Found via @ehelm on Twitter

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.

NAA sent me a letter with this month’s Presstime magazine letting me know that this is the last print edition I will be receiving.  They are moving online only.  Truth be told, it was probably the last print edition I would be getting anyway you see I graduated from NYU in January and NAA wants proof that I still qualify for their student rate. I do, but you know what NAA, I’m not wasting my time to send you the appropriate paperwork. 

Why is NAA, the NEWSPAPER Association of America, eliminating their print publication and moving online only?  The reason they cite in the letter is “to adapt our organization to the realities of today’s newspaper business”.  I’m calling bullshit on their reasoning.  The real reason I suspect is because NAA is too big a coward to try something innovative and instead is hoping to just hang in there a little longer like everyone else and hope for the best.

According to NAA’s website, here is the association’s purpose:

Today, NAA serves the newspaper industry in strategic efforts to:

. Serve as a catalyst for industry growth
. Identify and disseminate examples of industry innovation
. Provide tools to exchange information and ideas
. Advocate and communicate industry views and interests to the Federal Government and to third-party standards and measurement bodies
. Communicate the vitality of newspaper media to external constituencies including the advertising community, Wall Street and the news media.

Did you read the first and last bullet points?  What an awful message eliminating print sends to NAA’s advertisers, NAA’s members, and to the advertisers who spent roughly 34 Billion dollars in PRINT advertising last year.  We are adapting “to realities of today’s newspaper business”… by getting out of paper and everything that entails.   http://www.naa.org/TrendsandNumbers/Advertising-Expenditures.aspx   This doesn’t sound like adapting to me, it sounds like abandonment and surrender to the whims of whatever may come to newspapers.

Here is what NAA should have done:

Leverage the Newspaper Industry’s greatest asset and that is – the invitation to deliver a print product to people’s homes.     

Figure out how to deliver Presstime to readers using existing distribution channels of member newspapers and 3^rd party distributors like PCF.  

Show newspapers and advertisers how much money NAA is saving by distributing PressTime this way versus the US Post Office.  Show Newspapers and Advertisers how their existing distribution infrastructure can be used to deliver products to homes across the nation.  What kinds of things?  Things like magazines, catalogs, coupons, flyers, samples, and probably many other things an ad or marketing executive would jump at the chance to drop on a subscriber’s doorstep. 

For example, I get the Wall Street Journal delivered to my doorstep 6 days a week. Why aren’t my magazines and fishing catalogs delivered this way or anything else for that matter?    I can imagine a time in the future when I end my print subscription of WSJ but if I were getting other things via this home delivery service, I would continue to welcome my magazines and catalogs on my front step.  It’s a win-win situation.

If NAA thinks that a newsPAPER’s greatest asset is delivering news via websites then they and their members should expect ad revenue to plummet while competition rises everywhere. There is NO WAY to differentiate a newspaper online. 

If NAA thinks newspapers are unique media entities, as the association’s mere presence implies, then NAA must push the newspaper industry’s greatest asset – the invitation to deliver a print product to people’s homes.  This will open new revenue streams to newspapers and offer advertisers new and less expensive ways of advertising.       

RELATED:

Big Job Cuts at NAA — And No Longer Will Print ‘Presstime’ – Editor & Publisher

The fundamental problem of newspapers on the internet – The Krugman Paradox – Metaprinter

Metaprinter Offers a New, Innovative, Digital Newspaper Business Model – Infinite Zoning

News Media Innovation, Convergence and Sustainability – Interview with Don Carli

Alan Rusbridger on the Future of Journalism from Carta on Vimeo.

Guardian editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger’s (@arusbridger) sharing some thoughts.

Why do I love it?  LOOK AT IT!  It’s all about the user experience.  The redesign was done by BrassTacksDesign.  Click here to see the before and after.

News is widely syndicated — and that’s one reason why it’s difficult to charge for the content, Wales said. “If you went into Google News and didn’t see 600 copies of the same story, but just one, that one could make money — and spreading it everywhere doesn’t make sense”.

I personaly feel that newspaper are too worried about damaging their credibility and cache to just give up something like the sports section to local sports nuts, but if phased in properly I can see it working.  Look at Seeking Alpha (I’m a contributing media writer, though I haven’t contributed anything in a while) as a model.  I don’t know what their balance sheet looks like, but I know that people trust the site enough that it has formed partnerships with companies including Yahoo! Finance, Dow Jones MarketWatch, E-Trade, and CNET. The company is backed by Benchmark Capital, a firm that funded eBay.

The key to launching successful user generated content and sections is #1 visibility: Get the authors in front of lots of people and they will usually do their best to look good and do good.  #2 selection:  Get the most enlightened and fanatical users onboard.  #3 strict enformcement of guidlines: to give readers a sense of security.

But Robert, you just laid into Topix in a recent blog post for being a big useless, flame war inducing, data dump.  That site is user generated.  Yes, and one of their big problems is ignoring rules #1-3 above.    When Wales said “give up”, he was refering to newspapers’ attempt to move their business model online.  Clearly the internet paradigm demands new models and revenue streams.

Kenneth Lerer delivered the following speech at the Columbia Journalism School Annual New Media Lecture Series on Thursday, April 23, 2009
How We Got Here and How We Get Out of Here

——————————–

Nicholas Lemann, Dean of Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, cordially invites you to

the annual Hearst Foundation New Media Lecture

Thursday, April 23, 2009 (6:30-9 pm)
Columbia Journalism School
116th St & Broadway (#1 train to 116th St)

Join us to hear Kenneth Lerer, co-founder and chairman of The Huffington Post deliver an important lecture about the media industry:

“How We Got Here and How We Get Out of Here”

6:30-7:00 pm –  reception – drinks and light food
7-9 pm – lecture + Q&A (dessert will be available after the Q&A)

No charge; no RSVP required; all are welcome.
NOTE: Free open, wi-fi available in the lecture hall for bloggers and others.

We’ll be covering this live at http://bit.ly/lerertalk and http://columbianm.blogspot.com – the blog of Columbia’s Digital Journalism Program

Read/hear some of the previous Hearst New Media Lectures and learn more about the Hearst programs at Columbia: http://bit.ly/HearstPrograms

2008: Brian Storm – Digital Storytelling at MediaStorm.org

2007: Adrian Holovaty – The Line Between Humans and Computers

2006: Dan Gillmor – Trends in New Media

2005: Neal Scarbrough – Lessons from the Cutting Edge

2004: Jack Shafer – Spinning Into Control: The Good News About the Second Generation of Web Journalism

2003: Michael Moran – War Coverage in the Internet Age

2000: Rich Jaroslovsky – The Net and the Pendulum: Lessons Learned with the Benefit of 20-20 Hindsight

1999: Dan Okrent – The Death of Print

OUR THANKS TO THE HEARST FOUNDATION FOR ITS SUPPORT OF NEW MEDIA EDUCATION AT THE COLUMBIA JOURNALISM SCHOOL

Here is the offending article: The newspaper industry just gave away another free meal, er Twitter: do they have any left? -from scobleizer.com

What isn’t explored in Robert Scoble’s article, or maybe what isn’t understood by the author of that article, is that when a disruptive technology comes along, The Internet, in this case, little to nothing can be done to prevent seismic changes in business practices.  Mark Federman sums this up way better than I can.  Here he is talking about Marshall McLuhan’s famous line “the medium is the message”.

Marshall McLuhan was concerned with the observation that we tend to focus on the obvious. In doing so, we largely miss the structural changes in our affairs that are introduced subtly, or over long periods of time. Whenever we create a new innovation – be it an invention or a new idea – many of its properties are fairly obvious to us. We generally know what it will nominally do, or at least what it is intended to do, and what it might replace. We often know what its advantages and disadvantages might be. But it is also often the case that, after a long period of time and experience with the new innovation, we look backward and realize that there were some effects of which we were entirely unaware at the outset. We sometimes call these effects “unintended consequences,” although “unanticipated consequences” might be a more accurate description. Read The Whole Thing

Scoble’s list of things “newspapers gave away” sure are nice …after the fact but what isn’t discussed is that the mere existence of the internet and ubiquity of connectivity via computers or cell phones has smashed the newspaper business model.  Can you blame Sony for not creating the Ipod?  I guess, but then you would also have to blame horse breeders for not starting Ford Motor Company and who’s the last moron who dug a shitter in someone’s yard?  Why didn’t they invent the flushing toilet?  They all just “gave it away” I guess.

The only thing I agree with is that newspapers should not give up their physical distribution routes so easily.  It is the one thing that can differentiate them from… me or Google News or the Huffington Post.  We don’t have the distribution channels that the Star-Ledger or Washington Post have.  They should be selling that service to readers and advertisers via catalog and sample subscriptions or anything else really.  I am quite certain those newspaper trucks can hold more than just newspapers.

When Clay Shirky wrote about the internet devaluing content in 1995, he was the closest I have ever read about anyone predicting the demise of the newspaper industry.  At one point in that article he writes, “When a product can be profitable on gross revenues of one-half of one cent per use, anyone deriving income from traditional classifieds is doomed in the long run”.

Craigslist, Monster, Ebay, all started after Shirky’s article and all make a killing selling items and services formerly found in newspaper classifieds.  Newspaper didn’t give anything away Scoble, the internet paradigm is merely creating new opportunities where none previously existed.  Just today for example, PNG National Sales Director Eric Cox, covered the Boston Marathon “as Solo Journalist …one camera, one laptop and on-location video streaming live to your computer via broadband”.

Craigslist could probably start a newspaper on their revenues, but every newspaper cannot start their own Craigslist.  The economics don’t work in reverse.

The last time there was such an increase in publishers and publishing was when Gutenberg’s movable type became widespread and The Church lost control of literacy rates and content distribution.  I guess they gave that away too?  No.

Newspapers are not failing because they are giving it all away.  Newspapers are failing because they have lost their virtual monopoly on content distribution.  With that loss comes lower margins and cashflow.  So is journalism dead?  No, but newspapers that require 30% profit margins to stay afloat probably are.  Media outlets that are devoid of these legacy costs and cashflow requirements like blogs and blog networks are making money as are news media outfits that never had costs associated with their distribution model.

The argument that newspaper sites cannot become sustainable without putting up a paywall is a cop-out when there are so many news media sites doing it without a paywall.  Focused sites like baristanet, westseattleblog, boing boing, thebudgetfashionista, Cnet, Techcrunch, NPR, BBC, Politico, etc… there are thousands and all are free to use with multiple revenue streams.

The answer is simple. Unlearn newspapers and learn publishing in the internet paradigm.

UPDATE:

I should have called this article “The Great Unlearning” in honor of Nicholas Carr’s The Great Unbundling.

Normally I like Dilbert comics.  They are witty and fun and relevant and I imagine the creator of those comics sometimes has a window into my world.  When I read Scott Adams blog post about saving newspaper though I couldn’t help but think that Bottleneck Bill or some other minor character wrote the piece.  Adams solution for a failing newspaper industry is called “super-local news” and relies on volunteers submitting content to newspapers… “the super-local news has to have lots of content about classrooms, Cub Scout meetings, local movies listings rated less then R, and that sort of thing.” Sounds like the internet only useless.

Adams states that this new newspaper will of course feature Dilbert comics.  *sigh* I’ll just pretend I didn’t read this Scott.

Advertising and AP add-ons throughout the site pages as well as link mazes make the existing Press of Atlantic City site user-unfriendly.  I sat down with TownNews regional manager Loren Widrick at the TownNews booth to learn more about how they were going to help the PressofAtlanticCity.com improve their site.

RI- What is the TownNews CMS built on?  What does it use?
LW- BLOX is our new CMS.  It uses Universal Template Language (UTL) an Application-independent output template language engine.  The UTL utilizes PHP, CSS and XHTML but the newspaper’s content editor does not have to know any of that, our Asset Editor is really intuitive.  The new Press of Atlantic City site is being built on BLOX and will launch April 13th.

RI- What’s so great about BLOX?
LW- BLOX is a great CMS because it is platform and device agnostic, it can render sites on a mac, pc, iPhone, or Blackberry with equal ease.  On the front end, a social networking tool is built right into the site as well as a photo gallery feature.  BLOX allows tagging all Assets which provide for sharing additional content in a story for example related images and vide.

As for the back end, the CMS is dynamic in that the templates can easily redesigned using  a WYSIWYG drag and drop interface.  The templates can be saved and previewed without making any permanent changes to the existing site, so it give the publisher greater confidence in trying new things with their layout, content, and advertising placement.

RI- Tell me about the Asset Editor
LW- It is powerful and simple.  Articles, videos, photos, graphics, archives, audio, PDFs, polls, HTML, Flash, others – These are what we call Assets, they are not tied to articles and can be stand-alone. This allows you to create relationships between Assets, creating galleries and other special presentations of material.

You will no longer need to use tools like Photoshop to crop down photos to fit the page. Cropping and resizing can be done through the Image Asset Editor without the need for a third-party editor. Resizing and reviewing video is also done right through BLOX.  You won’t lose time learning an image editing software, and you won’t have to spend money on such software. You can also create multiple thumbnails/previews of the photos from the interface.

RI-  Who hosts the site?
LW- TownNews hosts all the sites we do.  It’s easier and safer for everyone involved.

RI- Who is using BLOX now?
LW- The Quad-City Times in Davenport, Iowa and Portage Daily Register in Portage, Wisconsin are both on BLOX.

RI- How many sites use TownNews CMS?
LW- About 1600 in the US and Canada so we have TONS of experience.  We do lots of weeklies and niche sites as well as daily newspaper sites.  The Press of Atlantic City will be one of the bigger news sites we’ve built.

RI- any parting words?
LW- The BLOX CMS has increased our customers’ sites revenue by creating well laid out, search engine friendly, easy to navigate sites that link to many internal assets, increasing pageviews and user engagement.

RI- Thanks for your time
LW- Thank you

Visit the TownNews site for more information about their BLOX CMS.