Slashdot on newspapers in the Internet age
It feels strange to agree with a Slashdot article, but it’s finally happened:
A truly Web-hip newspaper would not only allow but encourage reader comments on all of its stories, not just on a blog or two. With thousands of readers as fact-checkers, mistakes would rarely go uncorrected for long, and if there was any perceived bias in a controversial article, reader comments would make sure the other side got heard. Even better, a reader who witnessed an event the paper covered would be able to add his or her account of it to the reporter’s, which would give other readers a richer and deeper view of it.
The Herald, Herald-Tribune, and many other (if not most) local newspapers seem to think that they are still their readers’ primary source of national and international news, just as they were 20 years ago. So that’s what fills their front pages most of the time, with local and regional news stuck in a “B” or “C” section.
Welcome to the Internet age, local newspaper (and TV) people. I can and do get my national and international news from the New York Times, The Washington Post, BBC, Al Jazeera, Fox News, CNN, and other online media that cover faraway events better and faster than you ever will. I turn to you for local news. You tell me more about last week’s home invasion robbery on 11th Street East than they ever will.
It’s time for local newspapers to become truly local; to feature local news on the front pages of both their Web sites and print editions, with only a few out-of-the-area stories up front, augmented by an above-the-fold story list that tells readers where to find national and international news on their inside pages.
Some newspapers (and newspaper chains) will probably not survive the shift from news-as-monologue to news-as-dialog. Most will, although those that wait too long to adjust will have much of their audience, influence, and ad revenue taken away by more agile competitors.
The smartest newspapers will follow my survival recipe or come up with their own way to become an integral part of their community instead of a building full of people who have been sprinkled with Secret Journalism Powder that makes them better and smarter than their readers. These newspapers will not only survive, but prosper. They may even become the prime outlets for bloggers in their communities, which will increase their readership and ad revenue. Extreme ____-wing bloggers won’t want their words associated with the hated Mainstream Media, but most others will be happy to have a widely-read, influential outlet for their work.
Eventually, I expect print newspapers to become “snapshots” of their Web editions taken at 1 a.m. or another arbitrary time, poured into page templates and massaged a little by layout people, then sent to the printing presses, a pattern that has potential for significant production cost reductions if handled adroitly. From that point on, their paper editions will be distributed the same way newspapers are now.
Senior citizens and others who can’t afford (or don’t want) computers are and will continue to be a viable market. So will commuters who use public transportation. Then there are those — a substantial part of the population — who simply prefer reading words and looking at pictures on paper to seeing them on a screen. They will still want physical newspapers, even if they are not as up-to-date or as complete as what they’d get on the Web.
Except for the Florida business, a lot of this sounds eerily like things I’ve been ranting about for a while, either at poor Peter or online.
The good news is that it was my publisher who e-mailed me this article. That speaks well of the online destiny of the Daily Press family of papers.
- Spotted as a sidebar to the above article: A Virginia Tech article about improving your reading speed. I could definitely have used that in Comm Law and when polishing off my English major when at Tech.
- CJR’s take on what newspapers should do: Be more like Yahoo.
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Here’s a link–I bet you’ve already seen it (and if not, then your editor definitely has). The suppositions of the two jouranlists are interesting, and seem plausible. The media landscape they describe at the end doesn’t seem all that different from now, really. I mean, hasn’t the question always been, “Who has the time and resources to create media? Who has the time and resources to consume media? Who is willing to part with capital resources to consume produced media?”
EPIC
http://epic.lightover.com/ols-master.html
Comment by f. chong rutherford — December 4, 2005 @ 13:40
I agree, but a lot of folks in the newspaper industry (and media in general, since all of this affects the radio and television arms to a lesser degree) seem wedded to the old ways of doing things.
Luckily, my publisher doesn’t seem to be one of those. Obviously, protecting traditional marketshare (not to mention the jobs of the pressroom folks) is important, but he also seems interested in exploring new ways to deliver news in the information age.
Further details to come soon …
Comment by Beau — December 4, 2005 @ 22:31
One of my professors was an old newspaper guy, specifically a gossip columnist, who (essentially) had his head in the sand about things like this. He was convinced that the ‘Internet’ was just a passing fad. And it isn’t just newspapers; in addition to tv and radio, you can put ‘film industry’ in there as well. In the geek, for the traditional media outlets, ‘open war is upon you, whether you would risk it or not.’ I’m actually surprised at how quickly, and how prepared, some traditional media outlets have been for the changes. It’s like, people at the traditional TV networks were prepared for the ipod Video, and even had product ready to roll-out once ‘Lost’ became available on-line. That EVERYONE wasn’t ready is still telling, though. Some of the arguments about computer media, too (or the use of computers in media I guess, or the overuse of the word ‘digital’ in some media circles). It’s kind of like … digital isn’t a medium, per se. To me, it’s more of a method. In the broadest sense, that term describes a publishing efficiency more than anything (that crosses a lot of media). I mean, MS has this software–office notes–that you can take to a meeting and take notes with, right? But the notes you can take, if the computer has a touchscreen, camera and a microphone, you can use the software to record the meeting, along with whatever scribbings you make during the meeting, and then publish it on-line as a multimedia file within minutes of completing the meeting.
Comment by f. chong rutherford — December 5, 2005 @ 4:20