Just wanted to share some of the best posts I have read about the future of newspapers/magazines. Feel free to add others in the comments and I will update.
Newspapers and thinking the unthinkable – Clay Shirky
This superb post (its also quite long – but worth the read) starts off with a bang, quoting Gordy Thompson of the NYT as saying “When a 14 year old kid can blow up your business in his spare time, not because he hates you but because he loves you, then you got a problem.” This describes in a nutshell the major issue that newspapers face – that their old business model is being destroyed and a new one hasn’t yet been found. Clay points out that this is just a characteristic of all revolutions – the old models get broken faster than the new ones get discovered and implemented.
When someone demands to know how we are going to replace newspapers… [t]hey are demanding to be told that old systems won’t break before new systems are in place… that new methods of spreading information will improve previous practice rather than upending it. They are demanding to be lied to. There are fewer and fewer people who can convincingly tell such a lie.
Very thought-provoking indeed.
Business models of news – Vagueware Blog
This interesting post looks at advertising on news sites, and is critical of the publishers efforts to create value online. This best quote for me was this:
if distribution costs are near enough to zero for online editions, why bother asking the customer to pay for them? It’s almost sound logic, except they then made a major, major error. They gave the advertising away for free.
Of course every publisher will be shouting that they only did this because they had to. But the combined efforts of legacy print publishers, that have been training advertisers that online is worthless by allowing free advertising in their online editions for the last ten years, has fundamentally undermined their future sales efforts. Whilst new media firms have focused on delivering advertising value, old media have just sold print campaigns with an online element, which both advertiser and publisher knows is being thrown in for free.
Magazines Run Online – eMarketer
This research charts the decline of advertising revnues, and the meagre returns that are currenlty being providing by digital channels. I’m not sure if this is entirely representative of the facts, but the article compares the US results of Time Inc and Bauer Publishing – two very contrasting approaches to digital. Time generated $245 in digital ad revenue in 2008. Bauer US generated $0. Ouch.
The micropayments debate – various
There isn’t a single stand-out post here, but the debate is fiery and very important. Time published an article by Walter Isaacson called How to Save Your Newspaper, which focused on micropayments (or the “iTunes model”) as a way to fund news reporting. Several experts strongly agreed or disagreed, including Clay Shirky, Techdirt, Paid Content, and the NYT (a fuller list of posts has been compiled by Matthew Ingram).
Digital Editions: trying to solve the wrong business problem – Rory Brown
In this post, Rory hammers digital editions, and gets a ‘robust’ response in the comments from a variety sources, including a few digital edition technology providers. Basically his argument is that they don’t get engagement, are not as good as websites, and they aren’t social. I commented on the post basically to say that I think the issue is about content presentation – and standard websites haven’t cracked this one either.
Who reads the papers? – Yes Minister
To finish off with some fun, here is a wonderfully satirical video from Yes Minister, which I came across a few days ago. It describes the various readerships of the nationals, and is pretty accurate… [embedding disabled, so you will have to follow the link above]
UPDATE:
Just found an excellent summary of major magazine trends, with examples and a summary of the future paths that magazines can take. It was written last year, by Mohamad Jangda and can be read here.
Which other great posts have I missed in this roundup?