Online News
The current state of the newspaper industry is in a difficult situation. That was true before the entire economy made a massive downturn. Traditional newspapers have high printing and distribution costs due to the cost of materials, and the distribution costs due to the weight of the publication. To offset these costs, newspapers sell advertisements. Ironically, the addition of advertisements adds to the weight, which adds to the shipping costs.
Another factor that causes difficulty for newspapers is the user expectation that online news should be free. This is correlated to the principle that openness on the web is empowering. It’s this principle that has enabled so many, to create new applications and visualizations of information, by combining 2 more sources of data. In addition, traditional newspapers need to offer free news to remain competitive with the blogosphere for the attention of customers.
What are some of the factors that have contributed to the success of newspapers? The first is ubiquity. It’s possible to walk to a street corner and buy one from a newspaper vending machine. Supermarkets, liquor stores, and magazine stands are also common venues of purchase. Another factor, is reading text on the printed page. Some people find it easier that reading text on a monitor, while others enjoy the feel of paper. A third factor is archivability. There are people who want to capture historic moments, particularly those with famous headlines like “Dewey Defeats Truman” (Chicago Tribune, 1948), “Kennedy Assassinated” (Daily Mail, 1963) “God is Dead”(NY Times, 1968). For those, capturing a piece of history for the price of the daily edition is a powerful thing. In order for online newspapers to be successful and return to profitability, all of the above need to be addressed.
As noted above, it’s important to not break the web by hiding the news content – at least not in totality. An acceptable solution would be to expose some articles for the public to freely consume. Others would be exposed if someone is a paid subscriber. Imagine a front page where the free articles expose their headlines and the 1st paragraph or two. The articles requiring a subscription would expose headlines that link to the full articles, all of which would be in a panel on the homepage that clearly labels the box as subscriber content. This would allow the free viewing public to be aware of the content that subscribers can access. For the print operations, there are two obvious paths to consider. The first is total elimination. Becoming a totally digital publication has a number of positive aspects – greater responsiveness, significantly lower distribution costs, and decreased personnel requirements. The second path is to print back issues on demand. This allows the customers to print out the editions that would like to keep. Because it would no longer a primary service, but rather a supplemental one, the customer would need to absorb a higher cost. This will cause them to be more selective about which editions they want in print.
One of the attributes of the internet is it’s a great medium for distributing content. It would be cost effective to allow customers to have a digital edition download to their computer. This allows the editions to be distributed cost effectively while maintaining the ability to archive. While some people prefer to read paper instead of on a monitor, technology is always improving. The Kindle 2, a new device from Amazon, is reported to have improved text rendering abilities that more closely resemble the print experience. As this technology becomes more available, the quality difference between electronic and printed text will be less of an issue.
While the internet isn’t totally ubiquitous yet, its presence is growing by the hour. Most users currently access the news on their desktop or laptop, whether at home, work, or on the wifi at a cafe. But as mobile devices become more powerful, and barriers to entry are removed, it will only get easier to access information.