'What if the newspaper industry made a colossal mistake?'

For shits and giggles I googled "price of obituaries" and stumbled on the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

They charge $10.65 per line (and say a line is 30-35 characters). With the average English word being 4.5 characters, that's 8 words per line. We'll call it 7 to be conservative.

$10.65 for 7 words.
200 words would cost you about $305 for 1 day. A second day reduces the price by 50 percent.

 

As recently as 2006, my paper made a $253 million profit for the Tribune Company. And we were not one of TRB's heavyweights.

That's a full decade into your "two decades ago" hypothetical. And things were still pretty fucking good. When things are going that well --- and have been going well, almost without a hiccup --- for many years, NO ONE is going to listen when you tell them they must "ADAPT! CHANGE!"

 

So they're not all price-gouging jerkoffs? That's comforting.

Now, if only my dad had any friends or family in Minnesota...

 

So constantly decreasing circulation numbers and hard copy tells you that print is the way to go?

Newspapers aren't making money off of digital because they're not doing it right and they're expecting the same rate of return as the halcyon days of print.

 

Yes, that's the 2004 newspaper executive speak that we've all become so fond of.

Newspapers aren't making money off digital because there's little or no money to be made. Period. Full stop.

 

People do shitty video because they think just doing something digital oriented appeases the audience. It doesn't. Commit to doing it well, then you'll get the dedicated viewers and readers.

None of the things you mentioned - shitty video, Facebook live, clickhabit headlines - are good digital habits. Paywalls, high quality & unique content, engagement with readers/viewers, localized ad deals instead of Google ads...those are good digital habits.

 

What are these three shitrags you speak of? I'm having a real hard time believing $3,100 for 20o words for one day. I'd like to check their obit rates.

 

"Doctor, it hurts when I do this..."

"Well, don't do that anymore."

 

That's great that you guys were doing so well as recent as 2006.

So even if they didn't want to adapt up to that point, over the course of the next decade Facebook became accessible to everyone with a valid email account, YouTube became the go-to source for online video, Twitter and Instagram debuted, and streaming video completely changed our viewing habits

The digital world has changed drastically since 2006. So even if some news organizations were making big bucks before the recession hit, their unwillingness to adapt in the last decade has been just as bad as those who lacked the foresight to see what the internet could be in the 1990s.

 

Netflix. Rivals.com. Amazon Prime.

All provide digital, subscriber-only services. All make money. No newspaper will make as much as Netflix/Amazon, but can follow a similar model catered to their geographic footprint.

 

Good plan!