bill melnick, partner

Newspapers: Any Options Beyond Cutting, Selling or Closing?

While your observation that publishers are choosing between digital only or in some cases abandoning digital altogether, there is a third choice that has yet to be explored or to my knowledge been given serious consideration. As you have stated, neither betting on the web nor cutting costs fast enough has any promise because both are self defeating for economic reasons as well as product viability reasons. The web as a business remains profitable only for e-commerce or search and cutting costs that support the content which is the only product that newspapers have to sell in favor of web overinvestment is leading to eventual extinction. Newspapers are running down a blind alley if they think the web will save them as they defund content. Its as if NBC decided to scale back on programming and start building TV sets that only get one channel as a solution to their problems. There is another solution if publishers can think boldly and strategically.

All successful marketers have three things in common regardless of industry:
1. They are consumer-centric. They offer products and services that are what consumers have demonstrated they will buy in the most efficent and consumer friendly distribution channels.
2. Their products are highly relevant and often predict where consumers are headed.
3. Their products are differentiated from everything else that's out there.
There is no demand or pricing power in parity products.

As we see it, publishers are either driven by their own business needs or are capitive of the editorial desires to be the next Woodward and Bernstein. Publishers need to good marketers first and therefore focus on the three principles laid out above.

For big city daily metros it means changing editorial mission, looking at circulation distribution differently and understanding how local advertisers source their customers. This can be achieved within the current circulation footprint with a reallocation of current editorial staff and a wholesale change in advertising sales practices and pricing structures.

We at brandidiomatics.com are advisers to marketers in need of understanding and competing in a this fierce and changing consumer and business landscape. Visit our website and if you are interested lets talk about how we can advise you on how to adapt and thrive by providing a new strategic roadmap. No obligation.