Post Mortem for a newspaper

It takes a little bit to watch the presentation, but very well worth it. It explains very much how many of the DM papers are still trying to boost the paper end of the business, but not the community end.

abb will be very interested in this thread

I thoroughly enjoyed a panel discussion featuring some of the luminaries of a defunct New York paper. A very bitter bunch, they were very aware what had killed the paper, and terribly resentful at the public.

First of all, they shunned local news, because it was “boring”, and pointing out that there really was no local paper in the whole city, even though that is what the ignorant masses wanted. And as far as State, national or international news went, it was all wire service news, because it was tedious to actually collect news.

What they really wanted to do was report on what the small clique of the rich and artistic did at the cocktail parties they attended, because that was the only news that was interesting, even though the stupid peasants couldn’t appreciate such enlightenment.

So it was the public’s fault that the newspaper failed, even though they did everything that a newspaper is supposed to do, at least according to journalism schools in the US.

It was pretty obvious that what that newspaper had long needed, beyond anything else, was a hard nosed editor and “beat” reporters willing to use shoe leather to collect the news. College degrees were pretty useless in this endeavor.

That no one in the entire city of New York has had the idea to make a local paper, say with one edition per borough, in decades, is it any wonder that New Yorkers don’t buy newspapers like they used to?

But if you talk to a journalism school newspaperman, more than anything else, he will assure you that there is only one way to do a newspaper, and that any other way, at all, is heresy.

Say goodbye to the nice dinosaurs.

Thanks for the link, I’ll watch the vid sometime this weekend.

I did read the article and the comments, and one point that’s lacking is this:

The newspaper’s customer is the advertiser.

The newspaper’s product is the audience.

Newspapers and other print media have almost never made $$$ purely from subscription revenue (except specialty newsletters). Traditionally (for the 19th and 20th centuries), content has always been a cost-center.

So the very real and serious challenge for today’s media is how to present and sell advertising online.

Google has one answer, and it doesn’t depend upon the “old” print model.

Whoever finds the next model will be as successful as Google. If there *is* another model.

Newspapers are nothing more than a ink-on-paper format to distribute information. The internet also distributes information, except that it doesn’t require trees and mills to produce paper, printing presses, or hand-delivery of the finished product.

It’s not hard to see which is more efficient and how it will end.

Occasionally C-SPAN will run one of the journo conferences/gripefests, and it is fun to watch them keen and moan about the decline of the esteemed profession.

But behind all of it - and this really is what makes it so amusing - is that they cannot and will not admit that they are somewhat of an indulgence.

Yes, a newspaper needs good stories and good reporting to keep it popular, but what pays the bills is advertising, not scoops.

Journos resent this, and they are always trying to keep it under wraps.

Once devices like the Amazon Kindle go from $299.00 down to $29.95 - I’d give that 3 years tops - the hardcopy newspaper/magazine is D-E-A-D.

Vaguely recall that Scripps (???) was doing something with e-readers to replace print.

Check out this flashback!!

http://www.minnpost.com/braublog/2009/01/29/6313/the_star_tribunes_1981_e-edition
The Star Tribune’s 1981 e-edition

Was that the Sun?

I loved the Sun at first, but then it started getting all hoi poloi, covering arts affairs in the Village and museum openings, etc., and lost its flavor as a conservative paper.

Then all of a sudden it was no longer available at any of the news stands, I have no idea why...the Post, Times and Daily News were available, as were the Brooklyn Reporter, Bay Ridge Express, on and on, but all of a sudden all over the borough the vendors stopped carrying the Sun.

About six months after that it shut down.

Ed

I was going to get a Kindle because I read so many newspapers, but then they deleted 1984, and when I saw that they could actually go into my digital library and delete stuff that had already been purchased, I changed my mind.

Ed

I bought a Kindle v 1.0, a half-dozen books, then determined that the keyboard was very annoying, so I returned it.

When v 2.0 was announced I considered buying it, then could not find my previous books purchases anywhere in my Amazon account.

I’m certain they’ll get this all worked out, and I’ll stick with hardcopy until that happens.

I’m not so sure that advertising is the wave of the future for newspapers. It may be far more important to keep the size of the paper down, lowering costs, and focus more on subscriptions and newsstand sales.

But the price for doing this is much greater news density. Cover the front page with one or two sentence bullets, and maximize content that is difficult to get elsewhere. The selling point is that people can read what you have written in a few minutes, or they can spend three or more hours surfing the Internet. Trade purchase price for convenience.

The Internet is full of non-copyrighted original content, both nationally and Internationally. So get reporters to focus on State, and mostly local news. The news wires are too expensive and corrupt, so set up a subscription indy website that works on a news upload-download ratio, with news stories and organizations rated for quality by other users.

Reporters get assigned “beats” like in the old days. Either subjects, like “the crime and fire beat”, or sections of town. It is up to them to develop news sources in their beat, talking to people, getting connected, so they know who to call with news tips.

It might even be worth it for a reporter to develop a “granny” network, where retirees get nominal sums via paypal for good stories. The zinger is that paying them a dollar for a story will probably make a profit, because they will not only buy a newspaper, but get their friends to buy copies, to see the story they were responsible for. The top contributors get small novelty “attaboys”, like “cub reporter” badges.

Every day, the paper runs bits on boy scouts, local people who get awards, and upcoming social events and parties. Births, weddings and obits you can put on line, free to subscribers. This lets subscribers add on all sorts of pictures, lots of text, with do it yourself pages that are easy to print out.

It costs you a tiny amount, and they get serious ego stroking.

The idea is to build huge goodwill in the community, so people buy the paper because it is about them and their interests. Require advertisers to include good deals, like coupons for major sales of loss leader products, not just the routine stuff. It’s worth it to the paper to give advertisers special rates if people are buying the paper just for those coupons, and it’s worth it to the advertisers as well if everybody actually reads their advertisements while looking for deals.