Advice to Newspaper People:
Don’t Go Changing (Formats), Do Go Changing (the News)
Kindle Won’t Solve the Newspaper Crisis—Re-Defining “News” Will
By Scott Gerschwer
Apparently, perhaps by the time you read this, a large format Kindle will be released with the express purpose of saving the newspaper industry. According to PC World analysis, it would cost the NY Times company less money to buy and deliver a new Kindle to every subscriber than it does to continue printing the newspaper (what would their new sub-head be, “All the News that’s Fit to Kindle”?). So, of course, the print industry is all a twitter about the demise of the newspaper industry. But it will soon be evident that the problematic word in “newspaper” is “news”, not “paper”.
Harold S. Barnes, of the Bureau of Advertising, American Newspaper Publishers Association, once said, “To call up an image of the reader all you need to do is pin up a target. Then, starting at the outside, you can label his interests in this order: the world, the United States, his home state, his home town, and we’ll lump together in the black center his family and himself…me. Myself…I am the bull’s-eye.”
So, to use myself as an example, my ideal newspaper would have the sports on the front page instead of the back, and would have copious articles when my team wins and fewer articles when they lose, but when they lose would have more columns about what needs to be done to fix my team. It would also have some articles from around the league as I play fantasy sports and need to keep up with my players. When I get into the news section it would contain NO stories about celebrities or faux-celebrities or wanna-be celebrities and would focus on the wars, the Middle East, important news from Washington, D.C. and the most important local news, which would include local politics over lurid crime stories and the personal tragedies of others.
The whole second half of the paper would be opinions from various newspapers and perspectives by columnists I like to read, no matter what newspaper or syndication bureau employs them. Then a little bit about theater or movies, or a really spectacular art exhibition. And that’s it. That I would read. And I’d read it very happily on paper if the technology improved to a point where they could print something like that, by gaining the cooperation of papers around the country in a kind of news and opinion exchange program, and having the technical ability to print my own personal paper. I’d walk down my driveway—a fairly large commitment—every morning to get this paper.
Here’s what I won’t do—not now, not ever. I won’t buy a Kindle to read a newspaper that makes the same mistakes that print newspapers make: lurid headlines, stories that appeal to the lowest instincts of the species. In that case, I’d prefer to read it online, where I can pick and choose the articles for myself and even customize it right on my desktop. And, because I’m sure I’m not alone in this, the newspaper industry and the technology moguls and the printers ought to get with the program: it’s not the paper, it’s the news.
The lesson of flexibility and personalization and customization that matches preferences has largely been lost on these folks, who would prefer to blame it on paper and ink. I don’t ride the rails very often but when I do travel down to Grand Central Station, the NY Post or Daily News will get me there. If the trip was five minutes longer I’d be forced to buy the NY Times (I’ve never learned the proper technique for folding up the NY Times the way some commuters have, so that they can read the news a four inch square at a time—nor can I re-fold a map, or make a good paper airplane. And origami is out of the question). On the return trip I generally spring for a magazine.
There is one app on the Kindle that I think will be a winner: textbooks. Because I teach at a local college and the kids don’t know what to do with paper books. All they know is that they can sell it back at the end of the semester (usually in the same pristine condition as when they bought it) to get some drinking money. They are so electronically oriented that Kindle makes as much sense for Standard College Outfitting as a backpack and an Abercrombie sweatshirt.
The real savior of newspapers might be highly customized digital edition, complete with analytics to soothe the advertisers and links to dive deeper into the stories you like.
I’ll be giving a webinar on the benefits of Interactive Collateral Management, sponsored by Zmags, on May 18 at 9 a,m, and 2 pm EST. The information for joining me is below.
9 a.m. EST= http://pages.zmags.com/HowMarketersCanMarket9am-ext.html
2 p.m. EST= http://pages.zmags.com/HowMarketersCanMarket2pm-ext.html