Is the future of the newspaper twitter? Yes

On one level it is patently absurd that the depth and expert observational skills could ever be replaced by a technology that centers around 140 character bursts. However, if one actually looks at the way most people read the paper, and newspaper websites you might not think I'm that far off base.

First, people are famous for scanning the headlines. It has often been stated by long time readers that they read the paper from cover to cover in less than 30 minutes. Unless they have extraordinary powers of comprehension and word recognition, it's highly unlikely that they actually read every word. Twitter is pretty much nothing but the headlines. The shortened links that many use from sources like bit.ly offer a reader the opportunity, but not the requirement to read deeper.

Second, nothing could be more immediate than twitter. There have been plenty of incidents of people tweeting directly from the source of a major newsevent. The most famous was the on the scene twitpic of the plane in the hudson river. In this age of communication, going home to write about an event, or even looking for a hotspot to type something in to your laptop is just too darn slow. The short format can deliver immediacy and limit the burden on the newsgather-er. That is far from true of the articles that most citizen journalists are expected to contribute to their hyper local paper.

Third, the follower system can deliver the often idealized individual customization missing from the bulky newspaper. If a person wants to they can select to follow a favorite sports team, a couple of key causes, areas of personal interest, and a specialist with recipes for foie gras. They'll only get that info when there is "news" unlike even a newspaper website that they have to check and search to see if there are stories of interest. Twitter can fulfil the pushed power of a subscription, and deliver it as it is happening.

However, twitter has the same issue as newspaper websites, by breaking the bulk of content into efficient snippets, it is extraordinarily difficulty to monetize this content.

As dour as this might seem, there is one thing that newspapers might want to consider. They can use twitter to enhance their content. From the basics of the observation(s), they can use their expertise, experience and contacts to build relevance what might otherwise have been a singular event. What I'm saying in short is that twitter might eventually become the single best source that a journalist could ever have. A million eyes watching everything that happens in a city, and looking for someone to connect the dots.

Gannett's layoffs are now an ad?

From the kick a company when they are down file, I just noticed that one of the ads on my blog was for lawyers to represent employees from newspaper companies that are laid off.

A sign of the times to be for sure.

However, if a case went to trial, it had better resolve pretty quickly. At this rate, it looks like there's only one law chapter that most corporate council cares about. That chapter is number 11.

(Note: No disrespect intended to those potentially on the chopping block. I know it's stressful and I sincerely hope that that everyone is honorable and decent to those who've been the life blood of Gannett and plenty of other media empires. I'd want for there to be no need for ads like that.)

What will I write about when there aren't newspapers anymore?

This will be a bit of navel gazing, but it's becoming increasingly clear that some time in the near future the newspaper as we know it will cease to exist. While I don't doubt there will be some distribution of time sensitive information via a printed and distributed network, it will have to be a significant change from the status quo. It could be unrequested distribution like the Express chain of papers, weekly tabloids similar to the alternative press, or a premium offering targeted only at the information elite at an increased price. Regardless, newspapers as we know them today are clearly suffering from extreme atrophy and one day will undergo a metamorphosis.

So the question I've been asking myself is: what is to become of me and this blog?

This domain is clearly tied to the discussion of an "ink on paper" news business. Will we still call them newspapers when they are only on the Internet and/or Kindle? If they go away, those of us chronicling their decline and offering advice will go away as well.

These questions have caused me a bit of blogger's block.

I have hope that a new model will emerge that makes some sense. There's a future in news, but not necessarily paper.

Unfortunately newsbiz and localnewsbiz are already taken as domain names, though neither are active. A further unfortunate truth is that i monetize more poorly than newspapers, so I will be buying neither.

Gannett tries furlough as alternative to layoffs

Gannett today announced they would force one week of unpaid leave on most of their US employees for the first quarter. Just a rough estimate would tell you they expect to save 5-7% (less than 1/13th) of their hourly costs in the first quarter after you take in to account the number of people that will get exempted and benefits that will still get paid.

The move raises a number of questions in my mind. The first and foremost is: will they continue the tactic each quarter until they recover? It's a strange method to say the least, but it is an "easy" way to avoid layoffs and spread the misery equally.

The move, by its sheer nature, tells you they can get along with 5-7% less labor. You'll get one less week out of all of the people on vacation, which is about 1/13th of the work product you'd normally expect. They've even made the point that exactly zero work is do be done during the time off. That's better vacation time than most of us get with the constant tether of a Blackberry. The release tells us even the executives are expected to do the same.

So why not just make the cut? Sure they've cut twice in the very recent past, but this tells us they think they can get away with a bit more.

I'm not a fan. It's pretty classic weak management and is another death by a thousand cuts. Hard decisions are just that - hard. Either let people work, or pull the bandaid off.

Is Newspaper's problem Google's Fault?

Google has been frequently cited as one of the primary contributors to the decline of the newspaper business. Very recently people have even asked Google if they would be part of the rescue of newspapers. Eric Schmidt, wisely, said no.

Schmidt smartly recognizes that the key problem isn't the access or demand for information, it's the business model itself that is the issue.

Twenty years ago, a newspaper ad was they key way to relate complex information about a new product to a broad audience. No advertising medium could come close. Now a website can relate even extraordinarily complex information in a multi media manner to an engaged and interested audience. It's 10 levels deeper than a single print ad could ever be. The best sites allow conversation and questions to emerge about products.

So newspapers have lost on the depth of product information, needless to say. While google is the key way of steering people to these deep information sites, newspapers themselves could have, and often do function, in this manner as well. The key difference is in the scale that a web portal provides. Scale is part of the new advertising landscape, and it's a loss of newspaper competencies. As a response newspapers tried to go "local" which may be the opposite of the direction they should have gone. A local strategy naturally cedes scale.

A second loss is in efficiency. Printed newspapers deliver a bundled product. Even if I only want business news, I have to buy the whole paper. This is naturally inefficient for the delivery of advertising. However it is this inefficiency that leads to outsized profits, or at least used to. Search engine marketing is relentlessly efficient. It can deliver an advertisement to a person as they are in the final consideration set, and lead directly to a purchase. The model of pay per click is also remarkably efficient in delivering cost effective traffic for any budget.

Note that these two strengths of Google (and other search engines) have little if anything to do with content. While I have heard publishers claim that Google "steals" their content and profits from it, this argument has little grounding in reality. What Google has become is a model of advertising efficiency, and it threatens the most inefficient models. That model just happens to be printed newspapers.

I've made the argument in the past that newspapers should band against Google. Let me articulate that more clearly. Local isn't going to win. The Internet isn't local. It is my opinion that the best strategy is to collaborate and deliver scale. It's not about being hyperlocal, it's about delivering EVERY locality.

McClatchy's Revenue Decline approaches 20%

Honestly, it's hardly news that advertising in print is down considerably. What is news is how the decline continues to accelerate. McClatchy just reported November numbers that were down 19.4%. The only bright spot was the fact that Internet revenue was up 7.5%. October's revenue was down a "mere" 17.4%. The stock was down nearly as much as the revenue.

Eventually the year over year comparisons have to get easier right? Last year's Q4 was down 14-15% compared to 2006.

What's Black and White and Dead All Over?

Newspapers of course. 

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Clusterf#@k to the Poor House - Final Edition Edition

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

I guess its good that the plight of newspapers is making it to the Daily Show.  At least we can laugh while we pack our boxes...

Tribune Goes Chapter 11, who is next?

The news of Tribune's bankruptcy filing has been well chronicled already after plenty of rumors. Clearly it's one of those things that was expected eventually given the overall industry decline, but even six months ago Tribune was claiming they had enough cash until at least mid 2009. The filing preceded the sale of the remarkably valuable Chicago Cubs franchise, which was kept out of the filing. My supposition is that they were far enough in the hole that even a billion or so wouldn't have made much difference. It will be a bit of mess for the employees who technically own the company through the stock ownership plan created when Zell structured the take over. I hesitate to call it bought, given the limited amount of personal exposure Zell had in the deal.

The market reaction to the news among peer companies was one of the most interesting factors at play here. News such as this can often have a widespread effect on the sector. Some, such as AH Belo (AHC) and the New York Times (NYT) were fairly static (It's telling that this seems unchanged these days). McClatchy (MNI) and Media General (MEG) finished up the day over 10%, while Lee and Journal Register plunged ever closer to zero. If the market is voting rationally, Lee and Journal Register are perilously close to joining Tribune. While I can believe that AH Belo's stability given it's relatively low debt might have some limited life left, I don't understand McClatchy's lift on the day. Perhaps the rumored sale offer of the Miami Herald has something to do with it, but seriously, who's left to buy it?

A little pick me up for my comrades still in newspapers

I had lunch with a number of my friends the other day, and it was amazing how dour their moods were. It's worth mentioning that most of my associates are business types, not the journalists whose plight has been well documented. The question at the table was if everyone was going to ride the company for the next year or so, or try to jump off before it went under. The resolution wasn't an if, but a when.

So here's a reminder of some of the reasons that you likely got into the business in the first place:

1. Newspapers manufacture a bit of history every day. Clearly Obama's election led to massive demand, but every day people buy the paper just to keep a memory for all time. I still have the papers for the day each of my children was born. People post clippings all the time on their fridge or other places. Restaurants cut out and frame their reviews. As of yet, nothing else is quite the same. Telling people to go to archive.org just doesn't cut it.

2. Newspaper advertising still works, especially for certain categories. Trying to shop for furniture online is still nearly impossible, but I still buy the paper every Saturday that I'm looking for furniture. If it's expensive to ship and very oriented towards in person sales, it works well in the paper. Many of the areas of traditional newspaper dominance fall in these areas. Autos, homes, jobs just don't "ship"

3. Some of the resources of the newspapers are a true competitive advantage, even if they aren't a monopoly any more. The distribution forces of newspapers are paralleled only by pure delivery services. Some of the long held relationships with sales are hard to supplant. Even on the Internet, the amount of content production and back linking from blogs is a tremendous advantage for search engine optimization. It's pretty rare to see a newspaper site with page rank estimate below 6.

4. While it's hard to remember in the current climate, news can change lives. Journalists can be quite an idealistic bunch, and some times only care if the one person that matters reads their story. They can also be a cynical bunch which is why they are so good at trying to uncover the motives behind changes. The traditional wall between journalists and business was set up to keep everyone pure and motivated by the right things. Indirect monetization was what fueled some great endeavors, even if it's the current malaise.

Newspapers still matter, and part of the heaviness in many of the critics comes from the hope that these once proud institutions will regain their swagger again. I for one hope they can make it through this dark time to the other side. It's this same idealism of journalists that led me to start this blog in the first place. It might only take one really good idea, executed well, to reinvigorate the news industry.

A slice of history - newspaper demand in the wake of the election

Tribune and other companies (see this report from the Dallas Morning News for one in the middle of a "red" state) reported a huge swell in demand following yesterdays election. Obama's win is a historic moment when a color barrier was broken for America's highest office. It's clearly a movement that many wanted to commemorate with the newspaper of the day.

There's both good news out of this and bad news. The good news is that newspapers still hold a special place in peoples hearts. Even with Obama's noted bent toward the young and Internet savvy, the newspaper is still the historic record of choice. Demand might be double in places like Chicago.

What's troubling is the arrogance in which they couched this demand. To say that newspapers are being turned to "understand and interpret the news of the day" is quixotic. People already understand that a historic event happened yesterday, they didn't buy the paper to figure that out. The fact they had to reprint tells you many had no idea this was coming.

I'm not sure if this will translate into more than subscription revenue either. It was a chance to have advertisers join a special edition with provisional advertising. (e.g. If Obama wins, run this ad) I didn't see much if any in my local edition. If anything the ad volume seemed down.

It was also a chance to produce a special edition. Sports Illustrated jumps on the airwaves seconds after a Superbowl or other sporting event with a leather bound edition and countless other pieces of schwag. People pay absurd prices to buy a cap. Companies produce two versions and send the one that loses overseas. This is newspapers chance to do the same.

Some jumped on this with framed versions of the front page and I applaud them for that. Fayetville notabaly charged $40 for its version (Fayetville?) I think it could have gone even further. Frankly, either winner was a historic outcome so this was the chance to pre-produce t-shirts and other junk for immediate consumption. The newspaper adds the added relevance of capturing a "where were you moment" If I'm in Nashville, my local paper is important because it captures the national story for its moment of time and place.