Robert Osazuwa Ness

10 Ideas for Newspaper Survival

Newspapers should focus on leveraging their trusted brands to build local destination sites across print, web, and other platforms. Then they can go to their long time advertisers and give the more channels for reaching local customers with the same features, such as performance metrics and ppc, that make advertising on Google so attractive.

But "outsourcing" to Google is stupid. Google has content, therefore newspapers compete with them for eyes. Outsource instead to services that provide digital solutions without undermining you brand or training your longstanding clients how to advertise on content that competes with yours.

Relevance is important, but local relevance, not contextual relevance is where newspapers can win. When reading an article on a fitness festival at your local park, would you likely click on a promotional coupon your local gym, or a crummy adwords ad for getting rock hard abs? Newspapers have been local destinations for hundreds of years, digital media is not changing that, rather it expands the potential.

What is making it hard for papers is that the economics have changed. Investors still expect the profit margins a local monopoly provides, when expanded choices of content and advertising channels means that monopoly doesn't exist anymore.

Full disclosure; my company Verican.com is one of those companies newspapers "outsource" to, though unlike Google, we don't compete with our own clients. Your brand and roledex stay intact.