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Its becoming Clear that the Newspaper Industry is going to Die Out

There are so many dire newspaper news threads it’s overwhelming -

1. Rupert Murdoch and AP are accusing Google of stealing. An obvious sign of desperation – TechCrunch calls it the death wheeze of newspapers.
2. Google CEO Eric Schmidt is going to talk at the Newspaper Association of America’s annual meeting.  (BTW, if Newspapers think Google News steals their content, wait till they try out Google Quotes).
3. Morris Publishing Group (publisher of The Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville and a dozen other dailies) has avoided a debt crisis that could have forced it into bankruptcy. Seems like good news – except, it’s a mere 17 day extension on a $9.7 million interest payment. The total loan is a gigantic $413 million.
4. Its so obvious newspapers are dying because of free online content that Cable companies are beginning to wake up. 
5. Dozens of newspapers and journalists are writing about how newspapers are important for democracy.  
6. NY Times is threatening to shut down The Boston Globe. Boston Globe staffers are angry with their union leaders. And I’m amazed that Boston Globe Union Members get lifetime job guarantees.

The attempts to save newspapers (even innovative ones like this one by Minneapolis Star tribune journalists) are not enough.

Everyone is in Denial – However it’s Inevitable

Here’s the fact that everyone is trying to avoid -

The newspaper industry is going extinct right before our eyes.

The accusations of Google, the moves to make online content paid, and other recent measures are the last dying gasps of newspapers. The newspaper industry has already taken the suicidal mis-steps that have led it to this juncture and they cannot undo it.

Newspapers bought into the promise of advertising revenue and gave away their content for free and trained people into expecting news content for free. Perhaps it was impossible to create a paid content model. However, we’ll never know because newspapers have already trained people for years and years to get news content for free.

Note that the single biggest mistake is not giving away content free – it’s the assumption that advertising revenue would make enough to justify giving away content free.  

People are not going to start paying for content online – especially not in the middle of a recession.

News delivered over mediums that train people to pay – yes. So iPhone and Kindle subscriptions will work. However, there aren’t enough users and these mediums are not advanced enough to sustain an inefficient, behemoth of an industry that gives people lifetime job guarantees.

It’s time to accept it – The newspaper industry is dying out, and there’s no way to go back.

It’s just like in Antarctica where a Jamaica-sized ice-shelf ripped away from its moorings and will now further accelerate global warming, which was already accelerating faster than anyone had predicted.

Whether you believe in global warming or not doesn’t matter any more. 

The irony is that this ice-shelf article (from the AP) is hosted by Google – the same Google that the AP is railing against, and promising to protect its content from.

So … What Happens Next?

We are going to see some rather interesting things -

1. Attempts (unsuccessful) to get Federal Bail-Out money.
2. Lots of legal cases targeting cash-rich companies like Google.
3. Blogs are going to become increasingly important and for all the talk of ‘the importance of newspapers to our democracy’ its going to be a good thing.
4. For all the talk of protecting democracy newspapers are fundamentally large corporations sustained by advertising.
5. The domains and content of local and national newspapers are extremely valuable. There will be many viable businesses built on these if they can be pried out of the hands of the dead newspapers.   
6. There’s a huge opportunity for both large corporations and small teams of people to step into the void.  
7. People who already know how to make money on-line (let’s call them Traffic Monetization Experts) will become the most important resource – the equivalent of software engineers at Microsoft and Google.

Fundamentally, what’s always been missing from newspapers is people who know how to make money on-line. Anyone who starts news-oriented companies or buys struggling newspapers (wouldn’t recommend it) needs to learn this lesson and hire the right people from companies like Google and Amazon, and more importantly hire people like Martin Lewis (Money Saving Expert) who get it.

Coming back to our original question …

What happens next?

Well, it’s like the financial crisis – no one really knows.

Thankfully though, we don’t have a bunch of experts ‘saving’ us and bailing out the incumbents – yet.

Filed under: publishing, thoughts Tagged: | future of newspapers, none