Monday, February 16, 2009

Newspapers and textbooks. . or should it be Textbooklets

Newspapers are trapped by the idea that the only way to go forward is advertising. No doubt local advertising in Print and/or on the web is the at-hand solution to the "sky is falling," "Print is dead" conventional wisdom.

But once this all settles down, the newspaper companies left standing will need additional revenue streams. They should consider looking at the textbook, or better the textbooklet, business. The textbook business is due for reorganization, sooner rather than later. Every community is focused on the education of their children. The investment in education will only increase for at least the next four years. At the same time the pressure to do more with less will continue unabated.

One way newspapers can fit into high school education
My other blog, Tough Love For Xerox is focused on the Digital Print Output Industry. It's what most people -not in the trade- think of as Print on Demand. But POD is just the very tip of the iceberg. In today's post over there, there is an issue that might be important for newspaper publishers and editors, over here.

The context is a continuing discussion about textbooks. Yesterday, I found a February 14th post at Jim Burke's blog. He lays out the optimal teaching-English-High School-classroom experience. Today, I posted how digital Print might enable that experience, today.

The point for newspaper editors and publishers
From Tough Love for Xerox.
1. The article they read might be from that day's San Francisco Chronicle, downloaded for free as part of the digital version of Newspapers in Education program.

There are 9 more points at Reinvented Textbooks: Jim Burke's Use Case.
Versioned Print newspapers could be delivered directly to classrooms. Maybe three times a week. Edited with the classroom experience in mind.
My Weekly Reader for High School, on steroids.

Printed either in the school or the district. It would be Printed locally, distributed locally, edited in the Cloud, and contextually accurate for that community. It might have a "News in Brief" for international and national news, and two feature stories about that community. It could be newsprint product or a textbooklet.

3 comments:

  1. The content you have provided is pretty interesting and useful and I will surely take note of the point you have made in the blog.

    While I was browsing the Internet for ways to boost my website exposure, I read about how effective offline media is for getting additional exposure. Since online media advertising has become so competitive, I thought I will complement the online marketing efforts of my products with offline media advertising like newspaper and magazine advertising. This can be the best way to get a wider coverage for a website and draw additional traffic. I think it is a great marketing strategy to use both online and offline advertising to get more customers.

    I thought this information might be useful for anyone looking for solutions to get me-ore traffic to their website.

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  2. Thanks for adding some real world experience. Sometime off in the blogosphere, even after 40 years on the ground, it's hard to be sure one is not merely drinking one's own kool-aid.

    My take is that a website is best used to find and nurture your fans. Then sell them stuff they will want to buy, once you have them all in one place.

    Meanwhile, Print is the best way to get to top of mind with your fans. Mostly it won't convince anyone, but, when the buying event is about to happen, you will be top of mind.

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  3. Just one more...
    Print stays in the real world. Posts on websites exist for a day or two. Yes, they are stored forever. But it is always about the new.

    But Physical objects also function as tokens. As in "people like us, have that magazine, newspapers, texbooklet, in our house."

    "People like us" is the basis both of brand loyalty and social capital.

    ReplyDelete