Here it is:
1. Get out of the newspaper business. Culturally, you can’t look and define your business as the delivery mechanism. The business is truly content and distribution across all pipes. The asset is journalists and the brand. A print-based property is just one of the many ways to distribute the digital bits. Most newspapers have in charge of their leadership "newspaper men". They should turn over the reins to young execs, women and people with diverse backgrounds, who are web based and new consumer savvy and will NOT be wed and enamored with the print-based delivery system of the past. A true mind shift change is in order and an integrated plan for content delivery across TV, mobile, Web 2.0, print, radio, podcasts and syndication must be developed. 2. Give it away. Moore’s Law is the defining theorem of our generation: faster, better and cheaper until it is free. Free products are better than paid products on the web. Distribution is key. News is free and readily available; charging for it is old school. Eyeballs and keystrokes are the coin of the realm not paid circulation which will dwindle more and more over time. There need not be any registration either so ditch the sign-up at log-in etc. Look at the print property as a way to promote and support the online and syndication properties. Go from a subscription business with an ad business and digital business aside it to a digital ad business with a print business to promote it. Aggregate up other site’s news to get up the value chain and redefine circulation as syndication for Web 2.0. 3. Partner. I never understood why newspapers didn’t band together to create vertical online sites. A sports site that networked all pro teams across sports would be formidable. A political site that was national in scope with focus on local governments and politicians would work (see Politico.com). Even a Google news-like portal would roll up all of the assets. Then create a separate shared national sales force that sold across the network. Try again to create a Web 2.0 based classified service as well. Look to advertisers as partners. Look to competitors as partners. It is a new world. 4. Syndicate for Web 2.0. Atomize your online Web 1.0 site. Blow it to smithereens. Syndicate it all via widgets. Look to bloggers and social network pages as distributors for your content. It will never be cheaper and easier than it is today to get consumers to carry your info and reach their audiences as it is today. Make your brand a badge of social honor so that a local blogger for the Caps or Wizards wants to carry your scoreboard or your analysis via widget as examples. Look at what initially look like competitors and embrace them. Don’t be rude and expect someone to point to your site. Get your content baked into everyone’s site.
5. Create mini local third party networks. Embrace and extend your reach locally by building a great digital sales force and then network and ingest local unique visitors, page views and engagement from third parties. Do locally what Advertising.com has done nationally, superset the region by creating a network of affiliates and build up massive scale of local sites. Promote them in your print-based property. Write these affiliates checks to own the inventory and own the local market so you don’t die a death of a thousand cuts. 6. Be BOLD now. Take the Top 10 big newspapers and join together and then acquire something massive that can be shared. Why aren’t the newspaper companies banding together to acquire Yahoo as an example? Buy a big social networking site and launch a cross platform classifieds network within to compete with eBay and Craigslist. Acquire Twitter and create real time news and classified for sale network. Do something big and meaningful. Your shareholders will love you for it. 7. Re-purpose cash flow buy acquiring Web 2.0 companies in the rich media space. Go acquire a big podcasting business. Why didn’t a newspaper company acquire Audible as an example? Go acquire a video widget syndication business. You will need rich media assets in the new world. Just having words won’t scale in the Web 2.0 environment. You must move up the value chain and get video and audio assets. 8. Get rid of senior editors. Turn them into algorithmic managers. Editors are pass
Lots to digest, some familiar ideas and some really fascinating ones too. Thanks, Ted. Of course, if the people at the top don’t get it, doesn’t matter about the people at the bottom.
First time caller, long time listener.
i’m tired of hearing you rant about newspaper gloom and doom — if you’re so confident in your view, it seems like an opportunity for large ROI. Buy a newspaper trading at depressed value (put your money where your mouth is) and unlock the value of hidden assets you acknowledge are there.
asolutely spot on. I like the part about having more math majors!
I’m not trying to bash you here Ted because I agree with what you say about news distribution but I am genuinely curious here.
While it has improved in recent years, computer and computer based technologies have a notoriously short shelf life. What is top of the line today is nearly obsolete in two-four years. So wouldn’t it be smarter for the newspaper industry (or any industry for that matter) to try to get ahead of the curve instead of “catching up” to the current technological paradigm?
In other words, why are you recommending they adapt to Web 2.0 instead of getting out in front everybody and spearheading Web 3.0? I know they risk heading in the wrong direction but that is going to happen to them anyway if they try to adapt to Web 2.0 now that Web 2.0 is already established.
I spent ten years delivering papers (including the Post) so I could stay at home and raise my kids. I could see many of the things you mention happening in the 90s. What an archaic way to disseminate “news,” which isn’t “news” by the time you have to read it.
“Moore’s Law is the defining theorem of our generation: faster, better and cheaper until it is free.” Your prescription includes a lot about making newspapers faster and cheaper but less about better. Most “content” is seriously lacking in news value. I would prefer to read English majors “in love with the sound of their own voices” and managed by a good editor trying to deliver a well written and salient story than I would a story intended to deliver “the best click through”. It seems like you plan would more quickly and efficiently deliver “infotainment” — which provides little valuable information or entertainment. And you can’t wrap the fish in it.
These are all good suggestions I think, the only thing that I would be a little worried about is number 6. I’m not sure I would like the top papers to join up. I would be worried that too much of the media market would be in the hands of a few powerful people which leads to the issue of media bias. News papers are supposed to report unbiased news and should be free of influence or opinions of the top management. As a consumer I wouldn’t want to read a newspaper according to what Rupert Murdock believes I should read for instance. The Canadian newspapers suffer from this same problem, I believe it is something over 80% of the media market in Canada is owned by about 3 or 4 people. 1 of those people is known for influencing what his paper’s write.
The idea of faster and free is a good one, but the quality needs to be top notch as well. I believe a good example of this is the BBC who produce high quality content very quickly. Not to mention that they are very credible, unbiased, and not sensational.
Thats the other problem I believe newspapers and just news agencies in general is that they too sensational. Too much focus on which stories will be most entertaining rather then which are really important, even if they aren’t very exciting. For instance, we need less car chases and britney spears because that is not important to society.
Ted, you might have left a biggie off. How about a return to integrity and truth?
I do not mind that newspapers have so obvious an agenda these days, but at least get the facts and photos straight and deliver them with honesty. Go Washington Times!
print is dying because it is so liberal
Yes, math rules these days! Just like those smart numbers guys at Bear Sterns. That’s what we need more of.
Translated to old-time English, what you say sounds like “Put everyone in sales.” What’s not so clear is, aside from freebies donated by readers and re-hashed hand-outs (like sports stats), what content will you have to sell? Where will it come from if you slash headcount? The only reason news outfits in any medium have value to sell is because they are seen as credible sources of relevant, meaningful information that has been vetted for accuracy and fairness. Without that, a news organization joins the vast sea of digital junk dealers already jamming the bandwidth.
Absolutely brilliant. I can already hear the howls of agony and outrage from high-paid editors unwilling and unmotivated to change. But look at the pace that the industry is changing –barely 3 months after being bought out, Tribune is having to revamp its Zell business plan and put some of its prized properties up for sale, for just one example. This recession is only going to speed up the transition, and there aren’t enough journalism professorships or foundation posts to take all of those head-in-the-sand editors who are going to be let go. Actually, I am relishing the idea of a future tent city in Washington’s suburbs populated by former editors and publishers.
I don’t know why you are doing this, but this has to be the best business analysis of the future of newspapers that I’ve read from the financial advisers who follow the industry. You are so right about the utter disdain newspapers hold for their readers. It’s a culture developed after years of enjoying monopoly profits. As Wall Street is showing in newspaper stock prices, those days are over, and there’s not much goodwill left with the public. So boo-hoo for the future for editors who now spend their work days reading newspapers and writing e-mails.
I think this is what Tolles and team at Topix.com have already been doing
Do you have any original ideas, or just regurgitating what Jeff Jarvis and every other media pundit has spewed forth?
You make all kinds of vast generalizations, yet in fact quite a few newspapers are doing many of the things you pretend are revolutionary: user-generated content, blog rolls, syndicating, widgets, etc. Guess what? The revenue is still minuscule. And geniuses like you still have been unable to explain how all this is going to pay the bills.
It’s easy to pontificate, and keep telling us that all the smart people working on great newspapers across this country “just don’t get it.” Apparently only smart people like you “get it.” It’s really tiresome.
I like a lot of your points… but its not that easy to throw Math is king… Content is King and some times the best math wizards don’t know what makes for good content.
Do you own — directly or indirectly –any newspaper stocks? I don’t believe Time, Inc. owns any newspapers since walking away from the Washington Star, which was before it bought AOL. Thanks.
I think it is too late for newspapers to change. Take a look at the coverage of Spitzer’s hooker Ashley Dupre. Why is it that the only newspaper that talked to Dupre is the New York Times? Newspapers shovel these turgid budget stories at their readers, pontificate at extreme length over five years in Iraq, and have diahrrea over local political figures. But when it comes to something that has readership interest like Dupre, they avoid it like the plague. I don’t want to beat this to death, but 2 million hits of Dupre’s (not very good, imo) song shows public interest. But editors hold their nose and say coverage of a hooker scandal is above their standards. Well, if I were the editor of a newspaper, I would take reporters off tasks writing about the opening of new shopping centers, or meetings of the local sewage authority, and put them on the beat of finding and talking to Dupre.
Ted,
Do you have some specific tactical suggestions for new revenue generation? These are great ideas, but without revenue, they aren’t a part of my business plan.
I agree your suggestions except for #8 and #9 Editors are necessary because most user generates stuff is junk!
All the papers have to do is take a look at some new technologies available right now that can save them.
First being a new app. called the FEEDJOURNAL.com Newspapers could monetize their blogs overnight.
Check out what I’ve done with the Feedjournal Publisher at
http://www.Libertynewsprint.com
P.S.
If you combined:
Feedjournal.com + Scribd.com + Facebook.com
You’d have the perfect Online Newspaper Platform.
By the way. Jonas Martinsson over at the Feedjournal is looking for investors and some savvy business partners.
I was a newspaper guy for 20 years. I learned a lot of things during that time. But one big thing was that newspapers are terribly averse to change. The print newspaper business will continue to collapse over time–and new companies will slowly replace the old guard (Tribune company, Gannett, etc. It’s kinda sad, but totally innevitable.
The only problem newspapers face is a defeatist attitude and poor publicity. Bloggers exist by restating what newspapers already have. Newspapers do not need reinventing, they need to stop thinking they need reinventing.
Newspapers need top quality journalists, a dedication to more staff and resources and a better public front that shows how important newspapers are.
Bloggers need newspapers. The Internet needs newspapers. Newspapers don’t need anybody. That’s why they will survive.