2009: The year the newspaper died. Replaced by blogs and user generated pseudo-journalism. You once went great with a morning coffee and a bagel but now can’t seem to find relevance. You’re the penny-saver in a craigslist world. etc etc.
The reports on the death of the newspaper have been circulating for months now as the economic downturn has forced companies to cut and cut deep. There have been videos shot, words
written and soundbites from pundits. The newspaper is going down and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. Because when it’s all said and done It’s yesterday’s news.
I’m the first to admit that I don’t read the newspaper for anything but the comics.
Haven’t read it for years and for one very good reason. It’s yesterday’s news. Every single thing being covered in terms of hard news has happened at least 12 hours before. In today’s 24 hour news cycle 12 hours is an eternity. Imagine if you needed to wait 12 hours to get any details on the 9-11 attacks. Everyone points to the blogs and online as being the reason why newspapers are struggling but the reality is that it isn’t a blog but CNN that’s the harbinger of death. Instant access, always on, on the spot news coverage is what killed the daily. No one ever bought the paper for the classifieds. No one ever said to themselves I wonder what ads are new today. People simply want to know what’s happening in the world around them, and they’ll pay for this service. This is the miscalculation that the publishing industry made; thinking of newspapers as a vehicle to sell ads instead of as a news gathering organization. Now because of the economic struggles, they’re loosing their real audience, the advertisers. Sure technology has changed and enabled blogs and UGC to grab a market share but these new media spaces still rely on the traditional news gathering institutions. Below is a list of the top 10 media sites that bloggers link to (via technorati & techcrunch)
- YouTube
- New York Times
- BBC News
- CNN.com
- MSN
- guardian.co.uk
- Washington Post
- Yahoo! News
- Reuters
- Los Angeles Times
See something that pops out pretty quickly? Newspapers, at least the online equivalent, drive blogs.
The other week Marc Andressen , who by all accounts is a pretty smart guy, told Charlie Rose that to survive newspapers had to stop the presses right now. That going online was going to be tough but that it’s the only way they will be able to survive. I whole heartedly agree but think they need to go further. There needs to be a change in business model. Launching a LA times classified site isn’t going to bring in the cash that classifieds used to. So rather than being first on the scene and last to adopt new technology newspapers need to move online in all it’s potential areas. There’s no reason every paper can’t have a iphone app, support the Kindle and offer exclusive video content to subscribers. There will always be a market for thoughtfull, intelligent and well written reporting and analysis but those companies providing it need to realize that a shift has happened and that if they want to stay around the advertising needs to support the newspaper not the other way around.. Without the massive overhead of running a printing press there are ways to still come out on top but these news gathering organizations need to lead the change to online not cower in the corner hoping that they’ll escape unscathed.
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