If newspapers are dying, what will replace them? | Hacker News Reader

If newspapers are dying, what will replace them?

4 pointsabdulkundi11 comments

Every quarter long established newspapers are reporting decline in ad dollars. This scenario is forcing them to cut journalistic staff. Some have even gone so far to file for bankruptcy. Others are cutting down on home deliveries.

In this scenario, will the bloggers replace newspapers as a source for local news. But if that is true who will aggregate these bloggers to provide latest local news, traffic condition and city hall announcements.

what is the future of local news? is the real question.

regards

kundi

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I think you're right that "what is the future of local news?" is the real question, rather than "what will replace newspapers?"

Working at a newspaper (online dept.), I think these organizations still haven't come to the realization that print isn't going to rebound (very much a "buggy whip" situation, as leed25d suggested). We see reports that show that newspapers' customer base is literally dying off. The younger generations don't have the same place in their lives for dead-tree news.

The economic downturn and advertising nosedive will decrease the available time window for newspapers to evolve. I think many will not make it. This could be a good thing. If there is a need for their services, something will appear to take their place (and eventually something with a viable business model). Startups will lead the way in innovation, and the smart newspapers that survived will learn to rapidly adopt what works (and hopefully cultivate a spirit of innovation themselves).

To be fair, I know a number of "traditional" journalists that have made the leap to Twitter, Digg, StumbleUpon, etc and have embraced these new forms to build flow, readership and conversation. I expect these folks to adapt and provide the professional expertise required for in-depth investigative journalism.

thanks for your detailed reply. I personally feel that introduction of a new platform does not kill it but rather forces it to reshape and evolve with a niche. For instance TV did not kill radio and internet did not kill TV. All of these are still existent with their own niche appeal.

I also feel that people do need local news about their communities. All of us are concerned how our city councilman are doing. We also want to know the state of our schools. We also want to know the updates of a murder investigation etc. etc. So i feel that local news will remain relevant.

The Newspaper i feel will have to team up with new technology companies to provide service on a revenue share basis. Plus advertising platform will also evolve for local newspapers.

I don't see bloggers only replacing the news, unless those bloggers are just the journalists switching from writing a column in the paper, to publishing their articles at the newspaper's website (maybe in weblog format).

I think the biggest problem for local/print news has more to do with how delayed the news gets to the reader. If anything, I would see more newspapers abandoning or reducing paper editions in favor of online-only news (like the Christian Science Monitor (I think it was them)).

Local TV isn't likely to expand coverage beyond the items typically reported on during daily broadcasts. In the mean time the kind of local and hyperlocal coverage traditionally handled by print media journalists is going to be largely absent, which will in turn reduce the amount of grist for the blogosphere.

Some believe that bloggers will pick up the slack (and possibly even improve coverage) when newspapers drop off. Having worked for the 2nd largest newspaper company in North America for a couple years now I'm unconvinced. Simply put quality journalism (as opposed to editorializing) requires a tremendous amount of time and effort to pull off, and is very expensive.

i largely agree with you that on-ground reporting is important for accuracy of the news item. But on the other hand how important accuracy is as compared to frequent updates by users. For instance reporting of a sports score or traffic jam on a highway by a user through his cell phone is still quite useful for people.

If an online site emerges that gains traffic from a city audience, do you think local service providers like pizza, restaurants or plumbers will advertise on it.

Just about every major media outlet is currently experimenting with various approaches to fusing high-quality journalistic content with high-quality user contributed content. This can range from simplistic story commenting implementations to more involved user review & ratings systems. I believe that this is the future (if one exists) for print media outlets.

As to hyper-local advertising, there is definitely a market here. I've seen several instances where local community sites have (very) successfully monetized through a combination of local service provider ads and ad network positions.

Do we know of any company that has successfully used hyper-local market idea to grow exponentially?

Exponentially? Not that I'm aware of. I've seen examples of highly focused niche sites that have generated nontrivial (and growing) ad revenue, but so far nothing viral. And really this touches on one of the key problems in the newspaper world today: editors who are looking for the next Big Thing to replace the classifieds cash cow. I believe tremendous resources are being squandered on what is basically a waste of time. If there was one overarching business model that was going to "save" newspapers, someone would have struck on it by now and everyone would be following suit. The future (again if one exists) is in many carefully managed small revenue streams.

From the discussion here emerges another question. Is professional content creation out of date? Do users appreciate professional content so much that they are willing to be inconvenienced in terms of money or time to acquire it?

The guys over at the New York Times sure seem to thing so. They've been beating the "switch to paid subscription models online" drum pretty hard recently. The real differentiator is absolute top-shelf content. As far as I can tell (and my own surfing habits reflect this so I may have a personal bias) most folks don't much care where they get their content from as long as it's thoughtful, well-written and at least bears the appears of solid fact-checking. YMMV. The one thing that I think everyone in the industry agrees on is the kind of vanilla content that's coming off the wire these days is absolutely insufficient to attract users to an online portal. That crap is a commodity freely available on any number of aggregator sites.

I do not believe that they will necessarily be replaced with anything, really. They may just go the way of the buggy whip.

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