The Future of Newspapers in an Online

8/9/2019 The Future of Newspapers in an Online

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The future of newspapers in an online world(Newspapers are dead. Long live the news!)

Dirk Singer, RabbitTwitter - @dirktherabbit /blog - liesdamnedliesstatistics.com /

work - therabbitagency.com


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The future of news /

content online?

Demand Media is the answer to thequestion, what would Internet

content look like if it was entirelyand solely driven by advertising

revenue? Content is commissionedbased on an algorithm that

calculates the lifetime value of theads that could be run against it.

Blogger Sage Ross


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The problems newspapers face

Print costs - on the increase

Classified advertising - does better online

The recession, from which the industry will never recover

News in newspapers is by its very nature already old once published

Top down model, someone chooses what you read for you from on high

Quite simply its a problem of demographics. Especially younger readers areno longer interested


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ABC Jan 08/09/2010

Assuming a conservative figure of an average of 2.5 copies per reader, thats3.1+ million national newspaper readers lost 2008-2010


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Or looking at it another way

Thats slightlymore than thepopulation of

Wales

Or around thesame as the

population ofgreater

Manchester +Liverpool

And 500k+ morethan there areunemployed


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And the long term trend

Or looking at it even longer term,since 1951 the UK population has

gone up 25% but newspapercirculations have gone down 30%

And newspaper readers aregetting older. In the US, 2/3 ofthe over 55s read a newspaperevery day, for 18-34 year olds

thats 23%


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Newspaper circulation is down 7 million over the last 25 years while uniquereadership of online news is up 34 million in the last 5 years

Newspaper advertising fell nearly 19 percent this year while web advertising is up 9percent and mobile advertising is up 18 percent

More video was uploaded to YouTube in the last 2 months than if ABC, CBS, andNBC had been airing all-new content every minute of every day since 1948

We have access to more than 1 trillion web pages, 100,000 iPhone apps, and sendmore text messages a day than there are people on the planet

(From blogger / publisher Arianna Huffington at an FTC Conference on the Futureof Journalism in Washington DC)

And in the US...


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The morning paper just isnt as much of an essential anymore

The thing that worries me most at

the moment about the condition ofjournalism is, frankly, whos going

to pay for the journalists and the

journalism in 10 years time? My

kids wouldnt dream of buying a

newspaper and we are a

newspaper household.

BBC Presenter and formernewspaper editor, Andrew Marr


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Newspapers no longer essential

From Pew Research in the US:

Fewer than half of Americans (43%) say that losing their local newspaper would hurt civic life in

their community "a lot." Even fewer (33%) say they would personally miss reading the local

newspaper a lot if it were no longer available.

Only 27% of generation Y (post 1977) read a newspaper the previous day compared to 55% of those

born pre 1946

Less than a quarter of those younger than age 40 (23%) say they would miss the local newspaper

they read most often a lot if it were to go out of business or shut down. That compares with 33%

of those ages 40 to 64 and 55% of those age 65 and older

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There have always been millions of brilliant minds in the human population...journalism

in the past limited our access to these minds, so we perceived that top papers had the

few people worth spending to see. But now that I can find you, or anyone else I deem

smart or wise or reporting real news that I find useful, I can flow to this huge real supply

of intelligence. The profits disappear as the friction between content supply and demand

are gone. (Ben Kunz, from planning shop Media Associates and editor of Thought Gadgets)


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Most essential media (Ofcom)

Only 4% of adults chose newspapers and magazines as mostessential media. For 16-24 year olds mobiles are second

ahead of PC+Internet


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But - people still want news from respected sources

Lets assume youre a mid-levelgovernment executive, and its a

crime to leak information forpurposes of discussion. Are you

willing to leak to a blogger who hasno track record of protecting his orher own sources, versus the New

York Times, which routinely sends itspeople to jail over this question of a

shield law.(Eric Schmidt, CEO, Google)

Lets talk about Afghanistan.How many free bloggers are therethat are in a safe-house inAfghanistan with the necessary

support structure to do the kindof deep investigative reporting onwhats really going on in the war?Im not talking about the onesthat are embedded in thegovernment.


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96% of new news broken by traditional media


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Two ways newspapers will evolve

1 - The hybrid futureand the rise of media

brands2 - The print publication

as an elite product


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Newspapers as an elite

product

"Not all readers demand

such quality, but the

educated, opinion-leading,

news-junkie core of the

audience always will. Theywill insist on it as a defense

against "persuasive

communication," the

euphemism for advertising,

public relations and spin

that exploits the confusion

of information overload.Readers need and want to

be equipped with truth-

based defenses.

Philip Meyer, author of The

Vanishing Newspaper: Saving

Journalism in the Information

Age


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Those papers that wake upin time will become a

journalistic hybridcombining the best aspects

of traditional printnewspapers with the best ofwhat the Web brings to the

table.(Arianna Huffington)

A hybrid future


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Every journalist is a now a

potential blogger

"This isn't just a kind of fad from someone who's an enthusiast of technology. I'm afraid you'renot doing your job if you can't do those things. It's not discretionary..."...if you don't like it, if you think that level of change or that different way of working isn't

right for me, then go and do something else, because it's going to happen."Peter Horrocks, Director of BBC Global News


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And they feed off blogs

A study by George Washington

University and Cision found that 89%of journalists turn to blogs for

research, 65% to social media siteslike Facebook, 52% to Twitter.

And Wikipedia? Over 6/10 (61%)consult it.

Overall 55% of journalists thoughtthat social media was either

somewhat or very important

However, at the same time 84% said

it was slightly less or much less

reliable than traditional media.


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We now have media brands

The media pillars of the future will

be trusted brands. There will still bea role for news brands and premium

content.

Lets be clear about this. Whilesocial networking and user-

generated content are important,the consumer still values brands and

content.

We need to stop talking about the

demise of newspapers and start

talking about the rise of newsbrands. (Marcel Fenez, PWC)

PWC - Forget

newspapers or TV


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Whats the difference between these two?


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They both are the online versions of traditional media properties...and arebecoming increasingly important to both organisations

They have both acquired a life of their own outside their traditional mediaparent

They both give journalists an outlet for news and views beyond thetraditional media (staff blogs, wider range of content)

They both use images and text based stories

....and they both use audio and video

Spot the difference?


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Is she a writer, a

broadcaster or blogger?


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The job of the journalist / blogger

(From Editor and Publisher)

1.Long-form stories and features....but less of those

2.Regular updates during the day - essentially short updates and articles

3.Instant updates - basically tweets


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So in summary....

Print media is in a long cycle of decline, and that wont end with therecession

The print demographic is getting older, especially for the under 30s, printmedia simply isnt on their radar or is part of their lives

Printed newspapers and magazines wont die out, but they will become morespecialised, and focus less on news and more on features and investigations

New and traditional media is converging - traditional media outlets online

adopting new media practices. Journalists acting more like bloggers

In future it will be less about newspapers, television etc but more aboutgeneric, trusted media brands


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What does this mean for brand communicators?

Stop thinking in terms of print / broadcast / online outlets - think of where contentcan go across news brands

Personalise your information to the journalist / blogger concerned - they arebrands in their own right. What outlets does s/he have other than the normalpublication. Is s/he active on Twitter, does s/he have a blog - both an official andunofficial

Be aware of a reduced news cycle - the press release loop where you go through 12people to get it approved doesnt work anymore


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What does this mean for brand communicators?

Stop thinking of the big number. Journalists read blogs. Blogs affect search.Even a blog with 100 daily readers can have an impact of what people think aboutyou

Without engaging in brand spam, think about how you can integrate your news

operation into social media as a whole


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Thank you!Any questions, [email protected]

The Future of Newspapers in an Online

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