I continue to read post after post after post about how the newspaper industry is going under and what can be done to resurrect it using various new distribution models and monetization strategies.
While I absolutely agree that the physical manner in which people consume news is changing, I believe there is an even bigger pressure point for the news industry: publishing news that people care about. At a high-level news is simply new information. Newspapers have long held the vaulted position of being able to dictate what is important, focusing on publishing content on politics, war and economics. Although I constantly read articles suggesting that young people don’t read newspapers, I’d bet anything that the average person under 35 actually consumes more news than ever before — it’s just not the news of our parents’ generation.
News Is About Attention
The content of traditional newspapers has an increasingly difficult time competing for people’s attention. Whereas newspapers were long the only distribution source for emerging information (and thus able dictated what the news was), the web has essentially created an entirely new news marketplace. The long-tail enables information availability on virtually any person, place or thing worth keeping tabs on. As a result people have begun to allocate their attention to those news items they find most interesting and can relate to best.
And what do people relate to best? Local, me-centric and celebrity content. For example, if you were to compare new US Weekly subscriptions in the last five years against new subscriptions to the The New York Times I would bet that they’d be inversely correlated. And — the New York Times understands this. The most popular content newspapers have is made available by simply viewing the most emailed or viewed stories (see image below). These popular stories are rarely about global issues like Darfur and instead are usually focused on self-help, movie reviews or technology. To further prove that news ‘in general’ is not in danger, just consider the explosive growth of ESPN over the last decade. With long-tail accessibility, the plight of traditional news makes perfect sense – people will allocate their attention to the information that directly affect their lives, less so to issues affecting them indirectly. The fact that a teenage girl knows some new detail about Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore probably does have more impact on her life than reading about Abu Ghraib. The ability to talk sports with co-workers can be a ticket to a promotion or making friends.
Are We Really More Connected, or Simply More Accessible?
Many assume that globalization and the internet bring people together in a much more connected way. However, from what I have observed, just because we have the ability to access something does not mean we truly have any greater interest in or connection to it. There is a difference between connection and accessibility. In term of news, our access to information may actually sever to disconnect us in a a sense. Access can now serve as an excuse for not staying informed due to the ease and obvious nature of accessibility (ex: “Oh, I can just go read about it onWikipedia or Google it”).
Contrast that with what it means to feel connected. After World War II, there was a very real and clear sense of how the events in far-flung countries could collectively impact the world. This sense of inter-connectedness led our grandparents’ generation to place a great importance on news in the traditionalgeo-political and economic sense; what happened overseas could truly impact everyday Joe plumbers. However, in a world that hasn’t experienced such levels of global dependence and connection, the priority has returned to keeping current with the things, people and places that we encounter everyday. Me-centric news is powerful. For example, if you’re diabetic and have an aging parent, the most valuable news to is specific to your particular situation. And the more of it, the better! My guess is that celebrity news is so popular, in part, because we engage with these celebrities regularly, listening to their music and watching their movies and television shows.
Understanding Demand: Customer Development
To survive in this day and age, leading news sources need to prioritize their content offerings based on what garners their audiences’ attention. Readers may say they want traditional news (politics, economics, etc), but where they spend their attention speaks differently. As private companies, newspapers need to figure out a way to increase their relevancy not only at a distribution level (how do people want to engage with content?) but at a content level (what type of content do they want to engage with?). How can they do this? First, I believe that newspapers need to increase their relevancy by embracing amateur publishers and gaining more long-tail content. The New York Times should sponsor and pay certain bloggers, offering distribution and credibility in exchange for targeted andmonetizable content. Second — and though it pains me — I believe that newspapers need to embrace tabloid and popular consumer news. The New York Times should consider acquiring sites like TMZ.com, along with new distribution platforms like Twitter. It may sound crazy, but it really isn’t. If the Times applied its years of experience and strategy to more popularized sites [using different branding perhaps :) ] it could easily create multiple newmonetization channels. Take as an example the success of NPR. One of the most archaic communication mediums, raido, is flourishing thanks to a maniacal focus on customer-demanded content. Newspapers desperately need to read Steve Blank and engage in customer development. There is still time to right the ship.
