Eventually, newspapers are going to have to realize that the physical newspaper is now marketing material for their website and their websites are going to have to become CMS’s that archive all their content – trailing back to day one. Then share link love (instead of keeping it all internal) and hold on for a very bumpy ride.

“I believe that newspapers are struggling, at least in part, because of a basic misunderstanding about advertising.” You believe they are struggling? They are struggling because online ads don’t pay as much as print. There is no “belief” necessary. Even if the online ads paid two, three times the rate, it still wouldn’t be enough. Creating a page of travel offers?! Wow.

“Imagine that — people going to a page specifically to read ads. Outrageous? That’s exactly what people did for decades when they leafed through display ads to see what was on sale. ….”

Yup, when I want to do that I go to CNET comparison shopping, or Amazon, or any one of the big shopping comparison engines… or just search google and see the price comparisons on top of the results, or just search for “walmart deals” or (this is true) “mattress covers” (my 4 year old will hate me 5 years from now when she sees this).

There are like a million ways to do what the author described, better, without using the newspapers. Want advice? Why should I use the advice columnist in the paper? I go to the advice sites. Want classifieds, I go to craigslist.

Need the weather? weather.com (or its already on my desktop). The writer of a piece mentions a website? Damn-it, I can just click on the link and go there! Get it in your head Brian, the newspapers are dead, dead, dead. They’re gonna have to figure how to cut costs as inadequate advertising revenues from web operations supplant their dead-tree cousins.

As a guy who bought the NY Times paper edition religiously every morning for many years, and who now has moved on to the excellent nytimes.com, I will predict what will happen:

1. The NY Times will sell their new building
2. They will lay off most of their staff
3. The guys who run printing presses will have a very hard time of it — but they’ll get jobs printing the circulars that fill my mailbox that I just throw in the trash without reading.
4. They will keep on just enough staff to man the website and the revenues from there.
5. They may be lucky to keep some of the side magazines going
6. Their site will have to be waaaaayyyyyy more interactive and up to the minute (think a news feed like facebook/twitter)
7. There is no place in the audience that reads the Times for a print edition.
8. There is no place in the audience that reads the Times for a kindle edition
9. We consume our news on our computers and our mobile devices

Thats it. The end. Goodbye newspapers. You’ve had a good run, you’ve been the regional watercooler, that place for a shared experience. But just like how we don’t have a shared TV watching experience anymore, in the age of watch-when-you-want, its been good my friend. Just try to tell your enablers to take their heads out of the sand, huh?

“Imagine that — people going to a page specifically to read ads. Outrageous? That’s exactly what people did for decades when they leafed through display ads to see what was on sale. ….”

Yup, when I want to do that I go to CNET comparison shopping, or Amazon, or any one of the big shopping comparison engines… or just search google and see the price comparisons on top of the results, or just search for “walmart deals” or (this is true) “mattress covers” (my 4 year old will hate me 5 years from now when she sees this).

There are like a million ways to do what the author described, better, without using the newspapers. Want advice? Why should I use the advice columnist in the paper? I go to http://answers.yahoo.com, or http://www.funadvice.com

Need the weather? weather.com (or its already on my desktop). The writer of a piece mentions a website? Damn-it, I can just click on the link and go there! Get it in your head Brian, the newspapers are dead, dead, dead. They’re gonna have to figure how to cut costs as inadequate advertising revenues from web operations supplant their dead-tree cousins.

As a guy who bought the NY Times paper edition religiously every morning for many years, and who now has moved on to the excellent nytimes.com, I will predict what will happen:

1. The NY Times will sell their new building
2. They will lay off most of their staff
3. The guys who run printing presses will have a very hard time of it — but they’ll get jobs printing the circulars that fill my mailbox that I just throw in the trash without reading.
4. They will keep on just enough staff to man the website and the revenues from there.
5. They may be lucky to keep some of the side magazines going
6. Their site will have to be waaaaayyyyyy more interactive and up to the minute (think a news feed like facebook/twitter)
7. There is no place in the audience that reads the Times for a print edition.
8. There is no place in the audience that reads the Times for a kindle edition
9. We consume our news on our computers and our mobile devices

Thats it. The end. Goodbye newspapers. You’ve had a good run, you’ve been the regional watercooler, that place for a shared experience. But just like how we don’t have a shared TV watching experience anymore, in the age of watch-when-you-want, its been good my friend. Just try to tell your enablers to take their heads out of the sand, huh?

The thing is, not much has changed in that amount of time, except that more papers are shutting down. You may say they’re slow to adapt because they want to avoid causing undue harm, but what about when the alternative is shutting down completely? I’d go with the undue harm and take some risks and quicker action.