For a group whose role it is to tell people what’s really going on, journalists are doing an appalling job in explaining why newspapers are in so much trouble.
If you followed much of the media’s explanation for why newspapers are failing, you would conclude that it’s because fewer people are buying newspapers.
But that is not the fundamental problem for newspapers. The problem is that advertisers — not readers — are deserting newspapers. And it is advertisers, not readers, who have always paid the expensive cost of newspaper journalism.
The elusive truth about the demise of newspapers is contained in a fascinating (and very long) essay by US media critic Bill Wyman (published online of course). In it he reveals the essential truth about newspapers that journalists find so difficult either to comprehend or explain:
The problem of the daily press in the US is exclusively this: the collapse of its business model. That model used to be, plainly put, making money — a lot of money, oceans of money — delivering advertising on newsprint into peoples’ homes. Subscribers didn’t pay for news. Advertisers did.
Why are journalists so bad at understanding their own demise? Wyman’s explanation is both fascinating and plausible:
Journalists are pretty good at working the scene of a disaster. They’ll tell you what happened, who did it, and why.
But when it comes to the disaster engulfing their own profession, their analysis is less rigorous. An uncharacteristic haze characterises a lot of the reporting and commentary on the current crisis of the industry.
It could have been brought on by delicacy, perhaps romanticism. And since it is not just any crisis, but a definitive one — one that seems to mean an end to the physical papers’ role in American life as we have come to know it — perhaps there’s a little bit of shell-shock in the mix as well.
As an investigative journalist somewhere discovers every day of the week, the real story is buried inside the superficial story. In the case of the collapse of newspapers, it’s about time the real story was told.
Meanwhile, at least as far as classified advertising goes, instead of embracing the use of the internet to give advertisers a much wider coverage, the newspapers seem to sneer at their ability to place their classified ad’s online.
Some papers forget to put the ad’s up some days (full regions of states for Fairfax regional papers sometimes), delaying for a day or two to put the ad’s online, some will not put the whole advertisement online (Fairfax’s Walcha paper only puts the first word up – and McPherson Media Group will only publish the first 2 lines of an ad, encouraging smaller cheaper advertisements if the advertiser wants to be found online – larger ad’s lose their contact details online), and some Fairfax papers such as those at Mildura and Sale just will not put their advertising online in spite of having the infrastructure in place to do so. As someone who looks for auction advertisements on-line this really is frustrating, but also means that advertisers are not receiving broader benefits for their advertising dollars, and that the newspaper industry does not seem to be selling the fact that they can now get wider exposure for their regional and local advertising. If promoted and used correctly, the internet should be able to enhance the classified advertising sales for some newspapers.
This may not save the broadsheets and bigger city newspapers, but it should be beneficial for regional and local publications.
Hmmm, Kevin
Kevin Tyerman (3.36pm). The reason they won’t put their classifieds online is exactly as Eric Beecher said: it would totally undercut their much more valuable print income. In our one-news company town (Courier Mail, The Oz, mX) the CM’s online property site does not accept private ads–it is some cozy deal between the Real Estate industry and News Ltd. Any attempt by private advertisers to include a web address in the customer’s print ad is immediately edited out by the CM. Needless to say for the Brisbane market, money spent on an online ad in Domain.com is an utter waste (I know) but, with a bit of imagination and marketing flair, Fairfax could do something about this but of course will not.
Quote: “The reason they won’t put their classifieds online is exactly as Eric Beecher said: it would totally undercut their much more valuable print income.”
Okay, I seem to have missed the point. I had thought that Mr Beecher’s point was that advertising revenue was more important than print sales revenue in the overall scheme of the publishing empires.
While I use the online advertising availability to find auctions to travel to, I also buy all newspapers containing classifieds that I physically can, both locally and when travelling, for the sake of finding stock – but there is not much point in subscribing to the Dubbo Liberal to get notification of Saturday’s auction the following Tuesday. Contrary to your suggestion, Michael, using the internet to expand advertising coverage can and should be compatible with selling advertising, and should have a minimal impact on print sales.
Alternatively, I would like to put a $60 to $80 “wanted to buy” ad into McPherson Media’s Country News, but while the first two lines of the ad will be shown on their localclassies website, the contact details and half the ad is removed, thus meaning that I get less effective coverage than a $12.00 spot ad. While I do buy their newspapers when I am in the region to get a hard copy of the Country News and the classified of the regional papers, it does discourage me from actually placing advertisements that would immediately give them a years worth of the revenue that I currently give them, by buying their newspapers when I am in their region.
It’s NOT that they don’t know but that they daren’t admit that newspapers, a great idea in the 19thC, co-opted by the consumerism of the 20thC have simply lost their function, delivering ads.
As Mudorch demonstrated in 80/90s UK, you can cut the cover price to 20P for what was once the Thunderer as still mkake money as long as the advertisers singed up.
WHy would they in the 21stC?
Kevin Tyerman (6.03pm). No one is arguing that web advertising is no less effective or has all kinds of advantages but obviously the advertisers do not believe it and have set the standard online rates at one tenth the print rate. The rate for print is linked to numbers of copies read, so it is critical for the companies to prevent any decline. In Fairfax’s case they are going to extreme measures (expensive giveaways etc) to avoid breaching thresholds. If 100% of the advertising transferred from online to print you would have to run the “paper” on one tenth the budget.
This is why the only model that seems to hold some hope (for the established newspapers) is a subscription that includes free-online with print copy. That way, even if most subscribers are not interested in the hard copy, the numbers of the printed version stay up, still bringing in that advertising revenue.