Mar
25
More about moving online
March 25, 2009 |
There is a huge gap in opinion between people who think newspapers should go online or die, and other people who think something terrible is happening to newspapers.
I should admit that, despite encouraging people to compete with newspapers, I don’t want them to go away. I think of blogging as a supplement to the newspaper.
As you consider the facts, please consider all of them:
1.) Online is the perfect place for news. The web allows both for instant delivery and for a bottomless newshole. So you can get red hot spot news, or long in-depth coverage, depending on the situation.
2.) Online is not the perfect place for advertising. For a local business trying to reach its own customers, the web–for now–is practically useless by comparison to the local paper. In fact, internet readers don’t respond to advertising, and even resent its presence.
3.) Newspapers have already moved online. Newspapers are finally doing a fairly good job of packaging news online, with photos, video and other non-paper technologies. (And stories actually show up on the Web first, which newspapers couldn’t seem to allow until a few years ago.)
4.) Advertising has not moved online. Because there is no money to be made there. (Remember number 2?) That’s why newspapers have kept their expensive-to-print paper editions going. The paper edition is not a security blanket–as some seem to think–but more like a source of income to pay the people who create ads and stories.
5.) Papers are dying because businesses are not buying ads. It’s some combination of the economy and the loss of a percentage of ad revenue to the Web (but not necessarily to newspaper sites on the Web). But when banks and carmakers are failing too, I have a feeling that the economy is the larger part of the troubles of newspapers.
When you take all these things into consideration. It’s not just a matter of transitioning online. Because newspapers have been using the printing press to pay their bills.
Congress is considering a bill to allow non-profit status for newspapers. Maybe it’s not a bad idea.
I don’t know what the answer will be for the state of big, corporate newspapers, but I think that while they are struggling to survive, online journalists and political bloggers are going to have to step in and take part of the workload.
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