Comments on: Is it Too Late for Traditional Newspapers?

By: CristinaPhillips

CristinaPhillips — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 09:27:06 +0000

Make your own life more easy take the home loans and all you want.

By: When Traditional & Social Media Collide - A Lesson From John Bryne

When Traditional & Social Media Collide - A Lesson From John Bryne — Tue, 05 May 2009 20:29:44 +0000

[...] in February I wrote a post entitled Is it Too Late for Traditional Newspapers? – Like many, I believe innovation and adoption of social media and online components will be the [...]

By: Matt

Matt — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 03:52:32 +0000

@Amy – I agree that newspapers are expensive assets as you look at the number of components that go into each. Unfortunately, I don’t think there is a profitable print model as the effectiveness of advertising combine with declining budgets of advertisers doesn’t speak well for their future. SFGate had a huge circulation, but were they really very innovative compared to some of the leaders like WSJ & NYT? Great comments!

@Chuck – Per my comments to Amy, the recession has certainly impacted the downfall of these papers. The thing we have to remember is that newspapers were folding well before any recession. My personal take is that local papers should consolidate and then focus on grassrooots journalism (both online with video & print). Let USA Today & online outlets take care of the national components. Thanks for your tweets & post!

@Krista – You’re very right that print media in general are being effected but I’m still not a believer that “traditional media” will go away (i.e., online takes over completely). Newspapers and magazines alike can learn lessons from the WSJ model when they decided to make their print stories more feature-like with online breaking the timely news stories. You are “dead on” about a move to online however. Thanks for joining the conversation!

By: Krista Holloway

Krista Holloway — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 15:10:57 +0000

What a great and timely post. Ovbviously, a strong online presence is a must for “traditional” media to keep attracting advertisers and readers. With that said, I’m not sure that is the only thing that can keep print media alive. Taking it a step further, there have been a number of publishers that have stopped magazines, as well–Domino, Cottage Living, O at Home. Is it just a dying medium? Are we consuming media differently?

I hear about how many people get their news from online and social media sources.

So, where am I going? At the very least, the traditional print media industry needs to embrace online. I think these publications are still trying to figure out how to make the transition.

@kholloway

By: Chuck Hemann

Chuck Hemann — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 14:03:16 +0000

Matt – this is a great post, and very top of mind for the industry. As I said to you earlier, I think this is a natural part of any recessionary environment. Businesses come and businesses go. It’s part of the evolution of our society. The newspaper biz, unfortunately, is not immune. From everything I’ve heard from peers in the Denver area, the business writing staff for the RM News was FAR superior to the Post’s. That said, we all know that strong writing doesn’t always equal survival in this dog eat dog world. In addition, my sense is that Denver wasn’t nearly big enough to be a two paper town.

Anyway, just my random thoughts.

@chuckhemann

By: amymengel

amymengel — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 13:49:37 +0000

An online presence is key, but even some newspapers who have a strong one aren’t surviving. The San Francisco Chronicle runs sfgate.com and despite that being an extremely popular site (something like 80 mil views/month), it looks like Hearst is at the end of it’s rope in trying to keep the Chronicle going.

Newspapers are still asset-intensive businesses – presses, reporters, photographers, ad salesmen, layout designers, delivery. Comprehensive online content can definitely help, but I think we’re going to continue to see newspapers struggle or fold until they can change their business models and adapt their overhead and expenses to reflect declining print subscriptions and print ad revenues.

@amymengel