It's ironic that the week the Chicago Tribune revealed Illinois Governor Blajogevich was pressuring it to fire editors whom the governor found offensive also happens to be the same week the media company filed for Chapter 11. With most of its operating units in the black, and with its importance to the community so well-dramatized by Blajogevich's unbridled hatred for much of the Trib's editorial staff, one can only hope that this venerable institution will survive. Unfortunately, like so many other major metro dailies, the Tribune and its parent are in trouble. They haven't figured out how to leverage the IP syntax and capitalize on the Net-browsing trends of the American public. The result: they continue to lose readers and ad dollars.
Seems to this CyberSibyl that most of these venerable media institutions have missed the boat. While some newspapers online offer blogging and the opportunity to submit user-generated content, they don't deliver on their true brand promise -- being a superior infotainment filter between their readers and the world...which seems odd considering they've always understood that what they cover is out there, and not self-created.
It has become economically almost impossible to prosper as a news organization today. The cost of editorial staff, printing facilities, marketing organizations, distribution channels, not to mention sustaining overseas bureaus etc. has made the business model problematic at best. And with the added challenge of losing audience share and ad revenues to other media (especially digital media), it's no wonder the front pages of many newspapers today feature their own obituaries. But rather than chipping away at the edges of new media by adding a few blogging sections to their online incarnation, newspapers need to understand that, in addition to their base business, they must transform themselves into news filters, in the way the yellow pages became Google. That is, they should not only sustain the core of their existing editorial enterprises within their editorial speciality (e.g. economic news from the Economist and/or The Wall Street Journal) and geo, but they have to figure out how to leverage their brand to become the online filter for all the sources of news to which consumers are turning today. Not just newspapers online . . . online news-peepers, if you will.
The New York Times, for example (sorry Martin), should offer online readers a fully customizable Personal FrontPage that enables them to import points-of-view and editorial content from multifarious online sources. You want social issues coverage from Mother Jones over here, you got it. You want economic insights from the Wall Street Journal and Forbes, here it is. You want specific bloggers -- pundits from the both the right and the left, Doc Searls on Technology, specific movie reviewers, specific horoscopes, specific ticker data. You get the idea. It's more than what Google offers via your iGoogle personal homepage. And, of course, in this particular example, it should emphasize and feature the resources of the New York Times organization.
Over time, AI could help the New York Times organization recommend new content streams to online readers based on their personal preferences, the kind of targeted content -- and advertising -- delivery that would enable the Times to command a premium on advertising since the personalization of the FrontPage would self-segment each reader.
Think of it as an editorial TIVO, enabling you to suck in news and infotainment from anywhere on the Web, RSS-type feeds from the blogosphere, in a pre-designed New York Times template.
Of course, not everyone will have the time and patience to customize their FrontPage. Some readers may be happy with themed templates -- the Indigo for liberal readers, the Crimson for hard righters.
And, to leverage user-generated content and the wisdom of crowds, you could invite users to rate FrontPages, to demote and promote as they see fit. Over time, FrontPage design celebrities would come to the fore. Not to mention those who simply want to follow specific “readers.” Who, for example, wouldn’t like to observe the world through the eyes of our new President? I’d like to see what Obama looks at online.
Finally, such functionality could be parlayed into custom news reports, yet another revenue stream available to these troubled media enterprises.
It made sense for news organizations to be everything to everyone when they owned the entire value chain -- from staff writers and editors to the printing presses and distribution channels. But that’s not the case anymore. Now, “news” is increasingly documented by some citizen observer/blogger and not just by traditional news professionals. People expect most content to be free, or ad-supported, just as the distribution through the Net is virtually free. And it you want something to hold in your hand (I mean paper and not a Kindle or laptop), you can always click on that .pdf button and get your FrontPage to go. It's designed and just-in-time printed exclusively for you . . . and it won’t smudge in your hands.
You hit the nail on the head. I am sure, before long, the black-and-white window to the community and world being delivered to our mailboxes, front porches, and driveways will soon be extinct. I still enjoy getting dirty fingers turning pages but, sadly, the largest content section of my local paper are the foreclosures.
Posted by: Lisa Drahorad | 12/30/2008 at 11:00 AM