BendTech

A few days ago, I promised a post outlining what I would do if I were in charge of a local newspaper and wanted the business to survive. I had hoped this would be a good wrap up piece for my examination of newspapers. Unfortunately, I find myself stymied by how rapidly my views on this subject are changing. My draft post, which I had ready to go, went something like this…

Based on these premises:

• The audience for print news is irrecoverably shrinking, a result of the continuous improvements and adoption of technology pulling readers and advertisers away.
• There is no value in syndicated content online. Mainstream online sites and web portals already provide this content (world and national news, sports, weather, etc.) for free. Ditto for classified ads – craigslist.com won that battle.
• The craft of journalism is passing from the hands of the elite (professional journalists) into the hands of the masses (specialty blogs, community-based news reporting, Twitter, etc.)
• Readers don’t pay for news online, and online ads are not as profitable.  Meaning the available revenue for an online news business is likely 1/10th that of it’s offline counterpart (for now).
• The end will come quickly for print. As circulation and advertising revenues fall, a paper will see it’s thin profit margin disappear and find themselves irrecoverably in the red.

… I came to this conclusion:

There is a short window of opportunity in which a paper will be able to use it’s standing within it’s current market to recast itself as, “The Online Portal for Your Local Community”. Doing so will require the creation of a compelling online experience that aggregates community-generated content and engages readers in a vibrant, social dialogue. Simultaneously, the paper must focus on promoting itself as the preferred way for advertisers to reach this market. Finally, and most painfully, it must divest itself of it’s soon-to-be-unprofitable print business and all the resources implied in that. In essence, a paper must completely redefine itself and it’s way of doing business if it is to survive.

At the time it felt pretty good: some reasonable insights and what I liked to think was a somewhat out-of-the-box plan, right? But the more I read and consider, the worse it sounds. Don’t get me wrong, I believe the premises are valid, and there is little doubt that for a newspaper to hang on it needs to start acting *today* to become a much leaner endeavor with it’s fingers in the online pie. But does that “short window of opportunity” I mention actually exist? The Pew Research Center’s State of the News Media 2009 report is “the bleakest” one they’ve issued in the six years they’ve been doing them, and numbers released by the newspaper industry’s own trade organization, the NAA, would seem to agree; their figures show ad sales dropped 30% in the first quarter of 2009 alone. For many papers, the end would seem to be nigh.

And even if that window is open, if a paper does have a bit of financial runway on which to try and land, it’s debatable whether there is a way to profit from developing a local community portal. Not only are local TV and radio stations eager to enter the fray – they too need to make this transition to the online world – but there are innovative online services like Topix.com emerging that serve *all* local communities with an economy of scale that may be impossible to match. They also have the potential to leverage community specific cross-over news in novel new ways. (For example, imagine a news site that “knew” of a Bend, OR reader’s interest in, let’s say, broadband issues and used that to tie them into news and forums surrounding other regional stories, like Wilson, NC’s publicly owned broadband system.)  It’s shaping up to be a competitive battle, with players on a variety of fronts.  And that’s not even accounting for efforts like the student-developed, NewsMixer.com. How is a business supposed to compete in a market where a handful of graduate students can provide a compelling, innovative news service as a friggin’ thesis project, with no thought given to the need for revenue???

Finally, amid all this I found myself scrutinizing “Don’t Stop the Presses!“, an NAA article in which ten of the top movers and shakers in the news industry are asked a series of probing(?) questions about the future as they see it. As a newspaper owner faced with having to make radical changes to my core business, it would be reassuring to see leaders at the top who “get it”, and who are lobbying for the resources and support needed to make this transition happen as smoothly as possible. There are brief flashes of insight in their answers and, to be fair, they’re not in as complete a state of denial as I was half expecting, but they are  irrationally convinced there will be print news of some sort in the future; it’s just a matter of figuring out what it looks like. Of the 30-40 answers these “leaders” provided, only one acknowledges the very real possibility that print news may go away altogether.

For older readers, myself included, the prospect of newspapers going away is disquieting. Passing the paper around the breakfast table on a Sunday morning is a cherished ritual I grew up with, and one still enjoyed in many households.  But it is likely giving way to a more frenetic morning routine that involves checking your favorite blogs and your friends’ Facebook statuses.  I am saddened to think my new son may never know what it’s like to suck maple syrup from a corner of newsprint after having inadvertently dragged the comics across his pancakes. But I take heart in knowing the reasons for this demise of print news are undeniably encouraging for him and his generation. News and journalism are changing in ways that are exciting and energizing. My son won’t be a passive bystander. He will be part of the fray, creating his own news and actively engaged in the issues he cares about in ways it would be foolish to try to predict today.