In the Can Newspaper Be Saved? article, Rich Gordon breaks down Newspaper Next’s suggestions on how a newspaper can stay relevant in the face of declining subscriptions due to online media increasingly fulfilling the modern day reader’s need for obtaining news. Newspaper Next states that the print industry has been blind to its competitors. Newspaper is a form of communicating news that has been around for centuries. It has withstanded news radio and television news, but is rapidly declining in its popularity with the introduction of the worldwide web. And although the web has been around for decades, it feels like the newspaper industry simply disregarded that medium as a non-competitor in terms of being a platform for a new way of presenting traditional information, like news. Much to the newspaper industry’s surprise, the web has become more accessible and integrated into people’s everyday lives. It has and is producing websites that fulfill a newspapers purpose – like blogs (see Shifting to Blogs), wikis, ad sites, etc. With the emergence of internet technology breakthroughs in the early 21st century, the web has catapulted into becoming a more convenient and favored way for many people to obtain their news.
In the Newspapers use YouTube video previews to attract readers article, featured on the USC Annenberg Online Journalism review website, two newspapers - the Dallas Morning News and the St. Petersburg Times are profiled in their relatively new and unconventional use of youTube as a marketing outlet. Both newspapers used youtube to market their investigative reports, citing it as a new way to attract readers and evolve in this new medium. Both newspapers had positive feedback on the effect of using youTube, but unfortunately were unable to accurately quantify just how much of an affect the youTube videos had. The Dallas Morning News videos had a few hundred hits a piece, while the St. Petersburg Times has had over 200,000. However, both newspapers did not track http referer addresses, post links, or conversion rates. This is understandable at first, especially if newspapers do not have the resources to do extensive website tracking. However, gathering tracking data is helpful, if not crucial, when testing out what method of marketing is going to work in order to stay relevant in on the web.
Being creative and learning from their competitors will be a few of the keys to attracting and keeping online readers. Gordon’s article mentions that newspapers now need to be portfolio driven, making it a goal to provide different medium choices to meet consumer expectations. I think this rings especially true with smaller newspaper competing with the New York or Los Angelos Times. Small newspapers may not have the financial means or manpower to create websites which have the latest widgets or technology to attract and keep viewers. So following in Dallas Morning News and St. Petersburg Times’ footsteps and utlizing already popular online venues like youTube is a great way to call attention to articles and give more variety in how their content is distilled. It’s not about trying to reinvent the wheel, it’s about how you can creatively partner with other resources and what ready made tools you can use to more efficiently reach your audience.
The traditional way of communicating news is becoming less relevant. The newspaper industry will have to more versatile and accepting of change if they want to stick around. And if they want to gain back their marketshare they will have to evolve into a new way of presenting news through the web.
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