As I understand it, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Associated Press and a few other leading newspapers routinely prepare obituaries in advance of the death of individuals whose passing will be Page One news.
Over the past few years, newspaper journalism has found itself in a similarly odd situation, as it writes stories on the decline in newspaper circulation, the consolidation of newspaper publishers, and the ever-tightening noose around some of the giants in American newspaper publishing.
As this print journalism water empties out of sink, it's become something of a curiosity for me to observe publishers react to this fast-changing environment. Most newspaper publishers fail to understand what's happening or underestimate the severity of the change. At the same time, it's hard to find newspaper publishers who either change their behavior dramatically or leverage their existing assets (which are significant and can be re-tooled) to adopt to the future which arrived yesterday. To be certain, giant newspaper publishers like the Washington Post and the New York Times took the plunge years ago to diversify their business lines and develop Internet-ready versions of their venerable grey pages. My interests rest on the small to medium-sized publishers, with daily circulations of approximately 10,000 to 75,000.
Or, to put it locally, how could and should newspapers ranging in size from the Valley News to the Union Leader re-purpose themselves to an age where content comes from the cloud?
It might begin by realizing the vulnerabilities of local news publishing, starting with the basics of printing and delivering a paper every morning. With US personal computer penetration at more than 950 per 1000 people, and the number of US cellphone subscribers exceeding 250M, it seems reasonable to suggest that nearly everyone in the market of a local news publisher has an email address or device by which to get news. Investing in printing press, the people to run it, and the energy costs of delivery for one newspaper per household seems completely unnecessary and expensive
It's also not clear that classified advertising will last either. Craigslist is famously devouring the newspaper classified business in major urban areas, and looks now to advance on medium sized markets (including sites in Vermont and New Hampshire). Some communities even utilize their town-based list-serves as alternatives. People routinely sell, give away, or market their services on the Lyme listserve everyday. Items sell in a matter of minutes, and this is with a population of less than 2,000 people, of whom only several hundred are reported to be listserve members.
It's also not clear that local publishers need to break news in print and in the early morning anymore. Leave that task to the online version and instead think about the print version as leisurely compendium to the hard news operation that appears later in the day.
What local newspaper publishers offer, however, remains compelling. Let's start with high-quality writing and photography of the local geography. In these markets, people want to see their neighbors and read about their neighborhood. It's getting harder for these publishers to retain good writers and photographers, but those outlets who do benefit significantly.
The issue of geography should be not be overlooked. I'd argue that on the national level, geography appears less important than ever in distinguishing the major publications. If the Times, Post, and Wall Street Journal each cover national business, politics, sports, and culture, does it really matter where they are based? In those markets and in this Internet age, personality seems to matter more in creating and building a news operation than location. Ergo, Fox News, Huffington Post, Rush, or Drudge. Local newspapers distinguish themselves by resisting this trend, particularly in communities who value social capital significantly.
At the same time, in this Internet age, local news publishers seem to miss the opportunity match their prowess for local reporting with local advertising. As a platform, the local newspaper does a terrible job of connecting directly with consumers, and it seems odd that few publishers have turned to micro-advertising like Google's Adwords to develop an online presence that connects the auto dealer in Town X with the newspapers subscribers with prescribed circumference of its location. Something of the same could occur via SMS to the cellphones of shoppers. Tell me what the local sports store has on sale today, and I'd be happy to travel there. What local businesses often need, I think, is a way to reach local customers directly. Proximity matters, especially in rural communities, and newspapers need to ask if their current advertising business really works anymore and what they could really do to make it effective.
The bottomline, I'd suggest, is that the newspaper as we know it will become more scarce and vulnerable in the next ten years, particularly as buildout of truly high-speed (4 Mps) broadband occurs, energy prices continue to rise, and devices like the iPhone become ubiquitous. Whether existing newspublishers adopt depends as much on their tolerance for future risk, as it does on their ability to realize present-day risk.
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