…and that’s the News
Ok, to continue on my journalism rant…
I think the news is changing and the sad thing is most newspapers are in a not keeping up. How has blogging, the internet, and citizen journalism changed how many of us get news now and how we will find it in the future?
At this time newspapers are failing, not all together the fault of their own. Most newspapers are own my corporations with stock holders. While the papers are for the most part profitable, stock holds and in turn the corporations that answer to them want the papers to make more money each year, to turn more and more of a profit every year. The newspaper business was never set up to make more money every year, but to rather have a consistent stable revenue and their main function…to inform the public of news-worthy events. But the parent corporations continue to demand more, staff has been cut, budgets slashed, in turn causing paper’s news coverage to falter, become spotty and just become insufficient for the communities they are their to serve.
Enter the internet age. Papers have been slow to respond to the growing change in technology or unwilling to adapt to become viable on the web. The traditional newspaper model doesn’t work anymore. People will not wait to read their news in the next day’s paper, everything is immediate and breaking news needs to reported on as soon as it happens.
Take for example 9-11. At the time I was working on Netscape and CompuServe’s News Channels (basically the content with different name at the top of the page). We had stories up minutes after the first plane hit the towers. I had photos up an hour later, and a photo gallery up shortly after that. Over the next week I published over 20 galleries with 12 photos in each of them, ran images all over our service to go with breaking stories and commentary. At a time like that, do we want to wait till the next day to read our news? The age of the internet is here and it’s not going way (or a fad as some editor may have thought).
So why are newspapers fighting it so much, the sacred newsprint paper copy. Yes, the physical paper won’t go away, but it shouldn’t be the main source for news. There is a revenue stream on the internet, it’s the same thing that the paper uses to make money, it’s called advertising. But it’s got a distinct advantage over the paper edition. It can be tracked, how well it’s doing, targeted marketing for different areas, readers, and demographics. it’s working like hell for someone like Google and the advantage the newspaper has it that it knows it’s market (or should) and can tailor ad packages for their clients.
I know what your thinking, I hate ads on the internet, their annoying and stupid for the most part. I agree. But if advertising is done correctly it’s actually good for the consumer. Say your reading about sports, target sports type of advertising to those pages, not financial ads.
Ads are not going away, it’s the price we pay for the services provided and as long as they are not spyware or intrusive I’ll have to problem with it.
So the management of papers need to realize what papers are and where they need to go, hire the right people to do report stories and actually deliver news. Reporters report, photographers shoot, editors….need to deliver the content quickly and in the right form….paper and cyberspace.
The only problem I have with using the Internet for news is how slow my computer is. Granted I could fix the problem, but I don’t want to spend the money. I love getting the paper, but I agree about corporate greed hurting not just the newspaper, but also other industries and the consumers and workers. In my perfect world, we could get all the news we needed through the Internet and or the newspaper (with out crawling through he flower bed to fetch the paper) and to top it off everyone would recycle their paper.
I agree. I don’t think the newspaper is going away in it current form. But, changes need to be made, they need to be current with technology, events, and most of all their readers. Use the paper to drive more people to check for more in-depth article on the website, more photos, video, blogs, message board. Create a sense of community WITH their community. Though I think it will still be hard to do while budgets are being cut and they refuse to hire the right kind of people for the job.
It seems that many people are hiring the wrong people for the job. It only set up the person they hire for failure and the company they are working for up for failure. I have seen is up close and person and it is so infuriating! The right people are out there if you are willing to look for them. You just have to know where to look.
I couldn’t understand some parts of this article s the News, but I guess I just need to check some more resources regarding this, because it sounds interesting.