Editors Debate Need to Redefine America’s Newspapers : Journalism: Economic woes lead some to fear for the industry’s survival. Meeting focuses on ways to attract younger readers.

BOSTON — After three years of deepening recession, the nation’s newspaper editors are talking again about the need to redefine the American newspaper.

At stake, some editors fear, is the survival of the industry.

At the annual gathering of the American Society of Newspaper Editors that ended here Friday, the studies, prototypes and conversations were often about the idea that the nation’s newspapers must somehow change to attract a generation of young readers who in large part have turned to television.

While the problem of declining readership is as old as the 6 o’clock news, editors acknowledge that they gave it too little attention during the advertising boom years of the 1980s. Now, increasing data shows that the TV generation is not turning to print as it reaches age 30.

But a split is developing among print journalists about how to accomplish the changes. Some editors argue that the industry has grown arrogant and self-satisfied. They call for a more “reader-friendly” style, more “entertaining” topics, more graphics and summaries and new emphasis on life in the home and on the family.

Others believe that many of the new ideas are mostly smoke and mirrors that are unworkably expensive. And some, they say, risk de-emphasizing the thing that makes newspapers strong--telling the news that is important.

Still the signs of economic trouble are everywhere, even in the travel budgets of the top management. Attendance at the convention this year was down about a third to about 500 people. And when the committee charged with working on suggestions for the future of the newspaper met to discuss plans for next year, many members said they could not afford to come to a second meeting later in the year.

For this year, the group issued a major study ominously titled “Keys to Our Survival,” which outlined ways to lure the 45% of the population that no longer reads newspapers or is considering stopping.

Of this 45%, the study concluded that 19% of Americans will not read newspapers under any circumstances.

But 13% are “potential readers,” affluent and highly educated people who get their news from other sources.

And another 13% are “readers at risk”--people who read newspapers but are dissatisfied with them and on the brink of turning away. What is most troublesome to newspaper journalists is that the majority of these latter two groups are under the age of 35, and represent a large share of the industry’s future readers.

To attract and hold these second two groups, roughly a quarter of the population, newspapers need to consider bold, if sometimes contradictory, changes, said Kris McGrath of MORI Research, the study’s author. Among them:

--Stories should not be so long that they need to jump from one page to another.

--In place of stories, newspapers should run more briefs or summaries, more calendars of upcoming events, more listings of places to buy things.

--Papers should run more material that is “entertaining to read.”

--More stories should focus on “people rather than events.”

--But at the same time, editors were told, people want “more in-depth stories that go beyond the headlines or summaries.”

--Journalists should run “more explanations of complex issues.”

--Papers should run “more follow-up reports that update stories run in previous issues.”

The contradictory signals suggested to some that newspapers are at a loss about how to move into the future. But five newspapers did design prototypes of what newspapers of the future might look like to capture these readers.

The Orange County Register’s prototype for an experimental local section delivered information through a mixture of means, some in stories, others in charts and maps, others in lists.

The Lexington Herald-Leader in Kentucky designed an experimental section aimed at women that abandoned traditional stories altogether and relied instead on delivering information entirely in lists, in short one or two paragraph items and in calendars.

The Portland Press Herald in Maine ran only three stories on its experimental front page, two of which were long enough to jump, but the rest of the front page was a summary of stories carried inside.

Among other ideas were indexes that indicated on what pages readers could find the advertisements from what stores.

If papers followed these changes, they could not only stem the decline in circulation but they could actually increase readership by 8%, argued Scott McGehee, general manager of the Lexington Herald-Leader and chairman of the society’s Future of Newspapers Committee. “The results provide clear indications that newspapers can attract the target audiences,” McGehee said.

Some editors were more than skeptical.

“A lot of what I saw today was (just) presentation,” said David Lawrence, publisher of the Miami Herald. The way to win readers, Lawrence said, was not going to be found in graphics but in “fulfilling the basics of providing people with the kind of news they need, news of substance.” Others argued that transfering information into graphic form and in color is so time consuming and expensive as to be impractical for daily newspapers.

Larry Kramer, executive editor of the San Francisco Examiner, said he worried that the changes were trying to make newspapers into magazines, which would actually put newspapers at risk of becoming unnecessary. “It is a little far away from our purpose of being a daily provider of news,” Kramer said.

As one indication of how confusing the changes could be, some editors wondered how newspapers could attract talented people to become reporters if all they were asking staff to do is gather the information to put in summaries.

Still, even critics acknowledged that newspapers had to adopt some of the techniques of what is called “skimability and scanability.” Once resistant to these ideas, Geneva Overholser, editor of the Des Moines Register in Iowa, said she now felt the need to find a balance. “We have to find a way to get people to read what they need.”

Increasingly, editors say it is not really up to the journalists to decide. They report feeling growing pressure from their business managers and publishers to make such changes, pressure intensified by the recession that has cut into profit margins.

Take the case of the Columbian in Vancouver, Wash., with a circulation of 43,000.

When the tough times began there nearly three years ago, Editor Tom Koenninger was told to cut $250,000 a year from his payroll.

He began by eliminating the job of managing editor, his second in command, and went on from there. Soon, reporters began filling in for editors. Advertising people began sitting in on news meetings. Readers formed a steering committee, and other readers started covering some government meetings.

But, Koenninger argued, the emphasis on marketing, on involving readers and making the cutbacks, worked. Today, he said, circulation is up by nearly 10%.