A Three-Point Plan to Save U.S. Newspapers
Newspapers have an important role to play in communications. But they have to figure out how to survive in the Digital Age. A three-point plan to save them.
Newspapers have an important role to play in communications. But they have to figure out how to survive in the Digital Age. A three-point plan to save them.
We need to save newspapers. The story has been rapidly developing over the last several years, but it’s truly accelerated in 2009. The fact is newspaper readership had already been on the decline, the attention paid to it going mostly to television. But, of course, digital technology has removed massive numbers of newspaper readers and, with it, massive numbers of newspaper advertisers.
I believe that newspapers — the print editions and the companies that produce them — need to survive. From a cultural perspective, newspapers provide a critical service. No other news outlet is as committed to the fundamentals of journalism as newspapers are, and a consistent flow of unbiased information is critical. From a pure media perspective, newspapers provide a communications heartbeat in a fast-moving world. A newspaper comes out only once a day and the information in there is fixed. It is precisely the opposite of Twitter, and people need the balance between the rapid and the fixed.
Yet Twitter is getting pretty good at delivering the news and we must accept that. Newspaper companies have been painfully, dreadfully slow at realizing the emergence of new technologies. Newspaper companies have sat by and watched tons of new services come by and upend their model: craigslist, Digg, Twitter, and even search in general. A lot of time has passed, but the game isn’t over yet. There’s a strong shift in industry trends, and we’re still in early stages. By committing to join advertisers, journalists, and readers, newspapers can be saved. Here are my three points:
If newspapers are going to survive, they need to become more active players in the changing media economy. I want to be able to use newspapers to both communicate and to advertise products. Right now, they are on the road to ruin and seem insistent on standing firm in their position of selling content and charging for the advertising that surrounds it. The two best solutions they have come up with, so far, are to use micropayments (pay some small amount for each article you read) and to get some kind of charitable contribution from the government (good luck).
They need to shift their thinking and do exactly what the rest of us have done: look at the changes in how consumers want to interact with media and innovate inside that space. I desperately want newspapers to survive, but not just because they should. I want them to survive because they have figured it out.
Meet Gary at Search Engine Strategies San Jose, August 10-14, 2009, at the McEnery Convention Center.