Comments on: Andreessen’s newspaper advice echoes Grove’s, a decade ago

By: Christian Science Monitor says goodbye to print — mathewingram.com/work

Christian Science Monitor says goodbye to print — mathewingram.com/work — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 16:45:23 +0000

[...] Pat Thornton of Journalism Iconoclast thinks the Monitor model is a good one, and Marc Andreessen of Ning tells Portfolio magazine that he thinks the New York Times and other newspapers should do the same thing and “play offense,” but Salon co-founder Scott Rosenberg doesn’t think it’s quite that simple. [...]

By: The fall of my (former) industry

The fall of my (former) industry — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 03:48:48 +0000

[...] is an excellent article on why newspapers are doomed, both in print and online. These are some of the same things I said [...]

By: tjm

tjm — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 23:40:26 +0000

Russ Stanton, the latest LAT editor, said in a radio interview early this year that the LAT web revenue was at or near the break even point of editorial costs, meaning that assuming continued modest growth since, it could support the newsroom right now. The problem many newspapers have been having is not that the web isn’t profitable, it’s that it isn’t profitable enough to sustain their owners at the levels to which they had become accustomed. Or, as in the case of the LAT and Tribune, not profitable enough to support Sam Zell’s debt. The great irony is that the traditional newsprint product, over the decline of which so much angst is being spent, is still a cash-flow powerhouse. People won’t get rid of it because it’s too profitable.

If I owned a newspaper, I’d get rid of the trucks and the trees tomorrow, give every subscriber a custom Kindle or netbook-type device, in-home training in how to use it and make myself into a media, database and internet-training company. I would consider partnerships to build out civic WiFi infrastructure and paper (sic) the circulation area with video readerboards of the newspaper’s content.

By: » Blog Archive » Stop The Madness, Stop The Presses, Online Publishing Is The Way To Go

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 21:59:56 +0000

[...] to no impact on our business. Ok, if you didn’t believe me then, do you believe me now? I’m not alone in saying that newspapers have become basically irrelevant. Economic realities have forced [...]

By: Scott Rosenberg

Scott Rosenberg — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 21:46:47 +0000

I’m with you on most of that. I just doubt newspapers will make these hard choices until it’s much too late. Too much pride, too much head-in-the-sand thinking, too much unwillingness to give up on an outmoded but still partially lucrative business model, too much confusion between the “product” (paper goods) and the service-that’s-valued (providing news and information).

In other words — yes, they’d have to “turn their heads around” and no, I don’t think they will.

By: Newsmaven

Newsmaven — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 21:37:39 +0000

It’s true there are a lot of community papers out there that have some life left in them. They’re making money while most of top metro papers are not.

The Monitor is stopping its print edition, but will keep some kind of weekly magazine. Politico, as pointed out, stays afloat via their print side. The Times, if they put a yardstick to it (which they surely do), probably loses money on most weekdays and rakes in cash on Sundays.

This points to a transitional model that’s a digital/print hybrid which could take many forms in different places. To do this, however, newspapers first have to turn their heads around and decide, finally, that they are digital businesses, focused on publishing online content and creating online communities, 24/7. No US newspaper organization, including the Times, has truly done this—they continue to be organized around that evening deadline for the print product, and everything else is secondary. And their reporters and salespeople continue to carry business cards with the prominent name and logo of the printed paper, not that of their web site.

Andreessen’s solution is radical, and he probably knows it’s not going to happen, not right now. But the Times and all other daily newspapers could, and should, consider the radical-enough solution of going digital by dropping everything except a profitable, ad- and feature-laden Sunday package (and probably switching that to Saturday publication). Cutting out six mostly break-even distribution days a week would be a lot smarter than cutting out 40 percent of their news staffs.

By: Walter Abbott

Walter Abbott — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 21:03:00 +0000

Newspapers never were producers of a product. ‘News’ isn’t a product, it’s merely distributed information and newspapers are just one of the distribution systems.

The worth to advertisers was the monopoly that newspapers had on distribution via a durable media. Newspaper could always tell advertisers that unlike electronic broadcast distribution, paper ads were semi-permanent.

That’s gone now. The internet is a technologically superior method of information distribution and can more efficiently deliver advertising to potential customers.

There’s nothing anyone can do. It’s progress.

By: sophie jensen

sophie jensen — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 20:39:15 +0000

Andrew Brown: what you said! Those toxic comments do drive away readers. Of course we know we can not read them but they have a hypnotic effect and once in a while there’s a gem like yours.
Without moderation many sites will become Idiocracy attracting only the sub-literate– probably not what advertisers want.

By: Scott Rosenberg

Scott Rosenberg — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 20:21:38 +0000

But will “most of your readers” prefer ink “for decades”? Really? Even as the grandparents pass away and the kids weaned on the Web and iPhones grow up?

I don’t know. Here in the Bay Area the community papers are already in trouble; this is an early-adopter kind of community, but it seems to me that the rest of the nation isn’t likely to be too far behind…

By: J. Todd Foster

J. Todd Foster — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 20:16:22 +0000

Not all newspapers will be dying such quick deaths. Community papers will be around for decades because most of our readers prefer ink on paper, not computer screens. And most of the advertising dollars out there are national ads, not local ones in small markets where much of the population is not wired.