1. Welcome to SportsJournalists.com, a friendly forum for discussing all things sports and journalism.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register for a free account to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Access to private conversations with other members.
    • Fewer ads.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!

Five Key Reasons Why Newspapers Are Failing

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by lcjjdnh, Aug 16, 2009.

  1. RickStain

    RickStain Well-Known Member

    That's a nice article, but it's talking about how print newspapers handled the transition to become news Web sites. I think they did better than some want to give them credit for, but no matter how you think they handled it, that's a whole different story from asking newspapers why they didn't jump whole cloth into completely different industries such as online auctions or movie-ticket sales.
     
  2. RickStain

    RickStain Well-Known Member

    Fandango makes its money, I believe, by getting a cut of the ticket sales that go through its website. The movie listings are almost incidental to that.

    I keep hearing that these web-based companies were "a natural extension" of what newspapers were doing, and I'm not hearing a single good reason why.

    What intellectual or physical assets did newspapers control in the 1990s that gave them a competitive advantage in starting up a website that automated ticket sales for theaters nationwide?
     
  3. school of old

    school of old New Member

    True, but I think there's something to be said about the culture that existed. It's hard to be forward thinking or start something new when so many people had disdain for the Web. It's hard to start a new online venture, when ad people were never rewarded for thinking about the Web.

    Everything about the Web has been about decentralization, minus Goggle and maybe a few others. So it's very possible that even if newspapers started these types of ventures, it might not work. But it's hard to say if you don't try. There was also nothing to prevent newspapers from attempting to acquire some of these startups after they got off the ground.

    What if we were talking about Gannet attempting to acquire Facebook instead of Microsoft?

    Does it make a difference long term? I don't know. But taking that kind of action represents a very different philosophy from resting on your laurels.
     
  4. Twoback

    Twoback Active Member

    The infrastructure to gather and publish classified advertising. (Which Craiglist coopted).
    Armies of plugged-in sportswriters with writing talent and great sources. (Instead of turning those into national websites, they let Sportsline and ESPN and others poach the best and start up sports sites. And the likes of Deadspin & others have shown there are other, fringier opportunities there).
    These are some of the most powerful communications companies in the world. Are you telling me there's a legit reason not a single breakthrough internet idea came from one of them?
     
  5. RickStain

    RickStain Well-Known Member

    One of the most important reasons Craigslist is popular and profitable is because they bypass that infrastructure entirely. Try hiring enough classified ad managers to run a site like Craigslist and you'll blow through your startup capital in a week.

    Are ESPN and Sportsline particularly profitable? I was under the impression they existed as advertisements for the TV stations.

    Because the primary revolutionizing attribute of the internet is that it makes it so that you don't need infrastructure to communicate on a mass scale anymore.
     
  6. JayFarrar

    JayFarrar Well-Known Member

    well, to answer a question, I don't see a local paper becoming a fandango, but a local newspaper website could have become a destination site for everything and anything happening in that city.
    so, maybe, you could go to the paper's site to buy movie tickets, theater tickets, sporting event tickets or anything else local, if you lived there. If you didn't but were planning to visit, you could have booked hotel rooms, rented cars, made flight arrangements or anything else.
    papers could have become de facto travel agents and received revenue through that, but, and maybe again, they didn't because travel agents were for a time a major advertiser and they chose not to compete against a business that was already a client.

    BTW — I still think that newspaper websites could become destination sites for tourists and locals looking for things to do. Use the paper's brand as a way to get people to the site and then build off that.
     
  7. Twoback

    Twoback Active Member

    So having that infrastructure was somehow an impediment?
     
  8. 93Devil

    93Devil Well-Known Member

    I was thinking about the size of the building needed to run an online only newspaper compared with the monoliths used to publish the current major newspapers.

    Running a building that size with utilities, office managers per floor, a secretary on every floor, custodial departments, maintenance departments...

    I am guessing about a 2-3 million bucks is lost each year at the building alone. Ask someone what your monthly electric bill is. I am going to guess $60,000 each month at a paper like the Times Dispatch.
     
  9. RickStain

    RickStain Well-Known Member

    Well, it certainly didn't aid anything, at all. Newspaper companies surely could have invested in the Web same as anyone else, but they wouldn't be doing it as "media" companies in any way, it would just be the owners shifting capital to Web ventures.

    If you are trying to use the newspaper infrastructure to build any sort of web enterprise, it's an impediment. Web businesses that are profitable are light.
     
  10. playthrough

    playthrough Moderator Staff Member

    espn.com makes a mint. I'd have to think sportsline does as well.
     
  11. Bubbler

    Bubbler Well-Known Member

    I think there's a sixth reason why newspapers are failing ...

    6. Lists about why newspapers are failing.
     
  12. Twoback

    Twoback Active Member

    Unbelievable.
    You've already got the people, the computers, the office space, etc. You just need to move a few desks around, for the most part.
    None of that costs you a dime. A start-up has to front all of that. That's why so many web businesses failed; they choked on the debt.
     
Draft saved Draft deleted

Share This Page