10 Newspaper Myths Deconstructed
The San Francisco Chronicle is in financial trouble. InfoWorld stops printing. Time Magazine redesigns its print edition and fires 50 people. Old media is in trouble:
The big question is: Do newspapers have a future at all? – Change or die is the media’s new watchword. Here are the 10 major misconceptions that hinder newspapers in joining the new media party:
Myth 1: We pay for printed content
Fact 1: News content was always free
The price we pay for newspapers merely covers the paper and printing costs. The management, writing, editing and delivery of newspapers is fully covered by advertising. Economically, it’s only fair that we don’t pay for online content. Don’t tell me you’ve never heard that…
Myth 2: There is not enough money in online ads
Fact 2: Newspapers don’t care about online ads
Why are print ads expensive and online ads so cheap? Tradition and ignorance. Finally, things are changing:
“The latest numbers from the Newspaper Association of America show print newspaper advertising revenue continuing to drop: down 1.7 percent in 2006 to $46.6 billion. No news there — the usual doom and gloom. But there’s another interesting number in the NAA report: Advertising revenue for online newspaper sites jumped 31.5 percent in 2006, to $2.7 billion.” Source: Recovering Journalist
Put more effort and care into your website, hire your own salesmen, sell online ads together with print ones, and understand and explain to your customers that the goal of an online ad is not to be clicked, but to be seen. Just like the paper ad. Reduce ad space to one banner per page, make it big and nice and sell it appropriately. We don’t mind good adverts. We don’t click them, but we didn’t click on paper ads either. Don’t allow online what you would never do in print. And once and for all: no popups. Everybody hates popups and companies that use them to advertise their stuff make us angry.
Myth 3: Newspapers need on- and offline identities
Fact 3: Newspapers need one identity
The brand consultant that came up with the idiotic idea of creating separate brands for the print and the online edition should be beaten with a stick. Beaten really hard.
The “special” online identity communicates: “This is not the real thing. It’s a sloppy version of the paper.” Get rid of that silly “online” or “.com” or “.co.uk” or whatnot attribute after your precious brand. The New York Times got it right.
Myth 4: Newspapers need closed archives
Fact 4: Closed archives destroy access
How much money did you make with your precious archives, and how much traffic did you lose? Newspapers need to open their archives, cross link their articles and get Google to index as much of their stuff as possible. Put ads on your old content, for heaven’s sake.
As for TimesSelect — which runs so contrary to the first law of internet thermodynamics, according to which, unless you are offering financial news or porn, online content should always be free — it hides no more than three percent of the paper’s content behind its subscription wall. And this so-called “premium content” generates just under $10 million a year, a tiny slice of the company’s $350 million digital revenue pie. – From The Huffington Post
Myth 5: Newspaper pages need to burst with stuff
Fact 5: Readers want nicely presented information
Print and online are somewhat different in terms of what can and should be done, but for serious companies the quality standards should be the same. Newspapers allow the biggest information design horrors online, things they’d never allow in a printed edition. Treat your online design as you treat your printed edition, in terms of branding, information design and advertisements. Always ask yourself: would I allow that in print?
Myth 6: People are stupid, journalists are smart
Fact 6: The collective is smarter than you
I wonder who came up with that idea? A journalist? People are often much smarter than you think, and collectively they can outsmart any journalist a thousand times. Using the intelligence of your readership makes far more sense than insulting it.
Myth 7: Journalists = professional, bloggers = smearers
Fact 7: Bloggers are journalists
Yeah, right… And ice from the iceman is colder and tastes better than ice from the fridge… Bloggers are journalists. Some suck, some rock. Social media forces newspapers to become more independent, so this doesn’t happen any more:
Myth 8: The web is just a trend. No need to panic.
Fact 8: Change or die
Yeah, and the telegraph will come back and end this silly email trend. Let me assure you: what comes after the Internet will be even more fatal to your business if you don’t adapt soon.
Adapting means: your website is your publishing tool. The paper is one exciting product of that interactive publishing process. You need to work on your paper as well: increase its readability, scannability and usability.
Myth 9: Without paper, journalism and democracy die
Fact 9: Social news is democratic news
You may say I’m a dreamer, but – we have never had as many journalists as we do at the moment. And democratization of markets and politics is on the rise. Old media dies, because it is authoritarian and can be abused as an instrument of propaganda and suppression:
AsiaMedia: “Malaysia’s traditional media has been ordered not to mention, quote or pursue stories exposed by bloggers and online news sites, which are emerging as a powerful new media force. A security ministry circular dated March 13 told top editors of a dozen mainstream newspapers and five television stations that they must not “give any consideration whatsoever” to anti-government material posted online.”
Journalists are not going to die out. The more information we have, the more we need intelligent filters; newspapers should integrate:
Myth 10: Newspapers need to become social networks
Fact 10: Newspapers need to become Wikis
Newspaper readers are not friends. Good readers are supposed to be critical about each other and not pat each other’s backs. There is a much more obvious technological model for newspapers.
I believe that newspapers need to make the development of a story transparent, they need to cross link and cross reference articles, they need to allow users to write articles and collectively correct each other’s mistakes and they need to become at least as accurate as the Encyclopedia Britannica. Got it? Yes, newspapers should use Wiki technology. There is a lot to improve on the front end, but the content generation and optimization model is an almost perfect fit.
UPDATE
This is what it looks like (The Washington Post as a Wiki). More info here.
Links
- The Doc Searls Weblog: How to Save Newspapers
- Robert Scoble: Newspapers are dead…
- Don Dodge: Has the Internet killed newspapers, magazines, music and video?
- Mathew: Print may be dying, but the news is not
- Larry Digman: How journalism education should change
- Rafat Ali: IDG’s InfoWorld Magazine To Close Down; Focus on Online/Events
- Scott Karp: Can InfoWorld Survive The Transition From Print To Online Publishing? and Reinventing The News Business Requires A Little Imagination
- Dan Gillmor: Save-the-Newspapers Columnist Fires Back, Misses
- Dave Winer: Trouble At The Chronicle
- Ryan: Two obstacles to improving online newspapers
- Drumsnwhistles: Local Newspapers Are NOT Dead, But They Must Evolve
- Recovering Journalist: Internet ad revenue is going up, print ad revenue is going down
- Radar.oreilly.com: The San Francisco Chronicle is in financial trouble,
- Publishing2.com: InfoWorld stops printing
- Randomtech: Time Magazine redesigns its print edition and fires 50 people.
- The Guardian: New stars of the newsroom
- Asiamedia: Malaysia tells media to ignore online news sites
- Ryan Sholin: Two obstacles to improving online newspapers
- Crunchnotes: Print Media Demise, Cont.
- InfoWorld: InfoWorld Brand Moves Online and InfoWorld folds print mag to focus on online and events
- Adage: The Post Advertising Age
- Arianna Huffington: News 2.0: the Hybrid Future is Kicking Down the Door
- BBC: Web ad spend overtakes newspapers
- WKLondon: Razor sharp campaign for TheGuardian
- Seeking Alpha: New York Times Company Forecasts 30% Rise in Digital Revenue This Year
Newspapers now have to compete globally. Why should I read a third rate article from a newspaper when I can go online and find better sources for the information. If newspapers want to have a chance they actually need to do reporting and start breaking stories people actually care about.
Excellent summary of how newspapers should embrace all the advantages that the internet has to offer.
This has relevance not just to how newspapers should behave, but any business or organisiation - no matter its size.
It is easier to hyperlink than to turn the fold of a paper.
Newspapers need to quit deluding themselves that people will pay for archived articles. (Myth #4.) I can’t count the number of times I’ve wanted to read a back story (NY Times in particular) only to become quite infuriated that the publisher expected me to pay $4.95 for the privilege. Sorry, but server space doesn’t cost that much and could be paid for with effective ad space.
This article hits all the nails squarely on the head and should serve as a call to arms for publishers, journalists and editors everywhere.
Wow, point 1-9 are spot on; point 10 is an atomic bomb. Newspapers should be wikis. That’s the craziest tech move I’ve heard of in months…
Theoretically correct, but I can’t quite imagine how that looks and works in practice. Users modifying news? Who monitors and how?
Also, the current wikinews looks like shit and is too hard to use. What does the iA wikinews interface look like?
Tell us more.
Brilliant post, thanks
In some pre democratic countries like Ukraine Internet treated (for now at 2007) like some kind of “black” (i.e bad) PR material source, no more, nor less.
Our corrupted government, in its infinite wisdom, even tries to start register (for fee, or course) blogs as “mass media”. Bad luck yet.
Re: The wiki news model, Robert Niles outlines some of what wiki news might look like here in this article ( http://www.ojr.org/ojr/stories/060226niles/ )
Another fact: when you mis-use “loose” for “lose” no one will listen to you.
Andrea,
You got to cut a Swiss guy some slack when it comes to spelling… Thanks for the reminder though.
Bloggers aren’t journalists. Nobody who sits on his or her ass all day is doing reporting. No reporting = no journalism.
Wm. H. Harrison VI,
News content was never free - it was subsidized by advertisements and classifieds. In metropolitan areas, classifieds actually comprise the larger chunk of revenues. And it’s this area that’s being hit the hardest by the strong presence of Craiglist in major cities. Thus newspapers have to do more than just break even with online advertising revenue, they need to do even better to replace lost classifieds revenue.
Let’s drop the blogger vs. journalist terminology argument. A number of newspaper ‘journalists’ also blog now so bringing up this argument is pointless. Is your real point to say that an army of unpaid ‘bloggers’ can replace a team of paid ‘journalists’? For subjective topical interests like food, music, entertainment, I agree that you could replace these with unpaid bloggers. But for the boring, daily grind of objective reporting, there’s no getting around having a paid staff of journalists to get the details on the recent car accident, call up city staff on City Hall scandals, or doing an in-depth story.
It’s optimistic to think that newspapers could operate as wikis but as the LA Times can attest, it doesn’t work well in the real world. Right now, the biggest and most popular websites for user-generated content are probably Wikipedia and Digg, respectively. Wikipedia is the shining beacon of collective user-generated objective content but read through some of Wales’ reports and you’ll see that the majority of Wikipedia is created and managed by a small group of individuals. And Digg? You’d have to be kidding me if you want me to replace a newspaper with Digg. The LA Times tried a wiki approach to editorials in 2004 and it backfired on them hard.
I don’t deny that the newspaper industry has a lot to address and they really need some forward-thinking to solve it. But I think you need to examine some of your arguments and realize that the issues are more complex and not as easy to solve as you think.
Patrick.
That is exactly what I am saying. Contents were paid by advertisement, thus they were free - for the reader.
That is exactly what I am saying. Blogging is a publishing channel. Bloggers=journalists, journalists=bloggers.
You misunderstand that point. I say wiki technology as wikis allow a) to look at the development of an article, b) to collectively edit a text (for editors only, not for endusers), c) easily crosslink texts with eachother, which is extremely helpful for newspapers. User generated content is cool when it comes from professionals writing on their professional matters, but usually it would have to be edited by journalists in order to be publishable.
Where the misunderstandings come from: This is a very short form of the follow up article. Read it and you’ll see that we don’t disagree.
right on,Oliver! applies to the book publishing biz as well!
See my post: http://thenetworkedbook.blogspot.com/2007/04/10-newspaper-myths-deconstructed.html
kudos to patrick for bringing sense and perspective to the argument raised by oliver.
there will always be micro-handlers of information, and those who prefer to be led by monolithic info-gatherers and -sharers. we all have our own space to create our individual imprints in this media info age.
oliver began with “old media is in trouble”. at this point - no matter how you massage the argument - print media has a solid subscriber base, so it does not yet deserve the title of “old media”. unless oliver agrees his type of media is “noisy media”?
The only sense that Patrick’s comment makes is that he didn’t read the article:
Oliver: “The reader never needed to pay for news. Advertisers did.”
Patrick: “News content was never free - it was subsidized by advertisements and classifieds”
That is not bringing sense and perspective. It’s trying to disagree using the very same arguments.
Newspapers have dropped the ball by continuing to obsess about tiny design details that no readers care about.
Instead of becoming sleek, quick-delivering sources of information, they have put their time and effort into unimportant design foibles in their print editions.
Only when the designers are fired and replaced with real editors will the idiocy stop.
I guess I can wrap my mind around the concept that bloggers=journalists. But I draw the line if one tries to extend that to bloggers=reporters. Reporters for major metro dailies have academic credentials, training and experience to allow them to observe, process and report upon the news. Unlike a wiki, what they report is vetted by a series of editors, giving the reader some confidence that what sits on the page isn’t just the product of a fruitful imagination.
recently i stumbled over an article about your first thesis, where a journalist argues that the paper content economically can’t be transferred to online media because of less advertising income. http://medienkonvergenz.com/2007/08/11/zeitungen-ohne-papier-geht-das-finanziell-ueberhaupt/ (in german)
nice article Konstantin, thanks.