Death of Newspapers

The Economist has a dour look at the newspaper sector, with a cover headline "Who Killed The Newspaper? 

The magazine looks at Schibsted, a Norwegian newspaper firm, as a rare winner on the net with 35% of its revenue from the online businesses.

In contrast, most newspapers generate their profits from the legacy print business and are suffering declining advertising and declining subscribers. The magazine lists these common mistakes by newspaper publishers:

• Slow to grasp the need for change;
• Tried to replicate their print product online;
• Saved their best reporters for print;
• Feared cannibalizing the print business.

This is a very typical pattern of cramming the new innovation into the old business model, a frequent problem in industries facing disruption.  The Economist also notes the surprising success of new free urban newspapers, which have taken a solid 8-16% market share in dozens of cities worldwide:

The most shocking development for traditional newspapers has been the wild success of free dailies, which like the internet have proved enormously popular with young people. Roughly 28m copies of free newspapers are now printed daily, according to Metro International, a Swedish firm that pioneered them in 1995.

The clear message is that newspapers are being disrupted and that the business model must adapt to the net. The Economist report raises several questions:

• What are the attributes that consumers and advertizers value AND will pay for in new media?
• Should newspapers set out to cannibalize their current business?
• Should online operations be established as standalone business units, unbeholden to the parent company's business model?
• If the print business is dying, why is Metro International doing so well?

** Other Views **
Jeff Jarvis at Buzz Machine gives more fullsome excerpts, noting grounds for optimism.

Roy Greenslade at the Guardian Unlimited says there has been a lack of imagination in the news business. "However, we are undergoing a communications revolution and it's difficult for anyone, whether it be moguls like Rupert Murdoch or a geeky website editor in a 5,000-circulation local weekly, to envision the future. We are in the dark and advancing by trial and error."

Web2.0Newspapers has a roundup of news related to newspapers and online news.

Comments

[Ian Delaney]

Newspapers seem to be doing their best to speed up the process.

See here:
Five Signs Your Newspaper Is Doomed
http://www.blogherald.com/2006/08/26/5-signs-your-newspaper-is-doomed-melissa-whitworth-and-the-end-of-the-telegraph/