Drewbot

USC’s Anneberg School summarizes their 10 years of studies in the report. They write:

“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.

Their list of survivors looks good. LA Weekly disagrees:

We think that the L.A. Times should be considered among those papers that will survive. There’s no reason why the paper shouldn’t thrive as well as, say, the Washington Post, and for decades it was mentioned as being among the “big four” papers presenting the best journalism in the land (next to The New York Times, the Post and the Journal).

LA Weekly’s reasoning is flawed: great journalism isn’t the cost of entry for USC’s list. If it was do you think The Wall Street Journal or USA Today would be there?

The reason the NYT, the Washington Post, WSJ, and USA Today will survive is that they have unique reasons to exist beyond journalism for audiences sufficient enough to support them.

The WSJ isn’t a newspaper so much as a financial resource. Similarly, the Washington Post is a political source. USA Today is our only national ‘paper of record’ that’s built for national coverage divorced from a city; hence its common denominator drivel (but good sports coverage). The NYT is the paper of record for the high end audience that doesn’t lean on the WSJ or, for many, the reliable source of great journalism the LA Times hopes be.

If the LA Times wants to survive in a daily paper form it needs to find an audience that isn’t political, financial, pop, or quality concerned.