Mission Impossible?

Newspapers Can't Compete with 'Us'

Can you give me some help, NP Refugee?

Where did you see that "most have signed on to work with a search engine directly"?

I would like to know more about that story. Thanks!

-- NP Survivor

On Apr 06 09:35 AM NP Refugee wrote:

> Think about this: the newspaper's content, most of which they don't
> own nor create is available in lots of places. The newspaper is
> under siege from all sorts of directions. I can get comics from
> comics.com; I can't get that on the newspaper's web site.
> I can get stocks from-what-1,000 different places? I can get the
> syndicated national stories from just about anywhere. Obits are
> available numerous places. I don't have any problem finding puzzles
> online from numerous sources. A great number of the published editorials
> are available on the commentators' web sites. All of that content
> used to be the NP franchise. So it's not just about Google, it's
> the cumulative effects of having commoditization of what the newspaper
> used to monopolize in a local market. Going from monopoly to commodity
> is a giant killer. I agree that the small town newspapers will be
> the ones that last. If you consider the papers closing shop thus
> far, most are in 2-newspaper towns (Seattle, Denver). But the small
> local papers seem to understand the need to drill down into the communities
> they serve--because they can, while big metros seem intent on being
> a national newspaper. Unless the big metros bust up their newsrooms
> and start small suburban bureaus that can go deep in communities
> while having a "most important" fill the main section, I'm pretty
> sure the erosion will not subside.
>
> Think about this too: NPs don't put the local box scores and the
> other fine print online. To a local market, that's valuable.
>
> I, for one, believe that Murdoch knows exactly what he's doing.
> If you've been following the latest moves by the NP industry, there's
> a bit of interesting news where most have signed on to work with
> a search engine directly. If I were Murdoch, I would start a news
> search engine and sign on all the NPs as true partners. I would
> add some things the SEs don't currently do. I would have wild cards
> in search strings, so if you don't know some characters, you can
> use *, I would also allow searchers to index the search results according
> the date the article was published. Then I would cut off the Google
> and Yahoo! spiders. Goodness knows, promotion wouldn't be a problem.
>
>
> News flash. Only 20% of most newspapers' visits come through search
> engines. Most NPs are bookmarked.
>
> It would take a giant to make it happen, no doubt. Goodness knows,
> the NP companies can't get along to make it happen.
>
> And I could almost argue that the suburbanization has had almost
> as profound an effect as the Internet on the precipitous drop in
> circulation. Publishing the latest antics about which councilperson
> is taking a bribe in a large market? Most people in the suburbs
> are embarrassed and think it's pathetic, but beyond that, they really
> don't care. It may as well be 500 miles away.
>
> My prescription for survival is what everyone keeps telling the NPs:
> start digging deep into the communities and quit trying to cover
> the world. My fear is that they cannot get out of their own way
> to do that and the new NP model will be reinvented by those outside
> of the NP industry today with a fresh perspective and no ties to
> legacy systems and processes that are outdated.