After seeing a great ad (below) for The Sun newspaper, I started thinking about just what it will take for newspapers to remain viable in a digital world. Sure, much bigger brains than I have spent years trying to find the answer to this question with little success. But I think the secret to this lack of a solution to a very real problem, is that newspapermen the world over are just that, traditional newspapermen.
Newspapers report on the news. It’s what they’ve done for as long as they’ve been in existence. Unfortunately, it’s also the very thing that has lead to their current state of crisis. With the advent of the internet and accompanying mobile information technology, yesterday’s news is now last hour’s news.
The truth of this statement was clarified for me over the past couple of days with Australian and New Zealand newspapers’ coverage of the Tiger Woods car crash. On each of the last three mornings, Australasian papers have reported exactly what was covered on the previous evening’s television news. There was no new insight. Even breakfast television news was hours ahead of them with news of what had occurred while we were asleep.
Then there is the fact that in many cases newspapers simply fill their pages with ‘news’ stories pulled from the wires. The result? Pick up two newspapers and you will see many almost identical stories.
So, how can newspapers be saved? It’s simple. Add value. Ok, I know that sounds over simplistic, but it is the key.
The advent of the internet has meant access to news has become both instant and free. If the mainstream news organisations aren’t reporting it, new upstarts (such as TMZ.com in the case of the Tiger Woods example) are. Sorry old fuddy-duddy newspaperman, that horse has bolted and there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it. So, don’t try.
Take this example… instead of reporting on the fact that the Official Cash Rate changed the day before (as it did this week in Australia), focus on telling readers why that is important to them. Differentiate your online and offline reporting, playing to the inherent strengths around readability that the physical newspaper has. It’s why publications offering smart and thoughtful analysis of the news, such as The Economist, will survive.
This is why I see inherent danger in the approach newspapers such as New Zealand’s NBR have taken with online subscriptions. For those not familiar, The NBR charges for premium content – insight and analysis not, in their opinion, otherwise available. This may work for a weekly title such as theirs, but would be inherently dangerous for a daily publication, as it would completely eliminate the need to buy an actual paper.
Charging for premium online content might solve the problem of how to monetise the expense associated with generating the content, but it runs the real risk of exaserbating the demise of print editions. Publishers must work out a way to use their print editions to add depth to the story and make their readers see it as a critical extension to the online experience.
Agree Ken, decent indepth journalism may be the only saviour of the traditional newspaper. Sadly that takes time and journalistic talent – something plenty of papers have probably lost in the last decade’s scramble to compete with the real-time web.
I imagine a future of crappy free dailies (like in the UK) with a few quality weeklies that are somewhere in between a broadsheet and the economist… a lot like the Guardian Weekly really.
I’d pay a fiver for a decent Friday paper with good analysis of the week just been (+ good photography and art direction).
By: Gareth on December 3, 2009
at 6:39 pm
Ken
I think you’re absolutely right that value needs to be added.
But I think there are a couple of things that have to happen before people will be able to see that value.
The first is to acknowledge that people are being asked to pay for something that was once ‘free’. Because we’ve been taught that news online doesn’t cost anything and, understandably, we like that state of affairs.
Importantly, our experience of being charged for something that was previously free is that we’re being discouraged from using it. Think inner-city parking or toll-roads. The key in this situation is to offer something better in a demonstrably different form – parking buildings that are safer places to leave your car, or less-congested toll-roads. The form of delivery has to change to allow people to rationalise the cost. Because to pay for something that used to be free is stupid. And people don’t like to feel stupid. So publishers need to give more thought to how they change the delivery of news if they expect people to pay for it – a change that’s small enough that it doesn’t add much cost, but significant enough that it adds much value.
But there’s a second issue, also. My sense is that most people acknowledge the value of journalists and the role they play in helping us make sense of the world.
But part of the issue here is that we don’t believe we’re actually paying for journalists to do what they do. We believe we’re paying Rupert Murdoch and Barry Colman to own yachts.
It’s not accurate, but it is understandable. These people have made huge sums of money from media ownership. It’s inescapable. They’re amongst the richest people in our nations, and very publicly so. And that’s where we believe our money goes. Not to journalists who do work we admire and appreciate, but to media owners who live lives we envy and resent.
So if I were working for a media provider I think I’d be looking for ways to update the form of delivery and to make the journalist, as much as the title itself, the focus. The first step lets me feel better about what I’m paying for. The second step lets me feel better about who I’m paying.
By: Philip O'Neill on December 4, 2009
at 11:21 am