Today's blog post is from Damon Cali, Notice Technologies' VP of Operations... enjoy!
Old line newspapers will change. They will be brought into the new age of media one way or another. But only some will make it.
The good news is that the papers themselves get to choose if they want to shut down or transform into viable enterprises. The bad news is that this change will likely involve some internal conflict.
The ancient news business (and I do mean ancient) has been remarkably resilient. There are ways to do things. Some papers even own massive printing press operations. Hard capital, with huge costs and long term payback. After all, need for people to get the news is a safely assumed constant. Philosophies get shaped by these facts, and they have been for quite some time now. Slow, steady and concrete.
But it's not working anymore. The inefficient flow of information and staggering costs of distribution that have protected the newspaper industry have been ravaged, almost overnight, by the internet blinking into existence. Anyone who wants one has a voice. Distribution is controlled by the reader, not the publisher. Technicians battle for control of the information pipes and he profits they bring. Printing presses and their capital costs will soon be completely irrelevant.
Where is the old-style newspaper in this mess? They're not!
So what's a newspaper to do?
Change, of course. Any executive worth his salt will see that newspapers have to get into the online game, and that costs will have to be realigned with the new realities of business. All a paper has to do is adopt an internet strategy, settle into the changes, and continue as before, right? No. Not at all right. Do that, and your paper will be just as dead as if you cling to paper and ink.
There is no fundamental difference between the newspaper of tomorrow and the startups and internet publishers of today. Newspapers have a nice, built in audience, but no clear advantage beyond that. They have or will become large, well-positioned internet companies. But change hits the internet industry frequently and with force. Advantages will evaporate quickly without constant innovation.
If you run an internet company, risk is a daily companion. You embrace it. You manipulate it. You harness it to generate profits and you hold on tightly because it just might leave you in the dust.
The newspapers that survive the coming years will be the ones who show that they can break out of their old perspectives and embrace risk - the ones who learn to iterate quickly, find what works, and never stop. You do this one project at a time. Take a small gamble and see how it works. Do it quickly. Run with it if it does work, and forget about it if it doesn't. That's the new way, and the sooner papers learn to embrace this fact, the more likely they will be to survive.
No, the biggest hurdle to newspapers is not their cost structure - it's their ability to recognize and embrace what they now must be.
Comments