Vanity Fair: Has the Washington Post Lost Its Way?

There is the News & Messenger. That's in Fairfax, right?

 

Have you seen the figures on print revenue since 1950? It's going, going ... well, not gone, but it's not coming back to 1998 levels.

https://garrysub.posterous.com/print-newspaper-advertising-revenue-1950-to-2

So the revenue is a third of what it was. A lot of that is classifieds, which is NEVER coming back unless someone passes a ban on Craigslist and similar stuff.

So we can either accept a slash to one-third of what we were, or we can try to diversify and make up the lost income elsewhere.

Prince William.

 

Well, except for Porfolio. And Gourmet. And Modern Bride. And the layoffs.

 

When digital revenue comes anywhere near print revenues - which will be never - let us know. All the analytics of 5-paragraph bullshit with no information and terrible newsroom podcasts of bored, disinterested staffers talking about something won't pay the bills.

 

Forbes disagrees:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthof/2012/01/19/online-ad-revenues-to-pass-print-in-2012/

Then go back to classifieds. A print classified section cannot compete with online classifieds. Absolutely no way. The functionality of online classifieds simply can't be duplicated in print. Readers now expect to be able to search, then filter those search results. Same reason people are using sortable stats online instead of picking up the paper to browse box scores.

Online, you can even integrate the classifieds with the content -- ticket sales with sports stories, car sales with car stories, job listings with business stories, etc.

If you're doing terrible content, you're not getting a share of that money Forbes is mentioning. And yes, bored podcasts aren't going to cut it.

Something has to pay the bills, or we might as well close up shop now. And it ain't gonna be print. Not by itself. Those numbers don't lie. Neither do circulation numbers.

So you can find a benefactor who'll sink a few million a year into your news-gathering operation as a charity operation, or you can keep trying until you figure out how to make money online. Some people are doing it. Why are we the ones who can't?

 

Who is making money online and also paying its employees enough for a decent lifestyle?

 

Google.

Bleacher Report. (Yeah, I know -- I'm not thrilled about it.)

Yahoo (SPORTS ONLY! Yes, I know the whole company's in trouble) might be, though I'd imagine a lot of the revenue is generated by fantasy. Still, that's like the pre-Internet newspaper, paying for itself with classifieds.

Look, I'm not saying everything is awesome in the world of online revenue. I'm not even saying we'll all be able to have support 1996-size newsrooms.

But ask yourself which is more likely to happen in the next 10 years:

1. More money goes online.

2. Print revenue makes a roaring comeback.

Again -- look at that graphic. It's the reverse of a hockey stick. If you do NOTHING online, that stick is coming at you like McSorley's stick to Brashear's head.

Is this really such a difficult concept?

 

Interesting read, but in many ways, it just felt like a rehash of Dave Kindred's book.

 

I have yet to see the Google reporters at major sports events, or minor ones. It makes money off the information generated by others and by services newspapers can't duplicate (maps, email, smartphone software, etc.). It's not in the same business. My employer makes money off the information generated by others, by editing it for databases so that it can be more easily and effectively read by machines who sort information for people. THAT's the Internet model of making money off information.
BTW, advertisers play no place in our world. My firm sells the databases and other products it creates directly to its clients, who used to be libraries, but now are just about any organization.
But if there was a fire or shooting down the street, we couldn't tell anybody.

 

I know. The trick is figuring out how to get a greater share of that money.

Any application from that to traditional news organizations? (Not a sarcastic question in the least.)

I know we've gotten a little sidetracked from the original topic, and I'm guessing this sort of discussion has taken place many times before. I'm just a little stunned when people act as if all this "online" stuff is some sort of boondoggle, and we'd be better off if we just stuck with our print sections -- which are shrinking in newshole, circulation, etc.

In fact, to get it back to the Post -- have you seen how many display ads they have in the sports section? I know someone on Facebook who has been tracking such things. It's ugly. Imagine the size of the Post sports staff if their budget was tied directly to how much display advertising they sold, plus whatever share of the overall circulation money they can claim after you subtract the other sections, printing and delivery.

 

Apparently reading my one-line post was a difficult concept, so let me repeat that I said "while paying its employees enough for a decent lifestyle."

Google doesn't have news employees, as Michael Gee noted.

Bleacher Report pays shit or less than shit.

Yahoo has its fantasy sports operation, which is the whole reason they're #1. Newsies can fellate themselves all they want with the idea that Yahoo is making money on Pat Forde and Michael Silver and NCAA investigations, but that is simply not true -- as long as they have fantasy sports, they'd get the same number of clicks at a half or a third of the price.

So getting back to your "Is this really such a difficult concept?"

I don't know. Not a soul in the newspaper universe has yet figured out how to make money online. But if you have it all figured out, hold a seminar. You'll make millions.

 

Bleacher Report isn't paying less than shit now. They're hiring half-decent people. I think those people are selling their souls to be there, but that wasn't the point you raised. You asked who's paying "employees" (you didn't specify reporters or editors, which is why I said Google) a living wage. And Bleacher Report is making tons of money.

However Yahoo is making money, it's still (for the moment) paying journalists a very good wage. Again -- that was your point, if you distill it down to the one line you think I'm failing to read.

Then you try to change it to "newspapers," which wasn't the question. But even there, if you went just by what's invested in online operations vs. the revenue they're making, you'll find a couple that are making or have made money. It gets complicated to sort it out in the era of convergence, and you'll find some news organizations that make a little money and immediately invest it back into new products.

Let's get back to what set me off in the first place.

"Revenue-producing print edition" is a ridiculous statement -- particularly, as I said above, when it's applied to the Post. Their circulation has plummeted. Their classifieds are a tiny fraction of what they were. And display ads in the sports section? Forget it.

So you have to make up for that revenue *somehow*. I'm not saying it's podcasts or hard paywalls or an iPad app. Some of the solutions we've seen are OK; some are flat-out ridiculous, and I don't blame anyone for being skeptical of the whiz-kid VPs who talk about them with such enthusiasm.

I'm not the one pretending to have the answers. SixToe is. He said we should just be focusing on print. All I'm saying is that's demonstrably NOT the answer.

So are you guys ready to quit shooting the messenger now?