The Newspaper of the Future - 0 views
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It is now clear that it is as disruptive to today's newspapers as Gutenberg's invention of movable type was to the town criers, the journalists of the 15th century.
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The Internet wrecks the old newspaper business model in two ways. It moves information with zero variable cost, which means it has no barriers to growth, unlike a newspaper, which has to pay for paper, ink and transportation in direct proportion to the number of copies produced.
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And the Internet's entry costs are low.
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These cost advantages make it feasible to make a business out of highly specialized information, a trend that was under way well before the Internet.
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specialized media had been enjoying more growth than general media.
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A metropolitan newspaper became a mosaic of narrowly targeted content items. Few read the entire paper, but many read the parts that appealed to their specialized interests
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Sending everything to everybody was a response to the Industrial Revolution, which rewarded economies of scale
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Newspapers "keep offering an all-you-can-eat buffet of content, and keep diminishing the quality of that content because their budgets are continually thinner," he said. "This is an absurd choice because the audience least interested in news has already abandoned the newspaper."
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The newspapers that survive will probably do so with some kind of hybrid content: analysis, interpretation and investigative reporting in a print product that appears less than daily, combined with constant updating and reader interaction on the Web.
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But the time for launching this strategy is growing short if it has not already passed. The most powerful feature of the Internet is that it encourages low-cost innovation, and anyone can play
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Clayton Christensen has noted, the very qualities that made companies succeed can be disabling when applied to disruptive innovation. Successful disruption requires risk taking and fresh thinking.
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One of the rules of thumb for coping with substitute technology is to narrow your focus to the area that is the least vulnerable to substitution.
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What service supplied by newspapers is the least vulnerable?
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I still believe that a newspaper's most important product, the product least vulnerable to substitution, is community influence
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The raw material for this processing is evidence-based journalism, something that bloggers are not good at originating.
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Newspapers might have a chance if they can meet that need by holding on to the kind of content that gives them their natural community influence. To keep the resources for doing that, they will have to jettison the frivolous items in the content buffet.
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But it won't be a worthwhile possibility unless the news-paper endgame concentrates on retaining newspapers' core of trust and responsibility
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Argues that newspapers will need to get smaller and more focused on establishing trust-based influence. Interesting.
