Print newspapers need more than just a facelift

When I told my parents that I was going to study journalism, the first thing out of my father’s mouth was, “Saliste de Guatemala para Guatepeor. If you don’t die of hunger someone is going to kill you.” Here’s a little context: my parents come from a country with an infamous reputation of killing journalists: Mexico.

According to a Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) 35 journalists have been murdered between 1992 and 2015, and those are just the ones with a confirmed motive. The motives behind the killings of another 42 journalists have not been confirmed.   

So those were the words of a worried father. Despite all of this, I continued in my pursuit of journalism. I will admit that at first I wanted to write only for print. This way of thinking soon changed after I was exposed to video, then quickly editing on Adobe Premiere Pro, and moving on to handling audio. Some stories need to be told in different platforms. The medium you choose to tell a story will depend on the story itself. Still, I also don’t want to abandon newspapers… I just don’t want to limit my storytelling platforms.

So the big question is: When are newspapers going to die out? Personally I don’t think they will… if the people handling them are smart and innovative enough.

In a 2009 TED Talk, Polish newspaper designer Jacek Utko spoke about how redesigning newspapers and focusing on the content started to take Eastern European newspapers towards a different direction.

 

In Russia newspaper circulation went up 29 percent on the third year. Poland also saw similar raise in circulation up to 35 percent on the third year. Meanwhile in Bulgaria circulation went up 100 percent.

“Design was just apart of the process,” Utko said. “The process we made was not about changing the look, it was about improving the product completely.”

This echoes what I’ve been learning in my Journalism and Press Freedom class. The newspapers in Latin America that have gained readership and change the way newspapers go about reporting are those that have a focus on investigative journalism. It’s those who keep true to the watchdog role. A few examples are Reforma, El Norte, (both from Mexico) and La Prensa (from Panama). Granted these papers were established before the turn of the century, and they have often been targeted due to the corruptness.
 
Newspapers will stay alive only if they are able to find the target audience that wants to keep them alive. This can happen through redesign and investigative journalism.