Money for nothing…
What good is the daily printed edition of a newspaper? Is the medium so outdated that it’s only good for wrapping fish or lining the cage of the family pet? What will newspapers do to survive?
A recent article in Time, How to Save Your Newspaper by Walter Isaacson, talks about the options that newspapers face as more and more people toss aside their printed editions in favor of the endless clicking that their online editions provide.
How do you get people to start pay for something that they have been getting for nothing? - mainly - free, regularly updated, online content.
The second and more pressing issue is that for the last 400 years or so, printed newspapers have been accountable to two audiences - their readers who pay for good content and their advertisers who pay for access to these readers. The way the current online model works, the only audience the newspapers are truly answerable to, are the advertisers, as they are the only ones paying. That scenario just doesn’t add up.
How long can it go on?
Clearly, this won’t work on an ongoing basis, especially as current costs for online advertising are generally priced as though the numerous banner ads are an afterthought. Something that you should buy after you place an ad in the print edition. And as our shrinking newspapers show, most advertisers don’t think the print editions are worth the paper they are printed on.
Bait & Switch
On one hand it’s just a switch in platform. The content is the same, just not the delivery method. It’s like the difference between a church (the congregation) and the church (the physical structure). The physical structure isn’t nearly as important as the congregation or content within.
A newspaper is the sum of the whole, the journalists, photographers, editors and designers who create the news product. It shouldn’t matter what format it comes in when you read it. If the product has value it should be paid for. The challenge for our local and national newspapers is to find a way to get you to pay for it. What do you think? Your turn to speak…
September 17th, 2009 at 3:01 pm
Every day, i read online about how awful business is for the newspaper companies in this country. I have a friend in Columbus, Ohio and his family owns the Columbus Dispatch. Why can’t the newspapers lower the prices to advertise in there papers. For example, look at the help wanted section. It may be two columns at best here in fort Myers because it is so expensive for businesses to advertise in it so they go to monster.com, Craigs list or career builders. In the days of yesterday, everyone looked in the newspaper who was out of work and looking for a job.
There is just something about a personal touch of reading your local newspaper. Some days the News Press has more fliers in it than content. But than that’s a whole different issue I wish to not discuss at this time
Some thing needs to be done because some of these families have owned these newspapers for generations and generations and passed them down to their grand children and so forth.
I to am in the printing business (full commercial offset printing) and I think it is just so sad we could loose these news papers once and for all. And once they are gone their not coming back. (I mean the printed hard copy daily issues.)
My business has been hit so hard by this rotten economy that I have decided to go back to college and get my Bachelor’s Degree in Web Design and interactive media. I am a sophomore at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh.
The web is where its AT and the newspaper companies have got to find a way to stay current with the technology or we will loose them forever and what a sad, sad thing that would be.
sue mcgarty