The problem with Sundays (and Newspapers)
The problem with Sundays (and Newspapers)
Submitted by kpaul.mallasch on Mon, 09/18/2006 - 9:41am.Steve Yelvington has a great post today that started life as an email to Poynter's Online News list.
Newspaper readership has been declining steadily since 1970. Confronted with the Internet, newspapers generally have responded by creating "online newspapers," transporting a failing product model from dead trees to electrons.
The result has been a small shift from print to online and a large amount of crowing about "growing the audience" based on poor analysis of flawed data. The reality is that the genuine share of the market's attention continues to decline at an alarming pace.
Meanwhile, the "audience" is finding activities on the Web (but generally not on newspaper sites). Activities have to do with action and participation, not mere consumption.
It was at this point in reading that my mind started screaming, "Community! Community! It's about the community!" If content is king (and I still think it is) Community is its queen. And newspapers still don't get that. (For example, The Star Press, my former employer, is planning on adding a link to all their stories to their forums... finally, about 4 years after I first suggested it.
That they move slow is good for us independents, though.
These activities include meeting and conversing with with other people (not "rants and raves" but actual constructive conversation), photo and video sharing, blogging and other forms of self-publishing, games, and the pure joy of discovery that comes from exploring interesting and unknown territories on the net.
Yes, *moderation* is important. Very. And will become more and more so.
Newspapers -- online and off -- continue to be built around an assumption that there is a great unmet demand for news.
The reality is that people are drowning in news; it follows them around on radios and screens in cars, bars, stores, airports, even into elevators.
Increasingly, people say they don't seek news because they don't need to seek news -- if it's important, the news will come to them.
Sunday is a day when most people spend a great deal of time and energy away from the computer, engaged in personal and family interactions and amusement. Very little of the remaining time is spent consuming news.
This is the big answer, but I don't think newspapers want to hear it.
There is troubling readership data on Sunday newspapers. Readership, both of the content and the preprinted inserts that dominate American Sunday newspapers, is plummeting. This inevitably will lead to a collapse of circulation -- not immediately, because people are slow to take actions such as canceling a subscription, but it's coming.
Anyone, especially any editor, who says "we're doing all right" needs to step down.
It is long past time for a hard reconsideration of the basic product line -- followed by genuine change, not merely statements of good intentions (i.e. the "experience newspaper").
Genuine change needs to be built around thoughtful consideration of human needs. This is not a matter of tinkering with the existing product line and looking for ways to persuade more people to consume the existing content.
Here are two examples of human needs.
* In a big-city market, large numbers of people ride public transportation systems from suburbs. While on the subway they want to occupy their time constructively. What product, or products, would you offer them? They could be on paper or electronic (think iPod).
* Great numbers of women of childrearing age are now in the workplace. Many of them are not from your town, but moved there in the last several years. They lack broad, dependable support networks to help when a kid gets sick, when Mom gets stuck in traffic and can't get home, et cetera. What can you do to help them? (Think about facilitating social networks and microcommunities).Back when I was at the Star Tribune in the 1990s, publisher Joel Kramer came up with a mission statement that referred to "enhancing the shared life of the community."
The problem with mission statements is that most people think they're slogans. They're supposed to be prescriptions. If you take that prescription seriously you're going to be looking for new ways to do it, and developing radically new products.
We have to stop thinking of print as our core business. Our core business is bringing buyers and sellers together in local marketplaces. With that in mind, new products are a way of growing the core.
I do not believe that developing radically new products constitutes an abandonment of news. People expect news to come to them, and if we construct our products well, and connect them effectively, those products will be new conduits for news about public and civic affairs, even if they might be focused on personal needs.
Thanks to Yelvington for letting Journalism Hope republish this here.
Thoughts?
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Thoughts? Many.
Where Steve isn't absolutely right, he's not far wrong. My mental picture of the average daily paper -- of whatever size -- is that of a shipwreck victim who:
- blames the torpedo when he wouldn't steer the ship out of its way;
- seems to think advertising will be his salvation when it's the only thing more ubiquitous than news;
- and although he barely keeps his head above water, can sight no land in any direction and is clueless about rescue or survival techniques, calls out (as Steve noted), 'we're going to be OK.'
But Steve has driven me to this conclusion: There must be, at last, some real, considerate, deliberate thought given to what newspapers -- or news enterprises, as they might better be called -- are supposed to do and, therefore, how they are supposed to survive.
This is not to be critical of any of Steve's conclusions -- as I said, I think they're almost all correct or very nearly -- but his thinking is still shaped by the business as it is today, after decades of repeating a progressively outdated business model.
But some of what he has to say veers closely to a model that opens itself to question. For instance, can a news enterprise be all things to all people? I have no answer beyond a couple of observations:
1. Such a model places a great deal of reliance on the available technology. It's nice to have that technology and, to be fair, its reliability and flexibility do increase as time goes by. But as much as we believe in it, the average customer/reader/viewer/etc. doesn't. He or she expects a person behind every button or link, and expects that person to be expert and responsible. You cannot break a habit that has been reinforced over millenia. We all expect personal responsibility in business dealings, however slight. In plain terms, we -- whether we are huge, hidebound news enterprises or small, independent electronic pioneers -- ask too much of the technology. We must be careful about it.
2. If that poses a strategic obstacle -- and, given the average business model, it will -- we are compelled to consider what a news enterprise can, will and cannot and will not do. This is where, for larger enterprises, things get serious and painful. But we must hold up the lantern of good journalism, here, and insist on its value. By good journalism, I mean expert, well-presented, sober and responsible observation of the public square -- not the current trends of obtrusiveness, intrusion, gossip, speculation and agenda-driven coverage.
I'm sure we'll talk more about this. But those are my thoughts for now.
Good journalism
Participative web programming is just one of the many tools we have for developing new products around identifiable human needs. Basic conversation itself is one of those needs.
Whenever I speak about what we've been doing with participation on sites like BlufftonToday and SavannahNow, I take pains to explain that it strengthens professional journalism and should not be looked upon as a replacement.
All too often my audience includes publishers eager to cut costs who think "citizen journalism" will let them do that. I do think there's a strong business justification for a participative component of a news website, but much of that justification is indirect.
The ultimate goal is not to build a great website, but to build a great community where people care about local civic life and ultimately care about one another.
People like that are far more likely to read news (online or offline) than the generally disassociated and disaffected consumers we've created as a side effect of 20th century mass journalism.
Building stronger communities where people participate in local life won't solve all of the problems faced by newspaper publishers today. There are serious challenges from other directions, such as the economic restructuring of the retail industry and the replacement of classified advertising by (often free) Internet services.
But it can help.
There is hope in journalism
I would like to thank Steve for his response. I find nothing in it -- or, frankly, in his original posting -- to contradict. He makes by far the most logical and compelling case for changing the way we do things and the best and most realistic ideas I've seen for how to change them.
I am especially gratified that he has pointed out the truth about declines in readership. I recall working for a paper in the late '70s that died in the early '90s - before the Internet rose - and how readership was a problem then.
And I am sobered by a point which I must agree with: We at newspapers are responsible. I said it before and will repeat it here: We need to quit blaming external forces for our failures.
(An aside: I even believe newspapers should consider abandonment of the subscription model to use the print product as, more or less, a way to market their community-building products. That's right; I mean deliver them for free, to every door.)
that's my plan...
if i ever get to a print level. who knows. the site is still growing, though, and i'm witnessing some amazing things as a 'community' forms.
lots to do, tho, lots to do...
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