Reduced Stock Listings May Translate to Less Respect for Business Sections
By Chris Roush
April 7, 2006
I have a problem with daily newspapers cutting stock listings in an attempt to improve profits. More than two dozen papers with circulation of nearly 5 million have cut or revamped stock listings since the beginning of the year.
My concern is not the concept that the information that newspapers used to provide readers can now be obtained on the Internet.
And it's not the fact that most of these newspapers are cutting stock listings to improve their profits because they'll be using less newsprint every day, or on the weekends.
And it's not the fact that papers are alienating a core reader - the Baby Boomers and older who are accustomed to reading business sections, not the Internet.
What I'm worried about is the fact that the cutting of stock listings signals that the attention that top editors at newspapers paid to the business section throughout much of the 1980s and 1990s is waning, and without that attention, business sections could be headed into their own recession.
Here's my rationale:
With pages and pages of stock listings, business pages were easily able to become standalone sections in the 1980s and 1990s. With that raised status in the newspaper, the news hole for business stories was increased. Studies have shown that the news hole for business rose from 8 percent to 15 percent during that time period.
Top editors wanted to increase business coverage during that time period because the market was booming and there were major stories - the S&L scandals, LBOs, the Intenet boom - that drew reader interest.
I still think there are important business stories to be covered today - and well into the future. But if newspapers are cutting the amount of space given to business information such as stock listings, could editorial content about business be next on the chopping block?
At some papers, it's already occurring. A cutting of stock listings means that the business section is smaller, or in the case of the Cincinnati Enquirer, relegated once again to the back of another section.
Less space to write about business stories can only mean one thing: Few stories will be covered. And who will be to blame when the article that doesn't make it into the paper is the one that explodes into a major, nationwide story?
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Comments
Well, Chris, you convinced me. Before I started reading your item, I was pretty well convinced that it made little economic and ecological sense for a newspaper to devote multiple pages of content if an individual reader of that content was interested in only one or two lines. Your news-hole argument is compelling, but I still wonder about all those trees.
Posted by: Tom Bowers | April 7, 2006 08:17 PM
ya, chris,
I also agree with your arguments. In our case, stock listing news have been publishing only for formality in business page. Here, especially Nepal's stock market doesn't influence the business and econimic scenario. So, I think it will better to write news of different sectors of economy than concentration of stock market.
Posted by: Himal Neupane | April 8, 2006 08:38 AM
Hi from Spain,
In the last month we have seen the launch of a new financial newspaper in Spain, the fourth one of the market, called "El Economista". It dedicates only two pages to stock listings of the main Spanish index and offers the rest of stock market's information in its web, because it considers that the majority of the investors get the information in real-time from internet and there is no sense in publishing it printly. So, as you can prove, the current cut - trend is spreading out of America.
I would like to offer you some considerations about this trend:
- Don't you think that the arguments given by the editors - substitute the stock listings by other news demanded by part of its readers - is false and the real goal is cutting printing costs?
- On the other hand, can we consider this measure as a triumph of a new journalism focused in telling stories, offering analysis, increasing the added value of the newspaper to their readers?
- And finally, many newspapers earn money publising the mutual funds information: the funds only appears in the listings if they pay for it. So, for these newspapers there is no sense in cut the stock listings as it will suppose a cut in its incomes.
Posted by: Alfonso Vara | April 10, 2006 06:14 PM
Chris,
Working at a paper that was one of the first to make the big cut in listings, and having talked to biz editors at other papers, I'm not sure many of your points stand up.
1. Cutting to increase profits? In some places, yes. But in others, the newshole -- that is, space devoted to stories -- has actually increased, even filled all the former agate space.
2. Alienating Boomers? Lots of angry calls, sure -- mostly from the very oldest readers. But few cancellations. And younger boomers, plus Gen Xers and the rest, have long since abandoned print stock listings as too skimpy and too behind-the-market.
3. Signalling the end of attention to biz sections? When I started in biz journalism 20 years ago, at the paper I work for -- The Plain Dealer -- space devoted to agate was at a peak. We ran stocks, mutuals, even bonds daily. Yet we didn't have a section front and our newshole was so small that the agate sometimes crept up onto the first biz page.
Over the years, we have consistently chipped away at the listings -- dropping bonds, putting caps on stock and mutual listings. Yet our staff size is near its all-time high and readers get several pages of stories every day -- plus a strong Monday section that's never had the agate crutch.
Yes, some biz sections are being cut when agate ends. But in other places, biz editors are justifying their continued prominence with even more and better journalism.
4. Could biz newshole be threatened going forward? Sure -- but that's true of every section in the paper. The real threat to biz newshole is the same one all sections face -- declining print readership. As noted, the numbers I've seen don't indicate that dropping agate significantly contributes to that; it's a much broader problem.
5. Finally: Less (print) space for biz stories means news goes uncovered? That makes surface logic ... but let's wait to see what really happens. Online's space is essentially unlimited. Readers who go to the site that hosts The Plain Dealer's coverage get stories much faster than print could ever manage, they get audio of our interviews with local CEOs, a weekly business podcast, access to detailed stock data, several blogs about business topics including one devoted solely to a single local company. And we're just getting started.
Posted by: John Kroll | April 11, 2006 04:52 PM
Not to mention that papers get filmed to become microfilm, and investors need to look up old investment statistics in the future. Websites that check historical prices don't work if the company has a new ticker, delisted, merged, been acquired, newly become privatized, or are no longer in business. One way to do this is to check the microfilm. Removing this solution from investors, whose libraries purchased microfilm for this purpose, is an unintended consequence of removing financial listings from papers.
Posted by: Jill Adams | April 25, 2006 08:52 PM