Adding Life to Newspapers
Remember when getting your name in the paper was a big thing? And a picture? Forget about it. You bought extra copies for your grandparents. People around town would congratulate you. You felt like a celebrity for a short time and you saved the memory in a scrapbook for all time. I suspect many a high school hero still has the scrapbook of past glory in the attic or back closet somewhere. When it’s dragged out, those old memories in black bold type on yellowing paper remind you of a bygone era. There it was in black and white so it had to be true. Whether it was making the honor roll or scoring the winning touchdown or first place in the annual chili cook off, the experience was made extra special by an acknowledgment printed for all to see (a day or two later). Ah yes, the good old days when the newspaper was a vital part of how we got the news of the (yester) day.
Today, newspapers are in big trouble. Journalists are being let go. Titans of the printed news are filing for bankruptcy. I imagine that if this thorough dismantling of some other important institution was happening 5 years ago, newspapers would have been leading the way, chronicling the demise with in-depth reporting and dedicated scribes for columns in the business section or features on the front page of our local dailies. The newspaper industry itself can not offer such coverage of its own downfall. There is no one left to predict the coming storm through leg work and research. There’s no one left to check sources and conduct interviews. The business section has been eliminated or farmed out to a content service. The front page is filled with wire stories. You’ll know who won American Idol before you’ll know who won the chili cook off this year. Maybe the cook off winner will put the results on Twitter or in their own blog (with a link to the winning recipe).
Let’s finally face it, newspapers have been passed by. They are typewriters in a keyboard world. They are wax records in a MP3 reality. I predict that the term “newspaper” will become ceremonial much like the term “record” is in the music industry today.
All is not lost though. Newspapers have life after death. As someone who speaks to newspaper and television types everyday, I see new business models emerging. There are some great journalists out there forging a new trail all of us will be traveling one day.
I give the Christian Science Monitor a lot of credit for making the leap into the future. With much anticipation and fanfare, The Monitor recently switched to an online format with just a single weekly printed version. They didn’t wait to have all of the questions answered before deciding how to proceed. Editor Jon Yemma’s courage and leadership at The Monitor are to be commended.
I recently became aware of TheAlternativePress.com. Editor Michael Shapiro tells me they have 90 paid journalists on staff and have received 4 million visitors since October 2008. The Alternative Press serves a 6 community region in New Jersey. And, yes, they are making money!
Jon Yemma and Michael Shapiro along with efforts in Denver and Seattle as well as the scores of unemployed journalists out there forced to retool and innovate are creating the new business model for the modern online newspaper. Whether the focus is local like The Alternative Press, international like the Christian Science Monitor or somewhere in between, it is clear that a new more responsive, more dynamic online presence which includes audio and video components, constant updates, customized content, dialogue ability through comments and probably some yet to be discovered elements are needed to be relevant and profitable. It is also clear that waiting for a panacea is not a winning strategy. The innovators will rule this revolution.
Really cogent comment. So true that “getting print” has for centuries been the measure of the impact of events, crazes (tulips), personalities, political themes, movies and rock bands. Newspapers were the medium to memorialize such. Paradoxically newspapers are short-lived – they are not “forever.’ Digital is.
(V. Lenin’s rise to power was built on his crafty printing of tens of thousands of self-aggrandizing newspapers that were given out free (for a few weeks) on every major corner in St. Petersburg (also, free vodka).
An observation… useful to ½ fill the ½ empty cup (of vodka)… a highlight of one nice spin on that which is shaking us. Through the back door and in the nick of time comes “convergence” of another sort: huge changes, like it or not, what’s challenging all media formats is very green.
The challenges facing newspapers are in large part a given. The challenges to traditional broadcast are next. Sure, we’ll get every media (our newspapers, our TV – anything you can’t kiss or eat) over broadband. Ancient territorial copyright laws will be bent. But it goes further, much further: in a broadbanded world that’s impinging on newspapers’ space, logically, highly valued TV broadcast licenses will soon be worth not much at all….
Just as newspapers – albeit in some radically less inky format and likely off the newsstand, will survive – possibly thanks to innovations such as PNG. so too will broadcasters – but not “over the air,” (This Spring’s distraction of over-the-air DTV be damned).
Consequently thousands transmitters pumping megawatts into the air — at the cost of how much coal – will be switched off.
In slightly delayed tandem with the tremendous amounts of gas, trees and shelf space saved by newspapers switching to online formats, likewise TV “broadcasters” will switch to distribute their wares through less resource-intensive webservers — their carbon resources saved, even as their potential coverage areas increase to global. Such clean machines: good for the climate.
Nicholas Negroponte of MIT Media labs once pointed out that “everything that today is wired will soon be wireless and everything that is wireless will be wired.” A simple twist of fate would have it ”Everything that today is printed… will soon be on the web.”
Distributing content in all its forms will be the business of transporting bits, not atoms.
As long as GoDaddy, Priceline and other major websites continue to use TV (cable or satelitte) to steer viewers to their sites, so can TV and especially local cable channels help direct viewers to local news events, blogs, etc. on the Internet.
Until the Internet takes over completely, converged media will be the way to go.