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RSS"A temporary embargo, by depriving the Internet of free, trustworthy news in real-time, would, I believe, quickly establish the true value of that information. Imagine the major Web portals--Yahoo, Google, AOL and MSN--with nothing to offer in the category of news except out of date articles from 'mainstream' media and blogosphere musings on yesterday's news. Digital fish wrap," he wrote in a column in Sunday's San Francisco Chronicle.
Scheer's argument stems from his belief that newspapers will never be able to garner enough ad revenue to support their operations. "Even the most popular newspaper Web sites are unable to sell advertising equal to more than 9 percent or 10 percent of their print-edition revenue; and this after years of investment online. It's not that newspapers can't sell advertising on the Internet; it's that ads must be sold on a scale that is vastly higher--think Yahoo or YouTube--than the levels newspapers can ever hope to achieve," he argued.
But, while Scheer declares that newspapers won't be able to scale their online ad sales, he offers no evidence to support this assertion. Yes, newspapers have invested in the Internet for years, but the recession and dot-com crash of the early part of the decade temporarily derailed efforts to increase online ad sales.
Still, who's to say that newspapers won't, in the future, be able to significantly boost online ad sales. And if newspapers need scale, distribution deals with the portals offer a powerful opportunity in that regard.
Scheer might view portals as the enemy of newspapers--and to some extent, the portals do compete with online newspapers for marketing dollars--but even rivals can form alliances that benefit both. Meantime, any plan that relies on embargoing free content seems more likely to hurt newspapers' growth than help.
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Mr. Scheer and his coalition forces need to understand that IN THE 21ST century business dynamic there is no lon-term sustainable competitive advantage, and without adaptation to the environment(s) one serves and operates within, short tem progress will plateau.
Are you an adperson or a newsperson? Wrong answer! If you were both or neither, you would know better: Always share with the group and be nice to the new kid.
Content is king. Consumers are winning control. News and information sources are increasingly becoming democraticized. Newspapers will become commodities if they do not embrace the seismic paradigm shift going on out there in the real world. The problem is that editorial departments are afraid to relinquish control of the news and business departments are so driven by the daily revenue reports, that product development is stagnant for lack of concrete foreseeable ROI - so they're left trying to milk out year after year of rate increases and what ever else has worked in the past. All the other departments sit somewhere in between, and everybody is just holding on, doing what they normally do, the way they normally would hoping they still have their industry and job tomorrow.
Newspapers in general are not forwardly thinking as organizations about how to repurpose and reinvent themselves. Instead, both sides, fight for what ever remaining control they have on the world they once ran.
The solution: Think about the newspapers business from the reader and advertiser perspective. The reason why we are loosing, is because we’re not thinking like the rest of the group. We’re still stuck on ourselves and what we’ve done in the past. A simple solution is to experiment with everything, now is the time for a little trial and error - with different content and product combinations, delivery, access, options, etc. . .
Give your readers/subscribers/viewers/whoeverers something to talk about.. Most importantly, management needs to wake up and get off your lazy routine asses, take initiative, learn something, and develop a plan that takes action. Just please don't waste anymore time thinking of ways to resist the inevitability of change in the market place and our business.
So far, we've found that "Content is King," and 99.9% of my current content is in my newspaper and not on my website. You won't find similar content anywhere else on the web either.
We provide hyper-local news coverage. Even teenagers read our newspapers. Oh, but we will sell you a previously published story from our archives.
We do use our website to provide "utility" that is not easily used in our weekly newspaper - like current weather for example. We are exploring other options that may make sense, like e-mailing a "copy" of the newspaper to out-of-town subscribers. But until we can determine a way to make enough money to cover our newsroom costs, we're prepared to wait and see.
Bruce Wood
Bad news: gets about the same number of online subscribers as other online subscription methods.
Good News: protects newsstand and print subscription sales and assures when people research issues covered by the paper they'll find archive stories and be introduced to the newspaper's website (because the archives are open for search engine spiders as well as the public). Also, we’ve found that charging the local print edition rate for online subscription generates the same number of subscribers as other online subscription methods. For combonation of print and online we discount only slightly.
More info here, here, here and here.
Who cares if the online revenue per page is 10% of that of the off-line revenue - when you could be serving to 20 times as many readers.
Last time I checked, that is a significant increase in revenues.
Yes, be concerned about existing readers switching from print to online, but don't get so blinded by that issue that you ignore the potential for a massive online audience who would have never brought your publication at all.
A group calling itself THE CALIFORNIA FIRST AMENDMENT COALITION aims to protect newspapers by putting an embargo on the free distribution of news.
Does this gag order idea include international sources such as the BBC, bloggers and other independent news sources where many go to find news that the US media doesn't seem to be able to fit into current editorial calendars?
Newspapers have competed with radio and TV and survived by providing a better, more convenient and more locally focused product than other media.
Print media also had the trust of the public for many years. Editors were expected to make certain that their papers reported unbiased truth. That is no longer the case.
Perhaps instead of blocking other media sources, THE CALIFORNIA FIRST AMENDMENT COALITION should concentrate on returning the news media to the job of reporting news instead of focusing on ad problems.
Did it ever occur to anyone involved that falling subscription rates may be due more to the failure of the medium to provide what consumers expect in "news"papers than the pressure of competition from new media.
Really, it's in newspapers best interests to:
A) Expand customer base
B) Create strong alliances, as opposed to taking your marbles and going home
C) Reduce paper consumption while expanding the opportunity for users to digest news. By web, by mobile, ipod, and pda.
News is one of the few decent products that portals provide. Lookout because Google might move from its most recent expansion of selling traditional media, to beinng a news content provider...
Then what ya gonna do mr. non profit industry coalition pac lobby shadow backed toughguy?
But wait, there's more! How about an even broader (meaning larger, more loyal audience) vision? Why not provide that "third place" for people to gather? The phrase "social networking" comes to mind. Or...how about actually helping mobilize community members to solve local problems, rather than just reporting on them? Moveon.org might be a model. Or how about expanding their idea of providing light entertainment from color comics (in some papers already!) and Jumble and Sudoku, to interactive entertainment--say, Second Life, as you can see in WSJ and Fortune today. How about moving beyond advertising to enabling buyers and sellers to match up directly? EBay, Amazon and craigslist have only locked up 90% of this opportunity--there's still plenty of room for newspapers to compete here. Yes, it might require a little reorienting of the budget...