Meyer - The vanishing newspaper: saving journalism in the information age

Funding for the research and time off for the writing of this book came from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation along with the specific encouragement of John Bare, Hodding Carter, and Eric Newton. And, of course, the memory of the Knight brothers and their ideals guided its development.

Many people at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill helped out along the way. Nancy Pawlow, the Knight Chair assistant, kept the project organized. Many student assistants bore a hand, including Minjeong Kim, Theresa Rupar, Owen Covington, David Freeman, Chris Richter, Joy Buchanan, and Cary Frith. Other students let me borrow from their course work, including Koang Hyub Kim, Diana Knott, and Yuan Zhang. Fred Thomsen kept my computer running. April Umminger of USA Today was a summer volunteer. Special thanks to former Dean Richard Cole for providing the work environment and bringing in the sheaves and to Dean Jean Folkerts for her encouragement and for allowing me to keep my office after I joined the emeriti.

Colleagues at Chapel Hill and other institutions were a major help, especially Jane Cote of Washington State University at Vancouver, whose research interests in her field of accounting overlapped mine in journalism. We collaborated on the interviews of present and former newspaper company CEOs. Scott Maier of the University of Oregon pitched in on data collection and study design for the accuracy measurements. Dale Peskin of New Directions for News managed the contracting on that effort. FrankFee of Chapel Hill collaborated on the copy editor study. Edward Malthouse at Northwestern University and Rick Edmonds of The Poynter Institute were frequent sources and sounding boards. In North Carolina, conversations with Patricia Curtin, Frank Fee, Joe Bob Hester, Donald Shaw, the late Robert L. Stevenson, and Xinshu Zhao kept the wheels turning. Lenny Lind and Kimberly Overcash-Clark of FGI oversaw the mail surveys. Librarians Barbara Semonche and Marion Paynter helped me discover, store, and retrieve data in mass quantities. Jane Cote, Bill Hawkins, Frank Hawkins, W. Davis Buzz Merritt, and John Morton were seminar visitors while the project was unfolding. Present and former newspaper executives who shared their time and their viewpoints with Cote and me included Alvah Chapman, Larry Jinks, Tony Ridder, Doug McCorkindale, Al Neuharth, Erwin Potts, and Gary Pruitt.

Bill Drewry, Lauren Rich Fine, and John Morton helped me see the problem from the investor side. Thanks also to the people assembled by the Poynter Institute to ponder these problems, including Steve Lacy, Geneva Overholser, Tom Rosenstiel and Esther Thorson. William Friday provided wise career advice at a critical moment. Sue Quail Meyer made it all worthwhile.

And now the disclosures: I am an alumnus of Knight Ridder and a beneficiary of its retirement plan, now merged with that of McClatchy Newspapers. I have been a consultant and contributor to Gannett's USA Today, and a sometime shareholder in Amazon.com, all of which receive mention in these pages. And, of course, the research here described was funded by the fruits of Jack and Jim Knight's enterprise through the Knight Chair in Journalism that their foundation endowed. I hope they would be pleased. Neither their newspaper company, its successors, nor the Foundation bear any responsibility for the message herein.

The more powerful conflict of interest is nonfinancial. I have been part of the newspaper business since the age of 14, when I delivered The Clay Center (Kansas) Dispatch on a seven-mile bicycle route through the poorest part of town. Newspaper people are my friends. The message in these pages is an attempt to warn and empower them. I pray that it helps.