If it didn't bother you to learn that the New York Times, the one paper that's always supposed to make money no matter what, had to mortgage their new building just to generate cash to run their business, then it had to bug you that the Chicago Tribune and gazillionaire owner Sam Zell filed for bankruptcy Monday.
Still, none of that news rattled me as much as learning Newsday eliminated 100 jobs and the position of general sports columnist. The guys at my favourite sports blog, The Big Lead, say Newsday is setting a trend and that soon we won't have any more general sports columnists.
Dammit!
That's exactly what I wanted to be when I grew up.
Actually, first I wanted to be Lisa Lisa's husband.
Then I wanted to be some kind of undersized pro athlete, before journalism finally found me and I decided one day I'd become a well read, well respected and well paid columnist, like these two guys.
But how many folks even know those two were even newspaper columnists? Newspaper nerds like me know that the guy on the right, fellow Medill alum Michael Wilbon, writes a sports column for the Washington Post. The guy on the left used to, until he joined a growing list of high profile columnists to leave the industry over the last few years.
Why the exodus?
Nelson Muntz can tell you.
Yep.
Circulation continues sliding, papers keep bleeding money and, as "The Wire" creator and former newspaperman David Simon so eloquently points out, there's no love in the industry anymore.
So yeah, Nelson's right. Newspapers are dying and we're not sure if you members of the Internet generation will even turn up for the funeral.
But does it have to come to that?
Isn't there a way, short of a government bailout, to rejuvenate the industry?
The World's Greatest Sportswriter thinks there is.
I'll offer you the ideas below, for free, because I care.
But if nobody takes my advice now, you'll have to bring me in as a consultant later, and I'm warning you now I don't work cheap. I'll need De La Hoya money for my bailout plan.
Actually, the ideas I'm about to outline all fall somewhere between "crazy" and "so crazy it just might work," but either way here are my four easy steps to saving -- or at least bringing a little cash into -- the newspaper industry.
Actually, the ideas I'm about to outline all fall somewhere between "crazy" and "so crazy it just might work," but either way here are my four easy steps to saving -- or at least bringing a little cash into -- the newspaper industry.
1. I not to put too fine a point on this intricate, abstract matter, but PUT SOME DAMN ADS IN FRONT OF THE VIDEOS.
Newspaper people say they just can't squeeze the same ad revenue out of the Internet that they can out of the (increasingly less popular) printed page. I say they're not trying hard enough.
What about videos, guys?
What about videos, guys?
ESPN's figured it out. Those little ads aren't intrusive, and as long as people click that video, the network might as well make a little extra money from it.
So print folks, what gives?
2. GIVE IT AWAY, GIVE IT AWAY, GIVE IT AWAY NOW
Want to boost the readership numbers that in turn boost ad rates?
Give the paper away.
Next time you're on the Subway in Toronto, look around the car and count how many people are reading newspapers.
You'll find a bunch.
The problem if you love this dying medium is that three quarters of them are reading the free commuter dailies available outside every train station in the city.
Commuters prefer those papers for one reason:
The price.
It's not because they're easy-to-read tabloids, or because the populace has burned out their brains on TV and the Internet and subsequently can only handle the watered down, pre-digested news these papers provide.
People grab them because they're free.
If you don't believe me, leave a copy of the New York Times on a seat in a Toronto subway. If its not spoken for, someone will snatch it and start reading.
Because it's free.
Mainstream papers need to get a clue.
I don't mean doing away with subscriptions, or delivering the paper to homes that don't order it. And I'm not talking about setting up a booth in Union station and trying to force the paper on commuters both skeptical and pressed for time.
No, folks, I'm talking about guerrilla marketing.
I'm talking about sending people on to the subway, leaving a paper in each car.
Because it's free, someone will read.
Because it's on the subway, someone will leave it behind and someone else will read.
Now you've got five or 10 people reading each paper placed on the subway, and now you've got the readership boost you want to take to your advertisers.
Is any of that legal?
I don't know that it matters at this point. As De La Soul said, Stakes is High.
3. CO-OPERATE TO GRADUATE
Season two of "The Wire" and Stringer Bell's got a problem: low quality dope in the West Baltimore drug markets his operation controls. The fiends aren't happy, and they're not spending money. Stringer's not alone in this problem. This low-grade heroin is bleeding every dealer in West Baltimore, but only Stringer has the guts and foresight to look for a solution.
He connects with Proposition Joe, the East side kingpin and the only dealer in the city with a direct line to high-quality heroin. Together the two decide that all the big dealers in Baltimore will form a co-op. No more warring over drug corners and no more worrying about where the good stuff will come from. Everyone pools their money and, through Joe, buys straight from the source. When the price of the raw product drops everyone's profit rises. If the price rises everyone takes a hit.
So when news paper execs say they can't make the Internet profitable, I say they emulate String and Pro Joe and form a co-op.
My idea is far from fully formed, and I'll leave it to people wiser than I to refine the details, but the basic plan goes like this:
Newspapers have figured out that there's not much money in giving away the product for free online. They've also learned that there aren't many page views in restricting your web page to subscribers. It's easy, after all, to navigate to a competitors page and read for free. And the more papers that protect content for subscribers, the more cumbersome the Internet becomes for readers. We all like to read news from around the world, but few of us are prepared to subscribe to 50 papers to do it.
But what if we only had to subscribe once?
I'm thinking newspapers great and small across the continent form a co-op -- even team up with the Googles of the world if they have to -- and offer readers a deal:
Every paper worth reading is now password protected, from the New York Times to the Island Packet, and everything in between, but if you subscribe to the co-op you can access them all.
You don't charge people anything outrageous, because we've already established that everyone's favourite price is $free.99. Ask too much and suddenly people will decide they don't need "real" news anymore.
So you charge something reasonable, knowing that a subscriber anywhere helps newspapers everywhere.
4. GIVE EM THAT GOOD STUFF
Let's remember what prompted David Simon's drug dealers to form that co-op:
A dearth of quality product.
If you don't give people a reason to read, they won't do it, and none of the other stuff I outlined above will even matter.
But to give readers Prop Joe-quality content probably means concentrating a little less on the bottom line and focusing more hiring great story tellers and letting them tell great stories. Do that and you'll always have an audience.
I'm far from the first journalist to make this point, but it makes too much sense not to reiterate.
5. IF ALL ELSE FAILS.... OBAMANATE!
The numbers, pulled from this L.A. Times story, say it all:
If he can manage to win four or five elections a week for the next decade, newspapers will have cash to last them into the next century.
All we have to do is hope.
He connects with Proposition Joe, the East side kingpin and the only dealer in the city with a direct line to high-quality heroin. Together the two decide that all the big dealers in Baltimore will form a co-op. No more warring over drug corners and no more worrying about where the good stuff will come from. Everyone pools their money and, through Joe, buys straight from the source. When the price of the raw product drops everyone's profit rises. If the price rises everyone takes a hit.
So when news paper execs say they can't make the Internet profitable, I say they emulate String and Pro Joe and form a co-op.
My idea is far from fully formed, and I'll leave it to people wiser than I to refine the details, but the basic plan goes like this:
Newspapers have figured out that there's not much money in giving away the product for free online. They've also learned that there aren't many page views in restricting your web page to subscribers. It's easy, after all, to navigate to a competitors page and read for free. And the more papers that protect content for subscribers, the more cumbersome the Internet becomes for readers. We all like to read news from around the world, but few of us are prepared to subscribe to 50 papers to do it.
But what if we only had to subscribe once?
I'm thinking newspapers great and small across the continent form a co-op -- even team up with the Googles of the world if they have to -- and offer readers a deal:
Every paper worth reading is now password protected, from the New York Times to the Island Packet, and everything in between, but if you subscribe to the co-op you can access them all.
You don't charge people anything outrageous, because we've already established that everyone's favourite price is $free.99. Ask too much and suddenly people will decide they don't need "real" news anymore.
So you charge something reasonable, knowing that a subscriber anywhere helps newspapers everywhere.
4. GIVE EM THAT GOOD STUFF
Let's remember what prompted David Simon's drug dealers to form that co-op:
A dearth of quality product.
If you don't give people a reason to read, they won't do it, and none of the other stuff I outlined above will even matter.
But to give readers Prop Joe-quality content probably means concentrating a little less on the bottom line and focusing more hiring great story tellers and letting them tell great stories. Do that and you'll always have an audience.
I'm far from the first journalist to make this point, but it makes too much sense not to reiterate.
5. IF ALL ELSE FAILS.... OBAMANATE!
The numbers, pulled from this L.A. Times story, say it all:
The Atlanta paper initially printed an additional 55,000 copies to supplement its weekday press run of 375,000. But heavy sales forced the paper to print 150,000 more copies to meet demand.Reading these stats it becomes clear to me that the first African-American/Biracial/Kenya-Kan-Hawaiian president holds the key to the newspaper industry's future.
USA Today boosted by 500,000 its weekday press run of roughly 2 million. The Washington Post, the fourth-largest paper by circulation, planned to print 350,000 papers and then sell them for $1.50, triple the regular newsstand price.
The Los Angeles Times printed 107,000 papers in addition to its weekday press run of 750,000, and sold some at retail outlets because copies were being pilfered from newsstands. Meanwhile, a steady stream of customers came to the Times' headquarters in downtown L.A. to buy copies of the paper.
If he can manage to win four or five elections a week for the next decade, newspapers will have cash to last them into the next century.
All we have to do is hope.
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