Our Seattle Post-Intelligencer is for sale and if nobody buys it they say it will just simply close up shop. They gave the sale 60 days (from last month) so it’s a little longer than eBay. Interested?
In an earlier post I reviewed the reasons newspapers are not hitting on all cylinders. Basically the business model is lopsided away from the purpose. The word “newspaper” says it’s a paper whose purpose is to deliver news. And they have an army of delivery minions fanning out across the land delivering papers to homes and businesses.
Well that’s one of the problems. We have around 4 million people in the Greater Newcastle Puget Sound Area but circulation barely tops 100,000. So delivery minions travel a great deal while passing up non-customers.
The business model derives revenue from ads, not news. Papers are filled with ads that essentially pay the bills and provide salaries for the newsroom employees. What they can charge for ads depends on how many “subscribers” they have. Each subscriber is worth so much to an advertiser.
What are some reasons papers lose customers? Lack of news and no interest in the ads are a couple of biggies. In the old days of Seattle the papers used to publish the names of boats coming and going. If you wanted fresh fish you checked the paper to see if a fishing boat was in port. Then you went to market, bought a fish, wrapped it in newspaper, and took it home to the cat.
That’s just one example of things you used to find in Seattle papers. Now you’re lucky if they mention Seattle in any context besides describing the guy police are looking for in connection with something or other.
Then there are the ads. My question is how many people really search the ads for what they want to buy? I don’t. Am I unusual? Of course, but I wonder if that includes how I read a newspaper.
Mostly when I see one of those 20 page color inserts for “Nevan’s Discount Boot Barn” I just wonder if it’s a chain or a single store and promptly forget about it. Nevan used to sell garter belts but things weren’t too good and models are expensive so he changed to boots. Who needs models? Boots stand alone.
And, of course, there is the paper itself. The newsprint life cycle is expensive and smelly. Every week big blue trucks come around neighborhoods and collect bins of old newspaper that eventually gets back to the paper factory where hundreds of workers sit around all day and erase the “news” so the PI can buy it back and print the next edition.
My original suggestion was that Microsoft or Apple (or anyone else who can deliver snazzy devices) could make electronic readers that can deliver news for a small subscription fee. Amazon has sold around half a million Kindles that do that except it’s kind of awkward. The black on grey print is very readable, but hardly any pictures, page turners too big, and so on. You can subscribe to newspapers, magazines, and blogs. There are over 230,000 books available and it’s growing.
They come electronically and you can use the Kindle itself to browse Amazon and order books which arrive on the device in seconds. Periodicals arrive at the time of publication as long as you have the receiver on.
Now some more folks are producing these gizmos. One is called a “Plastic Logic” made of all plastic. Another is from Pixel Qi and is based on an inexpensive laptop design. Adobe has an application called “AIR” which they say can be used for downloading and reading on mobile devices. I’m sure more will be coming out as well. We’ve not heard from Apple yet. Microsoft is still tied to the full computer platform but I bet they too are looking at readers.
The point here is that today we are starting to see devices that are working toward elimination of the paper format for delivering news. And one of the most important keys is users will be paying small subscription fees for “news” rather than token fees for piles of paper.
Another key element is high speed internet availability. America is behind in delivering it to all households. The shopping and advertisement function would be separated from news delivery by keeping it on the internet.
A key prospect for informed consumers is that we can subscribe to a blog on our readers that tells about all the neat new stuff on the market. Then we get on our high speed internet and find out where it’s being sold locally. But that sounds like a “pull” system where the shopper has to research the source. A pile of ads on the doorstep is a “push” system where they just show up.
The readers of the future could do that just as well. The user could enter preferences, such as groceries in Newcastle, and receive full store ads with sale prices, specials, and electronic coupons. The device should be able to somehow link so you could make a list. Maybe it would be capable of sending info to the store so that when you check out the coupons are deducted from your items right there in line. If you decide not to get a coupon item it just ignores it.
Too much information? Probably. I’m sure the big data milking outfits would keep track of you and focus beams of ads into your head in hopes of getting you to buy more than you want, etc. In any case I still think the news industry should divorce itself from the advertising industry.
News and reporting are very important to a democracy and Americans need to stay informed. Sure, it’ll take many years to convert over to electronic news delivery and there will be a lot of shakeout in the process. But we really need to unhook from so much paper.
Cities with only one newspaper don’t really exist. When the PI goes away we’ll still have the Times. But we also have hundreds of focused rags everywhere. We have a business journal that tells about commerce, real estate mags, lots of local neighborhood papers, school papers, and it goes on and on. In Seattle we can also get the Wall Street Journal and New York Times (if we’re made of money).
The point is the Times doesn’t have to report on business, like commercial boat traffic, because another paper does that. They don’t have to deal with local items because other papers can do that. However, these are widely disbursed and you have to make an effort to find a publication that covers what you want. Besides very few actually report very well, but they could if “news” was their real business.
If you can get real news electronically on an easy to use reader you should be able to select news categories from a menu. There are a lot of categories I don’t care about. However, I’m interested in construction. I want to know who’s building what. I also want to know what’s going on with public construction, such as transportation and utilities. That’s my job now that I’m retired. But newspapers only cover those things superficially. The Business journal is too expensive. And even if you can find a source it’s almost always PR announcements rather than what’s really going on.
I’m looking for the future of news delivery today. I’m ready for my news to come from reporters who are not beholden to advertisers or employed by people making the news. I want to get back to an independent “press” that gives me information about what’s going on. Today.
So my message is: “Hey PI, when you leave town take the Times with you.”
Al
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