despite good circulation numbers and despite being one of the best loved papers in the US, it no longer exists.

Did the web kill the Rocky Mountain News? Probably not. But woeful mismanagement of the paper and it's web presence, a newspaper war with The Denver Post and lack of any clear leadership all contributed to the death of an institution.

But more on that later. For now, check out the video below. If you have any interest in news and newspapers you'll find it heartbraking.

Final Edition from Matthew Roberts on Vimeo.