Future of Newspapers

HORIZON WATCHING INITIATIVE
Table of Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 It’s About People, Not Products . . . . . . 21

By Randy Bennett By Mary Lou Fulton
ome observers are mired in the haze, predicting the
S The key insight was to identify the most compelling
imminent demise of the local newspaper franchise. But “lenses” through which people look at the world. What
other more thoughtful visionaries see brighter days do they value? How do they relate to the world around
ahead, IF newspapers embrace market trends and re- them? How can information and advertising be more
think product, marketing and organizational strategies. intuitively connected to that world view?
From Gutenberg to Galaxy: The Future is All About Connections,

There Has Never Been a Better Not Technology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Time to be a News Entrepreneur . . . . . . . . . . 7 By L. John Haile
By Paul Saffo Newsrooms have finally abandoned that silliness of
If you want to find a new model, look for an obscure old separating old and new media, with publishers and edi-
model. All of the big personal media winners got where tors having recognized that their job wasn’t to introduce
they are by leveraging once obscure—or downright he- new products but rather to change the very business
retical—business models. and the culture that drives that business.
The Future of Newspapers: Construct Your Community’s

A Roadmap for Transition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Info-Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
By Paul Ginocchio By Jan Schaffer
y belief is that newspapers (“news enterprises” is a
M News organizations need to construct the hub that will
more accurate phrasing in this new media era) have sig- enable ordinary people with passions and expertise to
nificant competitive advantages in today’s media land- commit acts of news and information.
scape, levers that I believe they can better exploit, and
which should allow them to make a successful leap into We don’t have to save the newspaper
the digital future. industry. We do have to bring “the
press” across the digital divide. . . . . . . 31
Adopting New Rules by Jay Rosen
of Consumer Engagement . . . . . . . . . . . 13
So here is the deeper set of possibilities we must con-
By Jeffrey F. Rayport template: Many newspapers may find that they are un-
here’s no doubt that information, not just news, is a
T able to charge, or recover “lost” revenues from the print
growth business, even if newspaper publishing is not. era with Web advertising. If that happens, will existing
But newspapers must find ways to align themselves news organizations die, shrink, limp along with expira-
with drivers of growth in a market they already know. tion dates, get absorbed into larger Web empires or find
a way to grow some other subsidy business?
2018 Memoir from a Digital Pioneer . . . . . 16
By Howard Finberg
I t hasn’t been easy getting to 2018. But the last few
years have been fun for those companies that have
worked through the “dip.” They realized that getting to
the other side would be very profitable.
NEWSPAPER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA 2

Imagining the Future of Newspapers
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The Future of Newspapers . . . . . . . . . . . 33 Making the Leap Beyond

By Tom Mohr Newspaper Companies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
As for newspaper companies, the only way to make By Stephen T. Gray
them financially successful is to make them digitally The question is no longer, “What’s the future of news-
successful in the key advertising verticals. In the online papers/newspaper companies?” It’s “What does it take
ecosystem, that doesn’t have anything to do with news. to meet the needs of the people, businesses and com-
munities we want to serve?” Whatever that requires is
Reading Future of Newspapers . . . . . . . . 36 what our companies must become.
By John Temple
Instead of producing one paper for everybody, a news- What We’ve Got? Paper,
room might produce 10 newspapers for 10 different au- People and Place . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
dience types, or maybe more. We’ll be slicing and dicing By Michael A. Silver
to deliver mass-customized newspapers.
As the newspaper industry goes through painful re-
structuring for the next few years, I think we’ll find—or
The Power to Change the World . . . . . . 38 perhaps more accurately, rediscover—a few key pillars
By Andrew Nachison to rebuild upon. They include the talent of professional
The purpose of newspapers is not to produce better journalists, the power of local presence and the potency
newspapers, or to sell more of them, with more adver- of the print medium itself.
tising. It’s not to build better web sites for more visitors.
It’s not to maximize revenue and minimize expense. It’s Personalization is Key to Future
not to dominate or “own” markets. It’s not to maximize of Newspaper Sites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
shareholder value. By Kane Cochran
The successful local newspaper franchise features a
From Newspapers to Citizen platform that intelligently and automatically presents
Destinations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 information on the screen based on thousands of pieces
By Kyle Redinger of information. Each movement a visitor makes is cal-
Tomorrow’s successful newspapers recognize the prob- culated, analyzed, scored and stored in a database.
lem is a cultural one, not a technological one. They will
also recognize readers of newspapers share their opin- Newspapers and Mobile Marketing . . . . . 58
ions in the offline world and, with today’s technolo- By Peter Levitan
gies, want to share those opinions in an online world
As I survey the present state of the newspaper industry,
as well.
especially from my perspective as an owner of an adver-
tising agency, it is clear to me that mobile phones must
Three Habits of Highly and will play an important role in the development of
Successful Editors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 newspaper readership and advertising.
By Mary Nesbitt
Successful editors won’t let those good and necessary Prognosis:
initiatives distract them from also tackling a far tougher Positive, If Newspapers Adapt . . . . . . . . . . . 60
challenge: rejecting insipid journalism and replacing it By Jim Chisholm
with things that grip, tickle, astonish, befriend and re-
For those companies that are willing to invest in new
ward readers.
products, we will gradually see new “media boutiques”
opening, where the core newspaper business underpins
The Future of the News Business . . . . . . 47 a wide range of focused products in key market verti-
By Mindy McAdams cals, fashion, food and drink, sports, business.
Content and delivery are the two fundamental things
that require our attention in journalism: 1) What con-
tent can we deliver, with our people, from our news-
rooms, that appeals to an audience that we can build
and retain? 2) How must we deliver it to make it irre-
sistible to that audience?

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Confronting Technology Change Now:

and Abundance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 Don’t Wait for the Future . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
By Earl J. Wilkinson By Juan Giner and Juan Senor
One cannot begin to comprehend the newspaper of 2017 In years to come, the leading newspaper brands will be
without understanding the fundamental trends of tech- those that can create communities around their content.
nology and abundance. We will be a fat, rich, spoiled, This means readers and audiences who are transformed
jaded society that can get information anywhere any- into active participants in daily discussion, exchange of
time—from Rupert Murdoch to Archie Bunker. information and participation in the news agenda set by
the newspaper.
Enjoying the Ride . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
The complete version of this report is available online
By Miles E. Groves
at: www.naa.org/blog/futureofnewspapers/giner
What remains critical is whether publishing companies
are producing content that will keep enough print and
Other Perspective and Resources . . . . . . 72
digital readers engaged to support the newspaper in-
dustry business model. If not, what is the model that
will sustain the brand?
Navigating Newspapers
to a Brighter Future . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
By Len Kubas
The solution, for both the short term and longer term,
is to boost print ad revenues as well as to grow online
revenues. Remember, it’s not an “either—or” decision.
Also, it’s not just any print revenue, but revenue that
brings with it a reasonable profit.
The complete version of this report is available online

at: www.naa.org/blog/futureofnewspapers/kubas

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Introduction goal: stimulate ideas and discussions about the

newspaper franchise 5—10 years from now.
By Randy Bennett Some perspectives are not new—re-organizing
newsrooms, embracing user-generated content—
The best way to have a and some are potentially transformative. They
good idea is to have lots all decry “incrementalism” and urge bold action
of ideas. to find new business and organizational mod-
—Linus Pauling els. And most implore newspaper companies to
become much more customer-centric in product
The newspaper industry is development and service.
in the midst of a wrench- Among the common themes that flow through
ing period of transition. many of the commentaries:
As business models, con- 1) Newspapers need to be more aggressive in
sumer and advertiser behavior and the competi- embracing change. As one writer eloquently
tive landscape transform, newspaper companies phrased it: “Business is decelerating faster
search for long-term clarity through the near- than our efforts to transform the organiza-
term fog. tion. Newspapers must stem declines and
Some observers are mired in the haze, predict- ramp up pace of change.”
ing the imminent demise of the local newspaper 2) Success will be driven by our ability to create
franchise. But other more thoughtful visionaries bolder, more differentiated content (includ-
see brighter days ahead, IF newspapers embrace ing a laser focus on local) delivered over
market trends and re-think product, marketing multiple media formats for specific audience
and organizational strategies. segments. (And, subsequently, better con-
As futurist Paul Saffo described it: necting advertisers with the audiences they
Without a doubt an old order is dying, but a desire.)
larger, more complex and vital new order is 3) T
he organizational structure will have to be
emerging from the wreckage. Riding the waves fundamentally re-thought, perhaps orga-
of change is unnerving, but this is also a privi- nized around customer segments rather than
leged moment for not every generation has the products or functional areas. As a result,
opportunity to shape the future in such funda- newspapers will have to think more like con-
mental ways as we are collectively shaping the sumer packaged goods companies in manag-
future today. ing their brands.
We asked 22 of some of the more insightful 4) Newsrooms will have to transform culturally
thinkers we know to provide their perspectives and more aggressively leverage content cre-
on how newspapers can shape their own future. ation, packaging and storytelling capabilities
Some are currently employed by newspapers, across media platforms. Many contributors
but most are outside observers (analysts, futur- commented on the disappearance of tradi-
ists, academics, customers, etc.) without a vested tional newsroom roles and the emergence of
interest in the success or failure of new business new ones.
or journalistic approaches. 5) Newspapers will have to define themselves
There were no restrictions. All were free to as portals of local information, aggregating
write on any aspect of the newspaper business content (regardless of its origin) and con-
and offer up positive or negative prognoses. The necting citizens/consumers with guidance

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and each other. That will mean embracing In addition to this report, all of the perspec-
local bloggers, even traditional competitors, tives are available on the Imagining the Future of
to become the most comprehensive source of Newspapers blog, created to provide others with
community content. an opportunity to comment and react.
6) And finally, many urged newspapers to For additional perspectives on newspaper
consider new metrics by which they evaluate strategies, check out the Strategy section under
the franchise—financial metrics(growth vs. the NAA Web site Resources tab.
margin) as well as audience metrics (total We hope these essays will stimulate—or vali-
and segmented reach vs. circulation or date—your thinking about industry transforma-
readership). tion. We urge you to share your own thoughts,
strategies and successes on the “Imagining the
Future of Newspapers” blog.

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From Gutenberg to Galaxy: Media does not merely offer a two-way chan-
There Has Never Been a Better nel; it demands it. Forget the obvious examples
Time to be a News Entrepreneur of Wikipedia, the blogosphere and MySpace;
beneath their novel veneers, all three have mass
By Paul Saffo media author/audience ratios with many viewing
and few creating.
“I know I asked for ice, Instead consider your favorite search engine.
but this is ridiculous” Unless you enter a query, nothing comes out.
One can’t watch Google any more than a 1950s
viewer one might once have watched the test
Legend has it that John pattern on their TV set. Instead, one puts some
Jacob Astor uttered this information in and gets information out. It is a
famous quip while sit- symmetrical process that we hardly notice be-
ting in the bar of the HMS cause it has become so deeply embedded in our
Titanic, but it also captures daily lives. Unlike media revolutions past, the
the mood of news execu- personal media revolution is a revolution with-
tives struggling to navigate the turbulent waters out bystanders. Dig deeply into this desire and
of the digital revolution. It is obvious that this countless new models emerge.
is a Schumpeterian moment, as creative as it is
destructive, but focusing on creation is difficult Tomorrow’s Winning Models
when the destruction is occurring all around. are Today’s Dusty Obscurities
Difficult, but not impossible. The secret to If you want to find a new model, look for an
success lies in maintaining a focus on the larger obscure old model. All of the big personal media
context while ruthlessly challenging every last winners got where they are by leveraging once
assumption one holds about the publishing busi- obscure—or downright heretical—business mod-
ness. In this spirit, I offer below some observa- els. Yahoo’s founders built their company out of
tions about what is afoot and a few suggestions a desire to point their friends to cool new sites.
for finding the opportunities emerging from the Google built its search empire on page ranking,
wreckage. another way of aggregating group opinion. And
eBay popularized a dusty and obscure auction
Personal Media, a Two-Way model into something everyone could relate to,
Trip without Bystanders and blasted the old classifieds model into smith-
Fortunately, the larger context is quite clear. ereens in the process.
We are passing through a media shift quite In the last month, mainline media players
similar to the rise of modern mass media in the from the New York Times to NBC have finally
1950s. Back then the agent of change was broad- realized what was obvious all along—consumers
cast TV. This time the driving force is the rise of don’t want to pay for content, and besides, ad-
the Internet in general and the Web in particular. vertisers will always pay more than subscribers.
The result is a dramatic, fundamental shift from Both companies seem content to live off ad rev-
the Mass Media order of the last half-century to a enues, but I suspect that if one digs a bit deeper,
new world dominated by Personal Media. there is more to the story. Sure, consumers won’t
Mass media was revolutionary because it pay to read, but get the model right and con-
delivered the world to our homes, but it was a sumers will happily pay for something else—the
one-way trip: all we could do was press our noses privilege of writing.
against the glass and watch. In contrast, Personal In fact consumers pay to post their content
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on several sites today—Flickr charges premium For example, does the idea of betting appall
users to upload photos, and other photo sites like you? If so, your affront is an indicator that it
PBase are subscription-only for would-be photo- is hiding an opportunity, and an opportunity
journalists. And there is a whole segment of the already being explored by media-sponsored
publishing industry that routinely charges au- futures markets. Readers don’t just want to be
thors to publish their work—academic journals. heard; they want to be right. This is the itch that
Just as eBay took an obscure auction model futures markets scratch. It is an itch so strong
and utterly that the bragging rights that come from success-
transformed ful prediction are as attractive to consumers as
the classified In a personal media cash won at a table in Las Vegas.
experience, I world, there is one thing But this is just one example of a sacred cow
would be sur- ready for slaughter. Look around, find your
readers want more than
prised if a player sacred cows and slaughter them, because if you
in the news to read; they want to be don’t, someone else will—and your company with
space didn’t do heard. Some player is them.
the same with
going to tap this desire Location, Location, Location
the academic
author-charge by reinventing the In cyberspace, there is no distance between
model. News ex- pay-to-publish model, two points—this has been a crucial driver behind
ecutives blanch the rise of e-commerce and offshoring, but it also
but of course this is
at the notion of has important implications for news. We have
“vanity publish- just one of a myriad of already seen news sites that serve geographi-
ing,” but the best models waiting to be cally dispersed communities defined by common
academic jour- cultural or interest factors, but newspapers have
rediscovered.
nals of course do barely begun to tap their most important asset,
not compromise the fact that they are tied to specific geographies.
on content in the slightest. And many are peer- A few major newspapers have long leveraged
reviewed, another obscure model that has huge geographical advantage. The New York Times
potential in the news space. Or perhaps not so benefits greatly from New York’s centrality for
obscure—consider digg.com. finance and business, and The Washington Post
In a personal media world, there is one thing is read across the country because it is close to
readers want more than to read; they want to the seat of national power. Thanks to the Inter-
be heard. Some player is going to tap this desire net, publishers in smaller markets may discover
by reinventing the pay-to-publish model, but that even obscure locations may be parlayed to
of course this is just one of a myriad of models advantage in cyberspace.
waiting to be rediscovered. Everyone is from somewhere, but in this age
of globalization, they are ever less likely to live in
Consume Your Sacred Cows
the place they are from. Absence fosters nostalgia
During the bubble, an upstart executive I and many small regional papers have discovered
know was fond of observing that Sacred cows a growing pool of remote readers, from expats
make the best burgers. His company didn’t sur- eager to follow the local happenings in their
vive (in fact it failed spectacularly) but his ob- childhood hometown to vacationers hooked on
servation could not have been more right. Take following the news of their favorite haunts while
your most cherished principles turn them upside back home after the holiday.
down and see if something new falls out.
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If one can attract former residents and sum- then-novel curiosity, magnetic recording. Crosby
mer renters, then why not also attract readers hated the inconvenience of live radio and la-
who never lived mented the fact that a show could run only once.
there at all? Thus, when an audio engineer fresh out of the
Business read- I’ll even bet that we will Army Signal Corps showed up in his office with
ers regularly see online newspapers a German tape machine, Crosby instantly real-
follow the news emerge that cover ized it’s potential and helped launch Ampex and
in distant cit- along with it both tape recording and recorded
ies relevant to fictitious locations, programming.
their industry, complete with real ads Hints of the future lie all around us in the
and the curi- chasing real readers present, and all it takes is a sense of context and
ous consumer curiosity to see them. Look for things that don’t
might just get following events as they
fit, that don’t seem to quite make sense, and try
hooked on the unfold in a place that to connect the dots into the future. If you are
exotic curiosities doesn’t really exist. very lucky, you might end up like Bing Crosby,
of daily life in a launching an entirely new industry.
place they have
never been to. I’ll even bet that we will see online From Gutenberg to Galaxy
newspapers emerge that cover fictitious loca- Without a doubt an old order is dying, but
tions, complete with real ads chasing real readers a larger, more complex and vital new order is
following events as they unfold in a place that emerging from the wreckage. Riding the waves of
doesn’t really exist. change is unnerving, but this is also a privileged
moment for not every generation has the oppor-
‘The Future’s Arrived; It’s Just
tunity to shape the future in such fundamental
Not Evenly Distributed Yet’
ways as we are collectively shaping the future
This observation by novelist William Gibson is today. Today’s news professionals are shaping
an eloquent reminder that the news models of to- a whole new media order, and the task is too
morrow are hidden in the present. For example, important for anyone in the industry to remain a
the 1990s rise of the Internet was foreshadowed bystander.
by the popularity of online services in the 1980s.
The path to Google began in the 1970s with
Lexis/Nexus and Dialog. And Second Life was
Paul Saffo is a technology forecaster based
anticipated by Habitat, a virtual world created in
in Silicon Valley and essayist with over two
1984 by Lucasfilm.
decades experience exploring long-term tech-
Also look back to earlier media revolutions nological change and its practical impact on
to see if an old pattern might not be repeating business and society. Paul currently teaches at
itself or an earlier response might not suggest an Stanford University and is on a research sab-
emergent strategy for the present. For example, batical from the Institute for the Future where
Bing Crosby was the first person in late-1940’s he has worked since 1985. You can read more of
Hollywood to understand the importance of a his essays at www.saffo.com

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The Future of Newspapers: Web site, but I think more can be done.
A Roadmap for the Transition In general newspapers have been sheepish
about marketing like a consumer product com-
By Paul Ginocchio pany, even though the newspaper is a consumer
product. Some newspapers now employ brand
Covering the newspaper managers, and I believe that is the type of at-
industry since 2003 from titude needed to extract the full value from the
my perch on Wall Street, brand. I also believe in a dedicated marketing
I’ve witnessed a fascinat- budget to project the importance of the brand in
ing case study in creative the local market, which is now more important
destruction, as the In- than ever due to the multi-media portfolio that
ternet appears to relent- news enterprises manage.
lessly supplant all the “old”
media in its path. Most Local Content
of Wall Street believes they’ve already seen the There is no comparison between the quality,
movie and know how it ends - thus the continued breadth and depth of news content created by
decline in newspaper stock prices. But I think the newspapers and that generated by the local
the movie may have a surprise ending - most TV, radio and Internet competition. As all local
newspapers still generate a substantial amount news media converge to compete in the digi-
of profit, and thus have the resources and ability tal sphere, I think it will be much easier for the
to invest, transform, and survive the transition newspaper sites to do what TV does (i.e., video
from print to multimedia. and live feeds)
My belief is that newspapers (“news enterpris- than it will be
es” is a more accurate phrasing in this new media for broadcast I believe every
era) have significant competitive advantages in Web sites to rep-
individual consumer
today’s media landscape, levers that I believe licate what the
they can better exploit, and which should allow newspaper sites would benefit by using
them to make a successful leap into the digital do well, simply the newspaper’s content
future. because newspa-
many times a week, and
pers are the only
The list of key competitive advantages as I see yet many do not, so my
media institu-
them: the best local media brand; by far the most
significant source of local content and informa-
tion capable of view is that newspapers
generating so
tion; a significant number of sales feet on the are leaving a lot of
much good con-
street. On the other side of the ledger though, I ad impressions on the
tent.
see both the printing press and the physical dis-
tribution capability as merely short-term com- In light of the table.
petitive advantages that over time will become overwhelming
major disadvantages. percentage of
original news content that is created by newspa-
Brand pers, it seems strikingly odd that the entire U.S.
No one disputes that newspapers have excel- newspaper industry (“newspaper.com”) only cap-
lent local brands. Any given daily paper is very tures about one fifth of the monthly page views
likely to own the best known local brand in any that Yahoo! generates, and only about half of
given market. This fact typically has made the what Google registers. I believe every individual
newspaper’s Web site the most trafficked local consumer would benefit by using the newspa-
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per’s content many times a week, and yet many Yahoo! is a smart move for the newspapers, as
do not, so my view is that newspapers are leaving those Internet giants mostly have sales platforms
a lot of ad impressions on the table. that are complementary with rather than directly
In the Web era, I think journalists will need competitive with the newspapers. Google offers
to be more tuned in to their audience. Soon more than half a million self-service advertisers,
every journalist will have their own blast e-mail while Yahoo! has a best-in-class national sales
list and repurposed beat-branded Web site. To force—the newspapers really don’t do well with
effectively “compete” in the news marketplace, either of those slices of the advertiser pool. Any
they will have to understand what their audience overlap will likely be far exceeded by the incre-
wants and is willing to pay for with their time mental gain from the additional sales channels.
and attention. If only a small audience exists for Why not use
a particular beat, perhaps that beat will be “out- Google/Yahoo!’s
sourced” to a citizen journalist. If news enterpris- strengths to get But an inventory of the
es fully and efficiently engage their community incremental ad industry’s formidable
via superior news, local information and services, dollars, so long
competitive advantages
I believe the community will likely reciprocate by as you retain
providing sources and leads for more efficiently final say on ad leads me to believe
delivered “watchdog” journalism. acceptance and that whether I can
price?
clearly see that path
Sales
Printing & right now, I think the
Newspapers typically have one of the larger Distribution
local sales forces in a market. While the news- odds are stacked in the
paper sales force should be a great competitive Currently,
newspapers’ favor over
advantage, too often it is not. A common refrain most industry
people view the long-term
I hear from new industry executives and con-
sultants (and often from executives who have printing/dis-
left the industry and feel freer to talk about it) is tribution as a
that newspaper sales forces lack aggressiveness. key competitive advantage, as the ability to get
As one executive recently told me, his salesforce a print product into the hands of any consumer
“aggressively waits for the phone to ring.” This in the market allows newspapers to generate
complacency likely gained its roots as the second some of the highest CPMs in a local market. But
daily closed in most markets, and was exacerbat- I see this capability as a fleeting advantage, and
ed by unions’ historical resistance to evolve. as household penetration continues to decline,
the operational leverage on both of these high
Recently I’ve heard good news regarding sales fixed cost base services will really start to work
force trends, with several examples of increased against the news enterprise. I am a big advocate
hiring and a new focus on growing accounts, of outsourcing these functions, or partnering to
(particularly long-neglected smaller accounts). reduce their cost, so that a major fixed cost can
Overall, “local feet on the street” should be an be variablized.
advantage over most pure online companies. The
news enterprises ability to cover the high cost We’ve seen two watershed events in this
of sales via the print product, should over time regard in the last year –Hearst outsourcing
allow news enterprises’ to penetrate the local its printing presses in San Francisco, and the
ad base with its online, mobile and other (lower Chicago Sun-Times outsourcing of distribution
priced) niche products. to the Chicago Tribune. I think we’ll see more
of this kind of thing over the next few years. I
In my view collaboration with Google and
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continue to be surprised by newspapers that the long-term (though nothing is inevitable). My

want to hang onto their physical production and guiding principles would be to focus on main-
distribution assets. taining and building the brand, the content, and
It is very easy to frame the problems faced by the sales force, and find a way to outsource the
the newspaper industry, but much harder to of- rest.
fer concrete solutions to those problems. I ac-
knowledge that even the best minds in America
have struggled to find the right path to a success- Paul Ginocchio is an analyst with Deutsche
ful future for the old media companies. But an Bank and initiated coverage of the Advertising
inventory of the industry’s formidable competi- & Publishing sector for the firm. He now cov-
tive advantages leads me to believe that whether ers the U.S. newspaper, yellow page, magazine,
I can clearly see that path right now, I think the advertising agency and marketing services seg-
odds are stacked in the newspapers’ favor over ments within the media sector.

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Adopting New Rules of tions of horizontally arrayed content. Success-

Consumer Engagement ful Web sites generally focus ruthlessly along
vertical lines. The best of them use every “light-
By Jeffrey F. Rayport weight” software tool, application, and service
to augment and redefine what content means,
The travails of newspa- overwhelming users with usefulness that goes far
per publishers across the beyond reporting the “news.” Think TMZ.com as
country have been a long compared with People.com for keeping us with
time coming. It wasn’t just celebrity news; or TheKnot.com as compared
the onslaught of competing with Brides.com for help planning a wedding.
media formats that have The best sites stake out a vertical and own it.
driven long-term secular Newspapers traditionally skim the surface of
declines in newspaper dozens of verticals and own none of them. That
readership and eroding means that newspapers can surely continue to
household penetration. It wasn’t just the ac- deliver the horizontal proposition, but that’s not
celeration of news cycles from daily to real time where future growth or profits will be. Publish-
with the advent of online news that has made ers must pick their vertical “microcosms”—those
newspapers far less relevant in a wired world. It content domains where they can “kill the catego-
wasn’t even the unbundling of the newspaper as ry” (such as Silicon Valley for San Jose Mercury
a product and business model, with online “cat- News, horse racing for Charlottesville Observer,
egory killers” like Monster and Match hollowing auto industry for Detroit Free Press) and over-
out classified verticals and niche publications whelm their angles of advantage.
like city magazines going after display or ROP
ad dollars, which put a stain on just about every Communities win, readerships lose
newspaper’s basic economics. The fastest growing sites online today are so-
While every one of these factors has contrib- cial networking platforms. Whether it’s Cyworld
uted to newspapers’ decline, something more in Korea or Bebo in the UK, or MySpace and
fundamental is going on. The rules of consumer Facebook in the United States, nothing is fueling
engagement—how every kind of media engages growth in consumer usage of online media more
consumers—have changed. The new rules don’t than peer-to-peer connectivity. But those are just
favor newspapers as they currently do business. the mass-market community platforms. There
If newspapers have a future, they must adapt to are niche-focused online sites organized around
these new rules, or die. location (Yelp or SFGate), interest (TripAdvi-
sor or Concierge.com), identity (Military.com
Here are the principles we believe successful
or PlanetOut), and condition (TheKnot.com or
newspapers will live by in the future:
BabyCenter). Even Facebook is less of a horizon-
Verticals win, horizontals lose tal community than it is horizontal infrastruc-
ture supporting thousands of vertically focused
What reshaped the retail sector over the last communities based on locations such as college,
two decades is happening to newspapers by university, and high schools.
dint of an onslaught of alternative media. Broad
general-merchandise retailers such as depart- Major metro and small town newspapers
ment stores (horizontal retail propositions) have alike have tight ties to their local communities,
given way to niche-focused retailers such as but to win in this new world they must identify
“category killers” (vertical propositions). Metro their relevant communities and activate them.
newspapers, like general merchants, are collec- It’s what Lawrence-Journal World did with its
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online property, LJWorld.com, by serving up not by Glam, some merely affiliated with Glam.
only news from the print product online but also Whether it’s making content and tools portable
by embracing reader-generated content, aggre- as players or widgets, or “working the Web” by
gating local third-party content, and integrating merchandizing content for Digg.com or search
a wide variety of community tools and applica- engine optimization, newspapers must extend
tions to connect users with users. LJWorld.com their reach and engage users beyond their own
did not establish a “readership”; it forged among name-brand sites. Today, a standardized, one-
its users a vibrant community of local residents— size-fits-all point of presence doesn’t pack much
from Little League parents coordinating pick-ups punch, especially as ad networks and search
after games to business people buying and selling become vertically specialized and walk away with
local services. increasing shares of online ad dollars.
Presence wins, sites lose Form factors win, broadsheets lose

Most newspaper publishers focus efforts on In industry sectors as widely divergent as
their “site” when many winners on the Web now consumer electronics, automotive, and consumer
exploit an online “presence.” Consider the case packaged goods, design matters. Herman Miller,
of YouTube. When it was acquired by Google in of Aeron chair fame, calls it ergonomics. Apple
2006 for $1.65 calls it aesthetics. Toyota’s Lexus calls it form
billion, many Today, a standardized, factor. Call it what you will, most publishers
observers asked tinker with their broadsheet or online interface
why YouTube, one-size-fits-all point of with a makeover once every few years. But that’s
just one of a presence doesn’t pack nothing compared to the attention Sony lavishes
reported 172 much punch, especially on optimizing its product design, or, for that
video playing matter, that Procter & Gamble invests in enhanc-
sites on the Web as ad networks ing the convenience and appeal of its product
at the time, had and search become packaging. In the news and information market,
commanded the vertically specialized design for usability is the next frontier. Magazine
outsize price. publishers like Condé Nast and Hachette have
One answer: and walk away with led the way appealing to younger readers with
YouTube could increasing shares of familiar titles in new and more engaging trim
claim over 100 online ad dollars. sizes (digest editions), while newspaper publish-
million video ers from Fleet Street to Michigan Ave. have made
views every 24 their papers more ergonomically friendly by of-
hours. But that only begged the question: How fering them in new trim sizes (tabloid editions).
did YouTube achieve such traffic. YouTube was As newspapers become constellations not only
not actually a site in the strictest sense, but a with multiple points of presence online but also
constellation—a firmament composed of hun- multiple platforms—such as print, online, and
dreds of thousands of third-party websites run- mobile—optimizing content for each “device”
ning YouTube video players. Upon acquisition, is part and parcel, as information providers, of
60 percent of video views occurred not on You- meeting their users’ needs.
Tube but on third-party sites. That’s presence.
Systems win, silos lose
In online publishing, newspapers would be
wise to take note of the vertical fashion and As newspapers become “programmers” of
style player Glam.com, which runs a network content for multiple media, coordination across
of hundreds of Web sites, some owned outright platforms becomes critical. Think American

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Idol: Spawned by European sensation Pop Idol find ways to align themselves with drivers of
a few years ago, American Idol has become the growth in a market they already know. Of course,
most valuable television franchise in history. It there are good reasons not to embrace the op-
is, of course, much more than a TV show. It has portunity. One is loss of control over what’s
become a social and commercial phenomenon “news,” by enabling users to contribute content,
by coordinating unleashing peer-to-peer social dynamics, and
activities across aggregating third-party content to meet users’
four relevant There’s no doubt that needs. Another is loss of control over distribu-
media plat- information, not just tion, by adopting, in effect, a “studio model” of
forms: broad- news, is a growth programming, creating content for other people’s
cast, where the media and platforms, and ultimately divesting
contest takes business, even if ownership of production. But the greatest chal-
place; mobile, newspaper publishing lenge is likely a conceptual one. What’s winning
where viewers is not. on the Web today is innovation that fundamen-
can vote for con- tally changes the definition of content. Like it or
testants; online, not, content is becoming something very differ-
where users connect with one another and access ent than anything ever generated in a newspaper
additional information on the competition; and newsroom. That this sea change is occurring is
offline, where the experience continues in live no longer a matter of debate. What is open to
concert venues and other promotional events. question is whether the nation’s newspapers will
The power of the strategy goes beyond robust resist this epic change, or choose to embrace and
offerings on each platform; it lies in coordination capitalize upon it.
and integration across platforms. By contrast,
many papers run sites that compete with their
broadsheets, and most ignore mobile and offline Jeffrey Rayport is founder and chairman of
altogether. It’s time for newspaper publishers to Marketspace LLC, a strategic advisory practice
mandate a “unified field theory”—that is, to oper- that works with leading companies to radi-
ate across platforms, including all of the relevant cally reinvent how they interact with and relate
ones, in ways that create one experience of their to customers. Mr. Rayport, a former faculty
brands instead of many. member at Harvard Business School, focuses
Put these strategies together and publish- his consulting work on opportunities for busi-
ers could take away a roadmap for the future of nesses to drive growth by transforming their
newspapers. There’s no doubt that information, customer-engagement strategies, particularly
not just news, is a growth business, even if news- in information-intensive industries.
paper publishing is not. But newspapers must

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2018 Memoir from a Digital Pioneer Let’s look at how far we have come with those
strategic advantages and how some companies
By Howard Finberg have succeeded while others failed:
The Press Advantage

It seems so long ago. Yet it
has been less than 25 years Printing presses give you an edge—if you want
since the digital tsunami to print large, bulky newspapers. Most people
known as the Internet in 2018 don’t want a newspaper-sized newspa-
washed over media com- per. Even after the incredible shrinking of most
panies, disrupting their broadsheet newspapers between 2003 and 2010,
businesses and the lives of consumers looked at the format as out-of-date
their consumers. and an ecological disaster.1
Looking back from the Today, most of the companies that print a
calmer perspective of 2018, it is hard to remem- daily newspaper, and there are about 700 in the
ber the turmoil that gripped the newspaper and country that print seven days a week, have gone
broadcast industries between 2000 and 2012. to a tabloid format or something smaller.2
Turmoil? Sometimes it felt like panic. In fact, The Old Growth Forest Protection Act
Listening to the new media pioneers remi- of 2014 still has many companies worried about
nisce, most of whom are retired from active pon- more restrictions on the raw materials needed
tification, today’s media worker might assume to publish a physical newsprint product. This
that there would be no survivors emerging from legislation—jointly endorsed by environmental-
that mayhem. ists, city planners and the recycling industry—is
forcing many companies to look at ways to re-
As you know, that didn’t happen. There are
duce the size of their paper consumption. Log-
lots of survivors. But there were also many casu-
ging trees for newsprint will be outlawed in 2025
alties, including several big-city newspapers.
and most cities have started to ban old newspa-
Even professional journalism survives, al- pers from their landfills, which are filling up very
though it’s still complicated to explain who is a quickly.
journalist and who isn’t. That’s one of the most
Of course, we still have lots of printed mate-
interesting side effects of the shakeout among
rial. There are lots of print publications, in lots
legacy [okay, call them old] media companies:
of different sizes and on lots of different kinds of
the flourishing of reporting and the sharing of
paper, all easily recycled. The recycling service
information across communities.
provided by many media companies has been
What didn’t flourish were the companies that well received by the public and has managed to
kept looking at their assets and saying things provide a little extra to the bottom line.
like, “We have a competitive advantage because
The Presses Advantage has gone to those com-
we have…” You can fill in the blank. We did have
panies who have the means to print a variety of
some advantages, but not in the way we thought
publication types.
back in 2008.
The Distribution Advantage
1 The environmental movement gathered steam in 2008 with the For a long time, this was a key advantage for
push to eliminate plastic water bottles. After that came plastic
many media companies: the ability to drive by
bags. Eventually, newspapers and magazines were identified as
eco-targets. just about every household in a community and
2 The most radical approach was to print in a size close to an 8” throw something on a driveway.
by 10” sheet of paper. In Europe this is called an A4 newspaper.

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What got held on to the display advertising model the lon-

thrown was a The companies that gest felt the most pain. The survivors, and those
newspaper. In thrive in 2018 have who have thrived, realized two important shifts
a plastic bag. in the Advertising Advantage:
leveraged their
Nothing else. 1. T
he advertiser needs solutions, not space.
And usually, it distribution advantage Of course, getting advertisers to understand
was just that into a competitive what kind of solutions has meant retraining
company’s the newspaper’s sales force to be more con-
advantage to help
newspaper. The sultative and help businesses identify what
most progressive advertisers and others success looks like. That meant eliminating
companies—the [local governments and the commission-based compensation model.
survivors –start- Most companies went for a “retention bonus”
the tattered remains
ed to deliver the model for the advertising sales staff. If the
national news- of the telephone company kept the business, there would be a
papers. The
3
companies] reach bonus. One bonus from this model: the sales
companies that staff learned to sell across all types of media.
consumers.
thrive in 2018 In fact, the companies that have been wildly
have leveraged successful look more like advertising agencies,
their distribution advantage into a competitive helping local and regional business succeed in
advantage to help advertisers and others [local the marketplace, even placing ads in compet-
governments and the tattered remains of the ing publications. Success for your customers
telephone companies] reach consumers. meant success for media companies.
The more innovative companies also realize 2. T
he customer is in control. The Digital
this advantage won’t last forever, as more and Privacy Act of 2011 forced many Web-based
more of their customers subscribe via a house- companies to change the way they did busi-
hold printing “press.” This high-speed printer ness. Much of the advertising based on
uses the WiMax networks in most cities to de- hidden browser “cookies” has been long
liver digital content that can be printed [and gone. In its place, companies have developed
bound] on demand. trusted relationships with consumers. While
Ultimately, distribution of the printed ma- fewer com-
terials will be outsourced to companies such as panies use
FedEx or UPS/USPS.4 a “cost-per- As we can see from
thousand” the rich amount of
The Advertising Advantage model when
content in today’s
As those who study history learn, this advan- it comes to
tage shifted the fastest. Those companies that Web-based media landscape,
advertising, media companies have
3 An interesting unintended consequence of local newspapers the thriving
delivering newspapers like USA Today, Wall Street Journal and realized that their
companies
The New York Times: the further development of a national
newspaper audience. This led to new entrants, including The are deliver- best opportunity is to
National Post & Observer. ing more present both news and
4 The U.S. Postal Service and United Parcel Service formed a
targeted ad-
joint delivery company after the USPS lost most of its flier
vertising on
information.
or junk mail business in 2013. The concept of first class mail
is now something reserved for holidays, with most personal behalf of the
letters sent by secure Internet and automatically printed on a
home press unit.
customer when he/she needs and wants it.
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The Content Advantage used both real world [neighborhood fairs,

News or information5, that is the question. for example] and virtual communities on the
Right? Well, maybe 10 years ago. But not in Internet.
2018. Frankly, media leaders and journalists Getting to solutions and community-based
have realized media wasn’t easy. One of the biggest challenges
there really was overcoming the public’s lack of credibility in
isn’t a lot to be
The successful both the journalism and lack of trust that the me-
gained by end- companies recognized dia company would look out for the community.
less discussions early that the audience The successful companies recognized early
on the topic. that the audience is often smarter than the sto-
is often smarter than
As we can ryteller. And a good story teller will enlist the
see from the the storyteller. And aid of the audience to help make for a successful
rich amount a good story teller experience. Some of that happened in the rush
of content in will enlist the aid of to citizen-based journalism in 2006-2009. How-
today’s media ever, like most fads, it died out.
landscape, me- the audience to help
Many of the citizen-based journalism attempts
dia companies make for a successful also suffered from, well, just lousy writing and
have realized experience. photography. Eventually, even YouTube recog-
that their best nized that there are only so many videos of cute
opportunity is to cats viewers were willing to watch on their 50-
present both news and information. Today they inch LCD screens.
do both very well because they understand the
Another indicator of a successful media com-
two key elements that consumers want:
pany is the number of non-English-language
1. S
olutions to today’s problems. Not just solu- publications. As the country became less WASP
tions to what kind of car to buy or what to and more culturally diverse, the survivors used
watch on the HDTVWeb.6 They want solu- their core skills to work with publishers serving
tions that explain what is going on in the newly arrived ethnic groups. Most large media
world and why events such as the recent companies and many smaller local groups pub-
democratic elections in China matter to lish in two or three languages.
them.
2. A
sense of community. Once media leaders Getting to the future
and journalists figured out they could bring It hasn’t been easy getting to 2018. But the
communities together, they understood how last few years have been fun for those companies
to recreate the business model as the trusted that have worked through the “dip.” They real-
source. The early adopters of this practice ized that getting to the other side would be very
profitable.
Of course, while profit margins still matter,
5 For consumers, there never was an easy way to define the differ-
ence between news and information. For journalists, news was the transition back to family or other non-public
about storytelling and journalism; information was about data, ownership structures helped many media com-
such as listings.
6 Another benefit from the sale of all of the high definition
panies work through the rough years. Several
televisions in 2008-2009 was the further merger of the “it’s companies took themselves private and, while
just another screen” concept. By 2014, consumers didn’t think the debt load was heavy, they did it early enough
of owning “computer screen” or “television screen” or radio
“screens.” [National Public Radio added visuals via its HD
to take advantage of robust cash flow before the
broadcast signal in 2012.] recession of 2008-2009.

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Other companies allowed their stock to be about the same time as the rollout of easy to use
battered [the executives suffered the most] and and very inexpensive flexible display devices.
used the time to invest in new technologies and Pioneered by companies like eInk, these devices
products. The companies unwilling to change— were a cross between a printed product and a
dreaming of the days of high stock values along personal digital assistant. Consumers jumped at
with 25% profit margins—suffered the most. Few the chance to use touch screens and voice to find
of them made it to 2018. what they want and be alerted to what they need
Several media organizations decided that their to know.7
public mission was too important to leave to Even the keyboard seems a curiosity today.
stockholders. After taking themselves private [a Most of us use touch screens and voice to find
few were family what we need or to get the latest solutions to an
owned], these ever increasingly chaotic world.
companies of- The resurgence in news
fered their stock consumption came The More Things Change
to non-profit about the same time as A cynic’s view of the 2018 media landscape
institutes such might be, “The more things change, the more
as universities the rollout of easy to use they look the same.” It’s true.
and training and very inexpensive Things don’t change very quickly. Sometimes
centers such flexible display devices. the basic concept of a medium doesn’t change at
as The Poynter all.
Institute.
Take a look at movies. The concept is still the
For all of the pain and suffering caused by same as in the time of Thomas Edison. What
technology, especially cheap computers and changes, however, are two very important things:
high-speed Internet access, by 2014 new devices
actually made media companies more successful. n The technology to create and deliver.
One of the biggest benefits came to those n he business model to support the creative
T
companies who managed digital platforms [we process.
stopped calling them Web sites in 2012]. The There are still vast audiences for movies in
introduction of widespread WiMax devices has 2018. We just don’t go to movie theaters as much
allowed media companies with their content in as in the olden days. There are still movie houses,
databases to reach new audiences. The distinction but they are like opera houses. Places for special
between cellular [phone] networks and computer events or for the revival of historical movies.
networks was erased. That leveled the playing What happens is technology’s “unintended
field when it came to sending content to devices consequences.”
that were the descendants of cellular phones.
The HDTV act that required broadcasters to
Advances in other technologies—speech rec- give us analog spectrum in early 2009 intro-
ognition, for example –also have been a boost to duced high-quality screens into households at
those companies with large assets of textual ma- an amazing rate. Prices fell for screens that were
terial [formerly known as libraries]. Finally, the the same quality as what we once used for com-
fracturing of local broadcast television markets puter monitors. Hard to tell the difference when
opened up new opportunities for the distribution watching a movie at home. And the popcorn was
of video stories. Consumers stopped caring about fresher.
the 6 p.m. news. Now, they just care about news.
The resurgence in news consumption came 7 Finally, one movie—Minority Report—got the future right.

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The picture and sound quality was as good as

you could get in the movie theater. Sometimes Howard Finberg is The Poynter Institute’s
better, since many movie houses still showed director of interactive learning, leads the Insti-
film. These once-important community centers tute’s Online Leadership seminars and teaches
failed to understand the shifting needs of their media habits/consumption in other seminars.
customers; they failed to offer better experiences Before joining Poynter, he was the co-founder
than what customers could get at home. They and managing director of Finberg-Gentry, the
failed to adapt. Digital Futurist Consultancy [www.digitalfu-
turist.com], which specializes in helping the
From the federal government’s goal of get-
media industry, newspapers and emerging
ting more broadcast spectrum, the unintended
companies with strategies, content and revenue
consequence was the disruption of the economic
development, and publishing technologies. Be-
model of movie theaters.
fore founding Finberg-Gentry, he was a corpo-
We still watch movies, but we get them over rate vice president at Central Newspapers, prior
broadband or fiber optical lines coming into our to its sale to Gannett Corp.
homes. We still enjoy good storytelling.
There are lessons here for all industries.

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It’s About People, Not Products Because they are lifelong learners who pay great-
er attention to the world around them, this group
By Mary Lou Fulton tends to have a high interest in news and votes at
a higher rate than other groups.
While cleaning out her Susana’s customers encompass both large and
desk, Sales Executive small businesses that serve Socially Conscious
Susana Ruiz ran across a people. For example, she works with everyone
printout of her company’s from local farmers who home-deliver organic
2007 rate card and shook foods, to travel agencies that organize trips on
her head. No fewer than which you can volunteer in needy communities,
36 products were on the to national retailers that only sell American-
list: newspapers, niche made clothing. And when election time rolls
magazines, directories, around, Susana has a hard time satisfying the de-
Web sites, mobile advertising and more. In those mands of all the politicians who want to get their
days, the company still thought of itself as being message to this key group of likely voters.
in the newspaper business and the name of the It was fun for Susana to serve as more of a
game was trying to get more money out of the consultant to her customers than a hard-charg-
same old advertisers through a slew of new print ing sales person. She helps to identify new cus-
products. tomers and then educate them about the specific
It was such a relief when the company stopped interests and buying behavior of Socially Con-
trying to be all things to all people, and moved scious people, who can be tracked both through
beyond demographic and content categories as what they click on, watch or listen to, as well
a way to understand consumers and advertis- as through tags and other consumer-generated
ers. After all, none of us can be solely defined by content.
where we live, our gender or our ethnic back- Socially Conscious people tend to have large
grounds in an increasingly multiracial world. online social networks, and many of them opt-
And now that 90 percent of all media is digital, in for advertising because they want to use their
content and advertising from a variety of sources spending power in particular ways. These days,
can be easily remixed and republished to provide almost all advertising is self-serve and rates are
different frames around the same information. based on how well their ads perform, so Susana’s
The key insight was to identify the most com- primary role is to steer advertisers in the right
pelling “lenses” through which people look at the direction and help monitor the effectiveness of
world. What do they value? How do they relate their messages. There are still a few “full service”
to the world around them? How can information customers who want her to do everything for
and advertising be more intuitively connected to them, but the company is actually making more
that world view? money now through lower-cost, performance-
Susana remembered the day when her com- based advertising available to local and national
pany’s CEO explained this concept and it made customers. The old “big fish” advertisers like de-
complete sense to her. That’s how she ended up partment stores that used to prefer one-size-fits-
on the Socially Conscious team, the group that all print advertising have either figured out how
worked with consumers and advertisers focused to target their offers or gone out of business.
on environmental awareness, healthy foods, con- Another thing Susana really liked about the
tinuing education, wellness, community volun- Socially Conscious team was the opportunity to
teering, philanthropy, travel and related topics. work side-by-side with the editor who selects

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from among lo- products to reach enough people to have a suc-

cal, national and The community blogs cessful business. Now, the Socially Conscious
international team uses the concept of print in a different
and forums have
news of interest way, as more of a presentation option for easier
to Socially Con- become invaluable readability. So instead of just reprinting content
scious people. and trusted sources that has already been seen online in a weekly or
The editor draws monthly format, the team has a growing family
of information for
from the com- of Socially Conscious Guides about topics, such
pany’s primary Socially Conscious as “The Gift Guide,” with community recommen-
newsroom feed people, especially for dations for socially conscious gifts and sugges-
of top head- tions for charitable donations. These publica-
topics such as wellness,
lines, sports and tions are downloadable in PDF and in e-reader
weather, but he charitable giving and formats, and advertising rates are based on the
is continually travel. number of downloads. Professionally printed
scouring the In- versions are available for an extra fee. After all,
ternet for other environmentally conscious consumers would not
relevant content and gathering content from the be happy about the idea of printing thousands of
community. On a typical day, you’d see every- guides that might not be wanted or needed.
thing from volunteering opportunities at the The Socially Conscious team was small, too,
local school, to an essay about climate change, and reminded Susana of the days when she
to recipes for how to make your own baby food, worked at an Internet start-up. The team con-
to videos from a community member’s recent sisted of two sales reps, an editor and a coordina-
eco-vacation to Antarctica. The community blogs tor who helped with marketing, administrative
and forums have become invaluable and trusted tasks and pitched in on a variety of projects.
sources of information for Socially Conscious That means the team can move quickly to cre-
people, especially for topics such as wellness, ate new opportunities such as the Guides, and
charitable giving and travel. can draw upon services of the larger company to
The best thing about the team was that every- help when needed. For example, the team will
one was into being Socially Conscious! Sitting need some extra IT help for the Organic Foods
together allowed them to share ideas and infor- Test Kitchen project, and would need an assist
mation about better ways to serve the communi- from marketing for possible community cooking
ty. For example, just this morning the team had event.
literally cooked up an idea for an Organic Foods It was also nice to be able to take advantage
Test Kitchen, in which community members of the company’s growing network of local Web
would be videotaped cooking up their favorite sites to build bridges between audiences. For
recipes using only food that was grown locally. example, one of Susana’s car dealer customers
This would be a great sponsorship opportunity was interested in seeing if people in the Working
for a local whole foods grocery store that could for a Living community (where everyone loves a
have ingredients for the recipe ordered digitally deal) might be interested in a year-end special on
and delivered to your house. Who knows, maybe bio-fuel powered trucks. The local animal shelter
something like this could turn into a community has had good luck in recruiting volunteers from
event that could bring Socially Conscious people people who use the pet classified ads.
together? Thinking back, Susana found it difficult to
In the old days, the thinking was that you had imagine that her company had once been or-
to have a regularly published print version of ganized just based on functions such as sales,
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editorial and circulation. That was a structure weekend, but the advantages of focus and self-
that worked when everyone was focused on just determination make up for that.
one thing: putting out a daily newspaper. Today, Best of all, both consumers and advertisers are
the company had more than a dozen audience- happier. They have known for a long time that
focused teams, such as Country Music (focused the one-size-fits-all approach results in clothes
on faith and traditional values), Working for a than don’t feel right on anyone, and they’re glad
Living (cost-conscious and deal-oriented con- that we finally agree with them.
sumers), Just the News (latest news, sports and
weather) and the Avant-Garde (early adopters
of the latest trends in arts, technology, food and Mary Lou Fulton leads new product develop-
lifestyle). These teams publish multimedia on ment and market research at The Bakersfield
multiple digital platforms, and deliver the way Californian. She was the founder of The North-
customers want to receive it. Through the teams, west Voice, a Web and print publication writ-
the company had deepened its understanding of ten largely by the community that was the first
the community and was able to quickly see and effort of its kind in the newspaper industry. She
act on new business opportunities. started out as a reporter and editor, working
The company has fewer employees today, due for the Associated Press in Little Rock, Ark., and
to the increase in self-serve advertising and de- the Los Angeles Times. She moved to the online
creases in print circulation, but is reaching many world in 1995 when she joined The Washington
more consumers and advertisers with its new Post’s new media division and later became
approach. Revenues are lower, but profitability is Managing Editor of washingtonpost.com.
higher because the company is able to remix and Fulton also held senior positions at a number
recycle content and advertising from across its of online companies, including America Online,
growing local network. Sure, there’s always the GeoCities and HomePage.com, before return-
occasional internal logjam when everyone wants ing to the newspaper business in 2003 when she
marketing to help out with events on the same joined The Californian.

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The Future Is All About to change the very business and the culture that
Connections, Not Technology: drives that business.
Papers large and small change And so we see the old newspaper operation
mindset, business then products part of a “unified” newsroom, a much smaller
part of a larger, more significant whole. That
By L. John Haile “whole” is gathering and producing news and
other content for a spectrum of services, includ-
ing Internet and an array of user-friendly mobile
I woke startled from a devices. Gone are those old TV partnerships,
dream, convinced I had since most news video has moved to Web “chan-
witnessed the future of nels” and “newspapers” can serve up their own
newspapers: The ink on competitive video.
my paper had been chang-
ing before my eyes, in The unified newsroom is distinguished, not for
color, to update the lat- its separation of media, but for the separation of
est scores from the West function. The “news gatherers” get news for all
Coast. It was amazing. media, thinking ahead to how to make the most
of the story across multiple platforms. Produc-
It was so good that it was almost as good as tion is handled by editors and producers who
the computer I use each morning to check sev- then get content into the right format and onto
eral news sites from around the country before the right channels.
walking out to pick up the two newspapers I still
get on my driveway…when it doesn’t snow. The consumer makes the choice; the news
operation scrambles to engage audiences having
Good, yes, but not good enough. The wide- general news interests as well as those with very
awake reality was that the ink-on-paper version narrow interests. Some users even pay for cus-
can’t keep up. Maybe the e-paper of my dreams tomized services.
will still come along to help salvage the format as
one of many choices available to readers. But, de- And while this requires a mix of print, video,
spite what many very good journalists would like audio, photo and graphics, only at some smaller
to believe, technology simply has passed by the operations are
ink-on-paper newspaper. reporters ex-
pected to do it Smart editors have
It doesn’t matter how good they try to make all. It is critical
the “old” newspaper, how many reporters they devised ways to vet
they understand
might add or what design they apply, there is no how to make the and edit this stream of
turning back. Ink on paper with its static, day-old most of it all, but text, video and audio
news really is old news. generally there to add significantly to
In the newsrooms of all but the smallest pa- is a division of
pers of five to seven years from now, the editors labor that uti- the overall scope and
who couldn’t quite let go have themselves been lizes the best timeliness of news and
let go. And there are no jobs for journalists who talent in each information.
continue to say they “just don’t get it.” discipline.
Newsrooms have finally abandoned that silli- The news
ness of separating old and new media, with pub- operation requires elegant planning and coop-
lishers and editors having recognized that their eration across all media, leaving no room for
job wasn’t to introduce new products but rather those who prefer to “go it alone.” A multimedia

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command center, similar to what we introduced customers and then find the most effective ways
in Orlando in 1997, sits at the center, with key to deliver the advertising message. Just as news-
editors for all the different media, as well as the rooms work across multiple media to find the
graphics, photo, video and audio coordinators. right connections with audiences, so do the ad
Planning starts when stories are assigned. staffs. The databases, with their wealth of de-
Support staff from marketing are part of the mographic detail, purchasing preferences and
newsroom team, bolstering a new understanding special interests, are used with each platform.
of the audience and how a story will connect with Resurrected were the TMC, direct mail and
various segments in different ways and through zoned products. Ad staffs took seriously the man-
different media. date to work with the new media staffs to identify
There is a new sophistication, too, about communities
working with the community for news contribu- of interests and
tions and feedback on stories. Smart editors have ways to make More than 80 percent of
devised ways to vet and edit this stream of text, quality connec-
the sales staffs are gone,
video and audio to add significantly to the overall tions with audi-
scope and timeliness of news and information. ences that could replaced with people
be marketed to who saw the potential
While things still haven’t settled out and may advertisers.
never, everyone now understands that the future to meet advertisers’
isn’t so much about the technology and the de- Owners and
most publishers
needs by connecting
vices as it about the mindset of the people lead-
ing the operation and doing the work. Change in 2008 real- interests, media usage,
has become so much easier with the realization ized that most buying habits and
that journalism is threatened only by failing to of their staffs
didn’t begin to
demographics across
change and by failing to lead that change.
understand how multiple media.
The business model has evolved as well, but to work with
neither is it settled. Emerging is something of a advertisers on
“back to the future” version of database market- such things and certainly didn’t know how to sell
ing on top a much smaller old-line newspaper it. More than 80 percent of the sales staffs are
advertising program that serves advertisers still gone, replaced with people who saw the potential
needing the broad, quality print distribution that to meet advertisers’ needs by connecting inter-
a newspaper does well. ests, media usage, buying habits and demograph-
Former Los Angeles Times Publisher and now ics across multiple media. There was no place for
Yucaipa partner Jeff Johnson called this “finding “incrementalist” publishers either. Change came
a plateau” where printing, distribution and circu- fast.
lation acquisition costs were minimized, but cir- A few operations also are getting a piece of the
culation was still sufficient to meet the demands action from transactions completed across their
of the total-market advertisers. The result is that media platforms. The outlook is promising as
circulation is much smaller, and the healthiest technology makes it easier to track transactions
operations found that plateau and its steady cash and allocate micropayments. So what started as
flow the quickest. a small “take” from such things as music down-
The real success, though, has come with data- loads associated with music reviews and movie
base marketing. Ad staffs have been revamped tickets purchased directly from interactive ads
with people who can work with advertisers to has moved into general merchandise that can be
build databases of customers and potential purchased from the sites of advertisers.
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Of course, all that may be the real dream. The

painful alternative is for newspaper companies John Haile was editor of the Orlando Sentinel
just to hang on, cutting or selling resources, get- for more than 15 years before retiring in late
ting smaller, until someone comes along from 2000. He subsequently launched Inside Out Me-
the outside with a better idea of how to take it all dia Partners, a company that provided media
and fit it into a bigger, more valuable whole. integration and strategic planning support to
operations in the United States, Latin America
But, as the innovative Chris Jennewein, head
and Europe. He also has served as a Senior
of Internet operations in San Diego, responded
Fellow of the American Press Institute and
in a recent conversation: “Isn’t that what just
has been a frequent speaker at major industry
happened with the Wall Street Journal?”
conferences around the world on organizational
The future doesn’t wait. change and media integration.

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Construct your Community’s local “info-structure,” one created to support

Info-Structure new definitions of “news,” new participants in
content creation and interaction, and new path-
By Jan Schaffer ways for news and information.
News organizations need to construct the hub
In 2005, Lisa Williams that will enable ordinary people with passions
launched a hyperlocal and expertise to commit acts of news and infor-
news site for her newfound mation. You need to be on a constant lookout
community of Watertown, for the best of these efforts, trawling the blogo-
Mass. Writing with wry, sphere, hyperlocal news sites, nonprofits, advo-
self-deprecating humor, cacy groups, journalism schools and neighbor-
she called it h2otown. hood listservs. Your goal is to give a megaphone
info and it was an instant to those with responsible momentum, recruit
hit. She soon coined a them to be part of your network, and even help
term, “place blog,” for what she had created and support them with micro-grants.
started tracking down others. Earlier this year, This new mission is requiring journalists to
she launched Placeblogger.com, a portal that embrace new partners, validate supplemental
aggregates and researches more than 1,000 such news channels, and support—without always
community news and commentary sites. controlling—a vibrant local newscape. Denounc-
At Harvard that same year, former CNN re- ing these alternative channels of information as
porter Rebecca MacKinnon co-founded Global- not “real journalism” will no longer work.
VoicesOnline.org, a curator and translator of Importantly, it calls for journalists to get off
blogs, often from uncovered third-world nations. automatic pilot. You need to re-imagine what
It now aggregates news from more than 200 you do and how you do it; you need to test drive
countries. new ideas day
Meanwhile, Lisa Stone, a former television/ in and day out.
Web journalist, co-founded BlogHer.org with You need to pay
better attention Today,
two fellow bloggers. Over three years, it has
become a portal and paid advertising site that to what consum- “newsworthiness”
ers find valuable
indexes topics, news and information from more more often is decreed
than 10,500 blogs, mostly by women. and not assume
you always know by the consumers
These three initiatives share some common what’s best. rather than the
traits: Each built a new infrastructure for certain And you need
kinds of news and information. And each infra- suppliers of news.
to expand your
structure enabled ordinary people who were pay- “tribe.” It will
ing attention to their country, their community expand anyway,
or their topic to commit acts of journalism. whether you like it or not. In the process, I be-
Smart news organizations are beginning to lieve you’ll add value and when you add value,
take some cues from these media developments. you’ll add audience, and when you add audience,
They are concluding it’s time for a new core mis- you’ll add advertisers.
sion, one that repositions the newspaper in the Here are some observations from my perch
community and revisits knee-jerk practices. over the last 13 years on the front lines of jour-
That mission calls for building an overarching nalism reform movements.

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Let’s start with our core product: News. How n Surprise or enlighten.
is it being redefined? n Move citizens to do their jobs as citizens.
Today, “newsworthiness” more often is de- n Hold public officials accountable.
creed by the consumers rather than the suppliers
n o a better job of holding citizens
D
of news. That poses an enormous challenge for
accountable.
traditional journalists who are finding that their
long-time definitions of news are no longer serv- n elp people navigate their daily work and
H
ing the public. Indeed, they are no longer serving personal lives.
themselves—note how many journalists don’t n mpower others to discover or share their
E
even read their own newspapers. own stories.
News reports that simply chronicle an incre- n ngage people in opportunities to participate
E
mental development or cover a meeting or an in either the process of news—newsgather-
event seem to add little value. Of greater worth ing, news analysis, news reaction—or in ad-
are reports that: dressing public problems and issues.
n elay some information you are grateful
R Think about how you, yourself, consume news
to have—even if it makes you sad, angry or every day. It’s unlikely that you read your daily
fearful. newspaper front
n ove you out of your comfort zone and into
M to back. You
your “squirm” zone. skim the pages, One take-away lesson
tour the head- is that it’s time to
n ink you to others with common concerns
L
lines, glance at
and experiences. rethink predictable
the photos—and
n ake a 5,000-foot view of a subject rather
T only go deep on stories—those knee-jerk
than a 50-foot view to connect the dots and a few stories that assignments that are
impart broader understanding. really hook you.
often as painstaking to
Most likely those
Definitions of News read as they are for the
are stories that
Heading into the future, news becomes less offer something journalists to write.
of a concrete deliverable—a story or package of you didn’t know
stories occupying some form of real estate online before. Then you
or on the printed page—and it becomes more of pull the string on other information, gleaning
an ongoing process of imparting and learning more from drive-time radio, e-mails and e-news-
about information. The process of involvement letters or RSS feeds at work. A television might
in the news, whether it’s an interactive consump- deliver white-noise news in the background, and
tion or a proactive creation, becomes as impor- late-night television may lace the day’s events
tant as the output. Look at how the processes of with parody or comic commentary. From these
posting, commentary, aggregation, reaction and various components of news, you, the consumer,
translation contributed to the creation of h2o- engage in the process of crafting a pretty good
town, GlobalVoices and BlogHer. internal narrative of the day’s happenings.
The goal is to relay and exchange information One take-away lesson is that it’s time to re-
that meets any number of benchmarks—not nec- think predictable stories—those knee-jerk as-
essarily all at once. The information should: signments that are often as painstaking to read
n Yield useful knowledge. as they are for the journalists to write. Consider
n Grow that information or knowledge. doing “charticles” for simple updates like The

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Oregonian does. Tell what happened, what’s at The Forum is now an online newspaper with
stake, what’s next—and put it in a box. Link to 220 contributors who produce an average of 37
a timeline with background on your Web site. If original stories a week. Surrounding newspapers
readers need it, they will find it. have noticed and are spending resources to
News is not parroting quotes because some- compete. But why compete? Why not collaborate
one important said them. It’s not reporting lies, and even help support The Forum?
again just because a high official said them. It NewHavenIndependent.org and the Twin
is not keeping some giant scorecard in the sky Cities Daily Planet have attracted support from
and writing about who “won” or “lost” today— community foundations that traditionally look to
the Democrats or the Republicans? The Mayor build commu-
or City Council? It’s not requiring a conflict or nity capacity.
semblance of a conflict before it’s decreed to be a Many of While citizen journalism
“story.” Notice how few citizen journalists define these startups may well be a new
news this way. have a different form of volunteerism—
Nowadays, anyone can decide what’s news and mindset when it
report it, write it and deliver it as well. There are comes to compe- something baby
many opportunities to build rooms in your info- tition. NewWest. boomers do when the
structure for those who want to commit these net launched to finish coaching their
acts of journalism. Make room for citizen jour- cover 10 states
nalists, student journalists, think tanks, nonprof- in the Rocky kids’ baseball teams—
its, individual bloggers and advocacy groups. For Mountains re- it’s a fragile dynamic.
instance, check out the Council on Foreign Rela- gion, but it has
tions’ online “Crisis Guides.” It would be hard also embraced
to duplicate a more comprehensive examination the mission of being a home for a fledging Rural
of international crisis zones. Or link to Tech- News Network to help small Montana towns with
President.com, the Personal Democracy Forum’s no available media like Dutton do it themselves.
nonpartisan site that tracks online activities of Remember, though, there is no free lunch.
presidential candidates. News organizations that think citizens will freely
Invite members of your community to help contribute to their citizen journalism pages need
you investigate or report on an issue. Take some to think again. While citizen journalism may well
cues from: be a new form of volunteerism—something baby
n The Fort Myers News-Press’ Data Central. boomers do when the finish coaching their kids’
baseball teams—it’s a fragile dynamic. There
n The Asbury Park Press’ DataUniverse. must be a high degree of equilibrium, a balance
n lorida Today’s Watchdog Web page and
F between the giving and the getting, in these ini-
Watchlist blog. tiatives. Money is not the only motivator. People
Finally, make room for the small-J journalists contribute for a reason—either because of a
in your community, people who are paying atten- personal passion, to effect change, to learn some-
tion to what’s going on. They are a tremendous thing, or even to get smarter about technology.
resource and they deserve to be supported with Be clever in juicing that equilibrium. If you
space, attention—even small grants to encourage have to pay the high school that uploads the most
them to contribute to your info-structure. robust content on your hyperlocal sports site,
When the residents of Deerfield, N.H., had like the Orlando Sentinel does, consider it an
no available media, they created their own. investment in your info-structure.

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Use your Big-J journalists where they can re- n ews analysts who will trawl incoming
N
ally add value. Professional journalists should information looking for Big-J opportunities.
focus their expertise and skills on doing investi- Minnesota Public Radio uses these para-
gations, identifying trends, building databases, journalists to analyze information coming
holding public officials accountable and articu- in through its Public Insight Journalism
lating the master narratives in their communi- network.
ties. n
Tribe expanders. Journalism in the future
Ultimately, the marketplace will decide what will come from many places. We should
is news. News will be whatever adds value in a contribute to the momentum of the best and
noisy information landscape, whatever helps most responsible efforts and recruit them for
people get their jobs done, whatever imparts the info-structure.
wisdom, and whatever elicits gratitude. To figure For those who embrace these challenges, there
this out you also need some new players in your is cause for a great deal of optimism.
info-structure. They include:
n
“Can do-ers” instead of those who whine
about what they can’t do. Jan Schaffer is executive director of J-Lab: The
n omputer programmers who will be the
C Institute for Interactive Journalism at the Uni-
architects of searchable databases or news versity of Maryland and a leading thinker in
games in your info-structure. the journalism reform movement. She serves as
n ollaborators, people who have the sensibil-
C a speaker, trainer, author, consultant and web
ity to see the possibilities of working together publisher on the digital storytelling models and
instead of moving into kneejerk competitor the future of journalism and is a regular discus-
mode. sion leader for the American Press Institute and
other industry organizations.

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We don’t have to save the newspaper largely an amateur calling, and to make the most
industry. We do have to bring “the of it.”
press” across the digital divide. Why does Searls say that the advertising
model may be broken, too? Isn’t there advertis-
by Jay Rosen ing to be won
on the Web?
“While rivers of
Because I write about There is, and it
is coming on. advertising money
the Internet and what
it’s doing to the press, But underneath flow away from old
and follow that story at that, something
media and toward new
my blog, I am sometimes else is going on.
“Harder to see,” ones, both the old and
asked what I believe the
future of newspapers to be. he says. the new media crowds
“Where do you see things “While riv- continue to assume that
going?” Or, more bluntly, ers of advertis-
advertising money will
“Will newspapers survive?” ing money flow
away from old flow forever. This is a
When you deal in opinions, it’s nice to be
asked for yours. Very rarely is anyone satisfied media and to- mistake.
with my answer: “I really don’t know what’s go- ward new ones,
ing to happen.” (I like that answer, myself.) “I both the old
don’t think anyone does.” and the new media crowds continue to assume
that advertising money will flow forever. This
To me that is not an impossible or even unde- is a mistake. Advertising remains an extremely
sirable situation: Not knowing what the model inefficient and wasteful way for sellers to find
is, we go on. We go on with newspapers. We go buyers. I’m not saying advertising isn’t effective,
on with Internet journalism and the practice of by the way; just that massive inefficiency and
reporting what happened. We go on with the or- waste have always been involved, and that this
deal of verification. We go on with the eyewitness fact constitutes a problem we’ve long been wait-
account, and with the essential task of getting ing to solve, whether we know it or not.”
and talking about the news.
The inefficiencies that created modern ad-
Reasons for my uncertainty about the news- vertising are themselves under pressure. That
paper in the combination we know it now were is what Searls argues, and I think we need to
well stated recently by Doc Searls of the Berkman consider it. “The holy grail for advertisers isn’t
Center at Harvard Law School, who also writes advertising at all,” he writes, “because it’s not
about the Internet and keeps his own blog. For about sellers hunting down buyers. In fact it’s the
metropolitian newspapers, whose problems I reverse: buyers hunting for sellers. It’s also for
know best, it’s not just the forced march to the customers who remain customers because they
Web and the decline in revenues from the print- enjoy meaningful and productive relationships
ed product. It’s not only that free content seems with sellers — on customers’ terms and not just
to be the standard online. on vendors’ alone.”
“The larger trend to watch over time is the Searls thinks sellers and buyers can get into
inevitable decline in advertising support for information alignment without advertising and
journalistic work,” Searls writes, “and the grow- its miserable kill ratios in the battle to break
ing need to find means for replacing that funding through the noise and reach the few who are
— or to face the fact that journalism will become
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actually in the market. I will leave you to read ing. If that happens, will existing news organi-
the rest and figure out why he thinks advertising zations die, shrink, limp along with expiration
will shrink to the perimeters defined by “no other dates, get absorbed into larger Web empires or
way.” find a way to grow some other subsidy business?
Suppose he’s right. Possible outcomes are a It is also possible that newspapers will morph
new business model, or “no business model at into something new, Net Based News Organiza-
all, because much of it will be done gratis, as tions—also called NORG’s—perhaps by combin-
its creators look for because effects — building ing in a fruitful way with “the amateur calling”
reputations and that Searls mentioned. Non-profit, lower profit,
making money semi-profit, part-profit: all combinations should
because of one’s The blogger who pours be ruled in. Private business, family business,
work, rather time and effort into his non-profit trust, community ownership, coop-
than with one’s erative ownership, the public radio model, the
work.” self-reported blog may crowdfunding model, the “rich person with a
The blogger initially do it for free, conscience and good advisers model,” other
who pours time build a reputation and variations on the gift economy... all these should
and effort into be made seaworthy. We don’t know how many
get paid for other things will make it across so we need to launch a lot of
his self-reported
blog may initial- that result from the boats.
ly do it for free, (free) blogging. We don’t have to save the newspaper industry.
build a reputa- We do have to bring “the press” across the digital
tion and get paid divide.
for other things that result from the (free) blog-
ging. Hardly a perfect model, but it is different.
Money because you do good work at your site is Jay Rosen is the author of PressThink, a
different than being paid for the work you deliver weblog about journalism and its ordeals
to the masters of production at the local newspa- (www.pressthink.org), which he introduced
per. in September 2003. He teaches Journalism at
So here is the deeper set of possibilities we New York University, where has been on the
must contemplate: Many newspapers may find faculty since 1986. From 1999 to 2005 he served
that they are unable to charge or recover “lost” as chair of the Department. He also blogs at the
revenues from the print era with Web advertis- Huffington Post.

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The Future of Newspapers steadily softer: in the number of households

getting thumped, in comparison to the digital
By Tom Mohr din, and in absolute terms as advertising morphs
into digital forms. Whereas once local newspa-
pers were the fulcrum around which community
Three stark realities have spun, they are now just one analog voice in an
placed newspaper compa- increasingly digital cacophony.
nies in a no-win squeeze
play. Here’s the crux of the problem. The newspaper
industry has been built on two key pillars:
1. N
ews and advertising first, that news and advertising are inevitable
don’t go together any- cohabitants. And second, that “local” is the
more. key source of competitive advantage. But both
2. L
ocal is indefensible pillars have been knocked down by the IInternet.
online. On the IInternet, news and advertising have
3. I nvestors who buy newspaper stocks don’t been separated at birth. It just took us a decade
want newspaper companies to innovate. or so to realize it. And “local” is indefensible
online because success online requires a level
Any vision of success for newspapers depends
of scale that is not achievable locally. This scale
on coming to terms with the first two of these
is necessary to spread the costs of advanced
realities, and changing the third.
platform technology.
First, some background.
Online, news-reading is a task. And adver-
Newspapers are neophytes, thrust onto a dra- tising is just an umbrella for a series of tasks:
matic technology innovation path that features job-hunting, car-buying, banking, furniture-
ever-increasing connectivity speeds, mobility, buying, travel-planning, stuff-buying, restaurant-
search intuitiveness and computing power. The hunting, and so forth. In the online ecosystem,
future promises more of the same. task-specific platforms (CNN.com, cars.com,
Let’s make no mistake about it: These innova- CareerBuilder, Travelocity, etc.) have emerged
tions have transformed the human experience. to fulfill consumers’ every need. The tasks that
We are always on. In our various devices, we relate to a purchase intent (i.e., advertising tasks)
carry with us second brains, extending our mem- can command high CPM’s. Consumer consump-
ory, our contact with friends, our ability to know tion of news, on the other hand, rarely reveals
and understand. We have instant access to the a purchase intent. The result? Low CPM’s. For
world’s information. We are connected to broad local media, it’s a double whammy: not only are
virtual friendship networks via global platforms. the C’s low, but so are the M’s.
The inevitable result: the rise of social authority To live online, local media must live on a tech-
and a steady decline of institutional authority nology platform. But it is prohibitively expensive
(including local media). News, information and to build a competitive Web platform in a single
entertainment are ubiquitous, blinking a billion local market. Whereas newspapers are about text
“look at me” messages like the lights on the Las and graphics rendered in flat-form design, online
Vegas Strip. We are multimedia multi-taskers is about multimedia content, complex interface
flirting with information overload as we seek to design and database and algorithm driven func-
take it all in. tionality—requiring tools and skills that are best
Into this new world comes the daily thump extended across a broad network, not limited
of newspapers on doorsteps. The thump gets to a local footprint. The power of the Web lies
in the ability for great online concepts to scale
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into global platforms. That’s where the economic has led to the entry of private equity investors.
leverage is. This new group sees the opportunity to buy low,
Local media don’t have that leverage. What’s cut costs and exit five years later with a quick
worse, they are further disadvantaged by the fact profit. Neither of these types of investors wants
that four gates sit between the consumer and to see significant spending on innovation.
their content: the device, the connectivity link, The problem is that neither of these investor
the browser and the search portal. At every gate, profiles fits the current need. Newspaper compa-
the gatekeeper is monetizing eyeballs, siphoning nies do need to cut costs. They also need aggres-
people away from local media content. Since the sive investments in both process and product
consumer’s con- innovation.
nection to local So where will the newspaper industry be in
media content five years?
The key ad verticals
is both fleet-
have migrated Here are my predictions.
ing and gated,
a news market- to scaled online he newspaper industry will be rolled up.
1. T
place that in the The nationally-branded newspapers (The New
platforms, with some
analog world York Times, Washington Post, USA Today) will
was a magnet newspaper companies stand apart. But in the top 50 markets, one com-
for advertising either partnering or pany (“BigMedia”) will leverage low stock prices
and readership to buy up at least one major newspaper in each
buying their way into
is now too small market. The rest of the industry will also trend
to hold critical relationships with these towards consolidation.
mass. players. 2. L
everaging this consolidation, BigMedia
So newspaper will radically redesign processes, imposing
companies are automation, standardization and regional-
stuck with core franchises that face steady de- ization onto its local franchises.
clines in ad revenues and circulation. They have
Common ad order entry systems. Common
Web sites that are essentially low-CPM news
classified systems. Common classification num-
sites, sitting on platforms of poor to moderate
bers and definitions. Regional travel editors, cov-
technical virtuosity, with no benefits of scale. The
ering multiple markets. Corporate food editors,
key ad verticals have migrated to scaled online
providing copy for all markets. Common metrics,
platforms, with some newspaper companies ei-
financial reporting, etc.
ther partnering or buying their way into relation-
ships with these players. But newspapers’ share 3. B
igMedia will move all its newspaper Web
of the revenue split from these partnerships in sites onto one common platform. All other
recruitment, auto, real estate and other catego- newspapers may migrate onto this platform
ries does not come close to filling the hole left by as well, leveraging the skill and scale of a
the structural shift in the core. central platform and team.
All of this has played havoc with newspaper This will mostly be an efficiency measure,
stocks, which are overwhelmingly owned by but it will also enable the company to gain some
institutional or private equity investors. Institu- leverage with the key gatekeepers (devices, con-
tional investors have until recently seen news- nectivity points, browser players, search players).
paper stocks as a relatively “safe” investment, These sites will be recognized for what they are:
characterized by predictable cash flows and low local news sites, and not significant sources of ad
volatility. That, of course, has changed, which revenue.
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igMedia will change its investment pro-

4. B local news gathering and delivery, keeping faith
file to reflect its increasing investment in with the public trust.
digital assets, eventually attracting growth- This idea is not as far-fetched as it may seem.
oriented investors. With large sales staffs in Joel Kramer,
every top-50 market, the company will cut former pub-
favorable deals with online partners and lisher of the Star As for newspaper
buy digital companies in the key ad verti- Tribune, has
cals (retail, auto, recruitment, real estate, companies, the only
initiated such
etc.), as well as in the areas of mobility and an effort in the way to make them
search. Twin Cities. He financially successful is
Increasingly, these partnerships will extend seeks to create
to make them digitally
vertically deeper into marketplaces, solving a not-for-profit
problems for advertisers that go beyond the local news site successful in the key
identification of prospects and into the effective characterized by advertising verticals.
management of those prospects in the adver- top-quality jour-
In the online ecosystem,
tiser’s sales funnel. nalism and paid
5. A
s the technology assets of BigMedia grow, for in large part that doesn’t have
it will recognize the need to retain an entre- by community anything to do with
preneurial culture in its digital subsidiaries sponsorship.
news.
and will reward leaders accordingly. In this sense,
The balance of power will inexorably shift I believe that
from the print to the digital side, and future lead- the future of news will be increasingly separate
ers of the organization are likely to have deep from the future of newspapers. Quality journal-
digital credentials. ism costs money. But content drives only limited
monetization opportunity online. It is my hope
6. A
s a result of these changes, BigMedia and that enlightened leading citizens in major cities
the other remaining companies will become across the country will recognize their responsi-
less and less about news and newspapers, bility to actively support credible experiments in
and more and more about advertising and a new kind of local online journalism.
digital.
As for newspaper companies, the only way to
7. N
ewspaper industry consolidation will so make them financially successful is to make them
weaken the quality of news delivered by digitally successful in the key advertising verti-
major metropolitan newspapers that the cals. In the online ecosystem, that doesn’t have
community will step in. Large metropolitan anything to do with news.
areas will come to see quality local news
coverage as a public good, inadequately
served by the local newspaper and there-
fore requiring public support. Tom Mohr is president and CEO of LeadLogix,
Inc., a start-up in the automotive online lead
Local leaders from the business and philan- management space. He was president of Knight
thropic communities will begin to see quality lo- Ridder Digital from Jan 2005 until KR’s sale to
cal journalism as a public asset to be cultivated in McClatchy in June 2006. Prior to that, he was
much the same way as vibrant theatre, museums, corporate head of KR’s $800 million classified
and the symphony. By this path, a whole new era franchise.
of experimentation and innovation may occur in

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Reading Future of Newspapers ever, wherever and whenever consumers want to

receive it.
By John Temple Newspapers are going through a period of
wrenching change. Even the Newspaper Associa-
(Originally posted as an tion of America
opinion piece in the Rocky admits it. But it
Mountain News on August also hopes that Instead of producing
in five to seven
18, 2007) one paper for
years the dust
will have settled everybody, a newsroom
I’m often asked what the and the local might produce 10
future looks like for news- media franchise
papers. newspapers for 10
of the future will
A reasonable question to a guy who spends his have emerged. It different audience
days trying to figure out how to keep you con- asked a number types, or maybe more.
nected to one in particular, the Rocky Mountain of industry fig-
News, but also works with more than a dozen ures to provide a
others in an advisory capacity. perspective on what that future franchise might
I wish I could tell you for certain. But that’s look like.
not easy when my nose is pressed to the glass as So here goes.
a witness to current events. The visionaries of Most of us will have an avatar - a computer-
our era - whether Ted Turner when he launched generated personality - greet us in the morning
CNN or Jimmy Wales when he founded Wiki- on our portable, personal screen. They’ll be as
pedia - seem to come from outside and shake loved as Oprah. They’ll make us feel good as they
things up. Then the rest of us quickly came to guide us through the day. Your avatar will know
think that what they did was as obvious as the you by your actions. It will anticipate your inter-
fact that night follows day. If only. ests in a way that makes NetFlix’s movie recom-
Our industry - that’s what some people call it - mendations seem as quaint as a butter churn.
tends to fall into group think about as quickly as You will live in a media soup. And whether the
our papers come off our printing presses. So now ingredients come from Jerusalem or Jasmine
in the U.S. you hear that “local” is the strength Street won’t matter. The distinction between
of newspapers and that “hyper-local” might even mediums will dissolve.
be better. In the U.K., you hear that the future is You get the picture. It could be sweet. That’s
“viewspapers,” a term to describe publications why I think people got so worked up over the
that don’t report the news so much as tell you iPhone. It signified the promise of something to
what to think about it. And, of course, every- come.
where “the Web” is the ultimate answer.
Wait a second, you say. What about newspa-
I took great pleasure this week when Rob pers?
Reuteman, our business editor, told a group that
he’s now “platform agnostic.” That’s another hot Yes. They’ll still be around, ink on paper.
term in the industry, signifying what I think is a There will be even more of them. Most will be
positive trend, where journalists stop thinking of physically smaller and have fewer readers than
themselves as “newspaper” people and instead they do today. A few will have even more readers.
think of themselves as providers of news how- In other words, we’ll have a few blockbusters

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or bestsellers. But most will be more specialized. logical advances. The local media franchise will
Commodity information - the stuff you can find deliver content the way our business editor now
anywhere, such as stock listings or the complete feels comfortable doing. Some of the papers it
list of matches in a tennis tournament - will no produces will be free. Others will be more expen-
longer find its way into print. sive.
Instead of producing one paper for everybody, New players will get into the business not tied
a newsroom might produce 10 newspapers for 10 to the traditions of the past. And they’ll have a
different audience types, or maybe more. We’ll ball. They’ll make less money than owners did
be slicing and dicing to deliver mass-customized in the so-called good old days. But they’ll do just
newspapers. You can see signs of what I’m talk- fine.
ing about in the way the newspaper company As will journalists and the communities they
Reforma in Mexico produces different products serve, who’ll wonder what all the fuss today was
for different audiences. about. By that time, we’ll all have gotten used to
That’s actually going to require next-gener- the fact that there is no end to the transforma-
ation journalists to be more agile and multidi- tion of the media world.
mensional. There will be fewer journalists in any
single newsroom, but there will be more of them
overall. John Temple is the editor, publisher and presi-
Today’s rules that prevent newspapers from dent of the Rocky. His blog, where he discusses
owning television stations and other local media the newspaper with readers, is at http://blogs.
in the same market will be eroded by techno- rockymountainnews.com/denver/temple/.

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The Power to Change the World economy—developers, designers, marketers,

sales people, business analysts, project manag-
By Andrew Nachison ers, accountants, lawyers and other profession-
als scattered around the globe, connecting and
working from anywhere to build businesses and
The news wars, or what- solve problems anywhere.
ever you want to call the
ongoing collapse of the For big, old media companies, the death of a
U.S. daily news business, thousand cuts is imminent—unless they figure
will not be over and done out what they’re all about. There is simply no end
with a decade from now. in site, and to pine for the next cycle of good and
The problem will not be plenty for the once mighty media monoliths is to
solved. The solution will pine for a kind of captive market-big iron-retro
not be found. It is a long bliss that is as likely to return as the floppy disk—
war, and it has only just begun. and who wants that? There is no return to the
old model. If that’s your idea of a happy ending,
Nor will newspapers in the United States be sorry, you won’t be happy with the story unfold-
over and done with, or in the rest of the world. ing around you.
The future is here. You can see what comes next
as easily as I can. People will get more of their So what is the happy ending then?
information through digital devices connected It’s a shocking question when you stop to
to digital networks. The diversity of sources and think about it—shocking because it reveals the
services through which we access, share and dis- depth of malaise within today’s news companies.
tribute information will continue to grow. They no longer
Ink on paper will not disappear—some people know what they
are about. They
will choose and prefer it. Many more will avoid Your job, whether
and detest it. Others will simply ignore it. are aimless.
you are a publisher,
The pace of innovation in digital media is If the industry
had leaders— journalist, sales person
relentless—new online products and services
are launched every day. Web developers and real leaders - or customer service
designers have become the new creative class, this is what you
representative, is to
churning out an astonishing array of tools, wid- would hear from
them today and produce a better world.
gets, social networks, shopping assistants, blogs,
search engines, mapping and location services, a decade from
policy trackers, advertising networks, and more now, and what
and more. It’s not just that these new companies you would see in their products:
and their investors are all vying to become the The purpose of newspapers is not to produce
next big thing—the next Google. Some are. Most better newspapers, or to sell more of them, with
aren’t. But they are all creating innovative new more advertising. It’s not to build better Web
services to eke profits out of every conceivable sites for more visitors. It’s not to maximize rev-
niche of the communications mediascape, which enue and minimize expense. It’s not to dominate
is to say, every nook and cranny of life in the con- or “own” markets. It’s not to maximize share-
nected culture. holder value.
The real disruptors of the next decade won’t be Don’t let the 2007 crop of amoral hyper capi-
companies, but people—creative, entrepreneurial talist media executives and investors fool you.
opportunists who are transforming the global If you are among them: Stop fooling yourself. If
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you are not—if you know in your heart why any- n More education.
one bothers with journalism: speak up. Now is n More leisure time.
the time. Your job, whether you are a publisher,
n More disposable income.
journalist, sales person or customer service rep-
resentative, is to produce a better world. n ore peace of mind and greater quality of
M
life for senior citizens.
That’s the happy ending—a better world.
n More love.
Focus on that objective and you will innovate.
You will find better ways to meet your business Yes, you want these things. Of course you do.
goals. You will attract and retain better people. This better, more equitable, more sustainable
You will do better journalism, you will produce world is good for you, good for your family, good
better-designed news and information experi- for everyone, everywhere. It’s also good for busi-
ences, you will think and act more creatively, ness.
more people will use your products, and more Newspaper companies have real power. It’s
will value them. not to control and limit what people know and
You will do well by doing good. do. It’s to con-
nect and em-
And, by the way, you will live in a world with:
power smart, Newspaper companies
n
Less disease—less AIDS, malaria, hepatitis, informed com-
obesity and drunk driving. have real power. It’s
munities to be
n Less poverty. better. not to control and limit
n Less conflict. No, news- what people know
n Less repression. papers are not and do. It’s to connect
solely respon-
n Less torture. sible for solv-
and empower smart,
n Less human trafficking. ing the world’s informed communities
n ess pollution and less poisoning of the earth
L problems, and to be better.
and its inhabitants. they are not
alone in trying
These things are not incidental to, or external,
to do so. But they can and should play a leading
to the success or failure of newspapers. They are
role. They should be leaders, not observers. They
not simply stories to be told, or content to be be
should be active, not passive.
packaged, or products to be delivered. They are
the benchmarks upon which news businesses In the United States, especially, this sense of
should be judged. social purpose has been lost. I suspect this is why
iFOCOS research this year found that two-thirds
Define the world however you want—as the
of Americans say they are dissatisfied with the
planet, or as your neighbourhood. The objective,
quality of their journalism.
motivation and rewards are the same. You are
working for a world with: Meanwhile, newspaper companies continue to
think of themselves in terms of business models,
n More and better healthcare.
products and processes. Technology has been
n More food and clothing for the poor. identified as not only a threat, but as a disrup-
n More freedom and democracy for everyone. tive demon to blame for declining readership,
eroding advertising revenue and diminished
n More understanding across cultures.
relevance, especially among young people. The
n More housing. reasoning goes something like this: who’s to
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blame for all those layoffs, and the next round people value most in the connected society will
that’s surely coming soon? The Internet. Google. be the media that has the biggest impact on the
Yahoo! Craig Newmark, the nebbish socialist world.
founder of craigslist. The alternative is—what? Launch some blogs?
No, no, no and … no. Get a grip. Wake up. Create a social network? Install a new content
New technology and the brilliant new creative management system? Make sure you’ve got nice
class that embraces, uses and creates it, is not a mobile services? Outsource your printing? Run
threat to making the world better. Think about it. an advertising sales blitz? Put pictures in your
How can the “enemy” possibly be something that classifieds? Sell photos? Build a new newsroom?
allows you to reach more people at much lower Buy some video cameras? Trim your paper size?
cost, and not simply to deliver a product, but to Put names on your editorials? Allow ordinary
enable people everywhere to learn more, share, people to comment on your cherished articles?
conduct commerce and mobilize to collaborate, It’s all meaningless, futile and pointless—un-
and to take action? less there’s a point to begin with. So don’t forget
It’s not that people and advertisers don’t get it: Make your world a better place for everyone.
newspapers—it’s that they do get newspapers, That’s why newspapers matter, and how they can
and, in the United States especially, they no matter more in the future.
longer like what they get. Newspapers can’t fight
technology, they can’t turn back the clock and
they don’t need to persuade anyone that they de- Andrew Nachison is co-founder, president and
serve better. They don’t deserve anything. They CEO of iFOCOS, a non-profit global media think
simply need to BE better. tank and community of innovators, and man-
aging partner of The 726 Group, a business
So welcome to the new day, and the awesome,
consulting firm that advises CEOs, manage-
exhilarating and audacious challenge of apply-
ment teams and corporate boards. Andrew is an
ing your skills, your intelligence and the power of
internationally recognized expert on communi-
who and what you know to the common, univer-
cations, technology and cultural trends and a
sal interest of making the world a better place for
leading advocate for applying media tools and
everyone.
techniques to make the world a better place for
This is a vision, and a forecast: the media everyone.

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From Newspapers to Citizen them from becoming the next Bell Labs.
Destinations Both new and traditional media companies
have many concerns. Digital media technology
By Kyle Redinger faces rapid commoditization as well as declining
prices and smaller barriers to entry. These com-
Both regional and local panies leverage technology in innovative ways,
newspapers have enjoyed but also use business models that build upon the
a viable business model for social needs of the community they are trying to
at least several centuries. reach. I believe that as soon as newspapers real-
Today, digital media ize that the technology is not a barrier to entry,
technologies combine the they will make the digital media startup world a
convenience of print with much more difficult place.
the richness of television, Tomorrow’s successful newspapers recognize
but, importantly shatter the problem is a cultural one, not a technological
the very barriers which entrenched newspapers one. They will also recognize readers of news-
during those centuries. The reason is less papers share their opinions in the offline world
about the technology and more about enabling and, with today’s technologies, want to share
interaction and participation by the community; those opinions in an online world as well.
in short, it is about an exchange. The winners of
the changing media landscape will be those who Changing Models
understand the needs of the community and can In addition to a community that requires
leverage those needs to create new and exciting interaction, newspapers must recognize that any
business models. Those business models will be individual has the tools to be both a competitor
less about news and print, and more about being and a contributor. The business model has to
a destination for the community. change in order to accept a diverse set of inputs.
Newspapers sit on a tremendous amount of
Things Are Different brand value. That brand has been driven by years
As a middle school student 15 years ago, my of targeted reporting and a community that has
friends and I realized that the Internet was the used the newspaper as an exclusive provider of
quickest and most efficient way to entertain information, news and advertisement. Successful
ourselves due to our control over personalized newspapers must use their established brands as
interaction and entertainment. Our parents did a platform for all the voices of their community.
not quite understand the richness of the Internet Empowering a community to generate content
medium—instant, free, interactive and open— yields a double-edged sword. There are evolv-
and no one realized, at that point, that the Inter- ing issues of liability and a fear of losing control.
net would grow into a tool which could effective- Technology, combined with the power of the
ly serve the needs of a community. community, can solve these issues. An empow-
ered community can only happen when a news-
The Gap
paper trusts its community. The more engaged a
I work in an interesting space. I spend half of community becomes, the more a newspaper can
my time with early stage digital media companies learn about the people who compose that com-
who have ideas they believe will revolutionize the munity. Imagine the ability to analyze opinions,
media world; and I spend the other half of my conduct research, produce free content and,
time discussing with established media compa- overall, take advantage of the voices outside of
nies how acquiring these new ideas may prevent the editor’s office. This interactive relationship
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enables newspapers to benefit from the opinions vide advertisers

and personalities of its readership, something with a flexible Newspapers will
that is difficult with the current print model. platform with realize that technology
which they
Stomaching Risk can target the is not the barrier
Today, many newspapers have strong balance most relevant to succeeding in an
sheets and strong operating margins. They can consumers will increasingly digital
approach change from secure financial positions. drive success.
Unfortunately, advertising dollars are not If a newspaper world; rather, success
shifting quickly enough to support the decline can become the will be driven by
from print advertising for many newspapers. “go to” online tailoring their brand to
Now is not the time to move slowly. Digital space for a given
media competitors grow overnight and the target audience, the expectations of the
longer newspapers let competition take digital they can harvest target audience.
market share, the more catch-up they will have rich amount of
to play. Facebook’s 35 million user base that data about that
literally happened in less than 4 years is an community. Analyzing this data and interacting
example of a new media landscape that took the with the community can lead to many interesting
world by surprise. business models, from market research to polling
Successful newspaper will actively seek out to targeted advertising.
digital media investments to diversify their The possibilities are only limited by a news-
expertise and revenue models. Companies need paper’s ability to think creatively about their
to allocate a significant amount of resources community, its needs and how they fit into that
and capital to these types of investments (both picture.
early and late stage investments). Participating
in these types of investments will help compa- Citizen Destinations
nies acquire operating expertise and the techni- Obviously, the vision for a post-transition
cal knowhow. Importantly, newspapers must newspaper company looks a whole lot differ-
look outside of their organization to acquire and ent than the newspaper world of today. Some
develop a “digital media” culture. News Corp. did of my colleagues see a move to 100 percent
just that with their acquisition of MySpace. digital content and increasing fragmentation of
content. These trends exist and the evidence is
Vision for a Post-Transition everywhere. Importantly, newspapers must also
Newspaper Company struggle with their identities. Unfortunately, the
The newspaper landscape will look very identity change will be less about news and even
different in a post-shakeup world. Successful less about paper, so we need to accept a change
newspapers will embrace a cultural change and of identity. I propose that newspapers start
use technology to benefit from these changes. thinking about their mission as “Citizen Destina-
Newspapers will realize that technology is not tions” because this title better reflects the needs
the barrier to succeeding in an increasingly newspapers can fill.
digital world; rather, success will be driven by As a platform and brand behind the voice of
tailoring their brand to the expectations of the the community, newspapers will expand their
target audience. reach and presence in a community, while at
The revenue model for a digital media news- the same time enabling interaction amongst
paper will be very different. The ability to pro- their audiences. Newspapers will successfully
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become “Citizen Destinations” by building on

established strengths and realizing the benefits Kyle Redinger is managing director of DeParis
of technology. Redinger, a firm he co-founded to bring merger
and acquisition banking services to progressive
middle market clients. He combines an exten-
sive financial analysis background with a pas-
sion for those progressive industries. Kyle and
his partner Francesco DeParis, both 24, were
named as top 25 finalists in BusinessWeek’s Best
Young Entrepreneurs 2007. He also hosts a blog
called The Media Age.

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Three Habits of Highly times. Their magnetism was rooted partly in

Successful Editors the fact that they were optional, something you
didn’t technically need to get through the day,
By Mary Nesbitt yet somehow couldn’t live without.”
And do you remember Reader Inc? It was
1. Successful editors Thomson Newspapers’ smart, reader-focused
of the future won’t initiative, launched in the late ‘90s. Their “Ten
settle for today’s Commandments” poster still dominates my of-
journalism. fice wall. I especially like the tenth: “Thou shall
not commit boredom.”
Editors will give hum-
drum news the ink and I think current economic pressure will actually
pixels it deserves—little prove to be a boon to plucky editors. It provides
to none. They’ll establish a compelling rationale for ceasing to publish
high hurdles for the jour- earnest-but-dull journalism and setting rigorous
nalism that wins precious resources and space. new standards.
They’ll advocate as vigorously for the self-de- But editors’ smart bosses will realize this new
fined needs of readers as they do for the public’s journalism can’t be flipped on like a light switch.
right to know and the First Amendment. Cus- It will take training and retraining; replacing
tomer-centric journalism? You bet, and unapolo- people; hiring a different type of journalist; en-
getically so. larging the definition of what a journalist does,
what journalism is for and who can engage in
They’ll exploit the unique strengths of the journalism; and demanding a different kind of
media in which they publish. Acknowledging, graduate from journalism schools.
for instance, that print, by nature, is a selective
medium, they’ll choose only the stuff that has the 2. Successful editors won’t give up on
very best chance of creating benefits for readers news, because the public hasn’t. But
they most want. they’ll finally take to heart the consis-
tent drumbeat of messages from audi-
This change demands a focus just as relent- ence research.
less as the pursuit of new business models and
revenue streams. It’s as important as rushing to First, let’s confront the notion that news tastes
post fresh news online, using multimedia to tell have dumbed down or that people are losing
stories, and delivering news and information interest in news. The best evidence I’ve seen on
where, when and how people want it. the subject comes from the Pew Research Center,
which uses regular public opinion polls to track
Successful editors won’t let those good and attention to 19 news topics of nation-wide cur-
necessary initiatives distract them from also rency.
tackling a far tougher challenge: rejecting insipid
journalism and replacing it with things that grip, A recent analysis of 20 years of data groups
tickle, astonish, befriend and reward readers. the topics into six super-categories and shows
that the Disaster, Conflict, Political, Tabloid and
As William Powers wrote in the National Foreign categories exhibit no trend over that
Journal recently: “… nobody should ever read a period—they rise and fall, depending on the
newspaper out of a dreary sense of civic obliga- nature of events in those news worlds. The sixth,
tion. Like great books, the best news shops have Money, shows a steady rise in public attention.
always drawn readers because they were feisty, Analyst Michael J. Robinson concludes that news
well executed, and thrillingly alive to their own interests and tastes are not being transformed
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by the chang- From this, editors can add new, customer-cen-

While the array of
ing information tric criteria to professionally-derived news val-
technology. news offered by news ues. So successful newsroom leaders will insist
While the outlets—the relative on journalism that engages whatever audience
array of news they are seeking—journalism that helps them get
proportion of space
offered by more out of life as individuals and as members of
and time devoted a community; that makes them feel smarter; that
news outlets—
the relative to different kinds of gives them something to talk about with others;
proportion of that looks out for their civic interests; that con-
news—may shift,
space and time nects them with others; that enables participa-
largely because of tion; that surprises, touches and inspires.
devoted to
different kinds of commercial decisions, In sum, there’s no lack of knowledge; just—
news—may shift, what the audience still—hesitation to act boldly on the directional
largely because advice that years of inquiry have offered. Our
chooses to consume
of commercial research shows that U.S. newspapers are moving
decisions, what does not. in this direction, but the change is incremental.
the audience Other newspapers don’t suffer from such
chooses to consume does not. The menu has inertia, perhaps because they feel more keenly
changed but the diet hasn’t, says Robinson. the hot breath of their competitors.
Pew data also show little difference between But hasn’t our time come?
people’s awareness of current events today and
3. Successful editors will make enter-
30 years ago. Interest in so-called “hard” news
prise reporting the norm, rather than
has remained pretty constant. And adults still
the exception.
spend, on average, 66 minutes each day follow-
ing the news in one form or another. Enterprise is all about originating news, not
just covering or following news that has already
Next, on the local level, there’s a huge amount
broken.
of consumer insight. Decades of industry-
sponsored and proprietary research about what I believe it’s a good indicator of three impor-
people need and want to know generally points tant things: a newsroom’s journalistic vitality;
in the same direction—intensely local news, sto- dedication to the needs (stated and unstated)
ries about people I know or people like me, com- of whatever audience it is trying to reach; and a
munity events, government decisions that affect compulsion to distinguish its journalism from
me and the health of the community, whether tax the commodity news gushing from other sources.
dollars are being spent effectively, whether edu- By enterprise I mean news that doesn’t come
cation is working, personal safety, and so on. from a press conference, a meeting or some other
Web site data provide rich behavioral informa- planned event. It’s off the official agenda. It’s
tion about what people are paying attention to news that someone discovers, by dint of curios-
and for how long. ity, observation, talking with people well outside
one’s normal circle, developing an eclectic blend
Finally, experience research (here and here)
of sources, monitoring community and interest-
adds the crucial dimension of “why” to the
group blogs, reading widely and idiosyncrati-
“what”—why people are moved to engage in the
cally, finding stories in data… all the idea-gener-
news. It reveals much about the psychic, emo-
ating tactics that journalism schools must teach.
tional, social, utilitarian and intellectual rewards
that people want. In my vision, enterprise news absolutely must

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meet the audience-engagement test—it’s not a ket showed that less than 10 percent of stories
license to ramble or be self-indulgent. It can be were enterprise. Yet enterprise yields higher
hard or soft news; serious or light-hearted; told viewer ratings, as documented in We Interrupt
visually, in text or in combination. It can be a this Newscast, by Tom Rosenstiel et al. (2007), a
searchable database, a list, a snippet, a photo national study of local broadcast news.)
story, a user-contributed video. It doesn’t have to Can every piece on every day on every page be
be created by professional journalists. enterprise journalism? Probably not. And cer-
But good enterprise doesn’t usually grow on tainly on-agenda stories can and should be told
trees. Right now, it costs more than covering with verve and ingenuity, if journalists are as
meetings and planned events, largely because passionate about getting their journalism con-
journalists aren’t trained, coached, expected sumed as they are about journalism itself.
or incentived to find enough of it. You can see But successful editors will make it their mis-
glimpses of it in every newspaper and news Web sion to surpass the 50 percent enterprise mark.
site every day. However, the odd gleam isn’t In the process, they’ll finally give themselves
enough. permission to let go, to stop doing journalism of
In print, the front page is a good gauge of marginal value. And they’ll honor, along with the
newspapers’ commitment to enterprise. I took a First Amendment, the Tenth Commandment of
random sample of U.S. newspaper fronts from readership.
the Newseum site recently and calculated the
proportion of enterprise. The average was 20
percent enterprise, 80 percent event or hap- Mary Nesbitt is Managing Director of the
pened-yesterday coverage. About one-third of Readership Institute at the Media Management
the sample had no enterprise at all. Center, and Associate Dean for Curriculum
at the Medill School, all at Northwestern
(Local broadcast news has a similar problem.
University . She is a former newspaper editor
Our recent study of night-time newscasts at five
and reporter.
stations in the highly competitive Chicago mar-

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The Future of the News Business calculated that I spent more time each week lis-
tening to the circulation department’s telephone
By Mindy McAdams voice menus than I did actually reading the
newspaper. The paper was so often not delivered,
or delivered soaking wet, that it became unreli-
The whole historical argu- able as a source of news and information to me.
ment about news and tech-
nology can be compressed Those two anecdotes help point the way to
into one iconic symbol: the how the newspaper business can improve itself
telegraph. Trains were fast- and its prospects.
er than horses and carrier
Content
pigeons, but the telegraph
was faster than a train. Some motivations to buy a paper, or to look at
That was 170 years ago. the paper, have migrated elsewhere. Movie list-
ings are one example. Stock tables are another.
The telegraph spawned both the wire services
Concentrate on the motivations that still exist
and the inverted pyramid. A hundred newspa-
and on new ones that you can invent. (Google
pers could run the same wire story on page one
even has show times for my town’s wholly in-
because readers generally could not see the New
dependent art cinema; movie listings are over.)
York newspaper and the Pittsburgh newspaper at
Commodity news is not a motivation. Like the
the same time, in the same place.
movie listings, people are getting that some-
Now they can. where else.
The first step to thinking about the future of
the news business? Accept that news—raw, up- Delivery
to-the-minute, see-it-now news—is a commodity. Declining circulation might have as much to
Everybody has the same news, unless it is right do with physical factors as with content. It wasn’t
in your geographical backyard. (In that case, you dissatisfaction with my newspaper’s content that
ought to cover the heck out of it, because nobody made me cancel my subscription in disgust. A
else will.) Stuffing the printed or the digital prod- very different example of physical factors is the
uct full of what everyone else has? That is killing free weeklies
the news business. (such as Red-
Newspapers have long been involved in a lot Eye in Chicago) You will need to earn
more businesses than news. Readers have relied that have been
my loyalty by being
on newspapers for diversion, conversation start- so successful.
Even though the there when I want you
ers, education, entertainment, ideas about how
to live and what to do to have fun, and some- free paper is full and by being easy to
thing the academics call “surveillance” since long of commodity
use, like RedEye—and
before the telegraph made it sensible to rely on news, it provides
a diversion Google.
wire services.
exactly when
I used to buy a newspaper on Saturdays be- people want it—
cause I wanted to see a movie. It’s been years as they board a commuter train or bus.
since I’ve done that. I still see movies on week-
ends, but now I always get the show times from Give some thought to this physical factors
Google (www.google.com/movies). argument. You might think I would still buy a
printed newspaper to check the movie listings
I used to subscribe to the local daily, until I if, say, I were having brunch with friends, and
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we suddenly decided to see a movie afterward. people, from our newsrooms, that appeals to
Nope. I would pull out my BlackBerry and check an audience that we can build and retain?
Google there in the restaurant, without leaving 2. H
ow must we deliver it to make it irresist-
my biscuits and gravy. ible to that audience?
Easy access is a big part of delivery today: Can Content: To me, “appeal” doesn’t mean pan-
I read it on my mobile device? Does it play prop- dering. People can get “all Britney, all the time”
erly there? Will it download fast? in too many places. That’s the commodity trap
Obviously, I don’t think of the news business we need to
as being limited to paper, or even to computers. avoid. Stories
The adaptations needed mean more than simply that are interest- Content should be
reformatting so that the phone-screen version ing and original
looks okay and does not keep me waiting. They do have appeal. a mix of diversion,
extend to searchability—which means meta data, Too much in conversation
such as keywords, and also user-generated tags, the newspaper starters, education,
descriptions and referrals. You will need to earn is just plain
my loyalty by being there when I want you and boring. Many entertainment, ideas
by being easy to use, like RedEye—and Google. articles are too about how to live and
As for content, we don’t need another Google long. Many col- what to do to have fun,
any more than we need 800 copies of the same umns read like
filler, not really and “surveillance.”
AP story on every news home page in America.
You know you are competing with The New York saying anything
Times online, with 24-hour TV news channels, new. Above all, I
with radio during commute time and with the look for stories I haven’t heard a hundred times
whole Internet all the time. Does it make sense to already in my life.
try to compete by being the same as any of them? Content should be a mix of diversion, conver-
No other content provider has as large a staff sation starters, education, entertainment, ideas
of news gatherers and editors as a newspaper about how to live and what to do to have fun, and
newsroom. This asset should enable the local “surveillance.” Surveillance is academic-speak for
newspaper to differentiate its products from checking out what’s going on. Surveillance is what
all those other entities. The newspaper’s staff the meerkats do when they stand up on their hind
of trained journalists makes it possible to do legs, looking for danger. Surveillance is finding out
things—where you are—that that no one else can that the (local) housing market is going to crash—
do. First, because those others are not there—in before it’s too late. Surveillance is learning whether
your town, your state. Second, because they do (local) schools are getting better or worse.
not have your people. Delivery includes, yes, online video, and
Because I’ve been studying and practicing mobile (cell phone) updates and headlines, and
online journalism for 13 years, you might think maybe the free tab beside the bus stop—if people
I’d be talking all about gadgets and digital media ride buses in your town. (If not, maybe you ought
such as online video. I think that’s exactly the to give them a daily 30-minute podcast they can
wrong focus for thinking about the future. download and listen to in the car at 6 a.m. Go on,
steal that radio audience. I know podcasts have
Content and delivery are the two fundamental failed in many places—but then, I have heard
things that require our attention in journalism. some absolutely horrible podcasts produced by
1. W
hat content can we deliver, with our newspapers.)

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Delivery also means having a Web site that and information that are interesting and origi-
doesn’t make someone’s eyes glaze over because nal and based on where I live. Frankly, if it’s not
the ads are flying over top of the editorial con- about this place, I can get a better version some-
tent, the news is 12 hours old, and the layout is where else.
so hard to decipher, it might as well be a Rubik’s We’ve come full circle from the time when the
Cube. telegraph expanded our interests to encompass
Delivery is, first and foremost, everywhere and the whole world. I have the world on my cell
any time, with maximum convenience and speed. phone in my purse. (The BBC provides excellent
(Today RSS has a lot to do with making this hap- RSS feeds.) What I don’t have is effective access
pen. Tomorrow it might be another technique.) to what’s really important in my own town.
Searchability and cross-linking among related
pieces are vital to effective delivery. Without
them, delivery is neither convenient nor fast. Mindy McAdams is a professor in the Depart-
ment of Journalism at the University of Florida,
When I think about a successful news product
where she teaches courses concerning online
for the future, I think about what I would want to
journalism. Her book “Flash Journalism: How
pay for. I quit paying for my local printed news-
to Create Multimedia News Packages” was pub-
paper because it was not delivered effectively.
lished by Focal Press in 2005. Before moving to
Then I quit reading it online because the Web
Florida in 1999, she was the Web strategist at
site was too slow and cumbersome. That’s also a
the American Press Institute. In 1994, she was
delivery problem.
the first content developer at Digital Ink, The
Even if the delivery factors are resolved, I Washington Post’s first online newspaper. Pre-
know I still won’t be diverted from all the other viously, she was a copy editor for 11 years. She
great content out there on the Internet and TV worked on the Metro desk at The Washington
unless my newspaper regularly gives me stories Post and at Time magazine in New York.

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Making the Leap Beyond companies.

Newspaper Companies The question The question is no
is no longer, longer, “What’s the
By Stephen T. Gray “What’s the
future of news- future of newspapers/
These days, everyone in papers/news- newspaper companies?”
the newspaper industry paper compa- It’s “What does it take
is trying to imagine the nies?” It’s “What
does it take to to meet the needs of the
future of newspapers.
Not the grim future that’s meet the needs people, businesses and
bearing down on us, but a of the people, communities we want
different one in which our businesses and
communities we to serve?” Whatever
core values remain strong,
everyone finds us indis- want to serve?” that requires is what
pensable again, and more and more businesses Whatever that our companies must
are flocking to us to use the great solutions we requires is what
our companies become.
offer.
must become.
The American Press Institute’s Newspaper
Next project has been working for the last two And that leads
years to help newspaper companies create that to the most important question of all: “What will
brighter future. those people, businesses and communities want
and expect in the coming years?”
In September 2006, we delivered a set of prac-
tical concepts, tools and processes that any news- Draw today’s trend lines forward, and we can
paper company can use to build new audiences see this picture in every local market:
and serve new businesses. In the year since, I’ve n
People will want—and will get from some-
taught that approach to more than 4,000 news- one—exactly the information, solution,
paper people and have worked with dozens of contact or connection they need or want,
companies using it. for whatever circumstance arises in their
In that time, I’ve seen a lot of progress. Many lives, any time they want it, wherever they
newspaper companies are moving much faster happen to be at the time. They will use any
today in developing new products and engaging convenient channel to get it. Some of it will
new audiences. be news, but the vast bulk of it will be on top-
ics more directly pertinent to their own lives,
But it’s not enough. The pace is still too slow, work, interests, circumstances, families,
and most innovations are too close to the core communities.
and lean far too heavily on old revenue models.
At this rate, we will still suffer many more years
n usinesses large and small will want—and
B
of painful shrinkage, and competitors will snatch will get from someone—the ability to reach
away many great opportunities. precisely and measurably the kind of people
they want to reach, with messages that will
So we’re now developing a second-generation engage them, delivered in the most effective
N2 report—due out after the first of the year—to formats and channels, at prices that fit every-
offer additional strategic and practical guidance. one’s ability to pay.
One of its key messages is this: It’s time n ommunities will want—and will get from
C
to make the giant leap beyond newspaper someone—ways to interact, share knowledge,
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ask questions, give answers, debate issues, enabler, part multi-media company. Its goal is
form networks and stay in touch. These will to touch, connect and serve every consumer and
be not just geographic communities, but every business. It may keep producing newspapers
communities of shared interests. well into the future, but that’s not the center of its
To newspaper companies, this looks dire and purpose—it’s just one way of many ways to fulfill it.
threatening. Their core product is in decline What, exactly, does this kind of company look
because there are now substitutes that meet like? No one can say definitively yet, because the
these needs better than a newspaper. Seeing needs that will shape them are still emerging.
these needs through the lens of its old model, a But the picture is becoming clearer by degrees.
newspaper company instinctively protects and The next N2 report, titled “The Next Step:
defends that model while cramming in a few new Making the Leap Beyond Newspaper Compa-
offerings around the edges. nies,” will offer a sharpened strategic vision,
But wait—these “new” wants and needs actu- more than 30 case studies of new products and
ally are not new at all. They’re as old as the hu- organizational structures, and pragmatic “how-
man race. Our companies were created to meet to” guidance on implementing today’s most
them years or generations ago, and they used the lucrative local online monetization strategies.
best available technology, which happened to be Fortunately, it’s not too late. Lots of digital
a newspaper. opportunities remain untapped in local markets.
It’s time to wake up. We are not newspaper Our companies need to move fast, talking with
companies—we are “needs companies.” Our core consumers and businesses to learn what the op-
purpose and business model is meeting the hu- portunities are, and quickly developing smart,
man needs for information, knowledge, solutions, strategic solutions.
connecting with others, choice-making, buying There’s tremendous opportunity ahead. In
and selling that arise among people in a given every community, market or region now served
locale. Whatever by a newspaper, there are thousands or millions
that takes, we of people who will welcome the next new thing
need to do. It’s time to wake up. that helps them live their lives or conduct their
So today, just We are not newspaper businesses there. The door is wide open for “the
as eagerly as companies formerly known as newspapers,” and
we adopted the
companies—we are a bright future is ours for the making.
printing press, “needs companies.”
we should be
grabbing the Steve Gray heads the American Press Institute’s
new technologies and using them to create the Newspaper Next project, which delivered its
products and services that local consumers, busi- report, “Blueprint for Transformation,” to the
nesses and communities will want in a digital newspaper industry in Fall 2006. He is now
age. A “newspaper company” tries to tweak old helping newspaper companies learn and imple-
solutions; a “needs company” makes new solu- ment the N2 recommendations to expand and
tions out of whatever technologies, skill sets, diversify through innovation. Previously he was
sales models and access channels will work best managing publisher of The Christian Science
for the user. Monitor in Boston for seven years, where he
implemented numerous strategies to introduce
There’s no handy term for this kind of compa-
the Monitor to millions of new readers, viewers
ny—it is part local information and knowledge
and listeners.
utility, part connection platform, part commerce

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What’ve we got? Paper, folks often affect, but with a genuine apprecia-
Place and People tion for the power of ink on paper. It has been
80 years since electronic media began to broad-
By Michael A. Silver cast information quickly and with an emotional
wallop that audiences and advertisers appreci-
ate — and more than a decade since the ubiqui-
There’s often lots of loose tous Internet began adding the personalization,
talk about the “assets” feedback mechanisms and measurability that
newspapers bring to their make it a fantastic venue for consumers to spend
fight for audience atten- their time and advertisers their money. Through
tion and advertiser dollars, all that, there’s not much indication that people
but the experience of the don’t like print — even among many folks who
past dozen years shows don’t have much interest in the newspaper we’re
that we’ve overestimated printing.
our own capabilities and
underestimated the speed with which great ideas If the daily newspaper had been invented after
can eclipse established products and trusted the Internet, we might be hailing it as the go-
brands. Now, more than ever, we need to get anywhere, read-it-the-way-you-want, visually
serious about figuring out what we do well and rich, verbally-robust, supersized-format, com-
how that can be adapted to what the marketplace munity-building medium of the moment. But the
really wants. fact that most newspapers don’t live up to that
is a failure of our ability to exploit the medium
When I began managing an interactive busi- to the fullest, not the medium itself. Instead of
ness for a newspaper company in 1985, the ques- grousing that reading the newspaper is a habit
tion I got most frequently from print executives that’s in decline (stupid audience!), let’s figure
was “You’re not saying newspapers are going out how to exploit the unique attributes of ink on
away, are you?” and I’ve heard the question in paper (and our unique capabilities to manufac-
one form or another for the following 22 years. ture and deliver it) to produce print publications
My answer always was—and continues to be—no. that are feasts for our LCD-glazed eyes and treats
But the vague sense of smugness that usually ac- for our Facebook-addled brains.
companied the query years ago now often seems
to have been replaced by a real sense of fear. The Shrinking the same old coverage into fewer
impossible now seems not so impossible—and pages filled with the same dull ads, the same
our track record in the hyper-competitive online stale features and same bland layouts won’t
world isn’t flush with success. So the question cut it. This is a time for rejuvenation, not life
of what “assets” we have that really matter has support—and that should start with a newspaper
become more urgent. that takes fullest advantage of the physical at-
tributes of the printed page. For the broadsheet
As the newspaper industry goes through pain- flagship, that probably means bigger and bolder,
ful restructuring for the next few years, I think with more visuals and livelier text –as well as
we’ll find—or perhaps more accurately, redis- graphics, headlines and advertisements that treat
cover — a few key pillars to rebuild upon. They the page like the big canvas that it is. It means
include the talent of professional journalists, the accepting that most readers already know about
power of local presence and the potency of the the big stories from TV or the web, and uses
print medium itself. the print page to complement that experience.
First, let’s talk print — and not with that hope- It probably also means publishing differenti-
less “dead trees edition” attitude we interactive ated print products for differentiated audiences,
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rather clinging solely to a homogenized daily Reinventing the role of the professional jour-
broadsheet in a world that’s all about consumer nalist for a multimedia era will be critical. The
choice. fact that we typically have the largest and best
One of the impressive things about the In- cadre of local journalists is a great starting point.
ternet is how it seemingly makes traditional It’s folly to expect that every good newsperson
geographic will be equally talented at writing for print,
barriers disap- shooting for video and running an online discus-
pear. We read We read information, sion. But we can and must figure out how to use
information, their subject matter expertise to produce content
share opinions, and
share opinions, in a variety of formats and on schedules that
and instantly
instantly communicate aren’t predominantly tied to print deadlines or
communicate in in ways that appear conventional notions of the typical newspaper
ways that appear article.
to make geography
to make geog- That doesn’t mean jumping on every new
raphy no longer
no longer matter. technology or abandoning rudimentary business
matter. But But geography does analysis of new projects. Every beat doesn’t cry
geography does matter offline — and out for its own podcast — and, in fact, very few
matter offline — do. But the role of the reporter needs to adjust
and our unique
our unique niche in the to recognize the primacy of the Web and the
niche in the media world is to make formats (like blogs) and techniques (like helpful
media world is it matter online too. links and search-optimized headlines) that are
to make it mat- native to the Web. Newsrooms that are encour-
ter online too. aging beat reporters to maintain newsy blogs and
Maintaining a strong local presence that is are viewing the print edition article as one by-
truly in touch with its local people, local busi- product of continuous beat coverage are proba-
nesses, local institutions, local schools, local en- bly onto a model
tertainers and local troublemakers is vital — and for the future.
not easily accomplished. We start from a great It’s important Certainly, our local
base — no other news organization has as many to remember market competitors
eyes focused on the community as we do. But that the entire
traditional newspaper content — with its empha- media universe will be reinventing
sis on rote government meetings and shopworn is shifting — not themselves, too — but
local features that bore even their writers — isn’t just newspapers. when it comes to local
enough. That means that
opportunities news in new media
Kudos to those reporters and interactive
producers who are stimulating local online may come our formats, I’d bet on the
conversations about everything from politics to way that aren’t local newspaper that
pizzerias, posting scads of digital photos of local necessarily
available now. understand which
people, and facilitating the discovery of local
blogs and videos. Figuring out how to tap the That’s one of the “assets” really matter.
passion and energy of user-generated-content reasons video
in ways that add value from our smart, creative, experimentation
well-informed newsroom is the key challenge at newspapers is so important — even in markets
and opportunity of the current moment of where there’s no shortage of video crews fielded
journalism. by local TV stations. Particularly as video usage
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grows on mobile devices, having the largest and

brightest group of versatile professional journal- Michael A. Silver held a variety of development,
ists in a local market may more valuable than marketing and general management positions
having a large infrastructure designed primarily at Tribune Company’s publishing, interactive
for producing traditional packaged-and-polished and broadcasting divisions from July 1985
TV newscasts. Certainly, our local market com- until May 2007. Named an NAA digital pioneer
petitors will be reinventing themselves, too — in 2002, he recently hung out his consultancy
but when it comes to local news in new media shingle at www.SilverChicago.com and is now
formats, I’d bet on the local newspaper that advising media companies and civic organiza-
understand which “assets” really matter. tions on multimedia product development.

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Personalization is Key to ized experience for every site visitor that has
Future of Newspaper Sites profoundly and forever changed the way the local
newspaper franchise delivers news and informa-
By Kane Cochran tion to consumers.
The nearly 100 percent penetration of high-
ANY TOWN, ANY speed broadband networks has made micro-per-
COUNTRY, Oct. 1, 2012— sonalization possible. Unlike in 2007, newspaper
Yesterday, your local Web sites are no longer constrained by techni-
newspaper Web site made cal limitations. Instead, they have the power
an announcement, “We’re to create and distribute highly dynamic rich
giving control of our Web media content and applications. Each piece of
site to you.” Intrigued by content on their sites is intelligently positioned.
this claim, you went to the No longer are the sites constrained by standard
Web site. That visit was layouts or confined to grids. The successful local
the last time you saw the Web site‘s content and newspaper franchise features a platform that
layout controlled entirely by the newspaper’s intelligently and automatically presents informa-
editors and producers. tion on the screen based on thousands of pieces
of information. Each movement a visitor makes
From now on, the Web site is personalized is calculated, analyzed, scored and stored in a
based on your interests. The content adapts to database.
changes in news, economic indicators, weather,
time of day, personal browsing history and your The homepage is now a personal dashboard
own profile. A personalized experience means that provides access to individual modules filled
that the Web site remembers your last search with news, photos, videos, restaurant reviews,
was for a pizza restaurant and after you ate there, events and applications all designed to quickly
you rated it four stars. The site understands you deliver the information you are looking for.
enjoyed your pizza, and begins displaying rich Each module can be “peeled” off the page, rear-
media advertising of local pizzerias. It recognizes ranged and slapped back on the Web site, stuck
you contribute to a blog, enjoy hard news instead on a user’s desktop or flipped over to a mobile
of soft news, spend 27 minutes per week read- device. This functionality seamlessly connects all
ing sports, and you almost clicked on a celebrity devices from the desktop to handhelds, opening
news story. In short, the local newspaper Web up the opportunity to engage users from every
site is entirely designed for “you.” direction. Distribution of content in this highly
personalized world takes on many forms, but
It was just five years ago, back in 2007, that most importantly, distribution takes whichever
local newspaper Web sites were just beginning to form each user desires. That said, successful
experiment with behavioral targeting and per- implementation of this platform does not mean
sonalization. In the five short years since then, newspaper Web sites operate in a “hands off”
local newspaper Web sites learned to leverage a manner. In fact, teams of developers, designers,
powerful blend of behavioral targeting, advanced writers and editors, are responsible for creating
collaborative filtering, user-provided profiles, the content and utility required to power these
user-interaction data and sophisticated algo- complex systems.
rithms to transform the content mix, advertising
opportunities, interactivity and distribution. The Local newspaper Web sites are uniquely posi-
result, called micro-personalization, has resulted tioned to benefit the most by this emerging tech-
in a hyper-local, deeply engaging and personal- nology. The local newspaper franchise, just like
in 2007, still is the best source for local news.
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Scores of Web tion a user has with the site, the more complex
sites around the Just as they are the best their persona will become and the more data the
world are now site has to process and tailor the results.
providing twen- sites for local news,
A personalized experience is a highly relevant
ty-four hour local newspaper sites experience. The more relevant the experience,
national and are the best sources the more likely a user will continue to spend time
international on the site. The sports fan in this example will
news coverage. for local durable
see a site where sports news, video and photos
As a result, the information. fill the top left of the screen. Modules of loca-
local newspaper tion-specific weather appear at the top right. A
franchise has completely customized team tracker is available
adopted the successful strategy of offering hyper- and displays information about tonight’s game.
local content ranging from political news, local Displayed at the bottom of the page is a mash-
crime and local sports to entertainment informa- up of local pizza restaurants around the stadium
tion such as local restaurant and event listings. complete with menu and suggested choices. With
Just as they are the best sites for local news, local the touch of a button, this personalized view can
newspaper sites are the best sources for local be changed to display a personalized page of
durable information. news content or a personalized page of entertain-
In addition, local newspaper Web sites, which ment content.
in 2007 were just venturing into the then-new Personalization also extends to advertising,
world of user-generated content, now have fully offering site visitors a highly engaging and rel-
embraced their audience and are using user-con- evant experience while offering advertisers a
tent to their advantage. In fact, the percentage of higher ROI. Behavioral targeting has evolved
user-generated content on local newspaper Web since 2007, and now is powered by a combina-
sites now greatly outweighs site-created content. tion of the user’s profile information, behavior
The real opportunity, site producers now realize, and previous ad interaction. Ad sizes are smaller,
lies in their ability to develop a platform to foster but better integrated into the content on the
interaction and conversation between users to page. Rich media advertising contains advanced
create a wealth of information on local restau- algorithms and connects to databases with vast
rants, events, sports, politics and more. creative resources. Advertising campaigns au-
Once a user begins clicking on articles, inter- tomatically analyze performance and weed out
acting with multimedia, or even moving his or poorly performing creative, replacing it on the
her mouse (or other pointer) around the page, fly with new creative. Ad-serving networks are
the Web site intelligently begins changing the fueling the growth and breadth of advertising op-
layout and content. When you click on sports tions on newspaper Web sites, allowing site visi-
stories and begin reading through each story, tors the power to dictate what advertising they
for example, the site begins to present sports see on the site. In an effort to create an engaging
team trackers, box scores, news and multime- experience, site visitors now have the option to
dia. Advertising from professional sports teams select specific advertising companies or advertis-
appears on the screen, offering the opportunity ing categories.
to buy tickets to today’s game. Weather informa- Through a combination of advanced behav-
tion automatically modifies itself to show you the ioral targeting, advanced “smart ads” and micro-
temperature and weather forecast for the local personalization, local newspaper Web sites have
professional sports stadium. A persona is being brought the “local corner store” mentality to the
formed with every interaction. The more interac- Web. Assume, for a moment, that your persona
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understands time for pickup. In short, each advertisement is a

you love cof- Through a combination mini-application. Since you have interacted with
fee. As a result, the ad in the past, it even remembers you enjoy
advertising on of advanced behavioral an Iced Mocha and suggests a new drink, an Iced
the site begins targeting, advanced Pumpkin Spice Latte. This deeply personalized
to change. In- “smart ads” and micro- experience offers a compelling opportunity for
stead of random local businesses, bringing back the “local corner
advertising, the personalization, local store” mentality and allowing advertisers to at-
site shows you newspaper Web sites tract the exact consumer they are looking for.
ads for caffeinat- have brought the “local Prompted by the offer, you order the new
ed drinks, laptop drink directly from the ad, ask for it to be ready
computers and corner store” mentality
at 3:30 p.m. and prepay for it. A few minutes lat-
even music. Tak- to the Web. er, taking a break from your job and enjoying the
ing this a step Iced Pumpkin Spice Latte at a sidewalk table on
further, because sunny and mild perfect fall afternoon, you pull
of the partnerships with ad-serving networks, the out your mobile device and finish reading the
site presents you with the option to see all coffee- article you started back at your desktop. You also
related advertising or select a specific company, decide to buy tickets for tomorrow night’s game,
such as your local coffee shop or a big, national invite a few friends to join you, and find a res-
chain. You choose the local chain. The local cof- taurant to eat at along the way. All of this takes
fee shop tempts you to buy coffee at every oppor- place on only one Web site, your local newspaper
tunity through highly engaging, highly personal- Web site. And all of it is possible because of yes-
ized and relevant ads. The ads are location-aware terday’s announcement, “We’re giving control of
and recognize the nearest coffee shop to your our Web site to you.”
location.
At 8 a.m., the ad creative displays a coffee, a
doughnut and a coupon. The coupon of course, Kane Cochran is Manager of Site Innovation for
can be “flipped” over to your mobile phone and COXnet, where he develops innovative strate-
taken with you. Around noon, the ad creative gies and solutions to increase user engagement
changes to display a sandwich and large drink. and audience growth for Cox Newspapers’ Web-
Around 3 p.m., the ad changes again, this time sites. Kane joined COXnet after leading Mar-
promoting an iced coffee. The ads even allow keting & Technology for a game development
you to pre-order, pay for your drink and set a company.

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Newspapers and Mobile Marketing Mobile marketing is a logical extension of your

existing Internet sales program. It is simply a
By Peter Levitan new form of digital marketing.
Mobile marketing can speak to the potential
160 characters. That’s all advertiser who would like to create a direct con-
you get. But these 160 nection to their customers via scheduled opt-in
characters are intrinsic messages, promotions and product or service
to the most ubiquitous alerts. You can help by providing the skills, tech-
communication device we nology and the backend mobile database (which
have. Our mobile phones. you will manage).
As I survey the present It gives your sales force a very good reason
state of the newspaper in- to visit existing and non-advertisers. Mobile
dustry, especially from my marketing is an intriguing subject that is still
perspective as an owner of an advertising agency, new and can position newspaper sales people as
it is clear to me that mobile phones must and experts in an
will play an important role in the development of emerging tech-
newspaper readership and advertising. nology. My advice is to start
I see three major reasons why editors should My advice is simple with text
be looking hard at the mobile phone delivery to start simple
with text mes-
messaging vs. trying
platform today.
saging vs. trying to convince advertisers
First, mobile phones are already in everyone’s to convince ad-
pocket.
to use the mobile
vertisers to use
Second, the use of mobile data, as in text mes- the mobile Web,
Web, which remains
saging and the mobile Internet, is increasing at a which remains a a relatively small
rapid rate. All of the major carriers are advertis- relatively small audience.
ing their data services. Mobile phone users can audience.
and will increasingly access your content either Text messag-
in short text message bursts or via a mobile Web ing, the delivery of those 160 character messages,
site. has finally reached a large U.S. market with SMS
Third, mobile phones are always on. Web sites or text subscriptions and family mobile phone
can deliver breaking news, or direct people to plans having surpassed the critical threshold of
your paper product. But today’s newspaper Web 50 percent penetration. Importantly, it isn’t just
site is primarily tethered to a desk or laptop com- the younger group that uses text as text messag-
puter and therefore requires viewers to actively ing among 45- to 60-year-olds grew 7 times as
seek out your URL when they are online. With fast as teenage usage.
text-based alerts or other forms of direct delivery According to Forrester Research, 43 percent of
you can push 24/7 news services directly to the U.S. marketers are using, piloting, or expecting
mobile phone user wherever they are. to use mobile marketing in 2007. Major advertis-
To me, it’s all about ubiquity and direct delivers including the usual suspects like Microsoft,
ery. Think of mobile phones as another driveway. Nike and Coke and the not so usual including
I see three major reasons that publishers should Dunkin Donuts and Hyundai are going mobile.
be looking hard at adding mobile marketing and These marketers are delivering promotional
advertising to their advertising product set. alerts, mobile coupons, voting and polling, con-

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tests and imbedded links to their mobile Web mobile marketing advice and skills, the manage-
sites. ment of the mobile database and most impor-
The good news for newspapers is that mobile tantly, advertising to drive awareness via your
marketing is hyper local and one of the early traditional off and online properties. My sense
adopter groups is that you have approximately an 18-month
will be retail- window to establish your newspaper as a mobile
ers who want marketing expert in your community.
To give you an idea of
to build a con- To give you an idea of the future of mobile
nection to their
the future of mobile marketing, all you have to do is to look at what is
customers by marketing, all you currently happening in Europe and Asia where
sending promo- have to do is to look mobile marketing is about two years ahead of
tions and news us. An exciting use of mobile marketing is the
via text messag-
at what is currently incorporation of the next generation of barcodes,
ing. Given the happening in Europe called matrix codes or 2D barcodes, into mobile
very early stage and Asia where mobile programs. Japanese advertisers are now using
of this market, I these barcodes in print advertising to drive a
think that it can marketing is about two stronger connection with the reader. A phone
be “ownable” years ahead of us. user points her camera phone at a barcode in
by the savvy a print ad and the user’s phone automatically
newspaper sales launches the advertiser’s general Web site or
organization. Your papers and Web sites benefit unique promotional page. A real time promo-
because newspaper and online advertising will tional message is directly tied into the previously
be required to deliver awareness of the mobile printed ad.
marketing program. Depending on where you publish you may be
Even more good news is that mobile market- seeing newspaper circulation and advertising
ing represents less rocket science than your move declines. I believe that mobile marketing offers
onto the Internet in the 1990s. Text-based mo- newspapers a new medium that can drive both a
bile programs require a Common Short Code, a 5 new revenue stream and incremental display and
or 6 number or letter address (think phone num- classifieds newspaper advertising. I think that
ber) that you send text messages to. You go to this is unquestionably the right time to take a
the Common Short Code Administration, a third hard look this new opportunity.
party organization that manages and rents these
CSC’s. The CSC can be either a random number
or a specific word associated with your paper or Peter Levitan is the President & CEO of Citrus,
market. CSCs can cost from $500 per month for a design and advertising agency with offices in
a random code to $1,000 per month for a cus- Portland and Bend, Ore. Citrus has been a full-
tom code. Once you have the master CSC, your service agency since 1985. Previously, he served
advertisers “rent” the CSC from you and create a as the President and CEO of ActiveBuddy, an
word or phrase for users to text into the CSC. An instant messaging technology company whose
example would be: texting “Macy’s sale” to the clients included Intel, AOL-Time Warner, Frito
code “Mynews”. Lay and Capitol Records. During the 1990s, Pe-
ter developed and launched the award-winning
The services that you would provide your
New Jersey Online for Advance Publications
advertisers include the rental of the code, your
where he held the position of President & CEO.

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Prognosis: ences are not. Young people are reading more

Positive, If Newspapers Adapt print than ever before. Newspaper Web sites
are attracting audiences far faster than printed
By Jim Chisholm newspapers are losing theirs. In Europe, free
daily newspapers now enjoy more than 50 per-
cent more young readers than “paid-fors.” As a
You know what it’s like: consequence, readership among young people is
You turn up for your an- growing, and so is total circulation, and the ads
nual medical. The doctor are following.
scares the hell out of you. In other words, the battle is not about audi-
He fills your head with bad ence, but about our share of audience and the
news and a range of horri- most effective way to realise it.
fying prognoses. Suddenly
he brightens up and pro- Advertising is in a similar position. It is true
vides a plan which not only that classified and display revenues are being
offers a happier life today, but offers to prolong it lost to digital media. But it is also true that those
for longer than you might have expected. newspaper companies that are embracing the
digital realities of the future of advertising are
And here we are looking at our patient’s fu- not only increasing revenues but are also devel-
ture. The newspaper. oping new profits far faster than they are experi-
Lethargy has set in. So many of us are resigned encing the loss of print profits.
to an early grave that we daren’t even speak So where does this leave the newspaper busi-
to the doctor! And too few are motivated to do ness in five to seven years’ time?
something that ensures a long and happy future.
Just as the doctor sees a range of patients with
The fact is our industry is not in great health. different conditions, so our industry is not uni-
Some of us are on our last legs. Some will die. form but contains a range of different conditions,
But these health problems are as much in different levels of fitness, and different approach-
the head as they are in the body. And those es to future health.
newspaper companies that adapt, get fitter and
happier, have a glorious and infinite future ahead If one simply deals with averages, then the av-
of them. erage prognosis of the average newspaper com-
pany is of ongoing, if slow decline in circulation,
So first the symptoms: and a continuing leakage of advertising revenue
Paid-for daily newspaper circulations are to other channels.
declining, along with advertising share. In the The situation is exacerbated by the underlying
last few years, the ability to compensate for these financial structure of our industry. Newspapers
losses by cutting fat has looked increasingly make little if any profit from circulation, and as
difficult. Initiatives in digital media are making the subscriber base slowly dissolves, the relative
inroads, but are they enough? A simplistic prog- cost of maintaining traditional six- or seven-day
nosis of these trends implies an unhealthy future. readership is rising. Publishers are obsessed by
But such a prognosis would be wrong, since it the notion of being paid for content, but in real-
would ignore the many routes that exist to not ity few in the United States have profited greatly
only restore fitness, but to creating a far stronger from content in the past. Circulation revenues
media business in the future. have increasingly served to prop up circulation
Circulations are under pressure. But audi- marketing.

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Advertising revenues are therefore underpin- effect on revenue structure.

ning the industry’s ability to grow and diversify, The tipping point is approaching.
and here again there are a number of misconcep-
Fortunately there is a lot of underlying evi-
tions. These are largely based around confusion
dence to say that newspapers are now manag-
between the tra-
ing the migration of advertising revenues to the
ditional model
online world more effectively, both in terms of
of rate per thou- Currently the major revenue generated, but as importantly in profit-
sand readers
per title, and the drivers of change are ability. The question is to what extent publishers
the largely negative are encouraging the new, even at the expense of
emerging metric
the old, and in this area our industry needs to
of PBR, payment structural impacts become more aggressive and more confident.
by results.
on readership and And this is where our internal issues are trip-
Because of
the mismatch advertising. These ping us up.
between the two can only be expected In Europe, a number of publishers have antici-
and the lack of pated this deep strategic impact. The question is
to continue to affect
comparative whether U.S. publishers are equally prepared.
metrics, and, our historical business
Perhaps the world’s most highly regarded
critically, the models. newspaper company is Schibsted, based in Nor-
unwillingness way, which epitomises the internal factors that
of publishers to our industry must address. Central to their suc-
invest in and adopt the knowledge of the dif- cess are two driving philosophies. The first is that
ferences, publishers are finding it impossible to building tomorrow’s business is more important
pilot a long term strategy. than protecting today’s. Their chief executive
So much for the analysis. Moving forward… openly talks about their digital products canni-
balising their print products. The second is their
Four factors will dictate where our industry is
pursuit of innovation, both in print and online.
positioned in seven years’ time. Two are external.
Not only does Schibsted now derive half of its
Two are internal.
profits from their digital activities, but they have
The external factors relate to cyclical and struc- also launched
tural changes that will take place in the market. what have now
Currently the major drivers of change are the become the most Publishers must follow
largely negative structural impacts on readership read newspa- the market, and that
and advertising. These can only be expected to pers in Spain
continue to affect our historical business models. and France. And
market is digital, it is
A second threat, however, is the cyclical nature these newspa- interactive, and it is
of our advertising revenues. This writer believes pers are free! self-selecting.
that when the next cyclical downturn occurs, and Across Europe
collides with an accelerating structural change, the rise of free
we will see radical shift in our revenue structure, newspapers is not only resulting in increases in
and as the cycle recovers, the shift to digital will total readership year on year, but is seeing this
accelerate. growth among younger generations.
The combination of advertising migration and There is plenty of life in the printed newspa-
its cyclical alter ego are likely to have a seismic per. As long as it is a newspaper that new readers
want to read.
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Publishers must follow the market, and that Shareholder disillusionment will ultimately drive
market is digital, it is interactive, and it is self- these companies into the hands of competitors,
selecting. or private ownership.
Currently daily newspapers in the USA are ex- For those companies that are willing to invest
periencing annual circulation declines of around in new products, we will gradually see new “me-
1.6 percent, so dia boutiques” opening, where the core newspa-
in seven years’ per business underpins a wide range of focused
time, sales will products in key market verticals, fashion, food
For those companies
be down by 10 and drink, sports, business. Each of these prod-
percent. that are willing to ucts will feed off each other, with readers or us-
Advertis- invest in new products, ers experiencing a range of strong local branded
ing revenues services, all coming from the newspaper house.
we will gradually see
are continuing Within the newspaper company, a centralised
new “media boutiques”
to grow, but at “back-of-house” will feed a range of distinctly
less than the opening, where the core marketed external brands, each focussed to the
rate of inflation. newspaper business channels of demand. Converged engine room.
And classified Diverged market face.
underpins a wide range
revenues are It is already clear that for some newspaper
declining faster, of focused products in
companies such strategies are successful in terms
and not being key market verticals, of the market, revenue and profit replacement,
compensated by and in particular value creation.
fashion, food and drink,
growth in on-
sports, business. So how does the newspaper company get from
line. U.S. news-
now to the future?
papers have
not yet seen the Radical treatment is required, to the body and
seismic shifts from print to online that are being the mind.
experienced in Europe, where in some markets The newspaper mindset has to change from
classifieds are down by as much as 50 percent. It single product protection, to new product in-
is also the case that display revenues are shifting novation. Core revenue streams are moving,
nearly as quickly. So the U.S. market can only and will start moving faster. Schibsted is based
expect to see an acceleration in the shift of rev- on accelerating that movement but ensuring it
enues. remains within.
But experience is showing that these levels of There is more and more evidence to suggest
decline can compensated for by greater levels of that it is unlikely that this transition will be suc-
innovation. cessfully managed through so called “converged”
So what could or should tomorrow’s newspa- advertising sales. The new must have room to
per company look like: breath.
For those companies that are content to sit “Innovation” must become as important a
back and milk the profits the outlook is not good function in the company as “Editorial” or “Adver-
at all. Given the exceptionally high levels of profit tising” with clear lines of reporting and power,
that American investors are demanding, because and targets for growth.
of lack of innovation-driven, top line growth, it Current newspaper valuation mechanisms are
is going to be harder and harder for companies an absolute barrier to growth. New products, in
to deliver a cost-driven approach to profitability. particular digital activities, need to be separated
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from the core business in both P&L and balance Several of Schibsted’s investors are the same
sheet, to create visibility to engender revaluation American Finance houses with holdings in US
of the new products. Newspaper companies. In the United States,
Targets and incentives for managers require typical profit margins are 25 percent. Schibsted’s
both a short term and long term element. It is investors are happy with their 12 percent.
extraordinary how many publishers and manag- The difference lies in their prognosis for the
ers will not innovate because the dilution of their future. Mind over body some would say.
profitability or gross margin has an adverse ef-
fect of their bonus.
Jim Chisholm is joint principal at iMedia
The reason that newspapers have to produce
Advisory Services, a leading, international
such ludicrous operating margins is simply be-
consulting and advisory service to the
cause investors do not see value coming from any
newspaper industry.
other source.

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Confronting Technology ratory in Tokyo showed me that desktop comput-

and Abundance ers, televisions, and mobile devices—along with
everyday devices such as car keys, credit cards,
By Earl J. Wilkinson and more—will merge together. Every household
will have what we would consider a supercom-
puter to which smaller mobile devices attach and
Newspapers are driven detach.
by two overriding historic
trends: Abundance goes hand-in-hand with technol-
ogy, though I don’t see the same changes in the
Technology: Every
n
next 10 years as we’ve seen in the past 20 years.
improvement in commu- Analysts focus on the “rich getting richer” and
nication—including new the shift to McMansion Exurbia. I am more in-
access points and speed to terested in the Wal-Mart effects of abundance—
access—lessens the voice cheap imports, easy credit—on the lower-middle
of mass media and mag- class. If the Archie Bunker character from televi-
nifies the voice of individuals. People dictate sion’s “All in the Family” lived in 2007, he would
when and where they access information, and live like a king compared to 35 years ago. And his
advertisers abandon mass media for as close contentment would be disconnected from any
to one-to-one communication that the latest aspiration to develop personally and profession-
technology will allow. ally—the gifts that newspaper readership brought
n Abundance: The more choices available to this demographic until two decades ago.
consumers and marketers, the higher the ex- One cannot
pectation of quality for all products, services, begin to com-
and brands. In the past two years, we crossed prehend the The core print
a bizarre threshold in the United States: newspaper of
There are more television sets in households newspaper will be alive
2017 without
than people! Where does any product fit in a understanding and well in 2017. But
world of such abundance? the fundamen- this general-interest
Newspapers must reorganize themselves for tal trends of
daily will be printed
constant change. Technologically in the next technology and
decade, there will be more access points to in- abundance. We on fewer pages and
formation, those points will be accessed at faster will be a fat, in tabloid format,
speeds, and the concept of “media products” will rich, spoiled,
the daily face of the
merge with everyday tools. jaded society
that can get overall information
These trends can be measured in months
today. I can barely put into words what 120 more information any- brand freely distributed
months of constantly improved iPhones, Black- where anytime—
to households and
berrys, and other mobile devices—and access from Rupert
Murdoch to saturated at single-copy
speeds to these devices—will bring us. It will be
an awkward dance: You need speed as well as ro- Archie Bunker. outlets.
bust devices to handle that speed. By 2017, surely What will the
some kind of multi-media hand-held device will local newspaper
access information at lightning speed. franchise look like in this setting?
Meanwhile, a recent visit to the DoCoMo labo- Frankly, I think technology ultimately will be

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the newspaper industry’s friend, while abun- segments of readers, and the use of home-deliv-
dance will be its foe. ery networks to deliver products and services.
Today, we are going through a clunky tech- Classifieds will continue to show growth through
nology phase in which computers and mobile long-tail partnerships with online partners such
devices—no matter how great we think they are as Google and Yahoo. Newspapers will out-local
(remember the Prodigy 2400-baud dial-up in all other media through news coverage and its
1992?)—are slow co-opting of Yellow Pages through hyper-data-
and not very basing efforts designed to stay one step ahead of
robust. That will Local newspapers will the global online giants and direct marketers.
change. One can be the local channel on Despite these advances, newspapers will be
see the promise “lighter” organizations. Printing presses will
a global net that will be
of online video be divested, and circulation sales and advertis-
advertising to- aggregated by players ing sales will be largely outsourced. Production
day. One can see unforeseen today. If processes will be outsourced to lower-currency
the promise of countries.
it happens in the oil
tablet technolo- The core focus of “newspapers” will be local
gies. Newspa- industry, the Houston
journalism, local information, and local aggrega-
pers today are Chronicle will be my tion of reader content.
fighting their
channel. If it happens Abundance will force newspapers to spend
internal cultural
in the entertainment much more on marketing and research—perhaps
wars with recal-
10 percent of revenues versus 1 percent today.
citrant editorial, industry, I’ll flip to the
The main competitor for the newspaper’s suite of
production, and
Los Angeles Times. products will not be another newspaper or Web
sales depart-
site; it will be the jaw-dropping “wow” factor of
ments that surely
24-hour stores, Best Buys stocked 30-feet high
will yield to the ability to operate in the multi-me-
with products, and constantly rising technology-
dia landscape that is slowly presenting itself.
enabled customer service. Over-choice means
What this ultimately means is that advertising that newspapers must constantly stand out.
costs per thousands in a digital environment will
Yet there are two sinister marketing projects
rise, while print costs per thousand will decline.
that can only be addressed through a fundamen-
We’re simply waiting on technology to catch up
tal shift and a sort of industry intervention:
with consumer demand.
n
Youth: The overriding demographic target
The core print newspaper will be alive and
of marketing expenditures must shift from
well in 2017. But this general-interest daily will
middle-aged adults to 8- to 21-year-olds. The
be printed on fewer pages and in tabloid format,
nuclear family will be an anachronism from
the daily face of the overall information brand
another day, and newspaper brands have to
freely distributed to households and saturated at
attract consumers as they enter the informa-
single-copy outlets. This will be a daily guide to
tion stream.
the broader information universe available under
the local brand. n ower Middle-Class: At some point, news-
L
papers must re-connect interaction with their
The real money in “newspapering” circa 2017
brands with notions of aspiration among
will be new forms of print/video advertising in
lower-middle class people. Any semblance
the digital environments, high-quality ancillary
of a local mass market lives and dies with
print products targeted to smaller and smaller
this demographic. This is a major marketing
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project. Only the owners and products will change—just

Local newspapers will be the local channel on as they have with every new generation for the
a global net that will be aggregated by players past century.
unforeseen today. If it happens in the oil indus- Peering into the future is a fun diversion.
try, the Houston Chronicle will be my channel. If Readers of this article in 2017 will no doubt
it happens in the entertainment industry, I’ll flip laugh at the simplicity and lack of imagination
to the Los Angeles Times. Or an aggregator will expressed here. Yet there are some underly-
tell me to flip there. ing principles that newspapers can take hold of
Note that I use the word “newspaper” today: Moving forward, the game is about “own-
throughout this article. I use the word like I ask ing” local and positioning your brand in the con-
someone to “Xerox” something. A “newspaper” text of constant technological change and greater
is any product attached to your brand. A print abundance.
product. A tablet. A mobile device. A Web site. I
don’t believe in “media companies,” “publishing Earl J. Wilkinson is executive director of
companies,” or the idea of a “media/publishing the International Newspaper Marketing
industry” from the customer’s perspective. These Association (INMA), a global best practice
terms water down what differentiates us: depth. organization with 1,200 members in 82
The newspaper industry as currently organized countries. INMA is based in Dallas
today will be largely intact a decade from now.

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Enjoying the Ride Changing Value

A few weeks ago I received a letter from a
By Miles E. Groves circulation executive from my favorite national
newspaper. The letter announced that they
Anyone Listening? needed more money from me. It showered me
with news of existing and new benefits. Now,
for the price of my subscription, I can tune-in
I spent a decade as a news- online to their digital replication of the printed
paper industry “hired gun” version. While nice, not sure the incremental
seeking the virtuous spin value gained equates to the additional expense.
of positive optimism. This No matter, I love my newspaper and, given the
meant mining every new tough year, I am ready to do my part.
study, analyzing (and pro- But the executive forgot to share all of the
ducing) advertising growth estimates, defend- plans that were in store for me. Instead, there
ing circulation “strategy shifts,” and positioning was a small notice in a Sunday edition alerting
audience measurement and readership statistics me that a change was coming on Monday. While
for a upbeat interpretation. I helped provide the newsprint expense was one reason for the need
salve that helped industry leaders evade dealing for increasing circulation revenue, I learned they
directly with the tsunami of change inevitably were moving to the “national standard” with a
wrought by demographics and technology. smaller product and the cost would only be “a
To be fair, during those years and since, I few less words” on each page. As an economist, I
sought to identify marketing strategies and recognized the loss of a few words as a reduction
technologies to shore up the declining franchise. in value and an increase in real cost. Even the
I coupled presentations of the challenges ahead paper seemed to be lighter! Had they coupled
with talk of channel integration, data-mining this with a circulation rate increase, I would
based models for subscriber acquisition and user have understood it. For me, it was like getting
attraction, and the need to leverage technology two increases in the same month with a smaller,
for better advertising and reader development. lighter paper. Somehow the content seemed
In industry meetings, I did try to lay out the is- lacking. No doubt, in a few weeks I will have
sues and propose directions though, admittedly, forgotten about the greater page depth and won’t
I was not sure many were listening. notice that the page width is less than my screen
width.
What is the Customer Perspective?
I am a regular reader of my local metropoli-
As a newspaper reader, none of this really mat- tan daily. I’ve read a series of “as I leave” stories
ters. What is critical is whether the media product from journalists plied with early retirement
is compelling enough to get me to read the paper buy-outs over the past two years. Each of these
or bookmark the URL. If it is, what is critical for stories serves as a reminder that the newspaper
a newspaper publisher is whether this can be is changing. More recently, two Sunday sections
translated into revenue. I doubt I am any more were combined into one and presented as a “ben-
unique than my declining peer group of loyal efit.” Instead, what many readers noticed was the
readers. Sadly, recent decisions by my daily titles continuation of a slide into a weaker reading ex-
have diminished their value to their loyal readers. perience. I could only feel a sense of loss. Clearly,
And, no doubt, the leadership of these newspapers the paper is being designed for a reader segment
delude themselves into believing that they can that reflects my own interests less than before.
convince me that these changes benefit me.
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Central Questions of institutional size and tradition. Many have

The point of these examples is simple. These passed the point of opportunity; those not suc-
actions cause even the most dedicated reader cessfully adopted marketing practices needed
to pause and to support the core product and integrate with
consider the alternative distribution channels have lost their
intrinsic value of brand mobility from a product manufacturing
It is critical that bent to one positioned to serve today’s communi-
the newspaper
and its brand. newspapers focus on ties composed of increasingly technically savvy
There are always the trade-off from the households.
trade-offs in any perspective of their Smaller market media properties, especially
relationship and those independent of large media-company
it is not unusual reader and advertiser control, are more important to the local commu-
for partners to base to ensure they nities they serve since the market offers citizens
see them differ- have an opportunity less alternatives. Smaller newspapers are less
ently. It is criti- structured and closer to the markets they serve
cal that newspa- to survive the techno- though all media markets face being sliced by
pers focus on the media evolution that is many players as technology reduces entry bar-
trade-off from challenging newspaper riers. Smaller markets have the benefit of both
the perspective time and advance notice if they learn from the
of their reader executives. foibles of their larger brethren.
and advertiser
base to ensure Enjoy the Ride
they have an opportunity to survive the techno- Before the current media recession, I argued
media evolution that is challenging newspaper that the power of the local brand gave a window
executives. of time to make
What remains critical is whether publishing the shift from
companies are producing content that will keep a manufactur- With content distribu-
enough print and digital readers engaged to ing industry to a
service industry. tion increasingly
support the newspaper industry business model.
If not, what is the model that will sustain the With content divorced from iron-
brand? If so, will it be enough to maintain the distribution bound technology, a
power of the local newspaper brand? Has the increasingly
divorced from new competitive envi-
newspaper been able to shift from a manufactur-
ing and distribution product model to a market- iron-bound ronment was emerging,
savvy multi-channel distribution service model? technology, a and newspapers needed
Is the newspaper being managed for growth or in new competitive
environment to become more reader/
maintenance mode for a managed decline? These
are central questions for those who believe that was emerging, user centric in order to
print and digital newspapers have a future. and newspa- maintain their brand
pers needed to
Market momentum driving the future of news- strength.
become more
papers is especially brutal in the larger markets
reader/user cen-
as they face greater challenges and more com-
tric in order to
petitive stress than smaller markets. These tend
maintain their brand strength. Today, that win-
to be more structured, more committee driven,
dow has closed for many newspapers.
and less able to change. This is largely a function
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For me, as a reader, I sit back and enjoy the

ride with the most bandwidth I can afford and Miles E. Groves, founder of MG Strategic Re-
settle in with my screen and my favorite digital search, is a media economist who has studied
paper or online site. I pay for my screen, hard- media for more than 27 years. He was formerly
ware, and my fast pipe. Everything else is free. with the Newspaper Association of America
Sometimes I wonder how long this can last. The for ten years and was vice president and chief
only forecast I can offer for the future is that the economist when he departed.
next decade will be more traumatic than the past
decade.

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Navigating Newspapers newspaper managers can no longer use declining

to a Brighter Future denominators (circulation, revenue, linage, etc.)
to improve their performance ratios—i.e., operat-
By Len Kubas ing margins and yields, etc. This course requires
managers to reinforce the value of newspapers,
adopt newer, but proven ways to package, price
Publishers and owners and sell newspapers, and embrace a new busi-
must make one of two ness model that emphasizes winning for both
choices today that will online and print operations.
determine what kind of
future their newspapers Transforming newspapers’ business model
will have. is a behavioral as well as a strategic issue.
Tomorrow’s successful newspapers will require
One option involves committed, persuasive leaders as well as the
maintaining a familiar innovative practices that will create real print
course; essentially what’s and online revenue growth.
worked in the past: Manage print newspaper
operations to maximize operating margins while (For the full text of this report, click here.)
introducing new digital and online applications.
Your author believes that this option is wrong
Len Kubas (len@kubas.com) is President
because newspapers’ print revenues are declin-
of Kubas Consultants, a firm specializing
ing more rapidly than digital and online revenues
in newspaper pricing structures, revenue
are growing. Furthermore, your author believes
development, and publishing strategies. Len
that newspapers are losing their ability to influ-
has worked in editorial, circulation, production,
ence advertising pricing, which further erodes
advertising, marketing and corporate planning
profitable print revenues.
for newspapers. Kubas Consultants helps
Choosing the second option involves changing international newspaper companies implement
behavior: Manage print newspapers for absolute new publishing and revenue generation
revenue and profit growth instead of for high strategies. For more information, visit www.
operating margins. Your author believes that kubas.com.

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Change Now: where the focus of media is reaching mass audi-

Don’t Wait for the Future, It’s Too Late! ences with mass audience products that appeal
to common denominators, we advocate finding
By Juan Giner and Juan Senor niches, unique voices and stories. Your news-
We believe in the future of this industry. We paper must be truly different and innovative in
believe in the future of newspapers. But only if presentation and content.
they change and innovate. And only if they keep And finally, for us the L in Soul stand for light
JOURNALISM at the core and as the soul of the and local.
business. (For the full text of this report, click here.)
Indeed we do believe that our business has to
rediscover its soul in order to remain relevant to
digital native audiences born in a screen-based Juan Giner is founding director of
society. INNOVATION International Media Consulting
Group. Mr. Giner is a journalist and PhD in law.
And our definition of soul for a newspaper
He was former vice dean, School of Journalism,
emanates from the acronym of the word S.O.U.L.
University of Navarre and visiting professor at
itself.
Columbia, Stanford and Harvard universities.
The S in Soul stands for Sensuality. This Juan Senor is director and senior consultant
means taking care of the quality of printing, de- of INNOVATION’s office in London. Educated
sign and presentation of every page of our news- in New York and Oxford University, he has
papers. worked for the MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour
The O in Soul stands for Omnipresent. Your (PBS), was a presenter for Wall Street Journal
brand has to become a true multi-media experi- TV and CNBC Europe and has served as London
ence and reach your consumer at any time on correspondent of International Herald Tribune
any platform: on paper, online, on mobile, on air. Television (IHT-TV).
The U in Soul stands for Unique. In a world

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Other Perspectives
The following articles and initiatives were not commissioned as part of this
project but provide additional perspectives on the future of newspapers.
Newspaper Next: The Transformation Project
From the American Press Institute
Shaping the Future of the Newspaper

From the World Association of Newspapers
10 Reasons There’s a Bright Future for Journalism

How the Local Newsroom of the Future Might Operate
Serious Journalism Won’t Die as Newspapers Fade
By Mark Glaser, MediaShift
Newspapers in 2020
By Jeff Jarvis, BuzzMachine
Speech to American Association

of Independent Newspaper Distributors
By Tim McGuire, McGuire on Media
The Newspaper of the Future

By Jack Shafer, Slate
A Model for the 21st Century Newsroom: The News Diamond

By Paul Bradshaw, Online Journalism Blog
Chasing the Chasm

By Mark Potts, Recovering Journalist
NAA Horizon Watching/Strategy Resources

From the Newspaper Association of America

281-205-1107-pdf-as/dr

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HORIZON WATCHING INITIATIVE

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 It’s About People, Not Products . . . . . . 21

From Gutenberg to Galaxy: The Future is All About Connections,

The Future of Newspapers: Construct Your Community’s

NEWSPAPER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA 2

The Future of Newspapers . . . . . . . . . . . 33 Making the Leap Beyond

NEWSPAPER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA 3

Confronting Technology Change Now:

The complete version of this report is available online

NEWSPAPER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA 4

Introduction goal: stimulate ideas and discussions about the

NEWSPAPER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA 5

NEWSPAPER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA 6

NEWSPAPER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA 9

continue to be surprised by newspapers that the long-term (though nothing is inevitable). My

NEWSPAPER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA 12

Adopting New Rules of tions of horizontally arrayed content. Success-

Presence wins, sites lose Form factors win, broadsheets lose

NEWSPAPER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA 14

NEWSPAPER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA 15

The Press Advantage

NEWSPAPER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA 16

What got held on to the display advertising model the lon-

The Content Advantage used both real world [neighborhood fairs,

NEWSPAPER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA 18

NEWSPAPER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA 19

The picture and sound quality was as good as

NEWSPAPER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA 20

NEWSPAPER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA 21

from among lo- products to reach enough people to have a suc-

NEWSPAPER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA 23

NEWSPAPER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA 24

Of course, all that may be the real dream. The

NEWSPAPER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA 26

Construct your Community’s local “info-structure,” one created to support

NEWSPAPER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA 27

NEWSPAPER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA 28

NEWSPAPER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA 29

NEWSPAPER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA 30

NEWSPAPER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA 32

The Future of Newspapers steadily softer: in the number of households

 igMedia will change its investment pro-

NEWSPAPER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA 35

Reading Future of Newspapers ever, wherever and whenever consumers want to

NEWSPAPER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA 36

NEWSPAPER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA 37

The Power to Change the World economy—developers, designers, marketers,

NEWSPAPER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA 40

enables newspapers to benefit from the opinions vide advertisers

become “Citizen Destinations” by building on

NEWSPAPER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA 43

Three Habits of Highly times. Their magnetism was rooted partly in

by the chang- From this, editors can add new, customer-cen-

NEWSPAPER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA 45

NEWSPAPER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA 46

NEWSPAPER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA 48

NEWSPAPER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA 49

Making the Leap Beyond companies.

NEWSPAPER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA 51

grows on mobile devices, having the largest and

NEWSPAPER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA 54

understands time for pickup. In short, each advertisement is a

NEWSPAPER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA 57

Newspapers and Mobile Marketing Mobile marketing is a logical extension of your

igMedia will change its investment pro-