Newspapers’ best assets (Part I): What is happening in my neighborhood

I am suggesting this for a long time:
Newspapers have to figure out what makes them different than the other competitors.

Wichita, Kansas

Q: What are print newspapers doing the best?

A: They (at least those good ones) tell me what is exactly going on in my own backyard?

Yes, we are amazed how easy now is to know what is happening in China or Russia, but what we always want to know more are the issues that can affect us immediately and those that will most likely have impact on our everyday life.

Kevin Alfaro couldn’t be more to the point:

As Thomas Friedman has said, the world is flat. At the same time as this happens, the newspapers have something that the internet would be hard press to provide. It is the local effect.

Online Journalism Blog quoted Philip Meyer

What service supplied by newspapers is the least vulnerable?

I still believe that a newspaper’s most important product, the product least vulnerable to substitution, is community influence. It gains this influence by being the trusted source for locally produced news, analysis and investigative reporting about public affairs. This influence makes it more attractive to advertisers.

Instead of trying to be global, reach everybody  and satisfy all the tastes, print newspapers should stick to what they do the best.

A whole new species

We have just finished our fourth Communication Week at the Wichita State University. Among many good points, one fact stayed with me today.

Bryan Monroe, vice president and creative director of EBONY and JET magazines, said that their online platform ebonyjet.com publishes 90% of original content. As he said, all three platforms are successful. Numbers are speaking the same:

• EBONY: average circulation 1.4 million
• JET: average circulation 978,000
• ebonyjet.com: average eyeballs 1.6 million

No cannibalization and no showelware.

Looking at this I am even more convinced that this might be the solution for the future of the print and online newspapers. They need to become two different products that are not necessarily competing but cooperating. This is not an original idea. Many have proposed the similar solutions.

Edward Rousel, Telegraph‘s digital editor, predicted;

In two to three years everything will be published to the Web and the best of it will be in the newspapers.

From the Associated Press study

The reality is, however, that the majority of newspapers still zealously protect their print versions (exceptions of course always exist such as the USA Today). Most of the content is replicated between two platforms. This becomes interesting for two reasons:

1. Researches has found an overlap between online and print readerships (some of us read both versions).
2. Newer generations less and less read print newspapers. If they choose online edition of the newspapers there are currently no incentives in checking out the print version. You get the same articles minus all the interactive features.

As of now, this is probably not an issue. Some of the biggest players, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and the Christian Science Monitor, reported in 2000 (this might have changed by now) that their print subscription increased because of the online editions. Only 7% of the MediaNews (owns 57 newspapers) sales come from online ads.

But what happens if you send a small rescue boat too pull out sinking Titanic? They both go down.

Not Good Night, just Good Luck

This post is inspired by Lou's comment and State of the News Media 2007.

They are innovative, open for readers customization, updated 24/7, cheaper, but…

Good luck to online newspapers!
 

This is only an observation from the business perspective that as it seems doesn’t look to

 promising for the electronic newspapers, and its journalists and owners. Newspaper online revenues account for roughly 3% to 8% of total dollars. This revenue is mainly coming from the advertisers considering that majority of online newspapers don’t have subscription fee (notable exceptions are the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times ). 
To better understand why this business is not working here is a list of some factors:

1. What is the market?
Electronic newspapers, unlike its print version, are juggling possibly four markets due to the fact that Internet enables globalization: 
                    a. local information
                    b. long-distance information                    
                    c.  local advertising 
                    d. long-distance advertising 

2. The choice of content, audience and advertisers dictates the model of online newspapers and the possible are:
                   a. National/International (USA Today, The Washington Post) 
                   b. Regional (Los Angeles Times)
                   c. Local-Community (Naples Daily News) 
                   d. Specialized or Niche (Wall Street Journal)

More on this topic: Online News and the Public 

Whether the newspaper business will make profit or not largely depends on these kind of decisions. Once again, I believe that the major questions will be “Who is the audience?” and “Which of their needs we can satisfy that nobody else can?”

The chain of In the wake of unsuccessful with charging subscription, I am inclined to believe that National/International model will work for very few.
Instead,It seems that local and specialized orientations should be the way to go for many. This is mainly because numerous news websites including the top three most visited (Yahoo News, MSNBC.com and CNN.com) are based on national/international perspective. The competition with those titans for many online newspapers is almost impossible.