Mission Impossible?

Print Ad Losses to the Internet: It Ain't Over Yet

Has anyone here read Kurt Vonnegut's "Player Piano"?

People are starving for work -- for gainful employment -- in the brave, new world he imagines. Not long ago, his idea seemed to be part of the distant future. Now, the Internet makes it seem more and more likely to happen -- a week from next Tuesday!

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.

10 Ideas for Newspaper Survival

I thought the comments by David H. Deans on Dec. 25 (the first appearance of "10 Ideas") were insightful. I recommend that everyone see what he said then. [seekingalpha.com/artic...]

One quick note about the original column that inspired Mr. Jarvis ("To Prepare for the Future, Skip the Present" on the Nieman Reports website).

The author, Edward Roussel, stressed that he was offering "10 ways that will help newspapers make the transition to digital media companies." Now I'm sure that in writing his headline, Mr. Jarvis gave us "10 ideas for newspaper survival" where he meant "survival" in terms of "making the transition to digital."

But the headline definitely attracted my attention because I'm a newspaper marketer -- and that may just be the problem.

Newspapers may not survive in the internet; digital media companies will.

On Dec 27 08:45 AM David H. Deans wrote:

> That's odd. The exact same column was posted the day before. Deja
> Vu?
> seekingalpha.com/artic...

Should Newspapers Stop Being Newspapers?

I share your fear that API and others are telling newspapers to transform themselves so completely that they’ll be out of the news business.

I recall that in the late 1990s, the Thomson Newspaper Group (which once owned Bridgeport Post in Connecticut) left newspapers completely. Turned out to be an astute move -- they bought Gales Directories and other “information services” companies, and moved data online. The move led to success in the brave new world of information services / online information, and they avoided the downturn that awaited newspapers in the next decade.

But Thomson is not in the news business any more. So as business people, I admire Thomson, but as one who values news, I hate them. They found a way to survive, but they gave up their core mission.

If you read "Good to Great," you'll see other examples of companies that moved out of their original business and became great in new ways and in other competitive arenas. The best example, I think, is Kimberly-Clark; their competitor (Scott Paper) told Jim Collins that they, too, could have succeeded as Kimberly-Clark did -- but they weren't willing to sell their paper mills! (That's exactly the thing that distinguished Kimberly-Clark from Scott, the author points out.)

That story could become the story of the newspaper industry: newspapers could have succeeded in new realms, but we weren't willing to give up our truth-telling mission. (We are willing to give up our presses, I think. We all see digital is better.)

It just seems that the business model for newspapers was designed to support the truth-telling mission of journalism (see "News Values," by Jack Fuller), and a radical change in the business model will clearly undermine the journalistic mission.

So, should newspapers stop being newspapers? I say no, but I don't see any other way to survive. I guess it's time to get our resumes ready, and send them to Thomson . . . . or Kimberly-Clark.