By JIM BROOKS
Nelson County Gazette
Thursday, Dec. 31st, 6 p.m. — Like print journalist across the country, I am saddened to read that the publication known as “the bible of the newspaper industry” for more than 100 years is officially dead. Today, the staffers of Editor & Publisher cleaned out their desks, its operation shut down for the foreseeable future.
For parent company Nielsen Business Media, this was a business decision. For journalists like myself it was a sign of a much larger issue.
There’s no doubt in my mind that this was a true business decision on the part of Nielsen. The newspaper industry — particularly large metro dailies – continues to face hard economic times and declining advertising revenues. Even smalltown newspapers have frozen wages and hiring as well as instituted mandated days off without pay.
As readers, we’ve seen newspapers physically shrink in size as publishers seek to cut costs by reducing the amount of paper they use. Advertising-to-editorial copy ratios have permanently shifted to more ads than copy in an effort to have leaner, more profitable papers.
Newspapers’ classified ad sections — once a huge profit center for newspapers — have been gutted in some markets by online sources like eBay and Craig’s List.
It’s easy to repeat the mantra that has crossed my lips repeatedly for more than 15 years: “Newspapers just don’t get the Internet.”
In the early days, this was largely true.
Back in 1995, when the corporate parent of my newspaper was setting up some of its holdings as dial-up Internet Service Providers (ISPs), I was ecstatic. I had been a not-so-quiet lobbyist for entering the age of electronic media, and this ISP venture would be the county’s first local dial-up Internet access. It was admittedly a very progressive move for a newspaper company.
But the newspapers’ managers didn’t see it that way.
The business plan was for each newspaper to create a “brand” for its Internet business – a brand that would be tied directly to the newspaper. This would give it instant credibility that comes with being tied to a trusted name in the community — and what entity is more trusted than the local newspaper?
But at my newspaper managers were suspicious. Weren’t the majority of the news stories about that “Internet thing” always bad? Wasn’t it risky to tie the newspaper’s reputation to something so … unknown (and possibly sinister) as the Internet? The die was cast, and the decision made: Instead of branding the ISP business and making it its own (as did the other sites), the newspaper avoided mention of any relationship between it and the Internet business. Even the first newspaper ads for the service purposely failed to mention a connection with the newspaper. While corporate suits later squawked about it – and a disclaimer noting the relationship later added — it was indicative of things to come.
Management’s support for the ISP venture was tepid at best. An April 1996 WIRED magazine article that parodied a future issue of Time Magazine citing the death of the Internet (click here to read “The Great Web Wipeout”) didn’t help matters. The article caused a lot of worried murmuring among managers, who never understood it was satire or noticed the month of publication.
Like all new technologies, there’s a learning curve and a period where you wonder “what the heck can I do with this now?” Fifteen years later, newspaper managers and corporate suits certainly “get it,” and they understand the Unversal Truth: What has worked for decades to make money in the printed newspaper industry doesn’t translate directly to the Internet.
To be sure, advertising is still advertising and revenue is created from the sale of it, both in print and on a web site. And news is still news, and still in demand. With readership coming from outside the printed pages, the hunger for news has increased exponentially in the digital age. It’s easy to see that it isn’t journalism that’s been in decline the past few years, it’s the paper medium on which it is printed.
Newspapers still haven’t found a way to translate the newspaper business model into the digital age. The reason is simple – it isn’t possible. This may explain why so many newspapers treat their web site as an item to add value to the printed product.
Newspapers have been trying to determine how a web-based business can support the same management structure and business model that has worked for years in the printed newspaper industry, yet the answer remains elusive. Why? Because the long-established management structure isn’t needed in the age of digital newsgathering. Instead of trying to change the Web to fit their profit and organizational structure, the question newspapers should ask is: “How do we change our business structure to succeed in the digital age?”
Rather than adapt its business model, Nielsen simply discontinued Editor & Publisher. And while the printed magazine may no longer be worth continuing, there’s no question in its readers’ minds that news about the print journalism business will always be in demand. It is worth covering, and for the right group willing to drop the old print business paradigm, it may even be profitable.
Locally, the news media is in no real danger of going away. There will always be a demand for news. What really is at stake here isn’t the demand, but the provider. And unfortunately for the print newspaper industry, the Barbarians are at the gate.
One of the biggest threats to smalltown newspapers is a web site called Topix. Topix is a news aggregator that automatically collects news stories and displays the content on web sites targeting a specific community — like Bardstown. But the real power – and threat — of Topix isn’t just the newsgathering, it’s the community it is creating.
Topix reminds me of a biker bar I used to frequent in Jasper, Ind. It was a fairly wild and wooly place at times; you heard the damnedest rumors, most of which were rooted in fact. The forums on Topix are much the same, complete with the digital-age equivalent of barroom brawls, hair-pulling and shouting matches.
Topix is creating a name as a place to go online to find out what’s going on in the community. In Topix forums they don’t just discuss the recently published news, but also the news that’s just happened. With real-time online reporting and discussion of news by those who see it, the real threat to the print newspaper is the usurping of its entire news franchise.
As we enter the second decade of the 21st Century, it might be time for some bold thinking: It’s time to change the relationship between newspapers and their web sites. Instead of the web adding value to the print edition, it is time to put the web first, using the newspaper as a vehicle to add value to the online product.
It may sound like a far-fetched idea, but it would achieve two important goals: The first is to meet the needs of a growing community who find a printed newspaper no longer relevant to their lifestyle; the second is to restore the newspaper’s role as the news authority within the community.
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