It’s rare to find anyone taking newspapers to task over the fact that they always blame extrinsic factors, their tools, and never admit any responsibility for the ongoing struggles of the newspaper business.
This post will do exactly that – with a focus on how newspapers are mistreating eReaders and Content.
Newspapers tend to blame their tools
For a long time newspapers (and magazines) grumbled about eReaders -
- They had no color and no video.
- The business model was terrible as part of revenue went to bandwidth and Amazon – allegedly leaving only 40-50% for newspapers.
- People weren’t paying as much for high quality content as they should.
Then we got the iPad with color, video, and a 70% cut for newspapers.
Guess What? Newspapers still aren’t happy and still think the arrangement and prices aren’t good enough.
Newspapers always find a way to blame extrinsic factors
Newspapers seem to live by the creed of ‘It’s not me, it’s you’.
They are creating top-notch content, they are serving customers excellently, they’re running the most efficient businesses around, and they’re perfect.
It’s the fault of the Internet and Amazon and Apple and readers and blogs and other sites that newspapers are struggling.
Consider an example -
Newspapers got greedy and tried to entice people in via free content and then sell them to advertisers.
Keep in mind that it wasn’t about making things easier or better for customers since they didn’t focus on additional services for paying subscribers.
Unfortunately, newspapers got taken to the cleaners by aggregators and other Internet companies that understood how to really work with the Internet.
How did newspapers react - Did they work on figuring out the Internet better? Did they try intelligent new models?
No. They are still blaming others and the New York Times keeps drumming up their paid content plan in 2011. One year on the Internet is the shift from MySpace to Facebook and NY Times thinks it’s doing a huge step by implementing a paid content wall one year in the future.
No matter what happens newspapers find something external to blame.
Newspapers don’t see content as their calling card and eReaders as their allies
In addition to blaming extrinsic factors newspapers are making two additional critical mistakes -
- They are viewing customers as their product instead of content. They want to sell readers to advertisers instead of selling content to readers.
- They see channels of good intent (iPad, iPhone, Kindle) as their enemies and not as allies.
Newspapers produce content, not cattle for advertisers
Consider the focus newspapers have had -
- We want to get lots of readers in the door and then sell them advertising.
- We want to get customer information so we can develop marketing plans and sell that information to advertisers.
- We want to give away content free and entice readers who we then monetize.
Were newspapers producing high quality content for readers to buy or were they providing trusting subscribers to advertisers?
Not only was newspapers’ approach morally dubious it was also strategically myopic -
- They had no expertise with the Internet.
- The real money-making point is before reaching the content – not after getting to the content page.
- Newspapers had little expertise in advertising online.
- Their brand and trust was gradually transferred to aggregators and other sites.
- They didn’t invest enough in quality content.
Newspapers thought they could fool people into clicking on advertisements and instead they got fooled into devaluing their content and making other companies rich.
Newspapers are attacking their only allies – channels of good intent
On the Internet readers expect free and almost never pay for subscriptions. Yet, newspapers continue to give away their content for free online - searching for an El Dorado of advertising revenue that hasn’t materialized in 10 years.
On the Kindle and iPhone (and soon on the iPad) readers are willing to pay $10 to $15 a month. Yet newspapers want to exploit those good customers by pushing for higher prices, lesser features, and poor service.
What would a smart company do when choosing between a $10 a month channel with little piracy and a free channel with loads of piracy?
Pick the former and close out the latter.
What are newspapers doing?
They are sabotaging the good channels – Instead of turning the Kindle and iPhone into channels will millions of paying subscribers they want to limit them and strengthen the Internet which is a channels of tens of millions of non-paying non-customers.
Newspapers ought to be written for users, read by users, and bought by users
Advertising based newspapers cannot work
We’re no longer in a world where people are gullible and you can sell them to advertisers.
The only companies succeeding with ads are search engines and they don’t really run ads. ‘Well targeted, relevant ads’ are code for ‘Taking users where they already wanted to go’.
That’s why you never have ads for tractors when someone searches for shoes. That would be advertising and that would not work.
The only people actually clicking on ads are the ones that don’t realize they’re clicking ads. Everyone else is clicking text ads that don’t look like ads and aren’t really ads – they’re shortcuts to where users already want to go.
Newspapers need to go back to their original purpose
Newspapers started off as news and analysis written for, read by, and bought by users.
Somewhere along the way they turned into elaborate, hidden advertisement machines. Instead of trying to find great content for readers they started focusing on creating great consumers for advertisers and companies.
All we hear from newspapers is how they would like things to be, how bad things are for them, and what helps them.
Customers have become a secondary concern. Is it any wonder that customers are turning away from newspapers?
Newspapers should consider selling content
Newspapers are all excited about Skiff because it allows for ads.
Think about the ridiculousness of that -
- Advertisement supported newspaper sites haven’t worked online.
- The Kindle and iPhone have customers gladly paying for content.
Yet, newspapers want to focus on eReader devices that allow ‘rich advertising’.
No user wants ‘rich advertising’ – newspapers have become so delusional that they’ve forgotten users want quality content and nothing else.
Newspapers’ core competency is supposed to be content. Yet they want to try everything possible to devalue it and give it away while they try to sell ads – something that they quite frankly suck at. Most importantly – it’s something that doesn’t help their customers.
Why don’t newspapers just focus on creating and selling high quality content?
Filed under: content Tagged: | future of newspapers, lack thereof, utility of advertising
Amen.