People Keep Talking at Harvard

Another interesting discussion at the Nieman Journalism Lab.
The topic for discussion is "

a group of newspaper executives” has launched NewspaperProject.org, which “will be devoted to insightful articles, commentary and research that provide a more balanced perspective on what newspaper companies can do to survive and thrive in the years ahead.”

After 30 years making and selling print and seven years teaching undergraduates, I suffer from the "What you should do is ..." problem. At comment 19, I said,

I’m a Print evangelist not a newspaper person, but the “sky is falling” stuff has been rampant in our industry for years, so a lot of it sounds familiar.

At any rate, I thought I would weigh in with what it looks like from the outside.

1. Newspaper companies are in trouble because of the massive debt they have incurred. The secular decline in readership has been going on since the 70’s. Profit was fine until advertising imploded.

2. The fact is that readers are a niche market. Most people view, scan, search Printed newspapers. Companies like the New Yorker have the best handle on the niche market of readers. Because of that fan base they seem successful with a read for free, pay for print, buy the stuff we make model.

3. The web is for talking, searching, and viewing. It is actually Telephone + TV +Search +a big filing cabinet+ the cheapest way to buy stuff every invented.

4. Print is for scanning, searching and reading for the mass market in phsyical space.

5. Since the real estate on the web is unlimited, the cost is going to continue to go down. Since the real estate in Print is limited, the cost can be stable. But it’s a location, location, location issue. If the Print is inserted in the right location with the right content, the advertising sell should be easy.

6. Newspapers should use the web to find and nurture tribes of fans. Data analytics are a big help. The number and quality of conversations started are a great place to start.

7. Once tribes and loyal fans are identified make stuff to sell them on the newspapers own website.
Why pay a publisher rent when the newspaper’s own website reaches the most probable buyers of a book produced by their staff. Given that the logistics of book printing and delivery have become trivial, publishing channels are a bug not a feature.

For the not readers, which is most of the audience, sell them posters, t shirts and tote bags.

8. Newspapers should consider the long tail of their content as a monetizable value. Consider replacing textbooks with targeted editions for students in K-12 focused on history, science, business, etc etc etc. Textbooks are another industry who’s value add is disappearing. Newspapers have massive under used capacity in their pressroom + they already give away copies of their editions as part of a “do good” program.

9. Reporters should be organized in teams of three to cover beats. Start with beats that are interesting to a potential fan base. Focus on that beat as a way to do business. Stop putting resources into following the news cycle. Devote the same place in the paper to that beat coverage.
As appropriate, print a special edition for the fans of that beat. As appropriate, print and sell and book covering that beat.

The same thing works for printing companies. Find your fans. Sell them stuff.

Meanwhile, by following a link from newsless.org I got to this at yelvington.com

The third role, the "town expert" role, is where we all fail.

Since he's a writer, not a printer, he said it much better. The town expert is the three person beat reporting team.

So this is cool. So far, 8:10, EST there were two responses.

I really like #8 and #9. Both think about “the product” in new ways

As I say from time to time, print is not dead. I especially like #6

Ah...the power of a checklist and numbers. It makes it so much easier to focus.

Gladwell wrote a great piece about reducing medial errors in the ER a while ago. I'm betting that if every editor and every reporter carried around a Printed checklist about the size of credit card, it would drastically reduce the number of journalistic errors and keep everyone on the same Page.

Looking for a New Business Model

thanks to Jeff Mowatt for the point..

Usually when printers or newspapers talk about a new business model, they mean "how do I keep making money doing what I'm doing, only better." Maybe that's not going to work as well going forward. Here's what Richard Branson said at Davos,

Worth the click @Victor Pinchuk Foundation:

"Business must achieve its goal - making profit. But at the same time it should increasingly focus on solving social problems. This idea Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Corporation, shared with the participants of the Second Davos Philanthropic Roundtable conducted by the Victor Pinchuk Foundation during Annual Meeting of World Economic Forum.

[for a full archive of information on the event - see project's page]

'Capitalism is the only economic system that really works', he underlined, saying that the downside of the capitalist system is accumulation of great wealth in hands of relatively small number of people. 'Not all of these people use their assets to create new jobs and new opportunities.' Branson stated.

This is precisely why social role of business, as said by Richard Branson, is so important in modern world. 'A modern company should focus not only on making money, but also on solving social problems and investing in protection of environment.' he said reminding the participants about his own initiative to establish an award for development of know-how to reduce emissions."

Its not about saving journalism. It's about inventing journalism.

Good discussion over at the Nieman Journalism Lab - A Project of the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University.

It got started yesterday with a post headlined Newspaper Staff Cuts. Good News? by Mathew Ingram, . There were 30 replies as of this morning.

In Comment 23 I said,

I think the issue is not how many editors or how many journalists, but what they do. I’m a Print evangelist so to me the idea that the web will replace Print as a revenue stream makes little sense.

The real estate on the web is unlimited. CPMS are going to keep going down and down. The real estate in Print is limited. But it has to be invested wisely, not try to do general news or compete with “breaking news”. That’s for the web.

I think it’s about great beat reporting. Choose your best reporter. Support her with a great inside person to cruise the internets. Get a great writer on the team to take the dots revealed and connect them in a great story. 3 people per beat. The writer on the team has to be responsible for copy editing. Everyone on the team is responsible for fact checking.

Then publish those stories in niche Print publications with advertisers who are interested in being in front of the fans who follow that beat.

I’m from NYC so ..for example medical care in the Bronx, in Brooklyn, in Manhattan. Then filled with ads for health care organizations in the Bronx, Brooklyn and Manhattan.
Or education or small business.

Zoned editions with focused stories with advertisers who are local.

For me it passes the “why wouldn’t that work test.” But as I said, I’m a printer, not a journalist so I must be missing something.

Thoughts?

In post 27, Matthew said

. . . .I think what you’re proposing is an excellent model, and one that is definitely worth thinking about.

In post 30, I said (slightly edited for publishing here)

I have to disagree with the conventional wisdom about ” the cost savings to be made about shifting totally away from print.”

It’s exactly the low cost of entry on to the web that makes it much less valuable. The cost of entry into Print and distribution is much higher.

From the point of view of aggregating eyeballs the web wins. If newspapers see themselves in the eyeball business it is rational to invest time and energy there. The problem is that the cost of eyeballs is rapidly going down to very close to zero.

Until there was serious competition in the eyeball business, advertising earned easy profits. The problem is advertising, not journalism.

The new opportunity is not saving journalism, but inventing journalism for a plethora of tribes of real people. It will grow by, among many other things, serving the niche, but rapidly growing tribe of people who read, instead of people who scan, search or view.

Use the web to identify and nurture tribes of fans. Use Print to sell them stuff they want and supply them with a physical search platform when they have some time during the day.

Besides why spend money rewriting Press Releases and calling it reporting. If you call it translating a document in corporate speak into plain language, it's much cheaper and easier. Sooner or later, some PR people will learn to speak in plain language for different tribes of real people.

Then it will get really easy. That means reporters can report. Writers can write. And if by some luck someone can find new patterns in the dots on the table, they can do "news analysis." But probably not every day. Unfortunately, "analysis on demand" is usually blablablablabla unless you have a really good budget.

Newspapers and/or Textbooks

I've been on my little soapbox about textbooks since 2006. In January 2006, I did a column at What They Think.com called Ipods and Textbooks. A while ago I did a post here called Watch Out Textbooks. For the folks in digital printing and POD, the version at my other blog is for you.

For our newspaper viewers, here's the argument about newspapers going into the textbook business.

NW Missouri State University Replaces Textbooks with E-books - Epaper Central:

"The pilot program, which used only the Sony e-reader preloaded with all the textbooks, was tested out with about 200 students in total. This spring they plan on expanding this program to include about 4,000 of the 6,500 students. They won’t supply e-readers anymore, but will give the student a package that pre-loads the textbooks onto their laptops.
. . .
This program is expected to save the campus over $400,000 a year, once they completely get rid of all physical textbooks. Most students spend over 1,000$ a year on text books, a price that is rising tuitions and making it more and more difficult for students to pay back their expensive loans after they graduate.
Princeton, Yale, Oxford and UC Berkeley are already targeting the Kindle for the electronic versions of their textbooks.

The use case:
A library of school board approved content in the cloud. Probably organized as a managed wiki. Next week the teacher is discussing the beginning of the Civil War. She goes to a GUI, clicks on the most appropriate chapters for her class AT THAT TIME, and within three days 30 64 page paperback books are delivered to her classroom. The content is limited to the beginning of the Civil War. The book contains a series of assessment quizzes she will give her class.

If your newspaper was publishing at the time of the beginnings of the Civil War you have the best content on the planet for the kids in your community. If you can unlock the content in the long tail of your published editions and reformat or even just select articles from those papers, you will be giving teachers a way to connect with history through the lens of their community. Priceless!

Or if you have a great science or business editor, and a long tail of content. Same story.
Or if you don't have a long tail of content, but have a science or business editor who follows current developments. Same story.

The trick is to link up with someone in the education space who understands standards and can help you write quizzes. The dirty little secret is that the only remaining value of textbooks is that they, not the school boards nor most of the teachers, set the framework for the curriculum. The other dirty little secret is that the real value of textbooks is the quiz at the end of the chapter.

Textbooks are the next to go. Their revenue stream is going to be worse than advertising, for them. But, given the talent at most newspapers, and given the deeps roots in the community, newspapers are perfectly positioned to win, while the textbooks lose.

What business are you in?

At the most abstract level there are only a limited number of businesses.

Sex
Drugs
Rock'n'Roll
The Rag Trade
Infrastructure.

The best business for the long term is infrastructure. You collect rent.
The best business for the short term is Rock 'n Roll. Big risks, big rewards.
The best business for fast growth is the drug business.
The lowest cost of entry is the sex business.
Most people are in the rag trade.

Selling printing is the rag trade + the sex business.

The rag trade is the right stuff for the right price at the right time. It's a great business if you can get the right stuff at the right cost and sell it for the right price. Consider WalMart.The sex business is the oldest profession. It's about delivering a "personal service". Consider barbershops, chiropractors and physical therapy.

The sex business is about making someone happy. It usually is not related to stuff. That's why the cost of entry is so low. The downside is that it is dangerous and unpredictable. You never know why someone is going to be happy. Mostly it is caused by things beyond your control.
Consider consulting, solutions provider, trusted partner.

Newspapers used to be infrastructure. They collected rent for the information real estate in Print. The marginal cost of Print real estate is very low. But not as low as the marginal cost of real estate on the internet.

The rag trade has the lowest, fastest cost of entry. It also is at the center of small business. Sell and deliver stuff at price that is less then your cost. The lower the cost, the less you can charge. The less you can charge, the more you can sell. Think Costco, Martha Stewart, the New Yorker magazine, ready to wear fashion and the Long Tail.

If newspapers used the web to get into the rag trade, every once in a while, they will stumble upon a hit. Think Obama's book sales. They have a shot at earning the rewards of the rock 'n roll business, without the risk. If they combine Print + Web, they will have a very cheap, very effective to sell stuff to fans. The marginal cost of the Print Page will get much lower. As newspapers continue to lower the cost of selling Print Page real estate, all the pieces are finally in place.

But then, you have all the problems of the rag trade.

Except for Rock n Roll, the general trend of societal evolution is to the infrastructure business.
Sex to infrastructure. Nevada, Amsterdam.
Rag trade to infrastructure. WalMart.
Education and government are now finally and quickly moving from sex to infrastructure.
Health is moving a little slower from drugs to infrastructure.

That leaves rock n roll. It's driven by creativity and the right movie or song at just the right time. But then, everyone gets the chance to be a star.