I wasn't really surprised at what Iris, Seth, and Nan found in their analysis of newspapers' coverage of their own struggles, and I'm not convinced that this indicated anything significant regarding the industry's coverage of itself in particular. As the authors acknowledged near the end of the paper, this is just how journalists cover business crises, period - not just in their own business.
They rely heavily on episodic framing, putting things in a narrow perspective, devoid of context. They quote industry leaders rather than looking for a broader range of perspectives. They use anecdotes and lazy, overwrought language rather than economic principles and precise, telling statistics. These are things that business journalists do, no matter what the industry.
And I think the general tone of pessimism can be explained by the overall characteristics of American professional journalism, too, rather than anything particular to covering the newspaper industry. In framing stories, American journalists are driven more than anything else by a desire to tie each individual story into an overarching narrative (even if that narrative doesn't actually add any context). The story can't just be that Mitt Romney said something stupid about half the country and the reality of who does and doesn't pay income tax; the story becomes Mitt Romney's Ongoing Problems With Gaffes™.
So the struggles of the newspaper industry quite naturally lend themselves toward an easy, reductionistic narrative: "OMG NEWSPAPERS ARE DYING!!!!1" (to paraphrase Picard). Nuance, caution, tentative optimism - none of that fits the narrative. Only pessimism does, and if specifics run against that narrative, they get tossed. So the negativity is really a function of an attachment to simple narrative, not necessarily any deep-seated belief about the future of their industry.
They rely heavily on episodic framing, putting things in a narrow perspective, devoid of context. They quote industry leaders rather than looking for a broader range of perspectives. They use anecdotes and lazy, overwrought language rather than economic principles and precise, telling statistics. These are things that business journalists do, no matter what the industry.
And I think the general tone of pessimism can be explained by the overall characteristics of American professional journalism, too, rather than anything particular to covering the newspaper industry. In framing stories, American journalists are driven more than anything else by a desire to tie each individual story into an overarching narrative (even if that narrative doesn't actually add any context). The story can't just be that Mitt Romney said something stupid about half the country and the reality of who does and doesn't pay income tax; the story becomes Mitt Romney's Ongoing Problems With Gaffes™.
So the struggles of the newspaper industry quite naturally lend themselves toward an easy, reductionistic narrative: "OMG NEWSPAPERS ARE DYING!!!!1" (to paraphrase Picard). Nuance, caution, tentative optimism - none of that fits the narrative. Only pessimism does, and if specifics run against that narrative, they get tossed. So the negativity is really a function of an attachment to simple narrative, not necessarily any deep-seated belief about the future of their industry.
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