Online News: My Focus Group of One

I am guilty of making observations based on tiny sample sizes and then treating my conclusion as fact. These sample sizes are usually my family in one form or another. My kids' total reliance on Facebook has convinced me of the vitality of that service and its dominance. My son's approach to video games has colored how I think about gaming. And recently, the Gotham Gal's late but inevitable adoption of intraday news consumption has taught me something about news publishing on the web.

The Gotham Gal has been religious about reading the NY Times (NYT) in paper and doing the crossword as 'dessert' as long as I've known her (28 yrs now). I haven't cared about the NY Times in paper form for years but it's still part of her daily routine.

So this past year, during the presidential election, when she went online 5x per day to see what was going on, you'd think she'd have gone to the nytimes.com. But she didn't. She went to the Huffington Post.

And that habit has not changed since early November. She reads the paper in the morning as always and then checks in with her trusted Huffpo throughout the day and evening. Like the trader who reads the WSJ (NWS) in paper form on the train in and then hangs out on his/her Bloomberg all day long.

Although I am basing all of this on a sample size of one, it teaches me some important things. First, the mainstream newspaper reader is just making this transition to intraday news consumption now. Second, they will not blindly follow their offline brand loyalty when they go online. And most importantly, publishing news online is fundamentally different from publishing news offline.

The Huffpo wants to be "The Internet Newspaper of Record." I thought it was a completely audacious goal when I first heard it. It's still a long shot, but I think they've proved me completely wrong on one point. They have established a large and growing mainstream audience of news consumers on the web. They are a force to be reckoned with and complicate the Times' and others' goals of sustaining themselves with their online businesses.

The Journal faces the same challenges. When I invested in TheStreet.com in 1997, I thought they would do a 'Huffpo' on the Journal, but they did not. Neither did MarketWatch although they came closer. I think services like Seeking Alpha, RealClearMarkets, and even tiny (but awesome) New Mogul are a better model than the Journal and that's where I get my intraday non-tech market news.

I am writing this post on the treadmill at the gym on my 'quill pen' so there aren't any links right now and I don't have time to lay out what Huffpo and the other upstarts I mention are doing right but I'd advise you all to spend some time comparing and contrasting and you'll get the gist pretty quickly.

Comments

[Roger Knights:]

My daily paper, which I just picked up off the porch, now weighs only 2/3 what it did a year ago.

Jan 08 09:10 AM

[User 283977:]

At least you get it delivered to your front porch. The LA Times and the WSJ seem to think its acceptable to fling the paper from a moving vehicle where it usually ends up in the mud or in the thorn covered rose bush.

After numerous warnings to these businesses customer service departments about the unacceptable of this practice, I cancelled my subscriptions to both of these papers. And they wonder why their business is going away.... Total and complete incompetence with respect to meeting their customers needs and wants.

I wonder how many other former subscribers cancelled their home delivery service because the newspapers so called management that runs circulation have outsourced delivery to the lowest bidder.

Business rule number one: you don't outsource your businesses primary interface with your customers. If you do, you loose control over the quality of that interface, and that means you are going to loose customers. But no, these businesses only think about short term results to their bottom lines. That is one of the reasons their long term bottom lines are shrinking.

Jan 09 12:12 PM