More Downfall of Traditional Media Stuff

Posted on January 24, 2006
Filed Under Uncategorized |

What investors should be demanding is an easy to find breakdown of on-line versus tradtional revenue. How long will it be before the first paper goes completely internet, recognizing that all of its old media costs of paper, production and distribution can be channelled into a better news product?
- Hugh Hewitt
I wrote last year that it was only a matter of time before a major newspaper drops the hardcopy version of their product for an online only publication. Not only are the economics of producing a physical newspaper working against them, but the process of delivering information is even more negatively impacted.

Until recently I thought that some of the citizen journalist projects would lead the way to a new model, but in light of the demise of Bayosphere and my own experiences building a community of participants, as opposed to just viewers, has made me reconsider the premise. The other component of all of these initiatives that I take issue with is the deliberate effort to aggregate source material under one tent, as opposed to the semantic effort required to aggregate search results. That’s why I get more excited about something like Technorati than I do Squidoo, although I will also be the first to acknowledge that both have their place and both deliver value to their constituents.

The TimeSelect program that the NYTimes embarked on is a foolish initiative by market incumbants intent on extracting more dollars from a dwindling subscriber base, a strategy that is in full denial of what their business actually is - deliver information - and how the economics have changed - Google. But the numbers don’t lie, in 4 months the NYT only managed to convince 150,000 people to sign up, while at the same time taking millions (tens, hundreds?) of pageviews out of their advertising denominator. The irony is that the NYTimes’ advertising revenue was actually up over the recent quarter, although they don’t break out online and offline. Overall earnings fell dramatically, the NYT’s response, raise subscription rates… shrewd.

Hewitt makes another point worth underscoring, although it’s one we don’t already know:
Eaxmple for today: Why would anyone bother with the Washington Post’s or the New York Times’ accounts of yesterday’s Candian elections? Ed Morrissey reported the results in real time, with pointers to all the Candian blogs anyone could need as well as an assessment of the likely government to result.
Also worth pointing out is that Morrissey uncorked the whole Canadian sponsorship scandal that ended up bringing down the Liberal government in yesterday’s elections… the NYTimes was nowhere to be found on this story for a long long time.

All of this ends up back where we started, the economics AND process of publishing a hardcopy edition of a newspaper put the industry at a distinct disadvantage in a Media 2.0 world.


Technorati Tags: , , ,

Comments

  • Feeds