Newspapers Need To Learn They're Not In The Newspaper Business
from the it'll-solve-a-lot-of-their-problems dept
As the debate over newspaper business models continues to heat up, Vin Crosbie reminds us of an important point: newspapers will never figure out how to adapt to the times if they keep thinking of themselves as newspapers. We had discussed something similar back in my series of economics posts, where I talked about the importance of defining your market based on the benefits you were providing, rather than the product. If you think of yourself as a newspaper, you continue to think about ways to make sure that particular product can make money. If you, instead, think of yourself as a provider of useful news information, then you work on ways to continue to do that, no matter what the final "product" is for delivery. The people who are your customers, users and partners don't care that you're in the newspaper business. They care about the value you add to their lives.
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Filed Under: business models, newspapers
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Re: Ramblings
Time will prove you wrong. If the groups that call themselves newspapers wish to survive, then they need to recognise that media, any media in this day and age needs to be fluid. Static business models are doomed.
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Newspapers are just that...
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Newspaper?
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Luddites...
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Re: Luddites...
You can not base a business model around the fact that a fraction of the population is not computer literate... once the baby boomers start to die, you have lost most of your client base.
News papers are obsolete. If consider it an insult when people give me a news paper. It's like saying "here, throw this away for me".
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Linux and the Desk Top - Same Idea
Great Operating System.
But what is it usefor on the desktop with out applications.
If a application is required to perform a given function and software is only available for Windows then Windows is the required operating system and one is locked into Windows.
Somes times one is fortunate and there is a usiable alternate Linux package most times not.
Good examples of this are CAD and accounting packages.
One can get an inferior CAD package and an inferior accounting package that will is not compatable with historiccal files but there is nothing usable available.
Whis does this have to do with Newspapers? Nothing, except it is the same psychology all over again.
Five years ago I had a big developer war in that Linux was not ready for the desktop user, today linux is still not ready for the desktop, and I am willing to bet that for exavtly the same reasons we will be having exactly the same discussion and Linux will still not be usable on the desktop five years no make that 10 years from now.
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Your Audience Is Your Patron
It was called patronage.
It doesn’t hold much favour today because people find it difficult to disassociate from plutocracy.
But as easily as the Internet enables diffusion of intellectual work, so it enables the diffusion of the wealthy patron – aka ‘the audience’.
It was difficult 300 years ago to collect an advance from a large readership, but then it was difficult to distribute copies without permission, so the idea of selling copies (under monopoly) was born (whether discretely or by subscription).
Today, you cannot sell copies. The illusion that you can is simply the business model’s momentum – the good will of its passengers pushing it along with the tank having long run dry.
Has anyone wondered if you can now collect an advance from a large readership?
Don’t forget the volte face though. It’s not the author’s publisher charging the customer for production, but the customers commissioning the author to produce a publication.
Of course, a nimble publisher could offer their services once again as intermediary, especially for audiences who don’t particularly care about the specific authors, e.g. newspapers.
In the case of a newspaper things would appear very similar to the subscription model. After all, the demand and supply sides are still the same. However, it’s not a newspaper that is published to sell (under monopoly) to readers, but readers who commission a newspaper to be published (without monopoly).
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WTF
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Newspapers Need To....
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Newspapers
They must find a model that brings in revenue. Clearly classified ads on the Internet can do the job. But attempts to sell traditional news for profit won't work. Moreover, as computer screens improve and the readership evolves, resistance to on-line papers will decrease.
Meanwhile, reporters need to improve in many ways. Too many are totally unable to handle numbers and calculations. Too many write stories as though the sky is falling. I think readers are worn out from too many years of overblown headlines and stories of little substance.
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The online newspaper is dead...long live the media
But now newspapers want the same thing, but in a different industry; namely internet media.
The first problem is that information about events has a much smaller value on the internet (lower value, lower margins, less of a commodity). As everyone has access to distribute and consolidate information, its the equivalent of having thousands of newspapers printed in every small town.
Secondly the print newspaper is loosing its market to people who are content with getting the same information online. The newspaper and online media services still have separate distinct markets and advantages...so there will always be some market for both.
The audience, and that audience's needs, are not identical in the newspaper and online media business; but the companies still believe they can follow identical models of doing business.
So newspapers, 1) re-evaluate your online business model 2) figure out how you are going to compete with free 3) figure out how to attract people away from free.
How, you ask?
1) give away what people already can get for free (get them in the door)
2) offer premium service on a very cheap per-story access, and subscription model
3) partner with your competitors...respect their subscriptions, offer bargains, cross-index information
4) get into the educational context business...Running a story on a virus outbreak. Add premium research linking to other virus stories and charge people a few cents to access it. Create video depicting how virus work. Give your viewers the ability to get as much or as little information about a subject as they are interested in finding. Because if you don't offer it, they will look somewhere else. Like the newspaper you need to consolidate information into convenient forms...why do people search google, look at wikipedia, etc....its one place they know they can find some information on a topic. If you don't offer 'unlimited' information, you loose.
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Still see the public buying
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Newspapers Without a Clue
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Railroads
If the railroads knew they were in the transportation business, they would have been the first ones flying commercial airlines for profit...
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