April 26, 2007
How to Save Newspapers: Round 3
Every six months when the Audit Bureau of Circulations releases statistics (NAA members can get information from NADBase), media critics write essays on how to "save" the newspaper industry. The ABC stats came out in April, and the essays followed. And followed. There were a lot of them this month.
I've made something of a work-related hobby out of collecting the essays and looking for common threads. The themes this month were that the Web is "killing" print, and newspapers need to look at new ways to gain both revenue and readers. Nothing new there.
But, I'd like to point one more time this week to this release from the Newspaper Association of America noting that when you take the Web into account, newspaper content is reaching more people than ever before. (We can't mention that enough around here.)
Following are this month's essays on how to fix all the things that are amiss with the newspaper industry.
I hope these give you something to think about, challenge your own views or give you some good ideas -- I certainly don't mean for it to be taken as a list of death notices, so read with an open mind. (The Digital Edge blog also has lists of essays from mid-January to mid-March of this year and from last year, when I started this project.)
Keep in mind these are not all the essays written in the past month or so about the subject – feel free to add to this list in the comments below.
Happy reading.
The Newspaper Form Factor
April 24, 2007
David Evans, Forbes.com
The newspaper business has a simple model: charge advertisers for getting access to readers whom you attract with relevant content and cheap prices. That's been a great model for a few centuries now, and it is far from dying. No reason to depart from it--and, in fact, that's precisely the model Google is using to sweep a path of destruction through every advertising-supported media business there is (more on this momentarily). It's the physical method that newspapers use to do this--what business types call the "form factor"--that's the problem, the Achilles Heel of the industry's current business model. Printing content and displaying ads on paper is going to go the way of the vinyl record and perhaps even the CD.
Mutual Suspicion
April 13, 2007
William Powers, National Journal (subscription required)
But there's one aspect of the symbiosis that is rarely mentioned: the way it helps us consumers by serving as a two-way filter. New and old media vet one another's work, each helping us to unclutter and winnow the content from the other side. When a major print outlet shines its light on a particular Web site or podcaster, I sit up and notice. Why? Because there are millions of bloggers and podcasters out there, so the establishment media can afford to be very choosy. A blog has to clear a high bar to win that kind of attention.
Reporter: News future is tied to the Web
April 13, 2007
Katie Dean, The Capital Times
"The way people consume news has fundamentally changed" with the advent of the Web, creating a new media landscape that will be dominated by niche Web sites rather than general interest newspapers. That prediction came Thursday from Jim VandeHei, a former high-profile political reporter for the Washington Post, who caused a minor sensation in the journalism world several months ago when he announced he'd be leaving the venerable paper to build an online news site from the ground up. He was in Madison through the University of Wisconsin's writer-in-residence program and spoke to local journalists at Capital Newspapers.
Newspapers will never be as profitable as they once were, experts say, but can still do well
April 10, 2007
Thomas Maier, Newsday
They don't feel like part of the traditional newspaper thrown on your doorstep - online chats, podcasts, video and audio feeds, plus searchable databases to aid in the hunt for a new home, used wheels or the best pizza on Long Island. But increasingly they are important parts of the modern newspaper, an ever-evolving format for news and information that is making a not-so-subtle, sometimes wrenching, shift from ink-stained newsprint to computer screens in the Internet age.
Anya Kamenetz, Fast Company
Item! The most crucial, distinctive product of the newspaper business is neither news nor paper. And the best way to provide it may not be a business.
Rumors of Newspapers’ Demise…
April 8, 2007
David Olive, The Toronto Star
It can't be good news, one would think, when the newspaper you work for is acquired by a tycoon whose nickname is "the grave dancer." … The conventional wisdom is that traditional newspapers are a dying business, a victim principally of the Internet. And it's true that readers have migrated to websites, and that the likes of Craigslist.com and Monster.com have skimmed off as much as one-third of the average big-city daily's classified ads and career ads, respectively.
What Newspapers Need to Do -- To Survive
April 6, 2007
John Rung, Editor & Publisher
We have to break the cycle. We cannot continue to cut at the core of our business simply to feed an irrational need for high margins. We must grow revenue, and we won't do that by slashing expenses.
Newspapers Struggle to Respond to Web Challenge
April 5, 2007
C.G. Lynch, CIO magazine
What’s gone so horribly wrong with the newspaper business? Many believe the answer is simple, profound and inescapable: the Web. Newspaper executives, many analysts argue, just don’t understand the disruptive effect of the Web on their business and as a result have jeopardized the future of their papers, their companies and the investments of their shareholders. Others take a more nuanced view, claiming the newspaper industry’s response to the Web is typical of any mature industry confronted by a new, disruptive technology. That is, the newspaper lords knew it was important; they just didn’t know how to incorporate it into what is, in the United States, a 300-year-old business model.
Newspapers changing, challenges not that much different
March 18, 2007
John Telfer, Midland Daily News
Many young people are not reading newspapers. This has led some to predict the eventual demise of newspapers. It’s hard to say what’s going to happen in the long haul. Larger metropolitan papers have been experiencing circulation declines in recent years, but not all papers are down. The Daily News’ circulation is up over 2006. Other smaller papers, often called community papers because of their intense local focus, have experienced similar success. The question I have is this: If many young people are no longer reading newspapers, why are so many applying for jobs in the newspaper industry?
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