Could newspapers have survived the Web?

Seth Godin

(Credit: Seth Godin)

The man who killed newspapers is supposed to be Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist, the Internet publication that has at the very least helped dismantle the newspaper classifieds business.

Newmark, though, typically denies Craigslist pushed newspapers to the brink of extinction, which is where they most certainly appear to be today. Newmark will tick off plenty of factors that contributed to the fall, not least of which was "they refused to speak truth to power."

That may or may not be true, but it's hard to miss how badly newspapers misplayed the Internet and a lot has been written lately about that. Seth Godin, a noted pundit, author, and the founder of Yoyodyne, has an interesting point of view on the travails of The New York Times. He argues that a decade ago, the Times failed to recognize the huge opportunity of using the Web to extend its brand.

He said among the ways the Times blew it was by not buying or creating competitors to Zagats or Yelp. "That's a quarter of a billion dollars worth of value that the paper with the most influential restaurant reviews page didn't create," he said.

Godin scolds the Times for "abdicating" its role as the last word on book reviews and he suggests Times, should dramatically boost the number of stringers it uses so it can offer readers hyper-intensive coverage about niche subjects that matter to them. Godin's point here seems to be that the Times, like most general newspapers, was traditionally restricted in its coverage because of limits on space. Only so many stories could fit in a daily paper.

A Web publication doesn't worry about space.

"Why doesn't the paper have 10,000 stringers, each with a blog, each angling to be picked up by the central site?" Godin asks. " You wouldn't have to pay much per story to build a semi-pro cadre of writers and reporters. When you organize the news (delivering unique perspectives to people who want to hear them) you influence the conversation."

Nobody has chronicled the Times' financial crisis as thoroughly or with as much unrestrained glee as the blog Silicon Alley Insider. Henry Blodget, the Silicon Alley's founder and former tech analyst turned journalist after a scandal drove him from Wall street, argues that the Times' cost structure is bloated with big salaries and newsprint costs that no longer make sense when competing against Web publications...like his for example.

I worked for newspapers for 10 years. I love the Times. But there's no arguing the company and many other papers appear to be stuck in the past. I visited the Times' relatively new Manhattan headquarters a couple of months ago. All that glass and steel shooting into the sky, the gift shop and polished wood floors, made me wonder if the place wasn't a huge and enormously expensive tombstone for the newspaper industry.

I asked Blodget several months ago what was the smartest thing he'd done this year. He responded: "Not buy newspaper stocks."

[ghaff]

Could the NYT have done more? Absolutely. At the same time, though, so much of what newspapers used to leverage for their profits has been unbundled and commoditized and making money off digital content has been a challenge for just about everyone except Google. If Craigslist is going to run classified ads mostly for free--thereby cutting into an historical newspaper cash cow--it's not that clear what the NYT's appropriate response should have been. Sure, they could have attached their brand to free classified ads of their own and could have churned out lots of book reviews and so forth that wouldn't fit in the print edition. But, at a minimum, it's an open question how much of that would have turned into $$.

[askj113]

More then just short term profit though, the author is using the example of book reviews as a way they could have, combined with their name, built a brand on the internet as the place to go for book reviews.

[vgraybeard]

It doesn't matter where I read the news, I want news. I was a newspaper junky; If someone was headed out of town, I requested a local paper. I read the whole thing (Banner through want ads).
"Unique perspectives" were on the editorial pages where they belonged; you could get facts in
the news pages. Facts did "influence the conversation." Craig, the net, television nor anything else from the outside has much in effect on the print media. Suicides always want to blame someone else.
Go to the library, maybe the have a copy of a newspaper. I use to get out of school; get my bike; pick up my papers and deliver my route every day. There was a morning paper too. Good papers. Now you have yellow "journalism" not fit to wrap fish or line the bottom of a bird cage. when I arrive in a new town, the first thing I do is grab a local paper. there must be one.......somewhere.

[myles taylor]

Digitalized content is just so much easier to sort through, manage, and distribute. The newspapers should have transitioned. That would have saved them. They needed to evolve. I will never open a newspaper when I can read something online. That way I can go right to where I want to and I don't need to scan and read a bunch of stuff I don't care about. Also, I don't have to get rid of the paper when I'm done.

Maybe they should make something akin to the Kindle for newspapers, where you buy a electronic newspaper that updates every day.

[honorable1]

The newspapers are losing, and will continue to lose ,because they have an inferior product, they are myopic and they are greedy. I predict in 10 years the newspaper will cease to exist in it's current 'paper' form.

[hran]

My local newspaper has adapted, maybe late, but effectively. They have interests in radio and TV, and have created cable regional news reporting sources. Their online presence was a bit late developing, but now includes automatic detection of small format PDAs and web-enabled phones. I have actually set it as my Home Page on my Palm Wi-Fi enabled Tx for some time. It's less satisfying on my PCs But very good on my Palm.

I believe they will be one of the longest surviving news sources here in the Columbus, Ohio (there, I gave it away) market. By working to be a regional news provider, The Dispatch companies have been broadening their base for years. I hope that they succeed through the (still) coming information renaissance. The true blending of professional reporting and instantly available information has not yet coalesced into a solid medium. CNNs use of iReports is getting closer, more sources will use similar paradigms soon.

Local news may become a totally on-site, real-time phenomenon. Learning to adapt to news as a blend of analysis, instant reporting, and investigative reporting is the answer to survival in the changing news environment of 2010+.

[The_Decider]

Small newspapers that mainly focus on their communities are in a good position. Local news is difficult to get online, unless an area has an exceptionally forward thinking TV news channel. Those that try to serve a national market are hurting.

That should tell the big newspaper the direction they need to go if they are going to survive. Of course, they could go completely on-line and probably do well.

Times change, just because you made money hand over fist, doesn't mean you always can. Adapt or die.

[akvasu]

We should always have news papers. Its a different experience. Much better than reading on tiny 11 inch or 5 inch screens. If that trend continues, then the optical industry sure will stay heads above recessions.

These days we dont really get news thru any media - print or web. We only get the juicy stuff on actors and socialites. When does that get fixed? Obviously the internet is not going to fix that. The internet is actually broadcasting suicides online!

[robruffo]

Lesser paid "semi-pros" are not real journalists.

What kind of elections can we have with a bunch of bloggers with no formal training, no notion of what fair reporting is, no intellectual tools to analyse and study information?

It is time we all stepped up and realized the need for old-school media, regardless of whether it is delivered by paper or compu screen.

Blogs written by Joe Six Pack or The Plumber do not replace seasoned pros any more than cta dn dog videos on You Tueb replace Hollywood, and the work of dedicated pros in both hose fields needs to eb protected.

[sandonet]

Robruffo,

I'm with you, at least I hope you're right. Obviously I'm biased and I hope Americans will always be willing to support publications that pay people a decent wage to gather and disseminate information on a full-time basis. But the way things are going I'm not so sure. The good news is most of the highest-trafficked tech blogs are publications with seasoned writing staffs.

I read the local city news paper and I find the local news very interesting. I believe the news papers in order to compete with online news should refer their hard copy news to online sites etc. News print is limited with hard copy; we can't have fifty pound news papers but we can have follow up stories in greater detail on the net. There is also some thing to say about holding a news paper in your hands as appose to steering into a computer display. The local news paper also gives us information about our local government, local issues, and local problems that would be lost on the web.

[HighwayHome]

Newspapers killed themselves when they stopped reporting the truth. Wait a second...when did they ever report the truth???

[Jesse_R]

The first thing that comes to our mind if we heard the term "extinction" is that.... all about animals. In publications such as magazines, comics, journals and newspapers as well, it can also happen.
Newspaper had been a part of people's life. Those wo don't have television in their houses buy newspaper instead. However, Newspapers are taking hard hits in this recession. Newspapers have been suffering a loss of readership, as more and more people move towards reading online editions instead of the time honored format. Currently, there are 4 newspapers that are seemingly doomed for extinction, according to the Wall Street Journal. The Philadelphia Daily News, Miami Herald, Detroit News, and Minneapolis Star Tribune are all in dire straits; 2 of them have already filed for bankruptcy. The Seattle Post Intelligencer has moved to an online edition, as no amount of payday loans could save them. The idea of people starting their day with coffee and crisp <a href="http://personalmoneystore.com/moneyblog/2009/03/09/newspapers-headed-dire-straits/">newspapers</a> may be a thing of the past.