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How would you save this industry?

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by DemoChristian, Mar 7, 2008.

  1. Inky_Wretch

    Inky_Wretch Well-Known Member

    No, but Brett Favre can. [/crossthread]
     
  2. DanOregon

    DanOregon Well-Known Member

    It's all about finding a better way to get advertisers to targeted readership. Right now, advertising in newspapers is like firing a SCUD missle. You know you'll hit a general area, but there are not guarantees you'll reach who you are after. Of course, I highly doubt it will be a newspaper company that develops this technology for the web.
    Here's what it would take: Have readers register for the site, providing as much info as possible on demographics and interests (think of NETFLIX asking you what type of movies you like) and each day you'll get a Yahoo News type of page with stories selected and arranged depending on your interests with advertising that is specificially targeted to you (kind of like the eye scan advertising in Demolition Man).
     
  3. statrat

    statrat Member

    Take the print edition out in the back alley, kneel it on the ground, and put one right in the back of its head. The sooner we stop throwing money into printing and destribution the better. With that out of the way, spend less time complaining about competition from the internet and figure out how to compete on the internet.
     
  4. DanOregon

    DanOregon Well-Known Member

    Maybe I'll write a book called how the print industry killed newspapers. That thought came to me while watching Celebrity Rehab and seeing these folks who spent three weeks detoxing and going to some pretty dark places, waver when they were offered additional care FREE OF CHARGE and walk back to their lives believing they could do it on their own. Newsprint (and the warm and gooey high chains get from the print advertising revenue) has been heroin of the industry.
     
  5. editorhoo

    editorhoo Member

    Four words:

    One newspaper, one owner.
     
  6. STLIrish

    STLIrish Active Member

    A five-step plan...

    1: Focus on what we do best: Storytelling, analysis and depth about the communities/teams/companies we cover. Help people understand their world, and start at home. Leave Britney to E! and US and any national-type stories that we can't own to the wires. But no one else can do the kind of quality local/regional journalism that newspapers can. And there's value in that.

    2: Stop running our most experienced, and our most talented, people out of the business. Quit the buyouts. Pay a decent wage. And, by following step #1, give people an opportunity to do smart, meaningful work, instead of degrading them at every opportunity. Keep the talent in the room.

    3: Find new ways to deliver our content. We should be e-mailing headlines to people's cell phones, communicating with readers via Facebook and MySpace, launching RSS feeds, doing podcasts, giving the paper away at baseball games and subway stops, whatever it takes to get our brand in front of as many people as possible, as often as we can. So we stay relevant.

    4: Market ourselves more aggressively. We're terrible at telling our own story. The metro newspaper is still a phenomenal thing. All the news of the world, on your doorstep by breakfast, basically for free (if you clip the coupons). And without it, every other news source, from Google news to local TV to your NPR affiliate, collapses. We need to tell people that.

    5: Go nonprofit. This is the only way get can escape the insane demands of Wall Street, and the cultural divide that exists between our newsrooms and our business sides and makes the newsroom be seen as an annoyance, rather than the soul of the enterprise. How this happens, though, I'm not sure yet.
     
  7. britwrit

    britwrit Well-Known Member

    Find a way to make the internet pay or stop giving your paper away for free. According to a 2006 analysis by media strategists Borrell Associates, newspapers need to find 20 to 100 online readers to make up for the ad revenue when they lose a single print reader. And despite its great website, the NY Times still only gets little above 10 percent of its ad revenue from online ads.

    Sure, "one day" all papers will be online and I'm sure off in that shimmering, glowing future, it'll be a wonderful thing. But I've been hearing that rap since the early 90s and it's getting a little tired. Besides, most newspapers have a monopoly on in-depth information gathering in their markets. If the good people of Smithville want to find out about local planning and zoning issues or who's going to make the football sectionals, they can lay out for a subscription.
     
  8. funky_mountain

    funky_mountain Active Member

    i would hire mr.scottnewman.
     
  9. beardpuller

    beardpuller Active Member

    Goddamn, you have to be quick around here. I clicked the thread just to post this, funky, and you beat me soundly.
     
  10. Mizzougrad96

    Mizzougrad96 Active Member

    As soon as the baby boomers die out, newspapers as we know them will be gone as well... Almost nobody under the age of 40 gets the print edition anymore...

    The places that can make their web sites profitable will live on... The rest will disappear...
     
  11. mustangj17

    mustangj17 Active Member

    ban the internet
     
  12. Sawker

    Sawker New Member

    Right now it costs money to read the paper in print and is free to read the paper online. Shouldn't it be the other way around? After all, it only makes sense to charge money for the product people actually value.

    The problem is society has not yet fully embraced the idea of paying for online content that isn't meant to be an aid in the masturbation process.

    As someone previously mentioned, ESPN -- along with a few other sites -- has done a good job of getting their readers conditioned to paying for online content by making them feel as though they are missing out on the real stories if they don't pony up the cash for "insider" services.

    The genius of this is that by only charging for a small percentage of premium content, they are making their readers feel they are missing out on the really good stuff, without alienating them by giving the impression the site is all about the money.

    It's simple strip-club marketing.

    First, you get the customer in the door with the promise of seeing something good. Once they are in the door you do your best to satisfy them while offering that little bit extra. In a strip club, that means private dances. For a news outlet, it means premium information.

    Without lap dances, most strip clubs would cease to exist. The same will soon apply to newspapers that aren't charging for premium content. Producing great copy will only get you so far if you don't know how to market it.

    A shitty Ford Festiva would never cost the same amount as a new BMW. But shitty copy gets sold every single day in this country for the same price as top-shelf, world-changing copy.

    Needless to say, it's not the brightest way of doing business.
     
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