How would you save this industry?

I sort of glazed over when I read that "every" business has learned how to use the Internet. That's false. Every industry has had growing pains while learning how to monetize the internet, well every industry except gambling and porn.

Retail has had the most success -- but there's a reason Nordstrom isn't shutting down stores because it is doing so well online. And I don't see Borders opening up fewer book stores these days. Plus, as much of the retail success is in online-only businesses (think Amazon, Zappos).

Even video games are just now figuring out how to make money online (at least in North America).

Newspapers made a mistake a long time ago giving away its most valuable content for free. And now, it's going to have to pull the plug in an age where everyone is looking at ways to monetize "free" content. Check out March '08 Wired for more information on this.

Papers can still be "free" on line but should only offer bare essentials for no charge. Newswire stories, headlines and other basic stuff but charge for photos, video and for exclusive content and they should have an ala carte and subscrition mode. Columnists, blogs by beat writers, photos, high school content... anything which is exclusive to the publication should be extra. And don't give your hard-copy subscibers it for free either. Charge them extra for the Web content.

Unless you're a major newspaper, the regionals should think about cutting back on their daily publishing content. They could save money in printing and production costs, spend more on building a 24-hour news cycle and still deliver content to consumers online.

You look at LANG and BANG, both should really think about creating one giant newspaper which serves like a news feed of the top stories for the extended area and the hyper-local content is online (for a fee). Advertising is still important so you'd create more value with a better-packaged print product and by creating revenue online it would also give you the almighty information stream which could help you better target your demographics for advertising/marketing purposes.

 

These ideas are key, and these posts on point, in my opinion.

I have a couple of online subscriptions to specialty-sport publications that are of interest to me -- and granted, they're different in some respects than a general newspaper would be -- but, really, the basic business concept is the same.

I want what they sell, and hard-copy editions are not readily available. So, if I want their information, the best/easiest way to get it is with online subscriptions, and I've decided to take them.

In the case of newspapers, it's going to take an industry-wide, collectively planned and carefully coordinated effort by all outlets at the same time, with every newspaper starting up with its pay-per-view/premium-content operations for individual stories, and/or their pay-based site subscriptions, en mass.

Really, it could and would be an amazing one-time display of teamwork and collaboration that would break people -- cold-turkey -- of their expectation of finding content someplace else for free. It would also counter the prospect of mass rejection by readers by, essentially, beating them to the punch, and then, eventually, making up, as it were.

It may take some time, and papers may have to take even more of a hit, for a while. But I think people and their current expectations would come around, and eventually, would be changed. As they should be.

This is all assuming, of course, that readers want what we sell, at all.

But I think they do. Right now, they're just used to getting it for free, that's all.

 

I don't think anything can save this industry. It's a dinosaur and the asteroid is coming over the horizon.

 

I'd sell it to Zell. Shit. Nevermind.

 

False. Information sells.

Here's what sucks: I'm 35. I'm better right now than I've ever been. I'm at a point in my career where I really want to take some time (when my beat is slow) to do some in-depth reporting. I'm talking about a single project that would produce a series of stories that readers would remember. I don't want to chill during the summer months; I want to do something meaningful from a professional standpoint.

Why can't I? My Gannett property recently instituted a quota on us. Seven bylines per week or else.

Oh well. I guess I'll keep re-writing meaningless press releases rather than actually using my talent and experience to enhance our product.

ps: I know Gannett isn't the epicenter of journalistic reckoning or anything. Just passing along a policy generated from a group of managers who clearly do not have a grasp of what it will take to "fix" our industry.

 

I think we've been cut back so much in both people and deadlines we just stick items in the paper to fill the space between the ads and are barely able to give readers anything too interesting to read. I also disagree with our "push" to draw in young readers. We aren't going to be able to compete with magazines, TV and the Internet on Britney news and we shouldn't try. Meanwhile, we alienate our loyal readers (older people) with these tactics without getting any benefit. I can't say what the fix is, but I do think local news that readers can't get just through google and remembering and respecting our actual readers would be a step in the right direction. Then there's always what we can't control, which is often the inability of the ad department and sales people to properly create contacts and make our product the desirable choice to market their goods.

 

I know this is a weird position. My idea is to charge more, a lot more, for information. If the NY Times was twice as much money, I'd still get it. If the Internet (which, let's face it, is only offering real-time information) version of the Times cost money, I'd pay it. Maybe I wouldn't buy the Globe as well, but I bet I probably would.
This is not a nation that responds well to the pitch "how can we give more of our product away?"
If the Times was $3 instead of $1 a copy, they wouldn't lose much circulation. If newspapers charged for their Web sites, they'd make money.

 

Does Gannett still have the silly injunction on the length of ledes?

 

OK, so we start charging . . . .

And 10-20 buddies get together, pay for the online paper together, and one copies and pastes the articles and sends them out.

Or they all use the same password to access the account, though this is less likely considering we can track that.

Or they simply get their news elsewhere.

The only way charging for what we do online would work is if every single media outlet, from the local Podunk Press to espn.cm and cnn.com, started charging at the exact same moment, shutting Internet information away from everyone who is not paying.

Then . . whoops. . . they would simply watch local TV news. Or some entrepreneur on the Web, maybe a bitter ex-newspaper employee, starts posting the whole paper on his Web site. And the paper's lawyers spend their time worrying about stuff like that.

There is no way to save what we do. That ship sailed a decade ago. We had our chance to be proactive; we instead blew it and are now scrambling to react.

The public at large, which often cannot tell real, reliable news from the average blog or Drudge post, will just find their news elsewhere if we had the audacity (of HOPE!) to charge at this point. Ownership doesn't care about great storytelling. Hell, the average reader sees a great story as "one about my community, that I agree with!!!: and a bad story as "I disagreed with that!!!!"

We're finished. The largest papers will survive as part of big media companies. The smaller papers will survive as they provide hyper-local news that you can't get anywhere else. The mid-major papers will continue to be chop shopped by the Robber-Barons until they cease to exist and/or are unrecognizeable as what they once were.

 

All the crime news we can possibly cram in. As much local gore as we can cover, plus the most twisted shit off the wire. Half the local staff needs to cover cops and courts and car crashes and fires.

The other half needs to cover all the local political pissing matches, including at least one reporter and one photog assigned to cover the lunatic fringe full time -- their demonstrations, their rants, etc. More if you're in New York or SF. We want grudges on city councils and on school boards. We want goofballs trying to save the goddamn whales. All the venom that's fit to print.

No more columns and higher standards on features (must have high human interest and drama). All of Lifestyle buys the farm except the weekly entertainment tab and a page of horoscope and sex-advice columns behind sports.

We cover local big business like we cover pro sports. The local factory has layoffs or outsources? We go after the people who run it like we go after the coach and GM of a 1-9 NFL team. We hold them fucking accountable. We hound the shit out them. We make their lives bloody hell day after day. We report that they were seen dining on lobster at The Sea Shanty while 200 laborers applied for food stamps.

The op-ed page dies. Three editorials (sometimes one on sports), letters and a local cartoon.

Lots and lots of pro sports coverage, but newsy. We concede nothing to any other media outlet.

We run refers on the Net and nothing more. Pay the 50 cents, it's worth it.

 

Hell if I know, but a big piece involves taking the major companies private.

 

I think that would be a good starting point, as would having local ownership of papers, but that ain't gonna happen.