Robert Osazuwa Ness

Fallout from the Great Newspaper Implosion

We will continue to see such painful changes as an industry built on local monopolies and 30% profit margins tries to reinvent itself for a future where news is a commodity. The focus will be on business models (perhaps) find paid content models for hand held devices, and more importantly deepen local content and go beyond local advertising to find new ways to ad value to local businesses. locoforlocal.blogspot....

Newsday et al: Too Little, Too Late

On my blog I comment that the people will only pay for the following kinds of content on the web; "business intel, games/music/entertainm... gambling, and porn". (locoforlocal.blogspot....)

"The memo speculates about creating an E-ink reader, seeking the mythical iPod moment for papers. I fear it’s a myth.", that is an oversimplification on your part. People are used to paying for content and apps on hand held devices. The promised land might be a long way off, but if we are to agree with you with what you said about publishing this memo ten years ago, then they should start making moves in this direction now.

A Sad Day for Newspapers

I agree that it is the problem is innovation. Innovation has to be applied to answering the question of "how can we develop new digital products based on local content and local advertising?". Merely taking made-for-print content and sticking it online with a pricetag is NOT innovation. locoforlocal.blogspot....

Newspaper Death Watch

1. It is not enough to charge for local content--which means just taking local content made for print on the web and stick a price tag for it. Newspapers need to redefine themselves as local media and go through the traditional product and customer development process to develop content specifically for the web.

2. If you want to look for business models that make money on the web, look towards Asia. Tencent, Cyworld, and others put Facebook and Youtube to shame. THERE ARE COMPANIES MAKING MILLIONS ON THE WEB. It just so happens that they are not from Silicon Valley.

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.