People care about news, they just don’t want to read newspapers
Jason Kaneshiro wrote an interesting post at Webomatica entitled “I Don’t Read Newspapers, But I’d Read Your Blog” in which he challenges Steven Rattner’s (WSJ) viewpoint that Americans are less interested in ‘real news’ and more concerned with entertainment and gossip.
It’s all a response to the ever declining readership of newspapers. Jason’s headline sums up his desire to read the news, but to do it using a medium that offers greater choice and interactivity.
The content contained in a newspaper is totally interesting to me. It’s the dead tree media – the delivery mechanism – that I despise. I also hate the total lack of communication with other readers and writers. I can’t hyperlink to a page in a paper, I can’t easily copy it and email it to anybody, and I can’t reference it on this blog. I even get frustrated turning the pages because I can’t just find a headline I like and click on it.
His recommendation to traditional publishers is that they pay their journalists the same rate, give them some blogging software, and get them working on the Internet instead. He notes that there’s still a general lack of quality writing online, and that trained journalists who are used to working to daily deadlines should find it easy to write ‘smart, fast, accurate, and interesting writing’.
Wishful thinking?
Yes, wishful thinking for the immediate future. And it is useful to acknowledge why. Money. It’s likely very few if any of the dead tree media are making the revenue online that they do from their pen and ink products. So how do they cast aside those profitable products and go online and pay their journalists what they always did? And no, the economies of not printing a product are not enough to make up the difference. Advertising on the internet is so different. Buying space, like you do on paper, and buying some action, like often is the case on the Web, is a different ball game — and frankly one that right now doesn’t look as profitable to paper publishers. Consequently it is taking some time to move from one model to the other.
PS: Contrary to some others, I also think journalists should make great bloggers.
That makes sense. So what you’re saying is that advertisers are supporting print newspapers (certainly subscriptions aren’t). I guess it’s just a matter of time then, since as subscriptions fall, there’s obviously less of an audience for those ads.
There sure are tons of ads in newspapers these days. Almost like a spam blog! :)