TomBritt.com Online Marketing Blog

I was talking to a “newspaper insider” the other day about the convergence of media and the somewhat incestuous relationship between metro newspapers, radio stations, and television stations. In our market, the Indianapolis Star has tried to create as many new online properties as they have new print properties in the last few years. (See my “Why Newspapers Are Dying a Slow, Painful Death” post)

I asked a simple question, “why don’t television stations feel threatened by their newspaper ‘partners’?”

The answer I got was a bit surprising.

“Television is already there, newspapers are running from where they are…they want to be television stations.”

He pointed out that in markets where one company owns all three mediums (TV, radio, newspapers), the television stations are the cash cow, radio stations break even, and newspapers lose money. In the example he used in Columbus, Ohio, the newspaper is actually being shut down because it is losing so much money.

Given this, he revealed that the Indianapolis Star’s goal is to eliminate the print product completely by 2013. No more print?

Last month they “redesigned” the paper to use a narrower font, narrower broadsheet, and supposedly “easier to read” type. In other words, they put their presses on a diet and cut about 10% of their paper costs. The business section is now a 4-page flyer with a few business classifieds and some stock prices. Signs of a struggling newspaper business are everywhere and they are trying to mask it by waving shiny objects at us like we’re infants.

“Look over here Tommy, it’s a new website!”

“Lookie over here Tommy, it’s IndyMoms.com!”

“Heeeerrrrreeee’s a big puppy, Tommy. You like puppies? Go to IndyPaws.com like a good boy.”

You might be making money online, even faster than you thought. But in the long run, if you eliminate print, you’ll be doomed. You are selling online ads ‘better’ because you have a relationship with your print customers and they want something that works. Simple. Your newspaper ads never have and never will do what the online ads can do: generate and quantify leads.

I think Gannett is fattening up the IndyStar.com “Walton-family-sized” offering of print and Internet products to sell to a radio empire, like Emmis. Television giants won’t touch a newspaper, but radio has the need to grow and they already survived the streaming media tidal wave in the late 1990’s. Without a strong Internet video strategy and the paradigm fixed in the public mind that the newspaper will report on what we do, newspapers have too far to go spread too thin as it is.

Give up the print and newspapers will die. Jot this prediction down.

Steve Yelvington wrote a great blog post about the arrogance and mindset of newspapers entitled “Resolution: Newspapers should be more like Apple.” One of my favorite quotes is:

After half a century or so of near-monopolistic market dominance, the average daily newspaper has developed a lot of really bad habits: rudeness, arrogant pricing, poor customer service and a really bad case of NIH, the “not invented here” syndrome. The newspaper often is as lame as the Zune and as resented as Vista.

Microsoft’s idea of a level playing field has been described as “bulldozing the other guy’s buildings.” Oh, what a dream solution that would be for today’s troubled newspaper publisher. Let’s get a law passed against Craigslist, or the new free commuter paper, or Myspace.

“Ditto” Mr. Yelvington. I’m facing this in Indianapolis where Gannett is trying to run everyone out of business, including Nuvo (with their Indy.com publication), Indianapolis Monthly (with their “Carmel Magazine”, “Fishers/Geist Magazine”, whatever other niche area they want magazine), and Indy’s Child (IndyMoms.com which is now launching a magazine). How thin can you spread yourself and how much more difficult can you make the advertising decision on a potential buyer?

I think we should all band together and start a daily newspaper. Wait a minute, that’s why they got into our business to begin with.

Interesting article from Jason Goldberg at SocialMedian.com today regarding the “new news.”

What is known is that the business of delivering the news has to change.  It’s no longer economical to produce print in the age of digital.  How can a printing company saddled with manufacturing and real-world product delivery compete with the economies of virtualization? 

I somewhat agree, but I know from experience that advertisers, the economic engine behind all media, put much more stock in print matter than they do a :30 second TV or radio spot or a click-through on a website. Something about print is ‘temporarily permanent’ and therefore more valuable. Companies that figure out how to bundle all medias and parse it out locally or by user will have the silver bullet.

That said, there is power in the masses.  Hundreds of thousands of citizen journalists, appropriately engaged, can deliver some awesome news — with a reach far greater than any wire service or modern day newsroom.

Where does all this lead to?  I’ve got plenty more ideas here which I will share over time.  It surely is an exciting time to be following the business of making news.

Jason goes on to highlight several news aggregation services pointing to them as the answer to this influx of citizen journalism. However, I believe that as more and more content comes online, people will be looking for more local, community content rather than putting their faith in an online service to sort it out for them. Digg and Reddit are great services, don’t get me wrong. But the majority of people still use iGoogle or myYahoo as their start-up page each morning vs. walking to the curb to pick up their newspapers off the driveway. Most folks know how to add an RSS feed to their ‘portal’ pages already, walking them through a news aggregation site is a little more clumsy and still doesn’t give them their email alerts.

Interesting story today in the Washington Post (”Storming the News Gatekeepers“) where the debate over whether citizen journalists are really journalists or not.

“The term ‘citizen journalist’ has an Orwellian ring to it,” says Andrew Keen, author of “The Cult of the Amateur,” who’s criticized the Web 2.0-Wikipedia world, where everyone can become their own editors.

“People are becoming Big Brother, either with a camcorder or a keyboard, and following the candidates around. It’s ridiculous. You can’t just be a great journalist, the same way you can’t be a great chef or a great soccer player.”

“Journalists,” he continues, “follow a set of standards, a code of ethics. Objectivity rules. That’s not the case with citizen journalists.

How interesting: “Objectivity rules.”

It’s my belief that objectivity will be the eventual downfall of print newspapers. They are trying to incorporate more and more “citizen journalism” into their daily broadsheets only to find that no one is reading them. People want to know the opinions of other people. It is the basis of communication as we know it today.

I would argue that “citizen journalists” ARE the real journalists, and that newspaper journalists abiding by the AP Style Book, quoting three sources for every story, and remaining objective are the dinosaurs of our new Internet age. Wake up editors, people can do what you do and people listen.

With all the talk about global warming, $90 per barrell oil, recycling, and going digital, why don’t newspapers get beat up for pumping out millions of tons of newsprint each day? Our family started getting serious about recycling this year, converting almost half of our “trash” into “recyclable waste” almost overnight. We have one bin for glass, one for plastic (which we fill twice per week), and one for aluminum cans. Off to the side, we have another pile of newspapers which grows each week by over a foot in height. With all the scuttlebutt around recycling, why isn’t the newspaper industry being scrutinized for pumping out tons and tons of newsprint that just fills our garages?

Sure, I can cancel my subscription and put an end to the paper madness. I logon to their website anyways first thing in the morning. That long walk to the end of my driveway in the morning is most inconvenient, especially when my laptop and wireless Internet allow me to read the same stories online from my couch. How much environment could we save by forcing the local newspapers to stop printing tons of unread paper each day?

More than 59 million people (37.3% of all active Internet users) visited newspaper Web sites on average during the second quarter of 2007, a record number that represents a 7.7% increase over the same period a year ago, according to Nielsen/NetRatings. Newspaper Web site visitors generated nearly 2.7 billion page views per month throughout the quarter, compared to slightly more than 2.5 billion during the same period last year. The second quarter figures are the highest for any quarter since Newspaper Association of America began tracking these numbers in 2004. May 2007 also was a record-breaking month for the industry; more than 60 million people visited newspaper Web sites that month, more than any month on record. This figure represents a 6.7% increase from the same period a year ago.

Newspapers are doing more and more online, but they are losing ground to other online news sources, social networks, and narrower niche websites. According to statistics gathered by Alexa.com (owned by Amazon.com), the largest newspaper websites have all been declining in online rank since January 2006. (see 5-year chart below)

Their page view rank is on the decline as well, noted in this graph below:

A recent study conducted by the Newspaper Audience Databank in Canada sheds some light on this ongoing problem for newspapers. It shows that boomers are still in love with their newspapers, 56% of 40+ year-olds read newspapers each day with 78% reading each week. On the weekend, boomers on average spend 105 minutes with the paper while those under 40 spend on average 67 minutes.

“Their readership habits have changed little over the past 20 years despite intense media fragmentation and technological innovation resulting in a ‘media everywhere’ marketplace,” the study found.

Which brings me to my point: people adapt their preferred method of consuming news at an early age and stick with it. As the boomers age and they become a smaller percentage of the population, newspapers will shrivel up on the dying vine.

We’ve been seeing a decline in newspaper distribution for the last five years and I’ve blogged about this phenomenon several times. The “Internet Generation” is not excited about a newspaper website offering journalist blogs, talk back features, or online extras. Their boomer base isn’t excited about it either. As a matter of fact, no one is excited about their online strategy which is reflected in their traffic decline over the last 18 months.

The general public is going online to get their news, not from traditional newspaper sources but from bloggers and citizen journalists. For the record, YouTube.com is now ranked 4th on Alexa.com right behind 1. Yahoo! 2. MSN.com 3. Google.

If you are still investing in daily newspaper ads, be aware that their business continues to slip. According to the Washington Post:

Newspaper advertising revenue continues to edge downward, with first-quarter declines reported yesterday at three of the industry’s largest companies — including Tribune Co., which is counting on cash flow to help pay down $13 billion in debt associated with its ongoing sale.

All traditional media are struggling to retain consumers and advertisers, but newspapers have been particularly hard hit in recent years, as many companies have moved their advertising to non-newspaper Web sites and other platforms.

And our friends at Gannett are feeling the slip, too:

At Gannett, the nation’s largest newspaper company whose holdings include USA Today and 89 other papers, first-quarter ad revenue slipped 1.9 percent.

Read the whole story 

An article from the New York Times sheds light on the continual downward decline in ad sales at Gannett, a prediction I made last year in my post entitled “Why Newspapers Are Dying a Slow, Painful Death.” Seems that USA Today is taking on water faster (14% decline from February 2006-February 2007) than the local newspapers (3.8% decline overall).

By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE (Published: March 26, 2007)

For newspapers, February was the cruelest month. So far.

Revenue from advertising was in striking decline last month, compared with February a year ago, and were generally weaker than analysts had expected.

And while there was one piece of good news for the industry — ad spending on newspaper Web sites rose — many industry watchers were wondering whether the February declines were part of a short-term slump or whether they signal a deepening systemic problem.

“I’m reluctant to say that a single data point is a trend,” said Barry Parr, a media analyst at Jupiter Research. “But those are scary numbers, especially when we’re not in a recession.”

At USA Today, the nation’s biggest newspaper, ad revenue was down 14 percent this February, compared with February last year. Gannett, which owns USA Today and is the nation’s biggest newspaper company, reported that its overall ad revenue declined 3.8 percent in February from February 2006.

Ad revenue at The New York Times Company fell 6 percent overall, declining 7.5 percent at The New York Times; ad revenue at the company’s New England Media Group, which includes The Boston Globe, was down 4 percent. At The Wall Street Journal, published by Dow Jones, it was off 10 percent.

The Tribune Company, whose papers include The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune and The Baltimore Sun, reported losses of more than 5 percent. So did McClatchy, whose papers include The Miami Herald, The Sacramento Bee and The Lexington Herald-Leader in Kentucky.

Even papers in smaller markets, which are shielded from some of the forces buffeting some of the bigger metro dailies, saw losses in February. Ad revenue for the publishing division of Media General, which owns The Tampa Tribune, The Richmond Times-Dispatch and The Winston-Salem Journal, were down 5.8 percent.

The American Journal Review posted an article by Dana Hull entitled “Blogging Between the Lines” that deals with the current predicament that newspapers now find themselves in with the Internet. She writes that “the mainstream media have fallen in love with blogs, launching them on everything from politics to life in Las Vegas to bowling. But does the inherent tension between the blogosphere’s anything-goes ethos and the standards of traditional journalism mean this relationship is doomed?”

It will be interesting to see how this plays out, and which “powers that be” will win out. Will it be the up and coming blogging journalist at the newspaper that gets a strong following with no revenue? Will it be the more seasoned journalist that still tries to present both sides of a story in hopes of not aggravating a print advertiser?

Hull quotes a media ethics professor on the dilemma:

“Blogging as it has evolved has been very different from conventional reporting,” says Jane Kirtley, a professor of media ethics and law at the University of Minnesota and a former AJR columnist, who adds that reporters, trained to be objective, often struggle to adopt the right tone. “Blogs are not intended to be objective. They are supposed to be opinionated, snarky and in your face — and that’s not the way the mainstream media usually goes about reporting. The whole genre of blogging is very different. It’s not fair for a news organization to say, ‘We want you to blog, but by the way don’t express your real opinions.’”

Therein lies the problem with newspapers trying to go online. They will essentially have to have a separate business, separate bench of journalists…er…I mean bloggers, and separate business models to really make this work. Gannett is throwing everything at the fan these days with the launch of local weekly tabloids, online-only moms websites, city-wide health magazines, local bi-monthly magazines, and video on their websites. Spreading yourselves a little thin?

Why don’t newspapers reach out and partner with “citizen journalist” (content partners for those of you at the newspapers’ ivory tower) and work with them to provide columns for their newspapers? They have done this with local TV media and radio stations, but they are reluctant to do so on the web. Bring this content in your non-opinionated style to your reader base and watch how much younger and bigger they become.

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