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This is why your newspaper is dying

bradcolbow.com

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Re: This is why your newspaper is dying

#21

Post by cpeterso »

chc wrote: post #3
ecaron wrote: post #2

Only thing missing in this is the local newspapers lacking local news point. I honestly don't read the St Paul Pioneer Press for reviews on the iPad - there are much more relevant places for me that information from more intelligent sources. I read the local paper to know what's happening locally. Can you imagine a newspaper without any AP stories in it? So clean. So relevant. So free of redundancy from the kind of i…

Except that producing your own stories is more expensive (unless you want to hire middle schoolers), and you need something to put in the space between the advertisements. I agree that a newspaper that actually fills its niche well is desirable, but it's unfortunately a tough business model. Frankly, I kind of suspect that local news will eventually be dominated by passionate bloggers. They don't have the overhead th…

I imagine there must be some interesting business models (or sustainable non-profit model) for harnessing local bloggers and print media. I follow an awesome local blog about my city government. The blogger is SUPER passionate and documents all the local issues and city council meetings. My local newspapers cover few of these local issues, issues that problem more directly affect people than the national crisis of the week. Fortunately, a local paper hired (?) the blogger to write (or syndicate) her content for their paper (dead tree and website).

Re: This is why your newspaper is dying

#22

Post by coffeemug »

Traditionally, the newspaper business was about delivering unique information quicker than other newspapers (or, in the case of local newspapers, delivering unique information that wasn't available elsewhere). Newspapers are dying because in an environment where instantaneous content delivery is done at essentially zero cost, fewer and fewer people are willing to pay for undifferentiated content. The author is confusing cause and effect - circumventing popup blockers and failing to invest into content formatting is most definitely the effect, not the cause.

Publications that have differentiated content (e.g. Wall Street Journal, NYT, Economist) seem to be doing just fine, but having thousands of papers that rehash the same content without any edge on each other whatsoever is just not sustainable given the current state of information technology.

EDIT: I only considered revenue from the subscribers, and ignored downward pressure on advertising revenue. The point still stands - the market can no longer sustain undifferentiated content (people don't pay for it anymore, and advertisers will pay less than before because they have better options), and differentiated content is probably a worse business than it used to be (people will pay for it, but the revenue from advertisers is still being diverted to Google).

Re: This is why your newspaper is dying

#23

Post by MartinCron »

rmason wrote: post #6

This is really only the beginning of a list. Most newspapers don't realize it yet but its getting pointless for them to even publish national and world news. Most twenty somethings i know never read the newspaper. Yet as they buy houses and have kids they develop an intense interest in local news about their community. The company that gets local right will be the new Hearst of this era. I am pretty sure it won't be…

Where I live, Seattle's Ballard neighborhood, we have an excellent hyper-local blog called MyBallard.com. It's a great resource for news that I actually care about but isn't at all interesting to people outside the neighborhood. The company behind it has developed blogs for many other neighborhoods and seems to be reasonably successful at it.

Re: This is why your newspaper is dying

#24

Post by joshu »

coffeemug wrote: post #22

Traditionally, the newspaper business was about delivering unique information quicker than other newspapers (or, in the case of local newspapers, delivering unique information that wasn't available elsewhere). Newspapers are dying because in an environment where instantaneous content delivery is done at essentially zero cost, fewer and fewer people are willing to pay for undifferentiated content. The author is confus…

subscriber revenue only accounts for 15-25% of total revenues...

i definitely agree that bland, undifferentiated content is killing the newspapers. what happens when revenues are down? fire the newsroom, get content from AP.

unfortunately, i am the one who is to blame for all the share buttons.

Re: This is why your newspaper is dying

#26

Post by nhebb »

kingkawn wrote: post #9
timr wrote: post #4

This is a red herring. The New York Times is "dying" too, but (other than not linking outside the site, which is of debatable consequence to site revenue), it doesn't do any of these things. This is mainly a list of one person's pet peeves, asserted to be the reason that newspapers are hurting. I have another theory: the advertising market for newsprint is being decimated . The pop-unders and massive ads are probably…

The NYTimes is actually profitable again.

That's not what their 2nd quarter earnings report [1] said. They had an operating loss of $114 million. They took a special write down of $161 million for goodwill, but the revenues had decreased 2 percent. They predicted an improved 3rd quarter, but until it comes to fruition I think it's too early to say that they've turned the corner.

[1] http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=105317&p=iro...

Re: This is why your newspaper is dying

#27

Post by rickmb »

It may not be the reason why newspapers are dying, but it is one of the reasons very few people pity them: in 20 years, there hasn't been one serious effort by a newspaper to create an attractive, pleasant and useful online experience people might actually want to pay for.

The readers needs are way down the order or priorities, yet the readers paying for content directly is the only halfway viable business model. It may not be enough, but they could at least once have tried a strategy that puts the readers first.

Re: This is why your newspaper is dying

#28

Post by danso »

Why is it that a critique of newspapers in which the very first criticism is about not linking to source material fails itself to link to the papers which it rips on?

Actually I don't want a link to the actual live offense, but a link to a full screenshot of the entire visible page seems to be warranted. Because I'd like to see a) the context of these screwups (in the first panel, is it actual content produced by the paper, or wire material in which re-editing presents other logistical obstacles?) and b) I want to know what paper made the alleged screwup. Because if the article has a nice link bait headline slamming the entirety of the news industry, yet uses examples from the Podunk Gazette and similarly sized papers, that's also worth knowing.

Re: This is why your newspaper is dying

#29

Post by danso »

rickmb wrote: post #27

It may not be the reason why newspapers are dying, but it is one of the reasons very few people pity them: in 20 years, there hasn't been one serious effort by a newspaper to create an attractive, pleasant and useful online experience people might actually want to pay for. The readers needs are way down the order or priorities, yet the readers paying for content directly is the only halfway viable business model. It…

The WSJ has long been taking in subscription fees.

Re: This is why your newspaper is dying

#30

Post by Groxx »

"Linking to a random story in the middle of an article"

Thank God I'm not the only one that sees this as nonsensical and annoying. Who first came up with it, and where do they live? I've got to return all the crap they threw at me; I certainly don't want it.

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