Bill Wyman Tells Us Why Newspapers Are Dying

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Five Key Reasons Why Newspapers Are Failing – Bill Wyman via SpliceToday

Bill Wyman is the former arts editor of Salon.com and NPR. This is an in-depth article on the demise of the newspaper industry.  Bill can now be found blogging at Hitsville.org.

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2 thoughts on “Bill Wyman Tells Us Why Newspapers Are Dying”

  1. It’s easy to pick on newspapers. I do not disagree with many of the anecdotal comments you offer. But if I had a dollar for every negative critical aspect view of the industry I would be…well, you know…rich. On the contrary, if I had ten thousand dollars for every article written on how to solve the challenge…I would be in bad financial shape.

    Your points are practical ones, but the problem is not unsolvable as I am lead to believe in your piece….it’s the diminishing content and the lack of planning to do (2) things:

    (1) How to monetize the proliferation on news content where as mostly is being originated in a newspaper newsroom? Newspapers decided to give it away for free on the Internet and thus have trained the news audience that news is a commodity. Not something that takes a significant investment to deliver.

    Solution: Change your mind, charge, license it out, and those who do not want to pay don’t get it. Then turn on the tube and watch the content drop like a rock on the Cable news outlets, and the affiliate nightly news. In six months, readers will be begging for a newspaper. There are several examples of newspapers going paid. The Arkansas Democrat is one. In the first year they went paid for online the audience dropped by 75%…and the publisher had the guts to stick it out. 6 years later, his audience is higher than prior to when they went paid, and…well, it’s mostly paid now!

    (2) Newspapers need publisher’s who truly understand the technology of today that can be leveraged to aggregate ad content instead of playing defense and executing an outdated advertising sales strategy.

    Solution: There is technology today to allow for mass aggregation of ad content into the daily with tremendous advertiser ROI. You will have to reformat sections because the old format would make it cost ineffective for the advertiser and the Publisher. I can count on one hand the amount of newspapers who are doing this….but I get the sense this will change in coming years.

    I think newspapers will come out on top…maybe not tomorrow…but I’m going to bet on newspapers. Take the barrel out of your mouth, and relax…start contributing to help solve these model challenges as opposed to being a side line critic….GET IN THE GAME.

  2. I’m not convinced that newspaper industry failures we are seeing today are the result of “newspapers giving it away”.

    Simple economic theory tells us that the costs of distribution can no longer be passed on to the consumer in the presence of widespread digital communications devices. When costs fall because resources are no longer scarce, prices fall too.

    If every newspaper closed their doors today, there would be that many leaner and faster new companies started tomorrow.

    Get in the game? Been there, done that.