| You are here: Home » The Marketing Diary » The Different Marketing Approach » Internet Taking the Upper Hand 'Against' Newspapers: What Can Publishers Do? Internet Taking the Upper Hand 'Against' Newspapers: What Can Publishers Do? rss.weblogsinc.com covers the news from the Carnegie Corporation and their findings, which indicate that younger audiences (18-34) have mostly abandoned print newspapers as important sources of current events in favor of the internet. As rss.weblogsinc.com cleverly states (taking my line:), only the content delivery channels really changed, since for a large part newspapers are the internet. This facet of the story is not about media houses losing readership, but about their content consumers switching content consumption channels. And it doesn't come as a shock. At the Business daily Finance in Slovenia, where I previously served as their Internet Manager, our internet edition had 5 times more regular users than the print edition had subscribers (although the actual print edition readership was not "so bad" when discussing measured readership against physical circulation). The other facet of the story is that media houses are seeing competition from citizenship reporting and bloggers, who often cover some news first. Many media houses are already going with the flow, by not only providing their print content online, but also enriching it, while many have also started their own blogs. But will that be enough? Probably not ... Some Ideas For Newspaper Publishers a] Rich-media Content Content can no longer be only "printed"; rich-media is the keyword. One of the reasons the television got the upper hand over print was rich-media content, but the internet and broadband access are leveling the playing field. Much content is better communicated via printed words, but that doesn't mean that end-users wouldn't benefit or want additional rich-media content to compliment the original articles. Start equipping your online content with video and audio recordings, for starters. Whenever you do an interview, on which you base printed stories, also do a video and audio recording of it and make that available via the internet. Make it available through the Web, RSS (podcasting and videocasting both) and link to it in your e-mail newsletters. There are many more opportunities to "record" stories instead of only "writing" them. Just do it. b] Citizenship Reporting It's becoming evident that professional reporting cannot cover (or discover) all the stories of interest to the public. The other problem is that most professional reporting is "cold" and impersonal, except for the commentary. Before anyone jumps the gun, I'm not saying that citizenship reporting can replace professional reporting. Rather, publishers should embrace both. Start developing large citizenship reporting networks around the globe and for all the key markets, even niche markets, and find ways of integrating that with your editorial content. c] Produce Supplemental Online Content
d] Personalization, Customization and Usability Personalization and customization are two of the key benefits of the internet versus any other channel. Unfortunatelly, most customization features are much to complicated to use and take too much time. Users are lazy. Make it a point to implement customization, but have usability in mind. If it takes more than two steps, it won't really work for the masses. Take news.google.com as an example. As for personalization, BabyCenter.com is the best example. Study it carefully. e] Pay Attention to Changes Start by reading this article.
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