Book Review: Marc Edge, Greatly Exaggerated: The Myth of the Death of Newspapers

Abstract

Marc Edge, Greatly Exaggerated: The Myth of the Death of Newspapers (Vancouver, Canada: New Star Books, 2014). Paperback. 320 pages, $21.Reviewed by Matthew J. HaughtDOI: 10.1177/0739532915587300On its final day of publishing in 2007, The Cincinnati Post anchored its front page with a -30-. The longtime copyediting symbol for the end of a story marked the end of Ohio's Queen City's afternoon daily and, in part, the end of the competing afternoon daily as a whole.At the time, many observers and critics of the newspaper industry thought the -30-for The Post would become a -30- for the entire industry. In Greatly Exaggerated: The Myth of the Death of Newspapers, Marc Edge uses the weapon of perspective to skewer the fault in their logic. He examines the ways newspaper industry insiders and critics positioned the declines and changes at the end of the 2000s as the harbinger of for the printed news. Their claims overstated the problems, he argues. Instead, corporate greed drove the cuts to the industry.Soundly researched, the book details the economics of the industry and offers those economics as the reason afternoon, second-place daily newspapers went the way of the dodo, or perhaps, the linotype machine. He decodes the complexities of newspaper finances, including advertising revenue, circulation, expenses and the write down of value loss associated with the downturn of advertising during the Great Recession. This process cleanly argues the Wall Street ownership of newspaper chains has deemphasized quality to keep profit margins inflated-double that of other industries.Edge's no-holds-barred book names names of the naysayers and doomsday mongers, as well as the owners and executives at newspaper companies who cowed to investors instead of fighting to preserve the newsroom. He cites the industry's vast profit margins, in excess of 20 percent for some chains, and their declines into the single digits during the recession, as the chief cause for much of the industry's transformation. His argument here delivers the analytics lacking in many reports about the death of printed news.As I read Edge's book, I anticipated an account of my former newspaper, the Charleston (W.Va.) Daily Mail; however, it was not found. In 2004, MediaNews Group sold the Daily Mail, then an afternoon newspaper, to the larger morning Charleston Gazette, effectively dissolving the newspapers' joint operating agreement. The Gazette leadership began systematically diluting the Mail's operations, cutting staff from more than 50 to about 20. After much public and advertiser outcry, intervention by the Department of Justice restored much of the Mail's staff, and rulings put major restrictions on the Gazette's ownership and operation of the Mail, which switched to the morning cycle in 2009 and continues to compete.1 The Gazette-Mail saga illustrates many of Edge's arguments: the of a second-place afternoon daily, the complications of joint operating agreements, the engagement brought by competing newspapers (The Gazette and Mail offer countering viewpoints about political issues in West Virginia's capital city) and the impact of advertiser and community support for a printed newspaper.Edge unabashedly advocates for printed newspapers; unfortunately, he's one of the few left to do this. He claims newspapers have righted the ship in terms of revenue and have returned to the print edition as a vehicle for profit, albeit with less of a wall between news and advertising. Further, pay walls and metered content online are still forcing people to pay, tapping that revenue stream. …