A Recipe for Newspaper Survival In The Internet Age?

Richard Jobity emailed a link out today; 'A Recipe for Newspaper Survival in the Internet Age'. Back when I was whatever I was for SSC's LinuxGazette.com, I was embroiled in a bunch of talk related to that and other SSC publications - such as Linux Journal. It's been some time since I thought about it, and Robin's article hit a few nerves. Mostly, I found myself nodding - not because I agree with Robin, but because a lot of this is just good, plain common sense. Solid. Take this part for example:

...Circulation figures can also be misleading because they only measure the total number of newspapers distributed, not the kind of people who read them. And readership quality can often be more important, in a business sense, than quantity. This is especially true for those newspapers (namely, just about all of them) that rely on advertising for the bulk of their income...

The main business difference between print media and web media, as far as circulation, is how the numbers are done. For web media, real time statistics show a lot about which parts of a website are most popular, and how many people actually visit. In the print media - as Robin points out - the numbers are basically 'how many are circulated'. When it comes to web business, there is no questioning Roblimo's knowledge - he did a great job on the meta aspect, so I'm going to plough into the aspect that I have thought most about, and give the recipe a twist.

Advertising

But wait, there's more. The circulation numbers that are shown to advertisers are done by... auditing agencies (such as Audit Bureau of Circulations)that actually audit the circulation. To date, none of the auditing done by these agencies allows for a transition between print advertising and web advertising - which I (and maybe a few other people) call printvertising and webvertising.

The key here is that this is a transition area. Does one need an auditing agency to count web hits? No. The data can be made transparent to advertisers in real time, if they so choose - but then there's a different thing that happens on the web. One can count clicks on an ad to see what the 'click through' rate is. GoogleAds does this as a service, and is one of the many reasons that Google is a publisher in a very modern sense, and if not a monopoly it is certainly doing things which point the way in a sensible direction. But Print advertising mindsets don't understand that, and they don't understand it for one particular reason:

They expect to make the same amount of money on the web as they do in print - which, perhaps, is possible. But the tools are different. The rules are different. And sooner or later, they'll have to bridge the obvious differences between print publications and web publications.

The Differences

Not too long ago, I was griping that Scientific American's special issue on intelligence - and that I had bought a copy from a bookstore when it first came out, but now I do not have that copy and I do not have the access to the article on their website... I can't read it. They want to charge me - twice - for the same content, which I think is rather annoying and perhaps even morally questionable. This highlights the first difference between print and web - all things being equal, the more content you have on the web, the more likely you'll generate income.

Since I started with the GoogleAds on this site, I've noticed trends and even spikes - I may have a particularly good day, or a particularly bad day. I have no control over the good days or bad days; it's a matter of what people are interested in. The more content that I have on the site, the more likely people will come in from another source such as a search engine to read something they are looking for. Of course, if your content isn't available, nobody reads the advertising.¹ This leads to the second difference; the front cover is gone.

The front cover is important for the print industry - but on the web, every page is the front page (in fact, I think that was in Robin's book). You can't put 'premium' advertising on a website unless the statistics show that the front page deserves premium advertising. Certain pages, over time, will get the most attention, and focused advertising on those pages makes sense. Still, when you can have context focused advertising which is dynamic on a website, what's the sense in doing otherwise? For the advertiser, it's to beat out the competition. Meanwhile, with print advertising, the advertising fades with the articles - accumulates in boxes, and so forth.

The last and probably the most important difference is that on most websites, content is created but never destroyed. In other words, the more content one generates, the more likely that one will gain advertising revenue. And with dynamic contextually driven advertising, out of date businesses don't advertise. Current businesses do.

The Digital Magazine

I'm not going to call any names here, but Digital magazines seem stupid to me. Why on earth would I download something in Adobe Acrobat format with the same silly advertising that expires at least within 5 years - usually faster. Advertising is supposed to serve the consumer as well, and while canning the content into a downloadable format is nice for people who want to download files - the advertising is just as important. Good advertising, in my book, is useful to visitors. Bad advertising occupies space and offers no value. Why would I pay for that? And why would an advertiser pay top rates to advertise in a digital magazine if they can get cheaper and more effective advertising on a website?

Still - webvertising isn't all of advertising. Websites that advertise only on the internet typically are not as popular as those that do. A website, in the end, is only one part of a business - even if the business is the website. The readers, visitors or 'users' all are an integral part of the business - more so than the advertisers. Why? Without readers, you get no advertising. Period.

Nobody Dies But the Inflexible

Back to Robin's article - the part about readers being able to participate is oh-so-very important on a website. The reason is simple - it keeps topics current, it lets people participate, and it also adds value and perspective to topics. It can even lead to future topics and articles, if one is paying attention - many articles I have done have been based off of questions on discussion boards or websites. Of course, I'm not Robin Miller - but if one studies Slashdot, I'm willing to bet that what people see on the front page is probably gained from what people have discussed in the past.²

In the end - websites are the future, and newspapers do need to catch up in a meaningful way. Newspapers and magazines that can adapt, that are able to make the leap - those are the aspects of media that will survive. The rest will fight for last place. There's a technology culture - an internet culture - which is changing even faster that the MPAA and RIAA like. It seems only appropriate that the media that reports on such cultures should be able to keep up with internet culture.

¹And only a jackass would pay for the same content twice.
²I actually do not go to the front page of Slashdot. I usually get there because someone I know found something interesting and sent something along.