How Achewood is killing the American newspaper

Man, why you even got do a thing?

It's interesting that you say that Craigslist is successful because its founder "isn't a capitalist," and then go on to mourn the death of the metro daily newspaper, which ostensibly is capitalist, or at least founded on capitalist principles, judging from the way you've juxtaposed it. I say this is interesting because capitalism is based on the theories of supply and demand and fair market competition. If the newspaper was the only avenue for classifieds, then it's not market competition, it's a monopoly. Similarly, if someone else comes along who can undercut their price, that's perfectly allowable -- even cause for celebration! -- under the capitalistic tenets that these poor daily newspapers hold to.

There was nothing preventing newspapers from buying webservers and creating their own Craigslist, thereby reducing the cost of getting the classifieds to their subscribers. They could even have built a service where people who owned a subscription to the printed paper were offered a discount (perhaps 100%) when posting ads. They then could have reduced the number of print classifieds in circulation, saving the associated distribution costs, and retained their near-monopoly status on this sort of information at the same time. But the fact that they didn't do this isn't Craig Newmark's fault. If the newspapers are so distraught over losing market share, they have nobody but themselves to blame. Welcome to capitalism -- innovation is what keeps us moving, not monopolies.

You might as well say the new automobile car machines are stealing your horse's job.

Network television and broadcast radio are in the same boat. Your issue, no pun intended, is non-customized content.

The newspaper is a one-size-fits-all solution. Each edition is a selection of stories picked by someone else, presented in a uniform format, and delivered to every person's door (or picked up on the corner) in the same way. You alluded to the problem when you listed reasons readers purchased papers in the past.

The continued spread and evolution of fast and cheap information technologies will eventually knock newspapers down to niche status. So how can newspapers, as a corporate structure, survive or revitalize? They can either fractionalize their products to more customized and focused regional papers, or they can redefine their businesses as *information* companies and redeploy accordingly.

No arguments with the position you present here, but on the other hand Achewood would never get picked up by a mainstream, family-friendly outlet in the first place, so the headline seems pretty hyped-up and groudless.

"But I can't think of anybody else facing the same utter destruction of their business model that the metro daily newspapers are."

The music industry and the movie industry.

I've also traded in hard copy comic books, which really add up in price, and my local newspaper, which doesn't even run strips like Get Fuzzy, for the great web comics like Achewood that come free with my internet connection and have an independent spirit, more irreverent humor, just as much continuity and character development... are updated more often, and offer more of an opportunity for personal contact with the creators.

Man, you can get hella use out of old newspapers. Suppose your old lady suddenly gets a weiner-dog that ain't housebroke? Try puttin' Craig down for the dog to wii on and see if he replace the newspaper. Not only that but you can't shove the internet under the short leg of a wiggly table or wrap fish in it.

Nice try.
If you are trying to blame achewood for the demise of the American newspaper, you might as well turn around and slap the fat bald men who run the newspapers and choose to run the same bland comic strips over and over again that no one but 70 year old shut-ins enjoy. I'd buy a newspaper every day if achewood was in it. But Wizard of ID? All of those Far Side rip offs? CATHY? PLEASE.
even a 6 year old could tell you the travesty that is the newspaper comic section, with everything from spacing/format to the fact that it is nearly impossible for interesting strips to get syndicated or into papers...
perhaps this would have been more aptly titled "How personal blogs are killing the american newspaper and inflating undeserving individuals feeling of self-importance"

The truth is, everyone is afraid of change. The internet is simply another change that must be adapted to. I agree with both the automobile comment and the music and movie industry comment. Times change. Capitalists found a way to profit off music and movies on the internet, they will find a way to do so with classifieds and comics. Don't worry. You will be just fine.

Posted by Cymbaline
January 24, 2007
"But I can't think of anybody else facing the same utter destruction of their business model that the metro daily newspapers are."

The music industry and the movie industry.
-----------------------

The music and movie industries are in no danger, aside from the self-created danger of producing poor to mediocre content. Despite the panicked screaming of the record industry, piracy is not the threat they make it out to be. Every independant artist out there will tell you that having their music shared over the internet has only *helped* their record sales.

Yes, it is possible to download and watch movies, sometimes even before they are released to theaters. This doesn't hurt the movie industry, though... exhorbitant ticket prices and crappy movies are hurting the movie industry.

Did comics create the American newspaper? Is it comics' fault that nobody reads the NYT at breakfast? Achewood is the best-written comic on the web or otherwise. It's not Onstad's fault that Americans prefer to watch television.

Hm...it's as if Time bloggers noticed that mentioning Achewood was getting them lots of traffic because Achewood is linking back to them. Oh, wait, one of them explicitly states this.

Keep in mind Time just laid off a bunch of folks, and like pretty much every periodical with the exception of maybe People, it's in real trouble. Time's bloggers are I'm sure eager to prove Time online is viable and that they are capable of generating readers (and maybe getting the mag paid with google ads?).

So...write a column lamenting the death of periodical ON YOUR BLOG and work in a mention of ACHEWOOD. You don't care so much about what you're saying, you just want to generate hits. This is sort of the opposite of the Craigslist guy's "anti-capitalist" view, which is not really anti-capitalist. It's just not short sighted. He states he cares more about the product and will not sacrifice user satisfaction for a shortsighted profit. Sometimes products succeed in the marketplace because the producer is actually interested in what they're producing. Think Craigslist. Achewood. Maybe not Time magazine, if their business strategy is to link to popular sites and then write columns around those links. This shows an interest in success first, and quality second. It'll probably work too. Time maybe succeed in becoming the internet's People magazine. Readers looking for writing by people with something interesting to say, will look elsewhere.

Umm, actually comics did sort of create the American newspaper. The first comics supplement sections back at the (last) turn of the century were MAJOR contributors to a boom in newspaper sales and comics-page competition was a big deal--artists and color printing processes being ganked from Hearst papers to competitors, back to Hearst, etc. What we now know as "yellow journalism" (thinly-sourced 'news' articles intended to further the opinions or policies of the editors or publishers) is so-called because of that style's association in the popular mind with the color comics page (The Yellow Kid being the first recurring comics-page character).

Get with the times, new technologies and avenues overtake previous inferior less efficient ones. Don't you have anything better to write about?

Whatever; this whole Internet fad is going to blow over real soon.

What the hell has Achewood got to do with all that stuff you wrote about the newspapers fall? Achewood is damn good and I see no point in your headline.

How about "How the Internet is killing civility" instead?

Achewood rules. Best webcomics. Perfect blend of social satire and over the top lunacy.

Posted by Kirath:
"The music and movie industries are in no danger"

Well, I never really said that they were in danger, I pointed out that they are "facing the same utter destruction of their business model that the metro daily newspapers are." And they are. iTunes and Friends are challenging the need for the sale of physical copies of music. Internet Radio is challenging traditional radio promotion. Band websites and MySpace are challenging the need for record labels for distribution. The old music business model is being ripped apart.

Just as the internet is destroying the de facto monopoly of print newspapers, so too is it destroying the collective monopolies of the major music and movie studios.

It's not that news and music and movies will cease to exist, or they'll cease to be profitable, it's that the old, monopolistic distribution models for those works - the *industries* - will need to change - or disappear.

Something to consider - there are several webcomics that are getting trial syndication in print. Owen Dunne's "You Damn Kid!" is (or "was" - I'm not sure as to the current status) running in a couple California papers under the modified banner "That Darn Kid" or something of the like. Similarly, Sinfest, brainchild of the enigmatic Tatsuya Ishida, kept a counter running for several years of the number of times the comic had been rejected for popular comic syndication.
Then again, given that most printed comics are getting regular online updates (some more often than or with different content from their print sources), this could all be part of a long transitional process.

"Some of that may have to do with the fact that the Internet makes it easier to find better articles elsewhere. But that has to be a pretty minor factor in comparison with the distribution-channel breakdown outlined above."

You have to be kidding me. I haven't read a print newspaper in years because of news.google.com. The American media in general (with notable exceptions) sucks at reporting things going on outside America and I find being able to view several different countries' articles on the same story enlightening in terms of observing bias, opinion, and perception.

For years, newspapers had a take-it-or-leave-it attitude to their readers, so it's no suprise that once readers have a viable option, they are taking it. For exampe, it's not just that Craigslist is free, it's that it is not printed in tiny agate type and is very easy to read. The monopoly dailies thought they had people over a barrel charging a small fortune for running three or four lines of agate impossible to read by anyone over 50 -- ironically, the main audience of newspapers.
As another reader here noted, newspapers could have responded by launching their own Craigslists. In fact, they still could. So why don't they? I suggest it's because they are still creaming millions of dollars from legal ads. Local governments are required in several states to publish notifications and contract notices in the local newspaper with the largest circulation. Lawgivers haven't yet caught up with the Internet technology, but I bet they soon will.
P.S. If you look at 19th Century newspapers, you see they run the classified ads in the same body type as the stories.

One salient point that I almost never see made when this sort of discussion comes up is that the profit margins that large corporate interests pursue still exist, but they are spread out over wider areas and require more consumerism. For example, the record industry might sell fewer cds now (for whatever reason) but there is more cross-branding and cross-marketing than ever before, between music placement in ads, between toys, posters, t-shirts, bobbleheads - the number of marketable products associated with a popstar has been steadily escalating in the last few decades to the point where certain name brand stars have billion dollar industries only tangentially supported by the product that they are famous for, ie, Snoop might make more off his Girls Gone Wild videos and his energy drink and his yadda yadda than he does off of music.

The same is definitely true for movies, which until the last thirty years only had two vehicles to earn income (theaters and television) - but over time that's exponentially grown, with studios new regularly cashing in on far more than just the DVD sales; let's not forget that Lord of the Rings was a billion dollar franchise not just because of the movies, but also the toys, the fast food crossovers, the t-sirts, etc.

The same is potentially true for newspapers if they can find a way to be inventive. Achewood is a good example of this: the traditional cartoonist 15 years ago was paid by newspapers to license his cartoon, and that was the bulk of his salary. Achewood, however, is given away for free, but is subsidized by a large number of smaller industries underneath the achewood brand - t-shirts, cookbooks, shot glasses, etc. This is going to be harder for reporters, but I think good cartoonists will be able to survive just as much as they did before with some creative thinking and hard work.

My point is this: there are somethings that can be pirated and copied, and there are some that can't. Food, housewares and clothes have to be bought while media can be copied and re-transmitted for free. The media enterprises that are adapting well are more and more often lowering their profits or eliminating sales entirely, and then making up the profit on physical items that have to be bought - e.g., a band giving away mp3s for free but making more profit because they increased their fanbase and more fans bought t-shirts, achewood giving the comics away for free but selling signed prints, etc.

"You'll occasionally hear people attribute newspapers' struggles to the lameness of the articles they print. There are certainly lots of lame articles in newspapers. There were 10 years ago, too. Newspapers weren't struggling then. Some of that may have to do with the fact that the Internet makes it easier to find better articles elsewhere."

I do think it's a major factor, though. Ten years ago many newspapers were pretty heavy on wire articles and the internet has made that pretty obvious when you can find those same articles on a few dozen newspapers' websites. Distribution was a key advantage back then because many newspapers lacked a distinct voice -- in smaller urban markets, one city's paper probably looked a lot like the others with only slight differences. When people started checking out the news online, their local paper didn't offer enough that couldn't be found online. The distribution shift would be survivable if these papers had a voice that couldn't be found online.

This recent phenomenon of wise-cracking talking animals killing newspapers is just payback for all the wise-cracking talking animals that have been killed by newsprint paper cuts all these years.

Syndicate his comics, then.

Problem solved.

When I started reading the comments here I was confused, because it didn't seem they were actually about the same article I'd just read.

1. The title of the article is obviously ironic, or at least absurd and irrelevant. Those defending Achewood are missing the (lack of a) point.

2. I also didn't read the article as defensive *at all* of traditional newspapers. Some people commented that the article was lamenting the death of newspapers. To me, it read mostly as neutral, if not leaning towards the Internet, given Justin is clearly stating the facts that the Internet is owning in every possible way. Otherwise it's just a "random thoughts" blog post, afaict.

http://achewood.com/index.php?date=02132003

"I have various methods of karate-chopping a man who speaks so bold a thing to me."

Quail Jesus, Corinthians 3.12

Jordan Lane has a point, and it also goes for Penny Arcade, Sinfest, Something Positive, Ctrl+Alt+Delete (ugh), and almost every other popular webcomic. Most of them would never see print in any "respectable" newspaper without severe content editing (and I'm not just talking about their sometimes prolific use of swear words).

the ratio of decent articles to crap articles in a newspaper is much higher than on the internet. No matter how many "good" articles on the internet there are, there are infinitely more crap articles. Newspaper classified ads contain much less spam and scam.

It is cheaper to get a weekly newspaper than to keep a computer, keep updating the software, and pay internet service fees.

Even though Achewood rules, it won't manage to kill American Newspapers.

Liberterianism became obsolete the moment the first railroad was operational. Since then it is just a buzz word.

Sigh. I'm sorry. First off, webcomics are not killing newspapers or print. I work at one, I'm pleased to say that Jon Arbuckle has had six month dating story arc, which has come of course twenty years later then most of us would have prefered but its a nice break from the 'Garfield is sheading' story arc which was in my opinion a more family oriented story line then the former.

Getting back on topic: What I feel is killing newspapers is a process in journalism that was being introduced perhaps ten years ago where different news agencys began working in tandum to secure more accurate reporting. This sort of networking which probably discourages libel in some ways has ultimately resulted in a very bland sort of journalism where everyone covers the same stories. Or at least the ones they feel are important.

Someone had mentioned that newspapers need to become more specalized for their communities, and I completely agree. When published news is coming through the AP-Press wire, I might as well just be watching CNN. At the very least print news could come at a higher quality in its coverage of national and international events but frequently falls short of the quality it could obtain. This could be attributed to the production capablilites of the modern press room which put pressure on local journalists and editors to comply to stricter daily deadlines to increase net profits for the company. In turn that creates a margin of falibility permitting poorly written generic and bland AP stories to be published frequently. these are basically the same stories in the same style of writing that is frequently read on the nightly news with 'John Smitherton' reporting.

I suppose I've prefaced a lot of sentences by saying: this is the one cause repeatedly but its a product in the end of course. I think what papers need to probably save themselves with is a willingness to have freedom of speech enough to run cartoons like achewood in their stable of funny pages and write cutting edge honest articles that cut to the quick, with the professionalism of not instantly polorizing to one side of the political spectrum or another for their own self intrest or whatever personal gain might be achieved.

Andrew, not to be completely rude, but . . . I hope you're not a proofreader at that newspaper.

Peace
policy

Some of my fellow Achewood fans need to help me figure out how they got from A(rticle) to B(does not appear in the word "comment")

Thesis: The historic success of newspapers can be attributed to content produced outside of that newspaper's staff, SUCH AS comics, but also classified ads and the like. With the advent of the internet, newspapers' monopolies on the source of this information is gone, and they're feeling the loss.

Hook: "I read my collegue's article, and it got me thinking about this. His example is on my mind, so I'll use it as a relevant illustration and a segue".

Achewood fans: HOW DARE YOU ACCUSE ACHEWOOD OR USE ITS HALLOWED NAME TO GENERATE SLEAZY CHEAP HITS YOU GRIMEY TIME-MONSTER!

My thesis: Nice Pete is real.

Now for something actually relevant to the article:

Kirk Alexander brings up an excellent point: Onstad and his wife appear to make their living off of Achewood, despite the fact that there is no charge to view any of the comics, including the whole archive. Onstad generates and provides the content direct, free of charge. He and his wife provide products related to the "brand" they have created and again are directly responsible for delivery to customers.

The middleman, which to keep with the syndicated comics example has historically been newspapers and periodicals, is cut out.

There are direct interactions between the artist and his fans, and the result is a personalization of the product on a level that isn't possible with something like Garfield.

There are non-comic equivalents, Craigslist, Amazon, and the like but the point remains:

Personalization is the future, and in the case of print-news, that's going to be a problem. Although, I think it will be more of a problem for national rags than for local (once they get with it).

Andrew said something similar above: Local periodicals have to personalize their content to local interests.

Google tries everyday to figure out what news I'd like to read and what ads I'd like to see, and bless its little heart, when it gets better at it, it's going to be amazing (at its worst, it's at least entertaining).

That said, I have to disagree with him on his last paragraph:

I don't think cutting-edge, centrist reporting is going to save newspapers. There tends to be this idea floating around that if given an informed choice, people would go for the balanced, rhetoric-free examinations of news, and I just don't think that's the case.

Look at the readership of the most blatantly biased political "news" blogs. What are the highest rated news radio shows? CNN/Fox News shows?

It's wall-to-wall pundits taking perjorative turns on the words "Democrat" and "Republican"...and actually not a whole lot else.

It's not really a big deal. Time links to Achewood, Achewood links to Time, and everyone gets more hits.

Time stays fresh and current by being "in touch", and Achewood gets the prestige of being noticed by a media giant.

When I picture the Internet, I see a billion monkeys all scratching each others' backs.

Ahahahah it's funny - and there are some smart comments here. Mostly, webcomics are a different medium, just like how the Internet isn't destroyed the music industry but is just changing is. Why did Prince and George Michael release albums (or at least pre-order 100%, in Prince's case, if I'm not mistaken) online? It's not hurting their record sales; it's just a different thing, offering something to their fans.

Achewood and all its blogs and such - they're unique to Achewood and the Internet medium. Some artists work better in print, but Achewood really uses the online medium - the blogs, the sizings, the variation... it's smart.

One additional random example of a webcomic that uses the online medium to mix it up is a fairly new one called, "The Boneless Children Foundation." I read it now & again, & the guy who writes it also runs a rock band and it's all mixed into one web-site -

and the link is http://www.bonelesschildren.com/comics.shtml for that comic. I bring it up because the current comic, #52, has an mp3 that's embedded into the page and plays when you get to the page, and it is a sing-along, sort of - the song that plays is exactly mirroring the comic.

It's a photocomic, so maybe it would be just as well if it were done as a movie or something, but it's almost more like an electronic children's book - you read along as it plays. I think it's cute & interesting, and more than any of that it's just fun. It's kind of dumb, but it's fun, and it's using the net to do something that you couldn't do in the newspaper.

Then there's comics like Sinfest, who have been trying to get into the paper for years, and the artist even logs on his page the number of times he's applied for such a thing! But his comic is too sexual, and it's great that he can post it online and get a readership.

Of course, comics like Overcompensating, Wigu, Scary Go Round, the whole Dumbrella line - they're a webcomic collective, and while they COULD be in newspapers, there are too many of them to print, and anyway those artists channel people to their sites and then make money with books and shirts and other merchandise. Essentially the same way bands do; it's quite clever, and they don't have an external distribution company to contend with! It's an intriguing new thing going on... and it doesn't at all interfere with or challenge the newspaper-based comics! But it's an addition...

It is unfortunate that irony is lost on so much of the American population nowadays. Most interesting is that the comments from Achewood fans indicate that the irony was well-appreciated. Well thought out indeed, I heartily applaud this article.

I certainly hope that intellectual writing and intellegent discussion does not continue to be lost on the majority of the American people. As such, I suggest we start reading Achewood in order to better appreciate the subtleties of our language.

PS. Improve public schools, please. This might help with the outbreak of misunderstanding I see in the reader comments.

As a 26 yo male, I find Achewood to be extremely funny. Garfield was amusing to me when I was 6. Six year olds don't buy newspapers. So if the modern paper is dying because its leading medium (the comics page) has declined in quality, should we rail against progress or update our business plan?

I like perverse, racy, indecent, intellectually stimulating or just plain laugh out loud funny comics. I have money. Where is my product? You idiots.

It makes me laugh when writers and cartoonists start lamenting the fate of their "industry" as as though art or entertainment were a bank or a factory that ought to be bailed out for the national good. Sorry but when your "industry" starts pumping out bland crap, people will stop paying for it. No one NEEDs to read comics (or newspapers), the way they NEED milk, eggs, cars, electricity etc. so there is no guaranteed market; you have to keep things fresh if you wish to survive. It's strange how combining art with business has lead to a complete failure to understand either.

Newspapers aren't struggling as you stated in your latest blog. Earning profits in the 15-30% range doesn't appear to me to be life threatening for a company or corporation. Because newspapers aren't making quite as sizeable profits as they once did is not grounds to say they are struggling. Don't support this idea please and thank you.

Good column.

I am really glad I picked up the newspaper to read your article.

Newspapers aren't struggling? I wonder what the ex-staff of the Dallas Morning News would have to say about that one. They're surviving but only by massive cutbacks on staff and quality.

Offer Onstad $20M to put his column exclusively in your printed rag and see if he's a capitalist.

"Did comics create the American newspaper? Is it comics' fault that nobody reads the NYT at breakfast? Achewood is the best-written comic on the web or otherwise. It's not Onstad's fault that Americans prefer to watch television."

Actually, comics kind of *did* cerate the modern newspaper. The Yellow Kid strips of the 1890s drove up sales of the New York World so drastically that other NY papers started imitating the strip or just plain copying it, sales of Yellow Kid merch. took off, and people just couldn't get enough of "the funny papers."

There ain't much funny left in the funnypages anymore. If I want my fix of Frazz or Get Fuzzy, I go online, not to the Kansas City Star (which doesn't even carry Frazz, the cheezy buggers).

Hey Quail, Perfect quote of Corinthians 3.12

I think it's because newspapers are still creaming millions of dollars from legal ads.

I think this goes back to fundamental attitudes. The question is what to

do by default and how to show people the possible other choices.There is

never any reason not to explore a better way.

Fantastic article covering some points I really enjoyed. Thanks

I think the idea of writing a song about a great cms is nice and the final song is amazing!!

By the way, Jeremiah, double-clicking on a word is supposed to select that word. And if you don’t let go after the second click, you can drag to select the whole sentence or paragraph. It’s very handy when you copy and paste a lot.

I am really glad I picked up the newspaper to read your article.. Thank for all..

"the times, they are a changing"

thanks for infos

kral oyun kral oyunlar inndir kral oyun video izle gazete oku bursa resimler

I am really glad I picked up the newspaper to read your article.
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