They blended the skills of a caricaturist and the mind-set of a columnist. They were entertainers and ink-stained jokesters. They were newsroom denizens and deadline artists who churned out five or six cartoons a week that received prominent display. If they possessed power, it was that they drew players, owners and managers in ways that reporters could not with their words.

Sports cartoons were usually more amusing and informative than critical, which reflected the times when the sports section was the fun-and-games department.

In general, the shift to replace losses in print ad revenue with new digital revenue is taking longer and proving more difficult than executives want and at the current rate most newspapers continue to contract with alarming speed, according to the study by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. Cultural inertia is a major factor. Most papers are not putting significant effort into the new digital revenue categories that, while small now, are expected to provide most the growth in the future. To different degrees, executives predict newsrooms will continue to shrink, more papers will close and many surviving papers will deliver a print edition only a few days a week.

Daryl Cagle has posted the response that he received from The Times that reports The Times is not going to resume publishing cartoons next week as planned until they have another process in place:

As I’m sure you all know, we got a lot of reactions to our request for cartoons for a new feature in the Sunday Review – much of it negative. Your very good questions and criticisms of our process have forced us to take a second look, and to reconsider. We are going to postpone adding the cartoon to our section until we can figure out a process that is fair to cartoonists and also works for us.

“Circulation of print newspapers continues to plummet, and we believe that the only print newspapers that will survive will be at the extremes of the medium – the largest and the smallest,” said Cole. It’s likely that only four major daily newspapers will continue in print form: The New York Times, USA Today, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal. At the other extreme, local weekly newspapers may still survive.”The impending death of the American print newspaper continues to raise many questions,” Cole said. “Will media organizations survive and thrive when they move exclusively to online availability? How will the changing delivery of content affect the quality and depth of journalism?

With that prediction on the record, lets look at other predictions that have been made in the past and see how accurate they’ve been.Dilbert creator Scott Adams, back in 2007 predicted the end in two mobile phone upgrades (about four years).

I predict that the end of printed newspapers will happen in the time it takes for most people to upgrade their cell phones two more times. The iPhone, and its inevitable copycats, (let’s call them iClones) are newspaper killers. When you have a web browser in your pocket, a printed newspaper is redundant. Eventually, all cell phones will have Internet browsing built in. You might not have a web browser on your next cell phone, but the one after that will have it as a standard feature.Most people prefer to read a printed page versus a computer screen. A cell phone screen is the worst of all. But newspapers will collapse as a business long before 100% of iPhone and iClone owners give up their printed newspaper subscriptions. I don’t know if it will take 20% of iPhone/iClone owners to cancel their subscriptions, or if it will take 60%, but whatever the number, it seems likely we will reach it. Then the printed newspaper will disappear.

Safe to say, we can put that one in the fail column, but note the “why.” It becomes a trend in a lot of these predictions.

Paul Gillin predicted back in 2006 that the end was within 10 years:

So here’s where the spiral begins. Newspapers’ profitable classified advertising business will be all but gone in 10 years, a victim of the vastly superior results and economics of search-driven online advertising. Display advertising will be under intense pressure from alternative media, including not just Web sites but an emerging class of small print publications and supermarket advertisers that serve local audiences (print publishing is getting cheaper, too). The department stores and cell phone companies that sustain newspapers’ display advertising business will apply intense pressure on papers to bring down their prices. Newspapers will be forced to lay off staff in order to maintain margins. Cuts in services will lead to cuts in editorial coverage, making papers less relevant to subscribers. As circulation declines, advertising rates will have to come down to remain competitive. This will put more pressure on margins, leading to more layoffs, more cost cuts, more circulation declines and more pressure on margins. Once this spiral begins, it will accelerate with breathtaking speed. And it has already begun.

So far he’s been pretty accurate. We saw the mass layoff stage during 2008-2009. He’s got another 4 years before we can put this down in the true or false column.

Here’s another interesting prediction by the Future Exploration Network that also puts the end within a 5 year time frame.

“In the developed world newspapers are in the process of becoming extinct, driven by rapidly changing use of media and revenues out of line with cost structures,” said Dawson in the news release. “These pressures will be compounded by the rise of tablet devices and the coming availability of low-cost digital paper with exceptional qualities.”

According to the study, the US newspaper is out of business by 2017 and pretty much in most nations by 2040. Here’s their timeline graphic.

As I read these predictions, I don’t think anyone is suggesting a wholesale end of the newspaper business. Small papers or specialized papers will probably survive, but most city papers will be replaced by digital versions.

From Poynter:

But among the 85 percent of tablet news readers who have not yet paid directly for content, there is little appetite to convert. Only 21 percent said they would be willing to pay $5 a month if their favorite tablet news source required it. Only 10 percent would pay $10 a month.

Tablet users are slightly more willing than general Internet users to pay for content. Earlier PEJ studies found only 5 percent of online news consumers had paid for local news, and just 7 percent would be willing to pay for online news of any kind.

Newsstand has its own section of the iTunes App Store, which makes it easier for niche and obscure publishers to find their audiences. That’s helpful, but I expect the benefit will diminish over time as the 286 current Newsstand apps are joined by hundreds or thousands more.

Newsstand collects all your publications in one place, instead of scattering icons across multiple home screens. It also enables apps to download fresh content “in the background,” so it’s already there before a user opens an app.

It should be noted that downloads don’t always equate to subscriptions.

News Corp.’s digital publication isn’t compelling enough to change people’s reading habits and its marketing push, including an ad spot in Super Bowl XLV, hasn’t created wide recognition, said Ken Doctor, author of the Newsonomics blog, which tracks technology and news.
“The Daily’s proving to be a great R&D experiment but probably not a viable business,” Doctor said in an interview. “It’s not breaking through the national noise.”

I tried the app when it first came out, but found it buggy and slow. There have been many updates to the app since, which I presume fixed the technical side of the issue, but the content was always limited. After the free trial, I opted not to subscribe.

The Bloomberg article mentions that to gain more readers, The Daily also has a Facebook app. Murdock’s plan was to keep it all on the iPad. At this point, I think they should also consider supporting other tablets.

Here’s Bloomberg’s report about the Kindle Fire.

In somewhat related news, at least two newspapers are looking to give away or subsidizing tablets to readers who sign a long term subscription contract. Back in July, Steve Myers reported that Philadelphia Media Network will start selling Android tablets with preloaded apps for the Philadelphia Inquirer and a shortcut link to Philly.com. The cost of the tablet to their readers would be about half the retail price.

The Tribune Co. is also looking at offering a tablet to extended subscribers (or at least highly subsidized) according to Jim Romenesko. According to the report, the project was still in the internal discussion phase with people split on its prospects.

With the Amazon Kindle Fire more than half the cost of the low end iPad, using the Kindle as a give away would be a bit easier on the wallet.

From the Times announcement:

Covering topical subject matters related to the world of finance and economic policy, The New York Times plans to release one new Xtranormally produced satirical short per week. Notably, these cartoons will introduce an interactive component, enabling readers to join in on the fun by posting feedback and comments.

You can see the first animation featuring Warren Buffet and Mark Zuckerberg.

Jeff points out three interesting things: Facebook users don’t click on links that go to WSJ – everything stays in Facebook. WSJ’s app uses ads and allows users to crowd source what are the top stories using a leaderboard and offering prizes to the most active users.

It’s obvious Facebook is a huge deal. It’s exciting to see someone figure out a way to work within the system rather than try to exploit it. We’ll have to watch to see how this is app is received.