News You Can Lose

"By extension, many argue that if newspapers had understood they were in the information business, rather than the print business, they would have adapted more quickly and more successfully to the Net."

I think this is the key point of the article, but I feel the author didn't really do much with that finding. He says that papers could have done better with online classifieds and should probably do something with aggregation. These are pretty standard conclusions at this point. More importantly, these conclusions still cling to the traditional role of the newspaper as a provider of news specifically.

If newspapers are really in the information business, and I believe they are, they should act like companies that sell information. There are plenty of examples of successful information businesses on, and off, the web: Comscore, Nielson, Hoovers, Marketing Sherpa, Motley Fool, the credit reporting bureaus, Google(!), etc.

While newspapers may not be equipped to compete in the same areas as all of these companies, they are more than prepared to enter into a variety of niches within the information market.

My local paper, for example, routinely compiles data into little online features where you can go and find out, for example, what the weather was like on the last 5 Labor Days. They also keep track of and print the latest executive-level stock trades from local public companies. Why aren't they packaging that data for investors and selling it as an online subscription? Why don't they sell local housing data to realtors or speculators (granted, they'll need to wait for the next bubble)? Political contribution lists to watch-dog groups? Names of new hires/fires to recruiting firms/departments?

It seems to me that while newspapers may be getting over the print business, they still think they're in the news business. If the advertising revenue from the news is getting thin, newspapers might consider augmenting that revenue by selling higher-margin information.

Matthew Yglesias points out that the revenue that newspapers get from dead-tree subscribers does not make up for the cost of printing and delivering the paper. So the real problem is not that consumers would rather not pay for news, but that advertisers don't want to buy the online ad space.

http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2008/12/news_with...

(Personally, I suspect that the problems are interrelated, because IIUC advertisers are more willing to buy ad space in a publication with paying subscribers--I guess the assumption is that if people are laying down their own cash, then they must respect the content, and that respect rubs off on the ads.)

"But it would not be shocking if, sometime soon, there were big American cities that had no local newspaper."

This has been something that I've thought about quite a lot of late, and think is definitely going to be the case. My personal idea is that there will be a lot of people who would previously have read local newspapers but would rather read a social news site online.

The problem with current social news sites for these people is that they are too focused on particular subjects, for instance tech or business. So in between university and another proper startup I'm working on I built a site that lets each user view their own stream of stories agnostic of what the rest of the user base is doing - unless other user's stories or comments overlap with those of the first user. You can check it out at http://memescout.com!

Now the difficulty is getting people to use the site!

Rupert Murdoch gave a lecture where he thinks media is headed - It's actually quite interesting.

It's the 3rd lecture is part of this years (6-Part) Boyer Lecture series. It's basically Rupert Murdoch's view on where the world and humanity are headed in the next decades.

Anyone interested can listen/read it here: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/boyerlectures/default.htm