10 Newspaper Myths Deconstructed

I was just offering a touche' ... and your comment about me is beneath you, especially since - while we've gone back and forth in the past - I've been nothing but civil in any of my discussions.

 

No, it's not.

Local advertisers aren't interested, in general, in advertising online. Because people don't go to the Podunk Tribune to read about the Toyota they want to buy. They go to Toyota.com.

Try again.

 

Leave idiot. You are wasting my time.

 

You're right, that was out of line.

 

Well, if Robert Scoble and Dave Winer say newspapers are dead it must be true. Wait, isn't Scoble in some podcasting startup that is doomed to fail because of amateurs?

 

Improper phrasing on my part. I was referring to the less important high school sports that don't normally get real coverage but are limited to agate or tiny roundups taken over the phone. Things that you'd never send a reporter to.

 

Got ya.

 

Okay, then let me try it this way:

A) What happens if you search for "Bush", "middle east" or "russia" or basically whatsoever on Google. You get a wikipedia result right at the top. Why do you think that is? Because newspapers do everything right and wikipedia does everything wrong?
1. Because wikipedia has tons of interconnected contents
2. Because these contents are semantically relevant
3. Because people often go there and stay there (Google measures the success of a search result)

B) There is no money in online advertising? - Where does Google's money come from? Advertising.
http://news.com.com/Google+first-quarter+profit+rises+almost+70+percent/2100-1030_3-6177702.html

C) So where do newspaper miss out?
You need access to make ad money. The way most newspapers are stuctured is very search engine unfriendly. Open access to archive after subscription is useless. What you need is a body of semantically relevant text, interlinked. That is why I suggest mediawiki. And - no matter what you believe - in that regard I have been proven right in practice within two weeks only. If you have a lot of access due to search engine friendly pages and tons of content, you can place a lot of ads. The more ads you place, the more likely you are to score.

D) Where is the money?
It is NOT in Yahoo or Google taking over your ad space. You need to take it in your hands. You need to sell your ad space for good. Yes, you need to start caring about your online ads like you care about your paper. Instead a series of newspapers basically leave their online ad business to Yahoo:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/16/AR2007041600540.html

Useless to say that this is very good for Yahoo and comfortable but bad for newspapers. Look what Google did to online ad value... I have been watching this deal since the beginning: http://news.bbc.co.uk/nolpda/ukfs_news/hi/newsid_6164000/6164828.stm and I can still not figure out how this could happen.

E) Exceptions to the rule?
Of course, some papers do a very good job closing parts of the site (NYT) and some papers do indeed have a profile that suggest closing the archives completely, as it has high value to few with high subscription interest (FT). It always depends, but generally, newspapers act very amateurisch when it comes to a)information architecture, b)information design and c)monetizing.

And I know that from within the newsroom. I have talked to dozens of editors over the last few months and they are mostly totally out of the loop when it comes to those three disciplines. The refreshing part of my experience with my Swiss editors was that they know about that and they're happy to learn and move foreward. Noone felt insulted or tried to bash me.

That said, the last discussion I had in here was a very good preparation for the upcoming meeting I had with the editors in Switzerland. As I knew all the fears and misunderstandings beforehand and had a reassuring clear answer to most questions. Thank you for that.

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Ps: People that insult me go directly on the ignore list. I enjoy being attacked with arguments, but don't expect me to react on personal attacks. I am kind of surprised though about certain defensive reactions in here which don't really correspond to the image I have from an intelligent curious journalist. Also, I believe that I have always been polite in my answers. If I seemed inpolite it is due to the fact that English is not my mother tongue and in that case I apologize.

 

Oliver, ihre Meinungen von Zeitungen und Journalismus könnten falscher nicht sein.

 

Oliver, let me chime in with support.

What you say makes a heck of a lot of sense, and I appreciate you taking the time to debate and explain your ideas on SJ.

 

Holy Shit on a Motherfucking Shingle.

Go to the link in the first post. Scroll all the way to the bottom.

Enjoy!

 

Excellent catch, Zeke. ;D

And Zeke's referring to the end of the comments, not the end of the blog post.