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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Great Example of Viral Marketing by MoveOn.org
If i wasn't going to vote, I am now. Click to view.
And the follow up letter days later.
Dear Robert,
Wow. Thanks to people like you, this nonvoter video has now been sent to over 6.3 million friends. It’s going out to more than 30 new people per second.
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It is getting increasingly harder for me to report on newspaper industry innovation news, there just isn’t much out there. Today makes up for all the latest goose eggs. Social news / ranking / aggregator site Reddit has partnered with British Newspaper The Independent to offer Reddit functionality to the newspaper site. I think this is a big step in the correct direction for newspaper websites. I have said all along that it is not the original content sinking newspaper sites, but their crummy user experience, navigation, and link structures which are horrible.
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ENOUGH!!! Everyone stop doing what everyone else is doing. I present you today with the metaprinter contrarian business model, otherwise entitled ALL THE WRONG MOVES. As the name implies, the business model takes all the recent attempts to “save the newspaper industry” and flips them on their head. The model is based heavily on the quote below, but once you read the contrary ideas, they don’t sound so crazy.
Warren Buffett says
SO…
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You know from my sidebar that I keep a dynamic list of good news media websites. Some of the examples are newspaper websites, there are a couple of news aggregators on there, and few stand alone news sites. They all exhibit something unique and compelling which makes me go back to them over and over again. Here I break down why I think the following sites are Great Newspaper Website Examples.
Click image to see larger size
The Las Vegas Sun – I would say that this is THE BEST newspaper site in America however, it is not a traditional newspaper. Only a smaller version of the site is printed and distributed, as an insert, in the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Still, this site kicks ass. It utilizes multimedia news reporting throughout the site, not just features. You’ll notice in the pictures above that the the front page changes every day, there are no rigid templates. The site uses Django and the Ellington CMS to do this as well as the genius of Rob Curley.
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How can you keep people interested in your newspaper without the distractions of competing news sources? How do you run a profitable newspaper company? How do you operate your newspaper with, dare I say, GROWTH potential? I’ve always said that newspapers need to change their business model so that it better serves the public AND generates difficult to reproduce revenue streams.
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My readers, and the subjects of my rants, know that I cannot stand when a rehashed idea is unjustly called an innovation. When I see such things, especially when an industry “expert” is involved, I call them out on it. Some people think I’m insensitive but I just tell it like I see it. It does no good to the newspaper industry to applaud mediocrity, not at this critical point. So in late August when I criticized newspaper designer Mario Garcia and his redesign business, I did just that.
I also understand that it is too easy to just criticize and offer up platitudes. I must defend my definition of innovation, no? Below is something I’ve been working on since 2007 that addresses many issues destroying the newspaper industry. It is a well thought out (if I don’t say so my self), well argued, and viable. It is a digital newspaper business model which could be launched TODAY should an investor or publisher choose to do so. ENJOY!
The My Post Infinite Zoning model
Market Demand:
A paradigm shift in information streams has fragmented traditional newspaper and magazine business models. Former subscribers are fleeing print media to fill their customization and personalization needs online.
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I’ll just post this now and build on it later. Article is from:
The Knight Digital Media Center is a partnership of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles and the University of California at Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. The Center is funded by a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
Steven Smith departs and the question arises: Who should lead newspapers’ online transformation?
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In case you don’t know, there is a gasoline shortage in the south and the Atlanta area in particular. The New York Times says, “The problem began when Hurricanes Gustav and Ike battered Gulf Coast refineries, reducing the national refinery capacity by as much as 20 percent. It worsened as nervous drivers stockpiled gasoline”.
Where can you find gas? How can you find gas if you can’t drive around to find it? As Clay Shirky would say, “HERE COMES EVERYBODY”! Twitter to the rescue! By inserting hash tags into tweets, people are able cover one topic completely, or at least better than traditional media. When people started communicating their need for gas in Atlanta an #atlgas hash tag was born. Continue reading
Screen Shots from top news sites around the nation and world taken at 1:50pm – 1:58pm, moments after agencies monitoring the vote revealed that it could not pass. Traders in NY watching CNBC’s vote coverage immediately began selling off equities and buying up Treasury Bills. The Dow Jones Industrial Average responded by dropping 600 points before bouncing and settling down 777.68 points at the close of market trading. This post shows how the newspaper and news sites anticipated and reacted to this EXTREMELY IMPORTANT vote.
Some Good. Some Not So Good. There Should Be Breaking News Notices On All Sites.
As can be predicted, The Wall Street Journal covered this well. They have a breaking news banner across the entire webpage drawing attention to the incident. Good Job. Continue reading
A while back I wrote a story about The Rocky Mountain News and their incredibly stupid use of Twitter. I would like to report now on a fantastic usage of newer technology by a newspaper.
The California Metrolink crash on September 12, 2008 was covered by The LA Times website with a Django powered database. The database was up and running in only 3 hours once the decision was made to utilize it. I commend Megan Garvey, morning Metro assignment editor and Ben Welsh, database producer, for the outstanding job they did in reporting this tragedy. Continue reading
Polymer Vision says they’ll have a color screen version of their eReader in about 4 years. Why wait for technology to catch up? I’ve successfully spliced the Readius screen around the rediculously thin new Apple iPhone 3G. Continue reading
Telephone interview with Igor Smirnoff, Director of Strategic Development for PressDisplay.com
With sustainability and environmental issues dominating business strategy these days I became interested in what types of applications were available to newspaper publishers to reduce their carbon footprint. I discovered NewspapersDirect and their Smart Edition ePaper solution. Smart Edition is a version of their PressDisplay.com offering for newspaper publishers to serve up PDF versions of their content online.
In the past I have been critical of newspapers simply digitizing their newspaper and putting it online. I feel this is an under-utilization of the capabilities which the internet and high speed broadband connections offer. I was skeptical of this application, but wanted to learn more about their technology which is more dynamic than a simple reader. Continue reading
The New York Times’ chief technology officer Marc Frons and Aron Pilhofer, editor of interactive news spoke recently with New York media blog fishbowlNY. The topic of discussion was their API and the desire to open the code up to, “programmers, developers, and others”. The timeline is weeks to months. Below are a few excerpts.
The goal, according to Aron Pilhofer, editor of interactive news, is to “make the NYT programmable. Everything we produce should be organized data.” Continue reading
NJ.com site metrics as of September 22, 2008
According to Alexa and Who.is info, we can see that the month following the release of Ledger Live generated losses in reach, rank, and page views. So despite the fact that Fast Company contributor Robert Scoble reports this as “one encouraging early trial“, the data tells us otherwise.
I wish Mr. Scoble had used this article to talk about some real innovation going on in newspapers, not this example. Video on news sites? Stop the presses!!!! Newspapers need to give their customers a real reason to stick with their product.
Every time a reader decides she’s going to quit her print subscription and make the move to the world of online news, she’s confronted with a new set of decisions. Instead of the local paper, she has her choice of thousands of papers and content providers. The goal of the newspaper at this critical
point is to get their readers to stick to their paper even when they make the switch to online.
Telephone interview with Alan Murray, Deputy managing editor and executive editor, online for The Wall Street Journal. This is transcribed from a telephone interview between Alan and I, so don’t kill me if I flubbed a word. Some answers are paraphrased.
First, thank you for taking the time to speak with me. I will disclose to you and my readers that I am a print and online subscriber to The Wall Street Journal and some years ago I worked there as a press operator in South Brunswick New Jersey.
META: Alan, after my review of the new website for WSJ.com I was left wanting a little more information regarding the specifics of the new website. Metaprinter’s readers also are interested in some site specifics so I hope this phone interview answers those questions.
META: How long has it been since the site was redesigned?
ALAN: The site was built in 1996 with the intention of being a news service for our paid print-newspaper subscribers. The site underwent a slight redesign in 2002 but until yesterday remained relatively unchanged throughout that time.
META: What prompted you to launch a new site?
ALAN: As I just mentioned, the site was not meant to do what it was trying to do as of late. The new site was designed and implemented to be a news website for subscribers, the general public, (and, Metaprinter assumes, advertisers). In the last one and a half years alone our website traffic has more than doubled. We wanted to better serve that audience.
META: Who did the site design and development? Was it in-house?
ALAN: Early on our in house team worked with Avenue A/ Razorfish for design and other things. Later we worked with Sapient to build and launch the site. Our in house team was involved throughout the entire process.
META: What was the biggest technical departure from the old site?
I didn’t ask this question but id say it’s the emphasis on community and interaction with their readers. The old site didn’t have many opportunities for dialogue.
META: WSJ is in a unique position where many of its paid subscribers come from Wall Street financial institutions. As those institutions collapse and cut back, do you see it impacting your paid subscriber revenue model?
ALAN: Large financial institutions represent a very small portion of our million plus subscribers. Most of our subscribers are small to medium size business owners, CEO’s, CFO’s and individuals interested in business finance.
META: As the only large newspaper with a paid online subscriber model, do you have any plans to go to an advertising based model?
ALAN: many of our offerings are already free to the public and advertiser supported. Sections like politics, and features like our videos and blogs. In the next few months we plan to open up our new community feature to non-subscribers however they will be required to login with their real names.
META: Linked in has a similar model no?
ALAN: Having a community with people interacting is nothing new. We want to test the notion that our unique subscriber base will build a community for intelligent, high-profile discourse.
META: Thank you, any final comments?
ALAN: Our new site is not the end of the line. It is a launch pad for new applications and innovation. It marks the beginning of a period of rapid innovation for WSJ.com. Stay tuned for lots of new developments and thanks for taking notice.
META: Thank you Alan.
End of Interview….
Well readers, Mr. Alan had to catch a plane, but that quick phone interview certainly shed some light on the thinking and planning that goes on when launching a site. Again, this is not a redesign. This is new programming, new applications, a new way of approaching the interaction of between man and machine and the evolving technology behind it.
Change is good
Change is bad
What is the only thing that stays the same?
Change is
Online is the future but does not account for enough of the revenue stream yet to be self sustaining. What did I learn from this interview? Hire kick ass developers, journalists, and editors to differentiate your news site from everyone else. Offer a real value addition to people’s lives. Even better? Do one thing and do it so well that it becomes your brand. News agencies that don’t do this will be swallowed up by other successful site and papers, speeding up the print to online transition.
Given that technology and taste changes so fast, it is a wonder that websites change so little over time. I would say that after 2 years a site should be seriously courting developers for a new product and after 3 years without change readers are starting to wonder if you really care about them. If your site is 4 years old without extensive modifications, you are probably losing customers because the customer experience is so horrible.
I am happy to report that the new WSJ.com site is not a redesign, but a completely new experience.
As you can see from the before and after photos below, the new WSJ.com site is wider, minus a side bar, and less cluttered. My initial reaction is that I like it.
OLD wsj.com site
NEW wsj.com site
I go to log in and right away encounter a problem. On my Imac I cannot log in using Firefox. I can however log in using Safari. As soon as I log in I send WSJ a note using the comment feature about the problem and within 15 minutes the problem is fixed. Maybe it was me, maybe not, either way small glitch corrected.
The WSJ.com site is the only newspaper website I know which offers real online communities. The Journal Community is where people post profiles, make connections, share news items, and form groups around their interests. I set up my profile, which takes about 2 minutes, and peruse the categories for newspaper groups. There are none so I start one. Here it is. Please Join.
Exploring the site, I get lost in a series of links and have to hit the home button a few times to get my bearings. This should resolve itself after a couple visits to the site. I read a few articles and check out the comments section, video tab, interactive graph tab, and slideshow section associated with them. They are nice new features. I should mention that at press time, only paid subscribers can comment on articles and join the community. There is also a newsreel widget that can be downloaded or embedded into any blog or social networking portal.
A redesign takes what was before, moves stuff around, puts bells and whistles on it and calls it done. What the Wall Street Journal did was completely change the way people interact with their product AND expand on the capabilities of what can be done with a multimedia website. Aside from a few kinks that will be worked out in the next few days, I think the new site is a homerun.
The Rocky Mountain News tweets the funeral of a 3-year-old, Marten Kudlis, killed when a car ran into the ice cream parlor he was in.
I highly recommend newspapers using Twitter to build an audience while writing/ gathering a story for publication. I think it is great for on-the-scene reporting at breaking news events.
But what is the point of using Twitter at a funeral? This does not add to my self-actualization, it does not inform me or entertain me either. The online editor at the Rocky Mountain News needs to get his head examined for allowing this tasteless stunt.
The Reporter is Berny Morson. John Temple is the editor, publisher and president of the Rocky Mountain News. Links are provided to contact these people. No one has been able to reach these two for a comment at press time.
UPDATE 9-13-2008
John Temple attempts to explain his usage of Twitter for covering this funeral. He claims the following:
The problem is that this was not a “road closing”. It wasn’t a presidential debate. It wasn’t done for the sake of the family.
Most importantly, The Rocky Mountain News should learn how to use Twitter before unleashing it at a kid’s (or anyone’s) funeral. You don’t have to be a newspaper editor to know that.
John, I’ve always thought that the purpose of a newspaper is to promote self-actualization by providing readers with quality information. Readers use that information to make better decisions on a wide range of topics, from which road to travel on (road closings), to which candidate to vote for. When readers find these interactions favorable over a period of time, then a relationship is cultivated and readers come to view your paper as a reliable source for news, information, guidance, entertainment, and advertising.
Not very long ago, the industry standard for revenue generated per subscriber was roughly $1000. It is easy to see why this is no longer the case. The product is no longer providing that level of quality, relevant, information.
Alerts.com recently unveiled MySchoolAlerts at DEMO fall 2008. The application allows schools to prepare a message and send it out via text, email, voice mail, on the web, and instant message. The idea is to use it for school delays, closings, events, and emergencies. GREAT IDEA!!!!
They also have alerts for CraigsList, GasPrices, LocalNews, WeatherAlerts DailyHoroscope, HeadlineNews, NCAAFootball, PressReleases, BirthdayReminders, PriceWatch, RememberIt, WakeUpCall, DailyTidbits, MovieAlert, NFL, and many more.
As my title states, these should have been newspaper apps. I know some newspaper allow alert features and Google has GoogleAlerts, which I use for very specific keywords, newspapers are not using this technology to its full benefit.
Example? Almost every newspaper has an events page that is searchable and has a calendar and all that fun stuff. But almost none have an alert notification feature. Given that people are inundated with information every day, wouldn’t it be easier and more effective to sign up for a specific alert than to put it all up there and hope someone finds it?
I have a young son; I want to put an email alert on NJ.com for family events in Monmouth County. I can’t do it. This is a problem. This does not add value to your product line and it does not add to my self-actualization.
The magazine is targeted to extremely rich people, but us poor folk like to look at the content and ads as well. Hell, I even went to the Vertu website to find out how much a Vertu Ascent Ti. cell phone costs ($6999.99), pretty amazing. Although I’ll never buy one, perhaps my wife would like that Smythson raspberry croc print leather continental purse for Christmas?
The overall build quality of the magazine is good but not great. The Magazine is perfect bound and suffers from a coversheet that is too thin (for the glue and ink coverage). As you can see from the picture below the cover is wrinkled at the spine.
Another problem I found was on page 94 with ink lay-down resulting in streaking. Again, seen below.
Innovation? YES! Why innovation? Continue reading
Take Aways: Continue reading
I have been contemplating this a lot for the past couple of months now. In light of all the changes in information delivery, what is a newspaper organization’s greatest asset? What differentiates it from other forms of information delivery? What does a newspaper do that Google can’t do? That CNN can’t do? That news aggregators can’t do? That the internet alone can’t do?
Newspapers deliver a physical product to people’s homes and businesses. And not only that, the product is invited into the home or office by the subscriber. No one else can do this.
The big problem for newspapers is that although they hold this monopoly, they haven’t evolved their product to serve their customers, hence the migration online – away from print.
The Daily Sentinel in Grand Junction Colorado has a unique spin on this conundrum. Instead of innovating their newspaper, they decided to offer a delivery service to anyone in their newspaper distribution area.
The Sentinel Express operates by using existing trucks and delivery logistics to deliver packages overnight. The courier service is almost 3 times as cheap as using DHL, Fed Ex, or UPS.
I like this kind of out-of-the-box thinking, however you are now moving further away from your core competency. I wonder if that’s what parent company COX thought too, because they announced last week they are selling the newspaper.
The following video goes way back to 2005, but I wanted to share before it’s lost forever. This is newspaper Innovation. It all started in Lawrence Kansas with Adrian Holovaty and Rob Curley.
These next 4 videos feature Rob Curley speaking on hacking newspaper databases using open source software. He shares his experiences with Lawrence Journal World, Lawrence.com, Scripps, and The Washington Post. I like his anecdotes and the applications he and his team develop. But where are the applications now? I don’t see them in wide practice at newspapers.
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During growth, and certainly maturity, companies must make the effort to innovate to avoid the decline phase of their business life span. Most newspapers have failed to do this and are now attempting to innovate while in steep decline.
The timing of new product launches must come well before the old product decline phase so that declining revenues and new product revenue growth offset each other.
I blog about innovation within the newspaper industry here at metaprinter and this is truly an innovation. At Drupa 2008 Hewlett Packard unveiled a new 36.5-inch wide inkjet web press. The press is capable of running 400 feet per minute and utilizing various impositions executing jobs ranging from broadsheet newspaper to standard size letter.
What can be done with such a piece of equipment you might ask? Well, Editor & Publisher summed it up nicely as such:
“Possibilities include: newspaper products other than the core daily edition; moving late-breaking news out from a national paper’s newsroom and page-assembly hub to remote print sites to augment the main print runs; production of larger papers’ local sections at distribution centers rather than trucking them from central plants, reducing their cost, stretching their deadlines and creating more advertising opportunities at lower price; production of the local paper with a national or nearby metro daily, or the weekly addition of a certain section of the larger paper to the local paper for certain subscribers.” Editor&Publisher
To see and hear the press running check out this YouTube video here and below:
No quiet room needed for this bad boy and a far stretch from the presses I am used to working on.
Then again, this type of equipment can print 70k to 90k impressions per hour, which is 12 webs at roughly 2,100 to 2,700 feet per minute given a 22″ cutoff. This is 60 times faster than the HP.
Just for fun lets say you are printing a 96-page Black Friday newspaper on the TKS press above. You would need 12 webs running at 70k impressions per hour for 5 hours to print 350,000 newspapers.The same job on the HP would require 24 HP Inkjet Web Presses running 25 hours! or 120 HP Inkjet Web Presses running 5 hours! Moore’s Law, if it applies here loosely, suggests that the HP will be able to print a complete newspaper as fast as the offset web presses in 12 years. See you in 2020.
RELATED:
Metaprinter Offers a New, Innovative, Digital Newspaper Business Model – Infinite Zoning
This model uses the HP Inkjet Web Press to print infinitely customizable newspaper inserts. In late 2008 this idea was pitched to The Washington Post and Tribune, however they felt going to a pure online play was more in-line with their long term goals.
UPDATE:
This story got picked up by the Newspaper Association of America’s magazine Presstime. Click to read the article. Thanks for the heads-up Pete!
March 23, 2009 Océ aims new digital press squarely at newspapers http://tinyurl.com/d3c7ap
We try like crazy to give our readers content that is relevant to their lives, and give them other services in any way that they want them in order to help them live their lives better and be more informed.
And do it all in entertaining and interesting ways that keep them coming back.
Some people call that “hyperlocal”. We call it doing our damn jobs.
Taking good care of your readers will always be the right answer.
Just make sure you do whatever it takes to let them know what you’ve built.
To that point, our team has a few new tricks up our sleeves that we can’t wait to try out. And to say that we’re motivated is the understatement of understatements.
We’re going to Vegas, baby!
Excerpts from Rob Curley’s response to a recent Wall Street Journal article entitled, “Big Daily’s Hyperlocal Flop”.
My Take
Lawrence.com is an awesome site that is intuitive and engaging. I live in New Jersey and I still visit the site regularly, that’s how interesting the content and features are. Extrapolating that interest to a “general population” site like LoudonExtra.com is difficult. I give Rob and his team credit for trying like hell to do something innovative. There are too many haters and doomsday watchers in our industry right now.
Held in Hershey Pennsylvania. I was only able to attend one day. There was very little new information being presented at the conference lectures. One exception was Editor of The Shelby Star, Jon Jimison, who gave a nice presentation about strategies they have implemented to grow readership. The exhibits were uninspired and even though I see more and more CMS companies attending these things, Apple Inc. was the only one showing something that could add value to one’s existing operations.
The keynote speaker was futurist Michael Rogers from the NY Times. He spoke in generalities and reiterated things already known throughout the industry. Some quotes, “hard times ahead”, “online revenue will ONE DAY catch up to print”, “millenials are opportunistic and omnivorous media consumers”, “mobile communication devices will replace laptops as the standard”…Somethings he said that I disagree with. “Growing WiFi coverage” all trends say this is not the case in the USA and in fact the New York Times reports otherwise here. One other thing and I’ll move on. He states local is an untapped market. This is true. but how can medium to large newspapers monetize that market and incorporate it into their large operation? My point is that local is best done by very few people with the interaction of the actual locals. The ideal local site or publication needs little capital and expect modest margins when compared to traditional newspaper margins. Big organizations need the national and international accounts.
Durring the Q&A I asked Michael and a panel of three newspaper publishers whether they have considered offering some classified services for free in order to drive readership. I was met with a brick wall of ignorance as everyone on the panel rejected my notion based on the fact that “we still need to make money”. I brought up the example of giving away a razor to sell the blades, they didn’t miss a beat, they didn’t care or they didn’t get it. I can live with rejection, but they didn’t offer any ideas, alternatives, examples or new business practices they were using …Right, so how is your business going to grow with no readership growth? I’m constantly disappointed by the lack of open mindedness by leaders in our DECLINING industry.
THE SHELBY STAR …online at least, nothing of note was mentioned about their print product. The editor of a small North Carolina newspaper, THE SHELBY STAR spoke about their attempts to stay relevant and grow readership. They partnered with IFRA and their parent company Freedom Communications to dramatically increase readership. How did they do it? Mainly, the vehicle below.
I’ve been away getting married and enjoying my honeymoon, I apologize to all of you who rely on Metaprinter for your daily Newspaper industry updates.
The last time I wrote Anne MacDonald was getting confrontational with the newspapers. Well it seems they had the last laugh, as she was fired from Macy’s quickly after making her “shape up” comments. Macy’s new CMO will be increasing ad spending and coupon printing. I bet those coupons will be printed or inserted into many newspapers.
Printing and Newsroom History:
For those interested in some newspaper printing history check out the article entitled, “Copy” and this New York Times three and a half minute audio slide show. The narrator does not mention it in the slide show, but the new building does not house NYT printing operations. Their flagship printing facility is now College Point Queens, New York. I just wanted to clarify, because the article states it and the slide show does not.
The thing which struck me when viewing the slide show was the look on the faces of those men and women in the photographs. It is pride. Pride in workmanship, pride in their contribution to the final product. These people worked hard, and although they may have grumbled or groused about the conditions or deadlines, I doubt for an instant any one of them would have traded it in for some other profession. I think that look is lacking in today’s pressrooms and newsrooms and I do not know if it will ever return. How do we get it back? We must get it back! It is an important feeling which no one can wrench from one’s grip, the way faith cannot be questioned and the way hope never lacks to motivate. Pride is freedom. It is the swagger in one’s step, and the confidence required to be successful. Pride allows the individual to contribute more that they ever thought they could. Pride let’s you do good work for the work’s sake, because it just feels so good and not because you were told to do so. I long to see that look again…
This is an excellent piece of reporting by David W. Dunlap, and I enjoyed the multimedia presentation of the story immensely. The New York Times audio slide shows are one of the most innovative applications newspapers have created.
“The medium is the message” Marshall McLuhan’s statement is completely relevant when thinking of the ways information is currently displayed on newspaper websites.
The online version of a newspaper should look very little like the printed newspaper and act completely unlike it. A newspaper is a finite, unchanging medium for displaying content. Once the content is paginated and printed, the product has been finalized and that day’s work is over. Conversely, the online edition of a Newspaper must remain dynamic at all times, receiving content from the company, readers, and advertisers at all times. The Internet is a medium for multimedia interactive environments. Newspapers marginalize their online potential when they maintain the structure and function of a printed paper on their website. I don’t know why this is such a hard concept for newspapers to grasp. There should be more interactive features on newspaper websites.
A newspaper’s online site must be displayed in a format that is appealing to the sense and easy to navigate. Simply putting digitized newspaper pages online is penny wise and pound foolish. People will recognize right away that no effort has gone into the site and will just go elsewhere.
I would like to see more innovation at newspapers’ websites. Something that realizes the potential of the medium. Something more interactive and in-line with the customer’s needs. It’s easy to say that, anyone can say we need something better, but more and more online destinations are coming up with good ideas, unfortunately they are not newspaper companies.
At press time, a great example of innovation in newspaper websites is the Asbury Park Press Data Universe.
The bottom line is that more can be done to steer readers and advertisers to online newspaper sites. How many truly innovative, user-friendly newspaper websites have you come across? These companies have enough money in their coffers to fund an innovative team eager to come up with a great newspaper website. All that is needed now is a commitment from the Newspaper companies to embrace change.
