Media Companies Aren't Fighting for the Future

A colleague of mine shared an article from Adage.com today titled "
Media Companies Cull 30,000 in Fight for Their Future." I believe the first part of the headline. Most of my recent Tweets have been about newly announced cuts in newsrooms across the country.

According to the article, "the media industries have shed more than 30,000 jobs in 2008, according to an Ad Age analysis of Department of Labor employment statistics and news reports. That's about 3.5% of the total media work force of 858,000. Since the bubble-inflated high-water mark in 2000, media has lost more than 200,000 jobs."

But I am not convinced media companies are "fighting for their future." Look, I understand the economy is awful, and company marketing budgets for advertising are shrinking. Fewer ad dollars means less revenue and less revenue means cuts. I get it.

Companies are watching every marketing penny, and determining where they can get the best bang for their marcom buck. So why are media companies responding by lowering the quality of their product? That's right - I said lowering the quality of their product.

Cutting newsroom staff leaves survivors charged with the impossible task of covering more beats in the same amount of time. Reporters must now divide their time among two, three even four beats - something has to give. While chasing down a story on one beat, another story is breaking on another beat and the reporter has to make a decision - which story do I chase? Either way, news coverage for one of the beats is going to suffer. News coverage begins to slip and readers start to notice. Maybe a few cancel their subscriptions or stop buying the paper at the newstand. Another hit to the bottom line.

The media industry is a lot like the airline industry, if you ask me. In response to high fuel prices, airlines started charging for luggage or booking your flight over the phone. They stopped serving beverages and those tiny little bags of peanuts or pretzels. In short, airlines have diminished the product and wonder why as a group, the seven largest airlines posted a 10.8 percent slide in traffic from a year earlier, according to an article posted on today's Chicagotribune.com.

What I am driving at is this. If media companies really are fighting for their future, they need to re-invest in their product. I'm not saying they need to maintain an overstaffed newsroom. But what I am saying is they need to devote enough resources so they can produce a high-quality product that attracts readers. People read newspapers and magazines because they want to know what's going on in the world - locally, nationally and internationally. Start giving readers less and they'll look elsewhere to get it.

So here we are in a viscious cycle. Ad revenue is down so media companies respond by laying off in the newsroom. News quality slips, readers go elsewhere and companies stop advertising in a declining product. In a few months it happens all over again. Are there any media companies out there who are truly willing to fight for the future of their product?