CNN founder Ted Turner once famously predicted that printed newspapers would disappear within 10 years. That prediction was made 30 years ago. And yet, most casual inquiries, “How’s business going?” are still couched with a hushed concern about print’s uncertain future. Even here.
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Granted, things are changing. Most of us are alive and lively in a world where you can get information from hundreds of different sources. There is no single dominant media anymore; big daily newspapers operate with smaller staff, less travel and expense money to chase stories, and fewer pages of newsprint. Even “dinosaurs” like small town weekly newspaper publishers are learning to tweet, blog, take videos, develop phone “apps” and post stories on Facebook.
Changing technologies keep the targets moving. The danger is spending more time keeping the composing room’s computer network working rather than networking with real people about local stories, or writing more html code or Javascript to make a website work rather than writing with real words that provoke interest, thought or emotion.
This is National Newspaper Week. If you think print is dead or dying, let me suggest a few places to take a pulse. Consider our ShoMeMore online products which depend on print.
We make money online by assembling information not easily snapped by anybody’s cell phone camera or distributed by a pyramid scheme of “friends” on Facebook. For real estate, we display more than 4,350 properties for sale from over 110 real estate professionals all on one website — ShoMeMoreRealEstate.com.
For more than 10 years this website has dominated the online real estate offerings for North Missouri and portions of South Iowa. Our website attracts 14,292 unique visitors for 167,153 page views each month — that’s nearly 870 different viewer sessions every day!
It wouldn’t exist without print.
Print still pays the bills. Initially we could not have attracted any real estate clients without including print in the promotional package; today we cannot retain our leading online edge without consistent, effective print promotion. ShoMeMore websites would not exist without companion print products, and vice versa.
The stronger our efforts have been to embrace electronic technologies, the more we’ve come to appreciate the strength of print. Newspapers are an incredible value. They are easy to navigate, totally portable and delivered to your door for less than the price of a bottle of pop. It is no wonder that print survives.
If print is dead, then why do more than 7,000 weekly and 1,400 daily newspapers still open their doors every day and report what is happening in their communities?
One of the pillars in digital strategy is coined “hyper-local.” That makes an ink-smudged newsman smile. Hyper-local is nothing new for community weeklies. Newspapers are still rewarded financially for providing the most comprehensive source of a community’s historical records — the births, deaths, weddings, engagements, business accomplishments, crime, courts and a myriad of other day-to-day news events. And good publishers, making the right decisions, are still financially healthy.
Here’s another place to take a pulse: radio news. On any given day most of what people know about their community — whether by a website, mobile app, local TV, and especially local radio — likely emanated from a newspaper story. Media often get their tips on top breaking news stories from what comes out in print, or from what shows up on newspapers’ websites.
Why? Newspapers are there covering the “hum drum” while other news media are only primed to cherry pick for the juiciest plums. All these thoughts and more come to mind when pondering National Newspaper Week, 2011.
The printed newspaper will be around for quite awhile — not forever. I’m not Pollyanna. Paid subscriptions to this newspaper peaked years ago.
There has been steady decline, matching a general decline in population and local business activity here. Yes, there is a reckoning day if this trend continues, but not anytime soon and not ultimately a death knell. Subscriber newspapers may give way to free distribution newsprint publications. Digital devices and electronic media fragment the market; nothing provides total market saturation like print (i.e. The Ad Pages shoppers …which, by the way, is best distributed by mail but can be distributed with or without the U.S. Postal Service). Print provides value.
Some say electronic tablets and other mobile devices of the future are the long-term saviors for the newspaper industry. Everything you see in print today is or will be available in the palm of your hand. Digital distribution gives newspapers another shot at the younger audiences. Phone companies have taught us to pay for mobile devices. Apple has conditioned us to pay for music; ditto for Kindle and Nook in the book world.
That sounds good. But nobody has figured out exactly how to monetize news online. And what’s going on today is not pretty. At the moment too many websites use/borrow/steal newspaper-created content and sell the audience they attract to advertisers — without paying a penny for the content. That obviously must change.
And it will.
Whoever provides the local, community-based news and information that no one else does — or wants to — will succeed. Today, with the murky nature of much online content, newspapers have a competitive edge when seasoned, professional journalists adhere to the rules and check the facts. Social media may strip away the element of immediacy of news providers. But the future appears bright for the journalist presenting serious, credible, factual, local news, analysis and opinion. Sometimes we fail in doing this; if such neglect persists, there are consequences because the alternatives vying for your attention are many. Service is the heartbeat of financially health for a newspaper regardless of whether the pulse continues on newsprint or in some digital form.
So today, this is a place to take this newsprint’s pulse. You’re holding it. If you’ve kept with me this far, odds are you like the feel of newsprint in your hands. We’re using and also recycling more newspaper at Gallatin Publishing Company than ever before in a printing business spanning more than five decades. If you want results when delivering a message in Northwest Missouri, ink on paper is still king.
But our pulse can also be taken if you’re reading this online, on our website or perhaps in an email forwarded to you from what we’ve written. More people visited the website than bought a newspaper in print last week! Yet, total revenue from news displayed online on this newspaper’s website alone is meager, but so is the additional expense in providing our news online.
Our news content is now reaching more readers than ever before, prompting more readers to participate in our website surveys and eliciting more comment from those interested in what happens here regardless of their address. That’s good news!
We don’t have all the answers. But we believe that newspaper publishers who embrace change without compromising on commitments to community service will remain confident and positive about the future. We’re about to unveil new website designs — not to replace but to expand our ShoMeMore website products.
We believe print/online commercial combinations are formidable and affordable. We think print is so vital that we’re emphasizing it in rebranding our websites, gradually changing to GPCink.com.
Thanks for reading.
Here are some facts provided by the Newspaper Association of America (NNA):
The number of words on the front page of a daily U.S. newspaper exceeds the number of words of an entire 30-minute network newscast.
The Super Bowl attracts about 49% of U.S. households. In Super Bowl week, 70% of U.S. adults read a newspaper.
Ten million adults used Twitter in the past month, while 164 million read a newspaper in print or online in the past WEEK.
In the last month, 82% of adults took some action as a result of newspaper advertising.
(Source: Google Analytics for September, 2011) The website has consistently ranked No. 1 for selected word strings for real estate on such major search engines as Yahoo, Bing, Google and many others since it began.