• by Mike Bloxham , Op-Ed Contributor, March 7, 2012

The ills of the newspaper industry have been well-documented in recent years, with circulation and revenue declines being the bane of owners and executives alike.

Now comes more doom and gloom -- a report from the Pew Research Center stating that for every $7.00 of print ad revenue lost, the sector has only managed to recoup $1.00 in digital ad revenues.  Not an equation that is destined to spread joy in the corridors of newspaperland.

While the same report makes it clear that many publishers see the re-skilling and re-tooling of their sales staff and sales operations as key to addressing the issue, they also admit that attracting digitally-savvy sales people is all but impossible. (That's hardly surprising; the industry makes the proposition akin to inviting rats to board a sinking ship.)

Why has it taken so long to get to grips with the issue?

Digital media is not new and nor is its impact on print consumption or advertising revenues. We’ve been talking about it for years, and yet Pew is still reporting on a sector where, on average, a paper (of those surveyed) had three print ad reps for every one digital ad rep.

No surprise that digital revenues are so much lower than print.  Quite apart from the historically established advertiser base, there is a massive imbalance in resources being allocated to make the case.

You may say, that until the revenues are there, an increasingly cash-strapped business can’t afford to allocate the resources to digital. History is littered with the carcasses of businesses that followed that line of thinking.  

While the sales function is clearly critical to the future well-being of the sector, to focus solely on selling more digital space would seem to miss the point -- at least in part.

The opportunity for the newspaper sector is to follow the consumers’ lead and redefine itself – from “print” to “text."  It needs to rejigger its image from a monotheistic view of itself, defined by the medium of delivery, rather than by function: a collection of local, regional or national trusted brands that consumers turn to for information on a regular basis.

The medium doesn’t matter.  It’s no more about paper than it is about screens.  It’s about both.  More importantly, it’s about the reader and the context of consumption.

Only by re-engineering the business and its culture around the media-neutral approach to the combination of words and images will the sector emerge from its current malaise to become a vibrant part of the modern media ecosystem.

By all means overhaul the sales process, the remuneration structures and the rest. But unless the core culture of the organization is also addressed, it will probably be for nought.

I believe what we currently call newspapers have a potentially great future. Some, like many in the magazine sector, have already embarked on pursuing the means to claim that future.  But too many in the industry are still rooted in the old way of thinking: paper first, then the rest.

The future for newspapers lies not in a fixation on newspapers.  They probably won’t go away -- I certainly hope they don’t -- but the future is more about news in the form of text, image, audio and video than anything paper alone can deliver.

Great innovations often arise from great crisis. In this respect, it is a time for creativity, bravery and boldness in the newspaper sector.

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