One of newspapers’ main advertising competitors is dead, though they haven’t acknowledged it yet. It’s the various yellow page directories, and the same thing happed to those ubiquitous yellow books that happened to our classified pages: the Internet. But there’s one difference, according to blogger Alan Mutter – newspapers could be in position to benefit from the demise of the yellows. You should read Mutter’s piece and have some serious conversations about it with your ad staff. The bottom line, Mutter says, is that customers won’t trudge through fat books looking up stuff when they can mouseclick their way to better information in seconds. How much is at play here? Mutter says it’s $16.5 billion. And guess who else is looking to cash on the deathwatch of yellow pages? Google, of course. But the blogger reminds us that Google doesn’t have even a fraction of the sales force that we have. And last time I looked, Google didn’t have anybody pounding the pavement in Brady or Dalhart or Corsicana or Mt. Vernon. Advantage, newspapers. Mutter summarizes the opportunity: “If you are a newspaper publisher interested in diversifying away from print while building a valuable, defensible and sustainable digital revenue stream, then it’s time to think about the online directory and web-marketing business.” So be sure to read this blog. And if you’d like to talk with someone about implementing some of these suggestions, call us at the Center.
Category: Link topic
The name is ePodunk. And having grown up in a town so small we used to go watch the druggist fill prescriptions on Saturday, I was a little put off by the “podunk” name. But I went, and I checked out a few Texas cities and a few in other states, including the Arkansas “podunk” where I was born. You’ll find lots of interesting information and links here on your town and those around you. Check this one out.
What reader wouldn’t love this? Marlene Skowran’s blog at PoynterOnline shares an idea we should all look at. The Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Wash., publishes “topic pages” that aggregate years of news stories. Check this out – no matter what your interest, from local history to sports, you can review lots of news stories with one click of the mouse.
AOL has announced its entry into community journalism. An AOL subsidiary, Patch Media Corp, has launched Patch.org, a series of hyperlocal news sites. Patch will partner with community foundations and other organizations to launch community news Web sites. At least at this point, AOL says its target markets are communities and neighborhoods that lack adequate news media. Patch.org is a charitable foundation that will return profits to the community it serves. Patch will include both news content and advertising.
The Daily Tribune in River Cities is going online-only except for its Sunday paper. The Tribune published five times a week before the transition. The paper cited shrinking ad revenue and high newsprint costs for the change.
Gone are the days when Americans got their news from only a few sources – maybe TV, a big-city paper nearby, and a community newspaper if they lived in a smaller town. The latest Pew survey, Understanding the Participatory News Consumer, shows that only 7 percent of Americans get their news from a single media platform on a typical day. Some 46 percent get their news from four to six platforms a day. The Internet keeps gaining as a news source – it is now the third most popular news platform, behind local TV news and national TV news. Where are newspapers in the American news diet? 78 percent get news from local TV, 73 percent from a national network or cable network; 61 percent online; 54 percent from radio at home or in the car, and 50 percent from a local newspaper. You can get a digest of findings at the Web site above and download a pdf of the entire survey at that site, too.
This isn’t a quick read, but it’s one you should probably make time for. It’s a scholarly study by Scott Maier in the j-school at Oregon, and it compares the content of five prominent Web news sites to a cross-section of U.S. daily newspapers. Here’s a sample of the results from Maier’s conclusions: “In a time of turmoil for the press, this study’s findings offer a refreshingly positive perspective for newspapers—at least from the standpoint of content. Clearly, newspapers provide a product that offers depth and breadth unmatched by their online competition. This is a selling point that has not been made strongly enough by the press. With most major stories authored by named staff, newspapers also boast a high degree of story ownership and transpar¬ency—attributes largely missing from some of the nation’s most prominent online services. In sum, newspapers have good reason to boast that they offer in-depth, independent news unrivaled even in the digital age. The findings also underscore some of the strengths of online news. Read¬ers who now get their news on the computer rather than at their doorstep are not likely to miss out on the big stories of the day. The study showed that both newspapers and online news services shared similar news judgments regarding news topics and story prominence. But reflecting the Internet’s international audience, readers online are likely to get a broader picture of what’s happening around the world than do those who exclusively read newspapers, as well as a slightly heavier dose of analysis and opinion.”
At the Center, we talk a lot about the Web and social media as being platforms that Texas newspapers cannot afford to ignore. Some believe us; some don’t. But please take four minutes and 22 seconds to look at this video – and remember that those who put none of their eggs in the new media basket will come to regret that decision. Not in 20 to 30 years, or when their grandchildren are grown, but probably in the foreseeable future. So give this a look and think about its implications. And if you’re motivated to action, one such action might be to sign up for our workshop May 27 on developing a Facebook strategy for your paper.
Here’s a startup to watch: it’s called Patch, and it’s a company that goes into towns without a community newspaper or where the paper is struggling and starts a hyperlocal Web site. Patch is exclusively advertising-supported. Advertisers can either buy the traditional ad or get an ad where they pay by page views — $15 per thousand at this point. Check out this Forbes article – Patch and other similar ventures are showing some success, and we predict that it won’t be long before more start popping up in Texas.
We’re in the middle of a recession and unemployment is up and circulation is down. But in Claremore, Okla., one small daily’s circulation is up almost 10 percent. Publisher Bailey Dabney of the Claremore Daily Progress thinks lots of newspapers have lost circulation because they expect to do so. Here’s a quote from the article: “Dabney said a common misconception from naysayers is that the public isn’t interested in newspapers, but he doesn’t take that seriously. ‘If you want to buy into the notion that nobody reads newspapers anymore, get a DUI,’ he said. ‘And see how many people call your momma wanting to know what it in the world is going on in your life that would have you get a DUI. It is just incredible the number of people that see everything in the newspaper.’”