The Google announcement should come as no surprise to anyone, in the business or not.

Google’s auction operation will now take bids for newspaper ads for fifty major newspapers around the country – and it’s the big guys: Gannett, Hearst, and the
Tribune companies to name a few.

A three-month test? Now let’s slow the boat down for a minute. Let’s see what we have here. We have an industry with losses in every profit center, i.e. retail, advertising, national advertising, circulation, and let’s not forget the biggest loser – classified. Many of these losses can be directly tied to the machine we call Google.

Here is the part I really like – “The new system will begin a test with 100 advertisers. Google will not earn any revenue during this test.”

Okay, so we have 100 advertisers, theoretically and potentially new business for Google, and these advertisers are going to be handed to us – no cost, no obligation – for a period of three months. What happens after that?

I read an article the other day that said newspapers need to quit worrying about making Wall Street happy and start concentrating their efforts on cultivating their customers. How true.

That said, the Google newspaper test will provide much needed revenue for these papers, develop a revenue model for all to follow, and Google will make it easy for publishers to reap the revenue. My prediction? We wont read much more about this marriage. It will quietly continue; no big announcements or fanfare. Other players that were not a part of the pilot program will want their piece and Google will be happy to give it to them. And you guessed it – Wall Street will be happy again.

The obvious question: is this good for the newspaper industry? This author thinks it depends on which newspaper industry we’re taking about. If we’re discussing the business that once was the breakfast staple of America, then no. If we’re talking about Wall Street, then yes.

Now is not the time for blame, what-ifs, or whys. Now is the time to figure out who and what is important. If you are a publicly traded company, good luck. I don’t see an out for you guys. Your bankers want return, plain and simple. If you are a privately held company, then you have to move if you aren’t already.

Just a couple of years ago I was a marketing director for a large group of weeklies. We had a mantra, so to speak. It was “Back to Basics” and although we couldn’t ever truly embrace this concept, the newspaper owners and managers of today, must!

Start with your customers – simply put, the reader and the advertiser. What do they want and how are you going to get it to them? Work on identifying the needs, remove roadblocks, forget the old business model, and move forward. It’s not going to be easy, but as a newspaper industry veteran and even longer newspaper reader, I believe it will be worth it. I look forward to the day when newspapers can say the report of my death has been greatly exaggerated.

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Todd Williams spent thirty years in the newspaper business. He is now the owner of Noapples.com, an award winning newspaper website development firm and administrator of GreatNewspapers.com. He can be reached at todd@greatnewspapers.com.