Last Friday, ANOTHER American newspaper died, Scripp's Rocky Mountain News. Yes, yes, you can certainly take the free market POV and say bah humbug these dinosaur newspapers deserve to die I spit on your graves.
Or, we can pause for a moment and lament the challenging times for America's only professional journalism form that is not (as) obsessed by Anna Nicole, Jon Benet, or whether [[insert name of emaciated, hungry starlet]] has strofoam boobs.
Newspapers uncovered Watergate. And My Lai. Newspapers fed the statistical appetite of every baseball fan my age. Newspapers make an effort to go a scosh deeper than offering headlines in between rightwing zealot versus left wing zealot food fights. While a certain cable news channel regaled us with an hour of [[this is 100% true]] what breakfast cereal was Saddam Hussein's favorite in American captivity (note: I believe it was Fruity Pebbles) newspapers were reporting about literally tons of money simply disappearing in Iraq.
The curse that newspapers must face is partly us and what we have done to consumer expectations. We have spent years feeding the tiger, giving users pretty much any info they want, for free. "We'll worry about the making money part later." And make no mistake, the pain they now feel is something many of us will be feeling in the not too distant future, when an ecosystem built on free begins to show its flaws. Free is not a business model. As we are discovering.
Newspapers have certainly made mistakes in the way they first ignored the web, and then rushed in without considering how to really make money in it. It takes a lot of 728s to replace a $74,000 P4CB in section one, from a revenue perspective.
Happily, all of the newspaper news isn't bleak.
Not by a longshot.
The digital offerings of some newspapers are getting superb. Some are experimenting with larger and more noticeable ads. Others with subscription models. And it's never been easier to buy local papers' online presences.
One cool development is the New York Times article skimmer, which you can check out here:
http://prototype.nytimes.com/gst/articleSkimmer/?scp=1&sq=article%20skimmer&st=cse
It's a way to scan pretty much every scrap of content in the NYT in a single, easy to use page.
Many newspapers are also creating extremely lively interest communities, juxtaposing chatty onliners with juicy local news.
There's lots of energy in this sector, lots of experimentation. And despite the closing of another paper, I am bullish that the papers will figure out a way to earn more revenue online. I really hope so.
And so should you, as the affluent, educated, involved lean forward eyes that newspapers attract -- both online and offline -- are probably what you and your brand are looking for.
So pick up that phone and RFP newspapers. The right audience within the context of truly unique and valuable content.
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