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November 14, 2005
The printed newspaper: Time to make it free
The past week, newspaper editors have been arguing their house isn't on fire while overall circulation figures go up in smoke and the nation's second-largest newspaper company quietly puts itself up for sale.
Keep the blinders on if you must, but traditional newspapering is quietly fading into irrelevance. Obscurity is the industry's biggest threat.
As we wrote about in the Big Moo, the market forces of competition and efficiency at their ultimate levels are pummeling punch-drunk and margin-heavy newspapers.
It's time to make daily print newspapers free.
Newspaper publishers fear free like passengers fear Lindsay Lohan behind the wheel of a car, but free is inevitable. Craigslist (free ads) and Monster (free to read) are eating newspapers' classified-ad business -- the most profitable portion of the newspaper business. Some 21 million blogs are leeching away the time and attention formerly spent devouring newspaper stories. In the past six years, NPR (free) has doubled its listenership to 26 million.
For years, the free news weeklies found in millions of coffee shops and street-corner boxes have stolen about $500 million of ad revenue every year from their daily competitors. The free weeklies make money because plenty of wealthy, well-educated people read them... free is their inducement.
Free works. Free reduces trial barriers. Free makes reading easy.
Free doesn't mean free delivery; dropping a newspaper at my front door is a value-added service for which I willingly pay the Wall Street Journal. And a subscription base is a permission asset that most newspapers obliviously ignore. And don't even think about introducing Ideo-like innovation at newspapers; that costs money!
But free newspapers in the nooks and crannies of cities, at train stations, coffee shops, street corners, supermarkets and at the thousands of Applebee's locations in rural America means it's easier to create a newspaper reading experience. The Chicago Tribune has experimented with this idea via its daily Red Eye tabloid. After initially charging 25 cents, the company decided recently to make it free. It's a start.
"Anyone who is so wedded to the paid circulation model is way, way, way out of touch," says John K. Hartman, a professor at Central Michigan University who is studying newspaper circulation. "I would compare them to the people standing alongside the presses when the first issue of USA Today came out. They were alternately raising each of their arms to hold their noses."
Free is a stench to most publishers but free is the future pathway to staying relevant in a world of democratized news and information.
Other blogs that reference The printed newspaper: Time to make it free:
» PR Week's Free Content Decision from On Message from Wagner Communications
I don't pretend to know enough about their business model to give them advice, but I do know that when PR Week opened up its site free of charge for a limited time, it spurred a ton of blog links that no doubt drove traffic.
[Read More]
I don't mind paying for content that I value. In fact I do this on a regular basis for some online news sites. In return I expect not to be bombarded with advertising.
Yep, all true. I was inspired just two days ago to write about the same thing from a different perspective with regard to the disastrous policies at the New York Times in a post I called Charging to Be Irrelevant. This after letters to their editor (email version) went unanswered and (I can only assume) unread.
Antony -- that's another function newspapers are consistently lousy at: responding to their customers' mail.
When the Dallas Times Herald shut down in the 1990s, D Magazine said it wasn't death from competition. It was suicide.
By my sophomore year of J-school, I decided never to work for a newspaper. Even then (early 90s) I could see that their business model was a dead end and showed no signs of change. Switching a subhead font required three years of conferences, shouting matches and ulcer medication – I knew they would never consider electronic distribution, abandoning broadsheets, rapid-release special editions or anything at all radical.
The S.S. Fishwrap has been underwater for years, yet the staff types on…
Ben, funny you mention the Dallas Times Herald as the monopoly it left behind still hasn't learned how to manage subscribers (the real ones, not the over-inflated numbers that they told Wall St. last year). I cancelled my home delivery b/c during the week I never had a chance to read, then was offered the paper for $26 for Sunday delivery only, which I decided to do. They then "upgraded" me to every day, which prompted me to have to call them back and say I did NOT want the weekdays (again). I decided not to pay to renew, yet the paper has still been coming one month after non-renewal... the only guess I can muster is that they still need the number of subscribers to be high to support all those ads I have to get through to read the actual writing!
Although I'm not accusing any organization of anything, Jason may be the benefactor of a type of "channel stuffing" to keep subscription levels artificially high.
The same thing has happened with almost every newspaper I've subscribed to and later canceled (and a few I'd never subscribed to).
Just because the newspaper business is venerable doesn't mean it's position is unasailable.
Newspapers need to leverage what they do best (provide low-friction, highly portable access to information) and reduce their dependence on the factors that limit their desireability. That means finding ways to make more connections between the online information that can be kept current and the images and tactile qualities of the newspaper that is delivered to the home.
I've added this post to my list of blog posts to read on Friday (11/18) on my "Much Ado About Marketing" blog.
Thanks again.
Mike Bawden
Brand Central Station
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zubair@csebd.com
Chittagong Stock Exchange
Research & Information Services
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Agrabad, Chittagong 4100
BANGLADESH
Your opinions are nice, but recall data clearly demonstrates that paid vehicles are better read. That's a better value for advertisers, and for the readers, as better journalists can be hired, updates will be more frequent, etc.
Will I pay $100+ year for a publication with specialized content like Harvard Business Review? Absolutely.
But newspapers are not in the speciality content business. They're in the mass appeal business.
The print paper of today should be in the business of driving readers to its website, where the growth industry lives for advertising. And Wall Street rewards companies whose revenue growth looks promising. That hasn't been the case for nearly a decade at most newspapers.
It seems innovation in the newspaper industry is as important as last month's news. That's one of the reasons why I got out.
Nice and comprehensive site.
I think in couple years we wont see anymore print paper. tech i heading to internet paper
I think in couple years we wont see anymore print paper. tech i heading to internet paper
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i need to read .
