The Advocate yesterday proved itself willing to take a bashing in the name of free speech when it published my blog entry "Newspaper customers deserve better." I doubted Gannett managers would be so First-Amendment oriented, but they proved me wrong. Some really good comments were added by readers too.
Something about contemporary print journalism that I don't think anybody understands is this: Why are publishers attempting to profit from a product they are throwing at my doorstep for $26.86 per three months, while, with the other hand, they are giving me without charge most of the same info on the Internet?
How long will it be before they understand they now have two products to SELL, each with distinct advantages?
I have for several years spent a good chunk of change (currently $25 per year) for a subscription to LiveJournal, which, before I started "blogging," I used as a creative writing outlet and an Internet meeting place with people who interest me. I scarcely write anything there anymore, but I still read about my friends and sometimes comment. So how much more valuable would be such a meeting place among local folks, assuming the web site were as skillfully designed and as convenient to use as LJ?
Then what if you added to that web site a truly well-designed, 24-hours-per-day news report with constant updates that would keep folks returning throughout the day and evening?
Then what if you added a good search engine to that site, one that would pull up local names and previously reported items?
And what if you offered many more useful databases than is being done already?
And a complete an easily searched library of back issues of the print edition?
And links and e-mail addresses to local government offices, agencies, and businesses?
And what if you promoted all of these features and gave the url's throughout the articles and ads in the print edition?
And what if you provided for advertisers in the print edition links to the web site where shoppers could go for detailed information and more pictures of individual retail products? Think of the advantage advertisers would have over those blinking annoying pieces of crap presently being stuck in web readers' faces.
If offered only that much on their web sites it would be worth a good chunk of change for a subscription - at least $50 a year to me.
On the other hand, my wife would pay nothing. She's not a computer person, but gives the printed Advocate a thorough read, while I scarcely give it a good skim, except for the classifieds and photos. So there's the rub for publishers. How do you serve - and profit from - both types of audience? And what can the print edition do that the web will never do, beside serve people like my wife?
A renaissance in classified advertising would greatly add to reader interest. Classifieds should be the common man's marketplace and it would be if they again became affordable. Publishers should use them as loss leaders for print versions only.
Other advertising that can be handled only by print versions is legal advertising and delivery of inserts which is also a readership a draw for shoppers like my wife.
Something else that cannot be handled on the web is photojournalism - words and pictures used in combination to add dimension to the subject matter. There isn't - and never will be - enough room on the computer screen to display good photos and layouts.
Then there are certain types of reading matter that don't have a timeliness and can be deferred to the print version and only there. 1) Well-conceived and well-written and tightly edited and interesting feature items, local and syndicated; 2) Daily TV schedule; 3) The day's community calendar; 4) State and national government coverage to include each vote by local senators and representatives - plus synopses of bills passing though the statehouse and congress and state and federal courts; 5) News analysis; 6) Editorials; 7) Columnists - to include columns by local reporters and editors; and 8) Comics - and likely much more that could be used in schools as teaching tools.
All of these are basic to newspaper reader interest and worth money if professionally conceived and presented.
Newspaper profitability is a matter of getting rid of herd mentality that says newspaper web sites should be a free version of the print edition.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
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Sorry, Bruce, but I think it is far too late for newspapers to adapt and survive. I'm afraid they are history. About as likely to make it in the long run as we are to have a return to town criers.
ReplyDeleteI get my TV listings, and movie listings, from yahoo. I can find commentary on any subject; local, national or international; on web sites and blogs...like yours.
The web owns classified advertising now. Newspapers will never be able to get it back at any price.
Photojournalism as we knew and practiced it is dead. Today's photojournalist is not considered to be doing his job if he doesn't deliver video along with still photos. Camera technology is very close to the state where photo-j folks will just shoot digital video and extract any still frames they want from the video.
I recently attended a talk by a representative of the Dayton Daily News. What I heard between the lines was desperation. Newspapers have lost their market because they have lost their function...it has been taken over by the internet and they won't get it back.
My children wouldn't even think of looking at a newspaper to get news. Why would they do that when they are on line and can get whatever they want with a few mouse clicks...often for free? Our generation is the end of newspaper readers.
Oh...I read my daily cartoons on yahoo too. I can google any politician's voting record and have it on my screen in seconds. Why would I dig through a newspaper to find that?
Nope, newspapers are over. Their day has passed. All they can do to survive as organizations is adapt to the new media and few of them seem capable of doing that.
Dave, you suffer from herd mentality - exactly what's wrong. Consider, please, this unlikely scenario: I am the editor; Rich Bergerman is features editor; Jim Underwood is news/editorial page editor; Dave Levingston is graphics editor and chief photographer with three hotshot photographers at his command. We have the financial wherewithal to make things happen. We focus on what is important and what is interesting about Licking County. We make it happen. Would your children read?
ReplyDeleteSure, if we put it on a web site. The point is that the traditional newspaper is no longer an appropriate medium for delivery of the product. There was a time when the most efficient way to deliver news was to have someone walk through town shouting it. Then came newspapers. Now it is the internet and there is no reason to go to the tremendous expense of printing the news on paper. There will be teams like that producing news. But they won't call what they produce a newspaper...or maybe they will, but it will be an "e-newspaper" available only on a website. Much lower cost to produce than a newspaper. That means lower cost to advertisers. And there will be an ability to gather information about the individual readers and push appropriate advertising targeted to each individual's likes and needs. Today it makes as much sense to print a newspaper as it would to carve the news in a stone tablet.
ReplyDeleteBut I don't think today's newspapers will be the ones to produce this new product. They are too locked into the old way of doing things and unable to streamline their operation to the form of staffing called for by the new media. Today all you need are the reporting staff, a few internet geeks, and customer service/ad sales people. The pressmen are the big losers as far as jobs are concerned. And that huge infrastructure to actually print the newspaper is no longer needed. The whole operation can run out of a small suite of offices. No heavy lifting involved. A far cry from linotype machines, galley's of hot type and a web press.
They will buy it and read it because it will be available to them only in the printed version, except several days later when it will show up in the on-line archives. In that format your images will be small and grainy, and the links from the print-version ads to the on-line details will have expired.
ReplyDeleteBut why would anyone buy that product when someone else will be providing all that information, updated minute by minute, on a web site with photos that blow up to full screen size with excellent resolution and video that plays on command? And with advertising targeted to each individual reader according to their interests, and including direct links to the advertisers' web sites.
ReplyDeleteYes, the newspapers may well try to do a product like that to preserve their paper product...but they will fail. That's competition. And the competition will be able to provide that superior, more timely product at a lower cost of production because they don't have to mess with that whole printing and distribution operation.
i agree with dave -- newsprint is only going to stick around as long as those of us over 50 are alive .... no one under that age is reading much of anything on paper, least of all newspapers, so as we die out, so will the old media we cling to .... i still get two newspapers dropped on my front porch every day, and read thru most of each (tho fewer inside pages every year, i confess), but after teaching future journalists for 20+ years i concluded it was a fraud to continue passing along the kind of know-how that was no longer marketable ..... besides, like bruce has said many a time, today's journalism is a shadow of its former self, and generally an embarrassment to behold ..... let's let newspapers die out, and just hope the same fate awaits the vapid opinion and pandering that passes for news and analysis on tv ..... and don't get me started on the blogosphere -- a cacophony of banshees (present company excepted, of course).....
ReplyDeleterich
ps -- how much were you going to pay that 'bergerman' fellow on your licking county rag, bruce?
Rich ... as a veteran instructor of journalists, one who writes here to share wisdom on the value of print reportage - and who still doesn't know the keyboard comes equipped with a shift key - the pay will be considerably less than it would if you came to it with respect for capitalization. Also, I will take a voluntary cut in pay because after all these years I still can't spell "Bergeman" the way you do. I still think there's an "r" missing.
ReplyDelete