Future of Newspapers

Scott Lehigh, at the Boston Globe, asked for reader's thoughts on the saving the Boston Globe. here are mine.

I disagree with the commonly accepted idea that the internet is responsible for the demise of newspapers. There is room for both newspapers and internet news; newspapers just have not responded correctly yet.

Content
There are two reasons, IMHOP, people have been turning away from printed news. One, indeed, is the immediacy that the internet –and radio- offer. By the time an article appears in my daily Globe, I have already heard the news the day before and read it online. It is stale. The way to compensate for the loss of immediacy would be to provide greater depth in covering the news item. Instead, and that is the crux of the matter, the news coverage in the Globe tends to be the same AP news coverage I have already read on Google. That is the true failing. Newspapers’ assets are their probing editorial teams. Lately, instead of exploiting these assets, newspapers have been printing the same AP news stories, whether a reader has picked up the Washington Post, NYT, Boston Globe, and International Herald Tribune. Newspapers have lost their voice and their punch. That is why readers are turning away. They have less and less to lose by not getting their news through their local paper.
The Globe has shown leadership and distinction in raising interesting issues on state pensions, corruption, abuse, etc. This is the saving grace of newspapers. This is where investigative journalism shines and is irreplaceable. More of that, and less of the plain vanilla news, and the Globe stays in business.
The other great asset of good newspapers is their editorial talent. My boss in strategic planning at Dow Jones pointed out the impact of serendipity. Serendipity is the reason I was always grabbed by the individual profile articles in the WSJ’s front page, reading them before other news, although if I had been asked, I would have declined to follow news on that topic. Serendipity is the editor’s judgment that a story will interest readers, though they don’t know it yet. Serendipity is what’s lacking on Google news. It’s an editor revealing an article’s newsworthiness. The internet is unbeatable for immediacy and strict relevance. Request articles on known topics (your company & industry news) and you will get them as soon as they are out. Good editors, whether in print or online, will tell you everything else you need to know, but don’t know you want to know.

Advertising
I regret to say there is a good reason for newspaper advertising to continue shrinking over time. Why should I get weekly circulars, car ads, want ads, etc., when I am not interested in them in the least? How can it be cost efficient to print these four-color ads, process the paper, and distribute them to people who are sending them immediately into the recycling can? (At best). I don’t read most of the regular ads in the paper itself, either. On the internet, ads are based on keywords: users show an interest in a subject, and then the ad is shown. That makes sense. It is targeted and relevant. There are cases when an advertiser needs to reach a broad audience: Macy advertising a sale, a national brand launching a new promotion or product, etc., any provider targeting a mass audience for common purchases. For the rest, why doesn’t the Globe send me a monthly email, asking me about planned purchases for the coming month? Car? Fridge? Apartment rental…? Which supermarket & pharmacies am I interested in? Type of clothing stores? Then, they could print targeted ads in my paper during that month. The Globe would have more leverage with advertisers, since it could prove it has a targeted, interested audience. Advertisers would pay more for the ads, more than making up for the lost revenue from ads not printed. The Globe would reduce its printing costs, by not printing the irrelevant stuff. It would help the environment. How would it get my cooperation? I would cooperate if it reduced my monthly subscription cost. It should, since it would generate more income for the Globe and reduce their printing costs. I would also be more likely to receive special offers from advertisers on the items I showed interest in, so it would be in my advantage to cooperate.
The advertising industry at some point will have to change the way it prices ads. Current pricing is based on eyeballs, whether in print (circulation) or on TV (viewership). There is no accounting for whether the eyeballs are closed or open, focused on the ad or looking elsewhere. How can that compete with an internet ad, where the advertiser KNOWS whether someone has clicked on the ad or not? These old pricing mechanisms are bound to change. Sooner or later, advertisers will wake up to the value of a receptive audience. The newspapers that will be ready to offer that receptive audience will come out on top.
The reader-selected advertising approach (reader buy-in) requires a transformation of the printing process, practically printing on demand. (In effect, there might be a limited set of permutations, with maybe 20 different variants of advertising theme sets.) Still, this would require the ability to print different papers and track which subscribers they go to. That is difficult. How does VistaPrint do it? If VistaPrint can profitably print micro-orders, then maybe newspapers can adapt some of the same technology? Especially, if newspapers also change their format to reduce paper size. These changes will require major investments and pushing the technical envelope, but, in my opinion, it is the future of the newspaper industry.
There remains the issue of newsstand sales. These can’t be individually targeted. So, there will remain one standard, default issue. It will be interesting to see how ad sales compare between the subscription and the newsstand versions.

Format:
Many people would rather read a printed newspaper than stare at a screen. Based on my experience, and given the reduced amount of news –and potentially, ads- I think papers should shrink their format so it is less hard on the arms to hold up the paper for a long period of time. The free Metro News format is more user-friendly than the Globe’s. Given the decreasing amount of pages and news, why not shrink the format?

Future
It may be that to pare costs, the future of newspapers relies on a common trunk of national and international news, complemented by really solid local investigative journalism. The common news would be shared AP-style, but reported with greater depth and probing. Local newspapers would then add their local and regional news, occasionally also raising a national issue that would then be shared in the common trunk.
The paper would be printed in a smaller, more convenient format. It would reflect readers’ stated interest in receiving ads on given subjects. People with a particular interest in a region other than theirs could also get the news pertinent to the other area.
Monetizing: I completely believe the future of information on the internet is in micropayments. I know many micropayment solutions have been tried and failed since the early ’90s, but the need has not gone away. It has only increased. The right solution just hasn’t been offered yet. Sooner or later, it will be standard practice for people to pay small amounts for interesting articles, whether they were written by a journalist or a blogger; for recipes; for pictures; for artwork; songs, etc. Then, the internet will be an additional, significant source of revenue for newspaper publishers, only if they have managed to retain their ability to write & publish good stories.