Before widespread internet usage, newspapers needed to have in-house staff covering every aspect of their content. The ubiquity of the internet has destroyed those old needs and has opened up new opportunities.
THE PATH TODAY
Newspapers are attempting to succeed by operating in the old information paradigm.
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FAILURES:
Classifieds: Craigslist does classifieds way better than newspapers
Social Currency: News aggregators and social ranking sites disseminate stories way better than newspaper sites do alone. (DIGG, Reddit, Delicious, Trendalicious, Google News, Yahoo News)
Advertising: Google AdSense makes placing an advertisement incredibly simple and inexpensive. They’ve made Billions of dollars doing this.
Niche Topics: Movie reviews & theater listings, Police Blotter & family court, Home & Garden section, Business sections.
Print Revenue: Digital ad tracking has destroyed the profit margins of print advertising. No longer does it make sense to pay so much money for ads when the results are unknowable or undesirable.
SUCCESSES:
Investigative Reporting: Investigative reporting requires time, money, and discipline that most blogger do not have.
News Coverage: Newspapers that focus on their areas of expertise speak with a much more powerful voice than news that is spread out thin. (Bloggers and link sites make hundred of millions of dollars linking to and commenting on original newspaper content)
Community Outreach: When the general public needs a platform to voice their concerns, when corruption and crime threaten a resident, when bureaucratic government agencies are apathetic to the needs of a person or community, then the public relies on their newspaper and its base for help. When newspapers serve as a sounding board for their community, they succeed.
Puzzles and Comics: What? Seriously. According to data-mapping technology used by pressdisplay.com, puzzles and comics are the most frequented pages of any pages in a newspaper.
Editorial Pages: The other most frequented pages are the editorial pages. Amazingly enough, these pages almost never have advertisements on them.
LOSING GROUND:
Sports: Newspapers are losing ground to bloggers. Cable and Dish TV networks make it easy for sports fanatics to cover almost any of their favorite content AND blog about it while it unfolds. These bloggers are perceived to be more passionate about their subject material than their “professional” newspaper counterparts. Bloggers are not beholden to any corporate mandates, or contractual agreements that prevent news reporters from delivering ebullient sports reviews.
Credibility This is a perception issue and it ties back into social currency as mentioned earlier. When the public is increasingly going elsewhere for their news coverage, the perception is that newspapers no longer offer any value to the daily life of their readers.
THE WAY AHEAD
Later this week I’ll begin braking down and highlighting all the above points.
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