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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

#51

Post by MartinCron »

andyking wrote: post #36
MartinCron wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

http://forargyll.com/ is a brilliant example of this--they were originally a group set up to launch a community radio station for a remote part of Scotland. This was unsuccessful for a variety of (mainly technical) reasons, so they turned to the web instead. Now they produce a daily-updated, hyper-local blog covering a huge, sparsely populated area. It's full of pics of local people, debate on local issues and news n…

That's a cool example. I was thinking that hyper-local really only made sense for densely packed urban environments. Good to see that I was wrong in that assumption.

Re: This is why your newspaper is dying

#52

Post by ericmoritz »

coffeemug wrote: post #37
joshu wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

subscriber revenue only accounts for 15-25% of total revenues Ah, that's incredible, I didn't know that. I think it's really easy to connect the dots here. Since news is a commodity and global distribution is cheap, journalism becomes a business of extremes, much like books and startups. A tiny percentage of journalists who are really good at writing will be in huge demand, while the overwhelming majority will barely…

I suspect that the vacuum left behind by dead local newspapers will be filled by local blogs. I haven't researched this but I wonder if the markets that lost their local paper if blogs have made up the loss. Knoxville, TN has to really nice local blogs even though we have both an alternative weekly (Metropulse) and a paper.

* http://knoxify.com/ * http://www.notawigshop.com/

Re: This is why your newspaper is dying

#53

Post by freejoe76 »

blntechie wrote: post #17
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…

Author has added a note. NYTimes has linked to the external sites but it was Denver post which republished the article who removed the links. "Quick note: The first panel is taken from the Denver Post, not the New York Times. I didn’t notice the byline in there. The story’s author actually does a very good job of linking out to other sites" Denver Post - http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_18451993 NYTimes - http:/…

To be clear, The Denver Post didn't remove the links -- we never had the links in the first place.

Re: This is why your newspaper is dying

#54

Post by ethank »

You might as well just take out "newspaper" and put (arbitrary old model content industry)

The examples cited are endemic problems in leadership, organization and focus. I worked in newspaper for 6 years, then the music business for 6. There are really smart people in both industries, most of whom have left or are leaving because at the top, the motivation is to bolster justification for existence rather than innovate.

Its often easier, and more profitable to let the ship sink. Sad as that is.

Of note, some of my former colleagues at the paper have done interesting things, like Danny Sullivan at SearchEngineLand

Re: This is why your newspaper is dying

#55

Post by keithpeter »

andyking wrote: post #35
jessedhillon wrote: post #34

Has anyone tried to read SFGate, the online division of the SF Chronicle? The stories are good enough -- the comments are a trash heap and a den of cluelessness, and this has been the case for years. The editors have done nothing to curb the nastiness, which even Chron bloggers themselves have complained about.[0] The least they could do is post the geographical region the commenters post from, as it really surprises…

The local press here in the UK seems to attract the same sort of vitriol - there was a fairly humdrum story in my local paper the other day about nuisance pigeons in the town centre being culled. It took about twenty minutes for the first comment to appear suggesting the local unemployed and immigrants instead be culled. More seriously, a friend of a friend died during a cycle race a few weeks ago, and it didn't take…

Back before the intertubes in a different world, they would have been the ones sending in letters to the editor written in purple ink and ALL IN BLOCK CAPITALS. On pages ripped from a shorthand pad.

Nice clean clear Web site you have there.

Re: This is why your newspaper is dying

#56

Post by kingkawn »

nhebb wrote: post #26
kingkawn wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

New York Magazine looked at the same stuff and saw hope:

http://nymag.com/news/media/new-york-times-2011-8/

Re: This is why your newspaper is dying

#57

Post by khafra »

ericmoritz wrote: post #52
coffeemug wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

subscriber revenue only accounts for 15-25% of total revenues Ah, that's incredible, I didn't know that. I think it's really easy to connect the dots here. Since news is a commodity and global distribution is cheap, journalism becomes a business of extremes, much like books and startups. A tiny percentage of journalists who are really good at writing will be in huge demand, while the overwhelming majority will barely…

I suspect that the vacuum left behind by dead local newspapers will be filled by local blogs. I haven't researched this but I wonder if the markets that lost their local paper if blogs have made up the loss. Knoxville, TN has to really nice local blogs even though we have both an alternative weekly (Metropulse) and a paper. * http://knoxify.com/ * http://www.notawigshop.com/

If you do research it, I'd appreciate it if you'd write up a guide to finding good local blogs and submit it to HN. I don't know of any in my area, and aside from googling my city name, I can't think of many ways to find them.
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