[pvoce]

It takes a little bit to watch the presentation, but very well worth it. It explains very much how many of the DM papers are still trying to boost the paper end of the business, but not the community end.

[GeronL]

abb will be very interested in this thread

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

I thoroughly enjoyed a panel discussion featuring some of the luminaries of a defunct New York paper. A very bitter bunch, they were very aware what had killed the paper, and terribly resentful at the public.

First of all, they shunned local news, because it was “boring”, and pointing out that there really was no local paper in the whole city, even though that is what the ignorant masses wanted. And as far as State, national or international news went, it was all wire service news, because it was tedious to actually collect news.

What they really wanted to do was report on what the small clique of the rich and artistic did at the cocktail parties they attended, because that was the only news that was interesting, even though the stupid peasants couldn’t appreciate such enlightenment.

So it was the public’s fault that the newspaper failed, even though they did everything that a newspaper is supposed to do, at least according to journalism schools in the US.

It was pretty obvious that what that newspaper had long needed, beyond anything else, was a hard nosed editor and “beat” reporters willing to use shoe leather to collect the news. College degrees were pretty useless in this endeavor.

That no one in the entire city of New York has had the idea to make a local paper, say with one edition per borough, in decades, is it any wonder that New Yorkers don’t buy newspapers like they used to?

But if you talk to a journalism school newspaperman, more than anything else, he will assure you that there is only one way to do a newspaper, and that any other way, at all, is heresy.

Say goodbye to the nice dinosaurs.

[angkor]

Thanks for the link, I’ll watch the vid sometime this weekend.

I did read the article and the comments, and one point that’s lacking is this:

The newspaper’s customer is the advertiser.

The newspaper’s product is the audience.

Newspapers and other print media have almost never made $$$ purely from subscription revenue (except specialty newsletters). Traditionally (for the 19th and 20th centuries), content has always been a cost-center.

So the very real and serious challenge for today’s media is how to present and sell advertising online.

Google has one answer, and it doesn’t depend upon the “old” print model.

Whoever finds the next model will be as successful as Google. If there *is* another model.