Sep 9, 2008
Change Agent: CJR profile of Tribune’s Lee Abrams
In the September/October Columbia Journalism Review, there’s a long piece on Tribune’s Chief Innovation Officer, Lee Abrams. Although it makes the mistake of equating Abrams and Apple’s Steve Jobs (They both hunt “the same Holy Grail: usability.”), the article’s chief premise is sound: Don’t judge Lee Abrams only by his trippy, disjointed memos, emails and blog posts:
In person, Abrams is more thoughtful and low-key than he appears on his blog or in a big presentation… He has a kid’s heart—a fan’s heart. He’s not the guy measuring how much someone’s written. He’s not the guy who has a secret formula for taking the newsroom down to six people. He wants newspapers to be something people love.
Abrams blew into Tribune in 2008 and did something nobody even tried to do before: he mandated that every paper reinvent itself. But then he did something equally amazing: he kept his hands off. He gave clues, he shepherded in certain directions and, by his reactions to early prototypes, he used praise to reinforce the directions he liked and silence (and the rare barb) to indicate a non-starter. But he insisted that the solution arise organically from the local market. There were no templates to follow other than this one: Build a newspaper that more people will want to read.
So far, redesigns have launched in Allentown, Orlando, Fort Lauderdale and Baltimore, each different from the other. The big two – Chicago and Los Angeles – are coming soon. None of these – as far as I know – was tested on a focus group. Each is something of a Hail Mary, lobbed at the readers in hopes of a new connection. But each is also attempting to turn the hard reality of shrinking news hole into an advantage by reducing the number of longer traditional articles in favor of graphics, photos and hybrid “charticles.”
At the end of the process, Tribune will have eight new approaches to daily newspaper design and something much more effective – and potentially dangerous – than a focus group: a live marketplace, where readers and advertisers will vote with their subscriptions and their dollars.
However this turns out, good or bad, Lee Abrams is the guy who made it happen.
Updates, as the saying goes, as they’re available.
Sep 8, 2008
A new verb: To Batavian
GateHouse Media is up to something potentially amazing.
The newspaper company has launched a news operation in a town where the local (non-GateHouse) paper had largely ignored the web: Batavia, New York.
TheBatavian.com is an online news site that’s all local and 100% paper-free. By eliminating one of the greatest sources of expense – the printed paper – the startup in Batavia increases the chances of breaking even and – imagine that – making a profit in a business far too many people are writing off as too expensive.
More importantly, TheBatavian.com could very well be schooling the competition on what happens when you allow the hottest medium of all to lie fallow. And in the process, they may be coining a new verb – to Batavian: to snatch a market away from the snoozing competition with an online-only play.
As GateHouse’s Howard Owen says on his own blog:
We picked Batavia because it’s a neat, vibrant town; it’s close to our home office; and the daily newspaper there was doing nothing on the web.
Amazingly, the local paper still just has a brochure site and hasn’t engaged the battle. This certainly bears watching.
Sep 6, 2008
The Glengarry Glen Ross revenue solution
On the subject of finding new revenue streams, Lucas Grindley has an interesting take that argues the old model of charging advertisers up-front for space has it backwards:
Generating an audience first requires attracting advertisers. It’s NOT a chicken and egg situation. Luring advertisers is more important than users.
To get on the advertiser’s list, posting an ad absolutely must be free. Otherwise, you’re asking the employer to take a risk and abandon one of their old standbys.
If it’s free to post an ad, then all you have to do next is convince the potential advertiser it’s worth their time to fill out an online form. Here’s a sure-fire way to persuade them.
Print the ad.
That’s right. After completing the online form, the reader’s ad will appear in the newspaper for free.
It’s really not as odd as it sounds. To protect their market share, newspapers around the country already give readers free ads for merchandise under a certain dollar amount. But I’m saying let all ads appear in print for free.
You can read the whole piece here. Stay until the end. It’s worth it.
Sep 6, 2008
Most news, print included, is free
That old tired meme – If everyone wants to read their news online, why don’t we charge for it? – is the Old Faithful of seemingly good ideas that aren’t. You can practically set your watch by the frequency that someone (often a print-centric newspaper employee) will throw down the idea as a fresh perspective on The Revenue Problem.
Which is a long way of saying that this post is at least partly a response to this post by Gus Sentementes of The Baltimore Sun:
Right now, we hear lots of anecdotes of people giving up the print edition and just consuming the news online, where it is free.
But we all know nothing is ever free. Harvesting the news costs a lot of money, though the promise of an Internet-only news site means a publisher doesn’t have to worry about operating a costly printing press and buying pricey paper and ink by the ton.
…
So would you pay for an online subscription to get a little better coverage and more distinctive, original reporting? Or would you be happy with the free information that leaves you still hungry for more at the end of the day?
Before asking whether people will pay for online news, consider this question:
What do people pay currently for printed news from their local paper? 75 cents an issue? A couple bucks a week?
The real answer: nothing.
The newsstand or subscription price doesn’t pay for the reporters or the editors. It pays for the printing and distribution of the paper (or at least, partially pays for it).
But the articles? They’re free. Whether you’re reading an article in the paper or online, it’s being “paid for” by advertising, not by the reader.
That’s why the decline in advertising in the US newspaper industry is a much more urgent problem than the modest declines in circulation. As ad dollars shrink, the ability of newspaper companies to create their product on a daily basis becomes much more difficult.
If a newspaper company were to truly charge what the paper is worth – that is, cost of reporting, editing and production plus a fair markup – most newspapers would have to charge many dollars per issue. That would cut into readership and, ultimately, drive down advertising revenues as fewer readers led to lower ad rates. The advertiser-subsidy allows for the paper to cover its costs and make a profit.
The same realities carry to online, but are magnified by the astounding volume of competing content available from uncountable sources. Any local or regional paper that charges for all content will make a fraction of what it can make as an ad-supported model. Why? Because once you put up a pay wall, fewer readers will visit and fewer readers mean diminished ad sales. You’d have to charge $1,000 or more a year per reader to even begin to make up for the lost advertising income.
So how does the Wall Street Journal succeed with their paid model? Here’s what I believe: They’re a highly-specialized, national product and many of the subscriptions are reimbursed or direct-billed business expenses. If a local or regional paper could replicate the WSJ experience, surely some would be doing so by now. The few experiments in this area have been less than successful, usually by small-market papers that are trying to protect print circulation.
Is the online model perfect? Hardly. Right now, online revenue needs to grow faster if it’s going to support the kinds of newsrooms that can properly cover a metro area. One of the questions news professionals should be asking isn’t “Can we charge for what we’re already doing?” but rather, “What can we create that people will gladly pay for?” What kind of valuable information can 200- or 300-person newsrooms dig up and synthesize that’s both compelling and exclusive? A hybrid model, where most basic news is free but certain types of information – or tools for managing that information – have cost associated with them, seems an inevitability.
Until then, I believe putting up a pay-wall between the public and local news would effectively kill the online revenue stream that newspapers across the country need to be able to count on.
Sep 4, 2008
Inflation-adjusted newspaper revenues approaching 1982 levels
According to The Newsosaur, Alan Mutter, the first-half 2008 newspaper revenue details, released by the Newspaper Association of America, represent the worst numbers in a dozen years.
But that’s comparing 1996 dollars to 2008 dollars. If you look at print revenue performance in constant 2008 dollars, the industry hasn’t seen numbers this grim since 1982 (click to see the chart in full size):
What’s really bracing about that chart is how the rate of decline clearly accelerates in the past few years.
This chart does not include online revenue, which NAA has tracked since 2003.
(Obligatory warning: I was an English major in college, not a stats geek. This constant-dollar hack was made with simple web tools and the original data from the NAA. If this is way off, please let me know.)
Me, elsewhere