Tom Mohr gets it

Read and discuss: Winning Online: A Manifesto. It originally was posted in E&P, but you can't see the original without a subscription, so the link above has it.
Notes of interest:
1. His discussions of skill and scale. The skill part is pretty straightforward. The most important part, however is about scale - which, by golly, I recall mentioning to somebody.
2. His points about how local, small online presences generated by local newspapers can't hold the center against, say, Google. Painful, but logical.
Where do I disagree? It's not so much an absolute disagreement as a slight despair over the perpetuation of a newspaper myth, to wit: that the Web has had such an impact on newspapers that it is perceived as the chief and only reason they have lost circulation recently.
That is not true. Check the numbers.
First, proliferation of print products, even while newspapers have been closing, is a primary contributor to newspaper circulation losses. The paradox is that while many newspapers have shut down, the number of print products -- newspapers, special interest magazines, ancillary newspaper products -- has either held steady or increased over the past, say, 30 years. That proliferation has forced readers into choices, and subcriptions have fallen on average as a result -- but not necessarily in aggregate amount.
Second, and we keep saying it, but no one listens: The downturn in average circulation began long before the Web came on the scene. What has to be examined, then, is whether the circulation loss has accelerated since the Internet began offering news on a regular basis, and then whether that trend can be directly connected to the rise of the Web as an information source. Were I a betting man, I'd put my money on 'not'. I'm not being Pollyanna, here. I'm saying newspapers need to quit blaming someone else when they lose circulation. I'm saying here, and I challenge anyone to prove me wrong, that every newspaper is directly and solely responsible for every subscription it loses. The disease that hemorrhages readers is systemic, and not from an external virus.

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