Fitted for a coffin
The news for newspapers keeps getting worse. The Wall Street Journal:
The downturn in the newspaper industry is getting worse. . . .“Right now, you’ve got a perfect storm,” says Edward Atorino, an analyst with financial broker Benchmark Co. He predicts total ad revenue will fall 4.3% this year. The decline will be one of the steepest in history.
No surprises here anymore. But the real bad news is that we don’t yet see bold strategies for shifting fully into the leaner, meaner, faster, funner future. Jon Fine tried to push the San Francisco Chronicle into just stopping its presses and I agree that’s the way to think. I’ve said for sometime that papers just imagine not being papers anymore — and fast.
Kenny riffed off something I said earlier about journalism being a service as opposed to a product and found cause for optimism:
While the distinction may seem semantic, I think the industry’s mistaken impression of itself underlies its fear and loathing of readers’ migration online.As a product, newspapers are doomed — and their demise is coming a lot faster than many of us realize. But as a service, journalism and the journalism business have unprecedented opportunity. The sooner journalists start thinking of their business as a service, the better equipped they’ll be for the changes ahead.
Tags: newsinnovation, newspapers
July 17th, 2007 at 11:49 pm
“The sooner journalists start thinking of their business as a service, the better equipped they’ll be for the changes ahead.”
I’d add that the sooner journalists start to think of their readers as “customers” and not “citizens,” the better equipped they will be. I’ve never heard of another industry where giving customers what they want is considered “pandering.” To see the problem, I would encourage everyone to pick-up a copy of “The Elements of Journalism” by the revered Kovach and Rosenstiel. You will read such ego-boosting, business-busting tripe as “Journalism’s first loyalty is to citizens…Citizens are not customers.” Yeah, whatever. (Steve Boriss, The Future of News)
July 18th, 2007 at 9:07 am
[...] Jarvis e sumbru la adresa presei clasice, deşi el e jurnalist vechi şi încă mai publica la [...]
July 19th, 2007 at 2:47 am
Dead-Tree Editions Are Soon To Be … uh … Dead?…
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July 31st, 2007 at 4:30 pm
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