NP Refugee

Can Anything Save Newspapers?

The answer is, as you said, to band together.

If they could ever agree (and they can't) the newspaper companies would turn off Google, Y! (although the consortium makes that difficult) and MSN and start their own news search engine. Sell the same contextual ads that Google is selling to make most of their bucks. The big con was that the newspapers are dependent on Google. I think it's the other way around.

Imagine what that revenue split would look like.




On Dec 10 04:13 PM hierofalcon wrote:

> There are certainly some cyclical problems - house and auto ads spring
> to mind.
>
> The real problem is that someone sold a couple of big names on providing
> free content on the internet with the hope of some web based advertizing
> dollars. If not totally free, then just for the cost of an on-line
> registration. The advertizing dollars from the web barely pay for
> the web presence, let alone the journalists that provide the news
> that people come to the site to read. For most smaller papers, it
> doesn't even cover the web costs. Yet the content is there and is
> free for browsing any time any person wants to look, 24/7.
>
> Unfortunately, I don't see much of a way out. Band together to abolish
> free content so you can get subscription fees coming in (either web
> based or print) and the anti monopoly people will be all over you.
> Leave everything free and only a couple major organizations will
> be left with no local news at all. Even with fee based web content,
> most of it will flow to major papers hurting smaller community papers.
>
>
> As a middle aged person who works on a computer all day long, I can't
> imagine trying to read the news on a computer - headlines and an
> occasional article are fine from Google News, but for real news I
> much prefer the printed paper at night. As for TV news - bah! Sound
> bites R Us isn't real news. I want to be able to read what I want
> and skip what I want without having talking heads repeating the same
> story every 15 minutes.
>
> The real question is how to make news relevant to the younger generation.
> We've lost a generation that cares about what happens around them.
> That they have the attention span of a gnat just aggravates the problem.
>
>
> The internet without the journalism backing of print media and TV
> media isn't worth much as a news source. Yes, it's fun to blog -
> at times. But like it or not, the major journalism sources (whether
> TV based or print based) provide good content for the net. Lose that
> and you've lost a lot of value. If I'm looking for reliable information
> about some headline - I pick the names I know and trust and not joes-blogging-news-liv...
>
>
> The trouble is that the major TV based sources (CNN and the like)
> are only focused on big events and don't really care about local
> news. Kill off print, as one poster suggested, and you lose much
> of what keeps a community bound together. You may rely on TV news,
> but it is in just as much trouble as print news. Local news is going
> away there too without some drastic changes. As more lawsuits crop
> up against web sites of independent bloggers or advertizers over
> what content they post, this may drastically change the landscape
> for the free world of the competition. There is value in that stodgy
> old editor that is only beginning to be seen by the do everything
> online crowd.
>
> Many of the items mentioned by former insider are correct. I'm not
> as convinced the carrier interface is all that important. Getting
> the paper to me by the same time is important, but face contact really
> doesn't matter to me. I'm not particularly a union fan and I'm sure
> those rate high in the problems to be solved department.
>
> As a newspaper stockholder, I wish I had better answers.

Can Anything Save Newspapers?

You've hit the nail squarely on the head.

I've heard the cyclical thing for so long it makes me want to hurl. Maybe cycle is sort of like a death spiral. Dave Morgan is one of the smartest people I've ever known, too. He knows what he's talking about.

When was the last time a reporter got out of their chair to go do an interview--look the person in the face? Lazy.

Point is, their model is dead. Why even have reporters come in? With today's technology, they should be in the community reporting. News flash: you can email your story to the copy editor. Get out in the community, for heaven's sake. There should be no reason for a reporter to come in unless there's a meeting. Reporters should be paid based on production in specific categories. Problem is, unions (see US Automakers) are geared toward minimum production for maximum pay. Guess what? The golden goose is on life support.

And I agree that the salespeople don't know how to sell. They wait for the phone to ring. No cold calling, no spec, no needs assessment.

The only hope for these guys is to take them all private, lower the price to whatever it takes to regain circulation, and then understand that they can't report as though everyone lives 3 blocks from the downtown metro center. And quit reporting yesterday's events as though we all live in a cave. Providing context and applying meaning should be a newspaper's pursuit. They'll never win on breaking news, so they should stop insulting the reader.

Lastly, they have got to reestablish the relationship between the carrier and the customer. I believe history will show that carriers' anonymity will be a contributing factor to newspapers' demise. Why would any business make its most critical link the weakest. Were it me, I'd reinvigorate the relationship between the carrier and the customer. Leaving a message on a recording when my paper is wet is not going to keep my business. Get the carriers digitally connected so they can serve their customers. We used to before the cyber age; technology should make it easier. They certainly don't have SO many customers these days that they can't provide a little personal attention.

Even Newspaper Next guys are getting frustrated trying to teach the old dog to do a trick. Lying on the floor waiting to be fed is not working.

CNN's New Wire Will Shake Up the Newspaper Business

So, ole buddy...

Do we really believe the AP owners will be able extricate themselves from the dinosaur? There's so much invested in the relationship, albeit dysfunctional, that I wonder if they can ever quit long enough to do something different. And do you think Tom Curley will just roll over? We both know of manifestos in the past that were described as "tempests in a teapot," but this seems to be real.

Here's my guess: Tom C. will back off rate increases, will promise more transparency and will politic his way into making the CNN thing go away by lots of calls and visits with the owner members.