NP Refugee

Telling Statistics on the News Business

As someone who was there in the NP online fray since late '95, I am of the opinion that there are some givens:

* An editorial dept will never be sustained by online ad revenue in neither the current online ad model, or the current editorial newsroom model-at least for most NPs that would be considered local and not national. For that model to work, CPMs would have to be multiplied by a factor of 10.
* The answer is/has always been there, but ego and arrogance have always kept the NP industry from solving their problem. They've never been able to get out of their own way.
* The traditional NP can't be fighting with the online group, whether the online is treated as internal or as an external entity.
* The NP industry has allowed the AP to sell its birth rite to the search engines where the money is being made. What a great deal! NPs pay to create the content, GIVE it to the AP (or pay the AP for the privilege for accepting their content), who, in turn, takes money from the search engines to undercut both the print and online editions of the papers.

The ONLY answer I see (trust me--14 years of experience here) is for the NP industry to create their own news search engine, market it heavily in a collaborative effort, etc. Their NP search engine should allow for search results to be organized by release date. Imagine the ad revenue that would shift from the search engines to the NPs!! Whatever they do---keep the AP out of the equation; they are part of the problem, not the solution.

Newspapers: Defensive, Depressed and Desperate?

I agree with most of what you're saying... arrogance... monopoly... blah, blah, blah. I do believe that NPs are essential to democracy. Are we going to trust the bloggers to hold politicos accountable? They get most of what they write from guess where? NPs.

Where I disagree is that all the newspapers could, in concert, turn off the outside world without a subscription. That ignores the fact that most people can already get most of the content of a newspaper without that subscription. The AP already sold out to Y! and Google. Comics.com has the comics. And as for local content, the local TV stations would have quite a boost in traffic to their sites. I'm sure they'd love to compete against a paid model for eyeballs. NPs have no monopoly on local news and information in any local market and for any doggone syndicated piece of content they run in the interactive realm. Sorry to be the one to break the news....

I have always found it amusing that NPs thought that they could, in their monopolistic view from their monolithic lens, cut off their websites from the world and there would be no competitors in the digital realm--just as there is not in the printed realm. How misguided and naive...

I'm afraid their problems are content, content, and content. They're not making papers people want to read--just as Detroit isn't making cars people want to buy.

So much could be learned by studying the HBO history, when VCRs, release windows, and proliferating cable nets all eroded the content value for their service. They figured somewhere that they weren't in the MOVIE business, but were in the ENTERTAINMENT business. Along came The Sopranos, Sex and The City, and lots of other original, can't-get-it-anywhere-... content. NPs are in a similar position: the product is largely commodity; competition against earlier release windows. They need to step back and see what about their product is unique, entertaining, and has wide appeal.

Or maybe they could go niche and print everything on a ditty press for those who still care about everything within a 5 block area of city hall. You're right, Jeff, they are self-inflicted wounds. The only remedy is total reinvention; even the content they port over to the net isn't strong enough to support a sustainable franchise where the websites provide payment for the news stories online. But I don't think they KNOW what people aren't reading. They only do readership studies. Perhaps they would be well served to do NON-readership studies to find out what people WOULD read.

Newspapers: Reinvent Yourselves... Or Else

What a buffoon!

I'll admit that newspapers haven't been bold enough to go where they need to. Mark apparently is writing from a perspective devoid of history. He doesn't know about the many things that have been done and the way that newspapers have tried to reinvent themselves online--many times being successful. Ever heard of Cars.com, Mark?

Where I think David is going is the right question in need of a solution. I still believe the day when the newspapers can all get together, close the door on Google and start their own news search engine will be the day they can start getting the money that Google gets (or at least their fair portion). Frankly Google makes money at nps' expense. What a great gig--the newsrooms across america produce content for which Google pays very little, if anything, and makes gobs of money off it selling ad words. While the move may be bold, it's where the NPs need to be. I'm not suggesting the NPs have one more "hail Mary," but this is no time to be shy. Between Cox and Gannett, there are at least 2 pieces of technology already in place to make it happen. NPs still have the umph to make the marketing happen and establish brand recognition.

[The AP is NOT the organization to do this. Their agenda should make anyone dubious. They are proving to be fairly colonial in their pursuits under TC. I wonder which will occur first--will the AP outlive its usefulness or wear out its welcome?]

I do know that Gordon B. is right: you'll never be able to pour money in the top faster than it's going out the bottom without an initiative the likes of a news search engine.

The NP industry tried to do all this in the mid-nineties, as many-a-colleague will remember, yet the egos of the individual companies made it all collapse. Perhaps such times as these will make for an environment where such initiatives could be revisited. I doubt Mark is even old enough to remember the New Century Network. I've said many times that NCN was ahead of its time.

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.