Comments on: The hard truth: Newspaper monopolies are gone forever

By: Walter Neary

Walter Neary — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 15:14:51 +0000

The fundamental problem with meshing journalism and newspapers is that for decades, and perhaps today, you could make money with a bad paper. It delivered advertising, as you say in this wise post. Publishers spent revenue to hire staffs just enough to tell themselves they had a good paper, and then over time they could whittle away at their staffs, raise profits, and still tell themselves they had a good paper. You could put out steadily worsening newspapers and still grow your profit margin. If the publishers have found a way today to somehow reclaim or save some of their advertising revenues, cut their staffs and still make money, they will. The model of laying off staff to help increase profit margins goes back decades. The question of what happens to newspapers and traditional media is different than the question of what happens to good journalism; the question there is, will anyone ever be willing to pay to support good journalism?

By: Mr. B

Mr. B — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 14:30:34 +0000

OK, here is my free million dollar idea for the newspaper industry.
I hate Craigslist. It’s creepy and weird and you cant tell if you’ll meet a freak or nutjob when you buy or barter something on there. Why not take the massive spaces you have and create your own Craigslist type site and all transactions happen at your site. If your a local paper, your viewers should not have a problem getting to your location. You can provide a secure place where transactions can happen. You can create an area where advertisers could meet your customers. You could sell concessions, jeeze there is a million things you could do with that idea. You could advertise that and you would at least get some of your missing revenue from classifieds back. The other way is to blow it up into a full blown permanent Flea Market/Job Fair.

By: Ranjan Roy

Ranjan Roy — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 03:04:18 +0000

Thanks Mathew for highlighting this crucial point about who the customer is, and has always been, for newspaper businesses. I feel it’s already too late for most traditional newspaper publishers for the simple fact that even with all the digital-first talk of the past few years, none of the investment focus has been on becoming better advertising platforms.

I can’t imagine a newspaper company ever competing with a Google or Facebook as an actual advertising platform, and they certainly dont’ appear to be trying to fight this battle. At that point, they’ll slowly lose all the people you correctly point out are their customers, the advertisers. I’m actually impressed with the FT’s content sales strategy, but a focus on selling content and not advertising is a revolutionary switch in business model, and could almost be considered creative and innovative.

I wrote a blog post on this misperception, incorporating a somewhat unconventional analogy (strip clubs) I’d hope readers of this article might like http://bit.ly/zWVf5N

By: cas127

cas127 — Sun, 17 Jun 2012 20:25:13 +0000

Excellent analysis.

By: David Gehring

David Gehring — Sun, 17 Jun 2012 19:46:25 +0000

If the local news business is really in the business of selling inventory to advertisers, it’s time the local news org sales teams start working as channels selling aggregated inventory to their advertiser customers. Also, on another note, Google Consumer Surveys would be fun for publishers to explore as an alternative method for monetization… Early indicators are promising.

By: Zach Copley

Zach Copley — Sun, 17 Jun 2012 17:31:28 +0000

Another thing to factor in is that the dinosaur news media has lost its “trusted advisor” status. There have been too many cases of WMDs-in-Iraq and other managed news stores, and people no longer trust the news. Ironically, the big news outlets have created demand for alternative sources of information, which the net has an ample supply of.

By: projectzme

projectzme — Sun, 17 Jun 2012 17:10:24 +0000

Reblogged this on projectzme.

By: Mathew Ingram

Mathew Ingram — Sun, 17 Jun 2012 15:00:28 +0000

Indeed — pretty smart guy, that Marshall :-)

By: Rohan Jayasekera

Rohan Jayasekera — Sun, 17 Jun 2012 14:40:43 +0000

“The classified ads (and stock market quotations) are the bedrock of the press. Should an alternative form of easy access to such diverse daily information be found, the press will fold.” -Marshall McLuhan, “Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man”, 1964

By: Rohan Jayasekera

Rohan Jayasekera — Sun, 17 Jun 2012 14:38:22 +0000

“The classified ads (and stock market quotations) are the bedrock of the press. Should an alternative form of easy access to such diverse daily information be found, the press will fold.”