We’re in a recession. If you’re thinking that newspapers survived the Great Depression and recessions before, you’re right, they have. However, newspapers haven’t faced off against the combination of a recession and the Internet’s ability to provide news instantly and freely. While I doubt that newspapers will ever completely disappear, the Internet and an ever fluctuating economy will change the way they do business forever. The ones that don’t change will go out of business. The ones that change will stick around and possibly be more prosperous than they have been in the past.
One of the main reasons that newspapers will outsource work to outside sources to save money will be the economy and its ever changing state. Even though America is in a recession right now, the fluctuation of the economy, from recession to prosperous and back again, won’t have as much to do with the need for legacy media to outsource as the price of oil does.
Unfortunately, the entire world has built economies based on a finite resource. Oil will eventually run out and the price will continue to increase exponentially until it does. Every business in America relies on oil in some way or another. They pay the cost for supplies that have to be shipped via truck, plane or train, all using oil and all factoring in the cost of their operations into the businesses they supply.
Newspaper companies rely on oil in the same way that other companies do, maybe even more than others do. They use gas to deliver papers all over the city. That daily cost will continue to steadily climb, regardless of how gas prices fluctuate in the short term. As more and more people decide that they need to save the money they spend on newspapers per month to fill their own gas tanks, Newspapers may eventually be unable to afford to deliver papers. That is unless they change how they do business.
By outsourcing work, especially on the Internet, to suburbs and outlying areas, major city newspapers could save on the price of circulating a daily paper. They would be able to save money by allowing more local writers to cover areas and stories that they would normally have to spend more time and money to cover.
In Cincinnati’s case, outsourcing to areas that are separated from downtown like Harrison, Hamilton, West Chester, Wyoming, Mason, Anderson, Batavia and many others, could save the Cincinnati Enquirer money. They wouldn’t need to spend the gas to get to one side of the city to the other to cover more stories and they would give those areas a local twist. Harrison, for instance, has its own paper, The Harrison Press. The Enquirer could buy papers like The Harrison Press and pay their current writers to not only cover local news but to add Enquirer stores in their papers, boosting their circulation.
The price of oil and the fluctuating economy may not force journalism to make drastic changes today or tomorrow, but eventually, the business will have to change. The economy will fluctuate constantly. It’s down right now but it will eventually go up (hopefully) and then it will go back down again. That combined with the ever climbing price of oil will force traditional journalism to change. If it doesn’t, it won’t survive.
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