Chip Babcock Communiqué

Chip Babcock Communiqué Save the News, Ditch the Papers

There have been three newspaper deaths in my family. The New York Herald Tribune, where my father worked and where, much to my delight, a grizzled printer set my name in linotype and gave the chunk of metal to me when I was five, closed long ago. So did the Dallas Times Herald, a Jackson Walker client from the time it was founded, and the Houston Post, which I represented near the end of its storied history. The Philadelphia Inquirer, where I worked as a sportswriter, is in bankruptcy as is the Chicago Tribune, which we proudly represented four years ago in the first Tribune libel case tried to a jury in over 40 years.

Most print journalists I know, at least the ones who are employed, are doing their work (sometimes brilliantly) one day at a time, fearing that the end of newspapers is near. The social utility of newspapers cannot seriously be debated. It was reported in The New York Times magazine two weeks ago that an assistant U.S. Attorney prosecuting a government corruption case argued in closing that the misconduct stopped for only one reason. "It stopped for the same reason that everything else stops in this case. The publicity starts in The Philadelphia Inquirer...and that was the end of the scheme."

It is unthinkable that for the first time in our democracy we could be without newspapers. Thomas Jefferson famously said, "Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate to prefer the latter." Well, we've got plenty of government right now. We need newspapers more than ever.

That's easy to say but much more difficult to accomplish. It seems to me, however, that the traditional newspaper must invent a new model by retaining its editorial, advertising, and production staffs but eliminating the costly printing and distribution side of the business and substitute instead the efficient and vastly more inexpensive internet to distribute the product. For those of us who like to have paper in our hands to carry around, that cost should be borne by the reader.

My idea is to lay out the newspaper exactly as it is today but distribute it over the internet and charge a subscription fee. A more limited edition could be made available for free, much as the Financial Times does today with its Lex (enhanced) paid subscription. A newspaper home printer should be developed and offered for sale to the end user. It would have software which would cause the printer to automatically print out the newspaper overnight when it gets the signal from the publisher that the paper is ready.

When the subscriber wakes up in the morning, she doesn't even have to walk outside to get her paper; it's waiting for her right there in the study, kitchen, wherever, sitting on the tray of the newspaper printer. Of course, the user has to pay for the paper and ink. This is not as far-fetched as it might seem. There are many newspapers available now on Amazon's Kindle device, which charges a modest price for a subscription. The problem with Kindle is that you don't get the graphics or advertisements. There are some limited photographs, but not nearly what you get in the daily paper.

If the newspaper printer concept catches on, the paper achieves both ad revenue and subscription revenue. If the paper eliminates its printing costs and ditches its home and newsstand delivery, it saves substantial monies. Eliminating home and newsstand delivery isn't so far-fetched either. I tried a lawsuit in San Antonio, Texas, last week and was looking for the Austin American-Statesman, which was providing substantial coverage of the trial. Austin is about 70 miles away from San Antonio, but the paper was nowhere to be found. Too expensive to deliver was the reason given.

— Chip Babcock is a partner at Jackson Walker. He can be reached at cbabcock@jw.com.