An overview of the newspaper vs. the web issue recently discussed here
from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School for Business.
Specifies the problem(s) and offers possible models for the future.
Worth a full read for those of you in the business of publishing, for those
of us consuming information, and for those of us willing to pay for
professional journalism. At >>> http://tinyurl.com/9bl6fz
Oversimplified excerpts below:
==============================================
January 7, 2009: "Urgent Deadline for Newspapers: Find a New Business Plan
before You Vanish"
The problem, from a business point of view, is that few of today's eager,
fickle readers are willing to pay for their online news....
So how can a professional, reliable news product turn a profit for its
investors? Wharton's media-watchers offer a few ideas:
* The Philanthropic Route:...Re fears that a decline in serious
reporting about public affairs will harm our democracy....
* * The Niche Route: Forget Capitol Hill. Forget the State House.
Maybe even forget City Hall....One key to success is to provide news and
information for the most local of levels. "I'm talking block-to-block," citing
localized web presences that have proved successful in Europe and Latin
America....
* * The Pay Route: Subscriber strategies aren't always doomed.
Companies from Dow Jones, which publishes the Wall Street Journal, to any
number of small trade magazines that offer highly specialized information to
affluent subscribers manage to keep content behind a for-pay
firewall...defying
the conventional wisdom....The key is a degree of specialization, whether by
locality or....release partial information or certain stories...as a way to
get traction and then drive people towards the web site, which could be a pay
model. It's a classic, "we're going to give some stuff away for free model."
Pay satellite radio has flourished despite the availability of free AM and FM
radio and the ubiquity of iPods.
* * The Participation Route: One way the Internet differs most
dramatically from print is readers' expectations of being able to interact
with
one another....But this contrasts with the traditional newspaper idea that
content, even content that is labeled "opinion," is produced by professionals
with specific training and standards....news companies are going to have
to...transition to an online existence...."Whatever gives him or her a chance
to
say something, to have an opinion, even if 90% of it is self-serving, it
works."
* * The Commercial Route:...Survival online will require
rethinking basic values about things like bias, opinion and, especially,
advertising....
The harshest critics of newspaper firms have compared them to the railroads
of a half-century ago--unable to cater to customer desires, even as
technological change threatened to wipe them out. A more charitable comparison
might
be to the music business, which saw its profits dissolve in the face of free
downloading....
Of course, there's another parallel: The music business, criticized for
bland, generic acts, was flawed in ways that left customers broadly
unsympathetic
to its plight, just as daily broadsheets, after two decades of cuts and
Britney Spears coverage, have lost much of their claim to nobility. The
question
is whether there's a model that can revive the good pieces--the investment in
people who consider it a professional duty to spread the word about
everything from local traffic disruptions to national political
chicanery--while
giving customers the whole world of options they now expect.
Either way...some newspapers will remain--as boutique products for a niche
market willing to pay a premium for the charmingly old-fashioned idea of a
hand-delivered piece of paper printed with news stories.
======================================
[TRT's and the Coaster's sites seem to be a hybrid, nudging visitors to buy
or subscribe to the print editions.]
_Urgent Deadline for Newspapers: Find a New Business Plan before You Vanish
- Knowledge @ Wharton_
(http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=2130#)
_http://tinyurl.com/9bl6fz_ (http://tinyurl.com/9bl6fz)
**************New year...new news. Be the first to know what is making
headlines. (http://www.aol.com/?ncid=emlcntaolcom00000026)
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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