Can Newspapers Survive in the Age of the Internet?

Finally, after centuries of cutting down forests to make newspapers, we can see the end of road for the newspaper.  Will it be able to evolve?  Or will it die the way of the typewriter?  They need to find new revenue and more creative ways to engage their subscribers.

It’s no secret that newspapers and magazines are hurting for revenue.   Why would someone be willing to receive for fee, when you can download it 5-8 hours earlier online for free?  What can be done to place a tourniquet on the financial and subscription bleeding and hemorrhaging money the way they currently suffer from.

The doctor says “The prognosis doesn’t look so good, newspapers.”

Sell, Mortimer!! Sell!!!!

In a month long study of the behavior of the American internet users to reading online newspapers, here are the results:

You can literally hear the trees screaming at the LA Times Printing Facility.

Unique visitors : 70.3 million
i.e. one-third of the internet population

Number of page views : 3.5 billion
Total time spent : 2.7 billion minutes
Total number of sessions : 597 million
i.e. 4.5 minutes and 5.9 pages per session

In contrast to the NAA’s survey findings, a recent study by Harris Interactive put newspaper ads behind TV ads as the most helpful to consumers making purchase decisions.

Another survey, commissioned by Google, found that newspaper ads do drive consumers to the web, heightening the importance of newspaper websites and the growing need for them to be integrated with other types of offline media.

Newspapers have to evolve.

I really like the idea of the branded journalist.  Being freelance and free to write where and what you please in the niche markets that support your ideas.  What has to happen is the journalist needs split of revenue, instead of large fat salaries.   It keeps them hungry.  And half of the time, the most passionate writers are the one who aren’t even getting paid.  Just the prospect of sharing your voice is recognition enough.

One thing that I think we will start to see more of, is virtual meetings, interviews, trainings and discussions via Second Life-type communities.  MobLoSo plans on having weekly discussions where 50-100 people can come into a private room and we can have discussion sessions on many different topics and articles.

A key feature of this, is you are able to charge per ticket.  So, you could have exclusive, one time events and share revenue with the author, the interviewee, the trainer… etc.  The site is MingleVerse.

Sylvie Barak recently shared this site with me, and we had a business “mingle”.   What is a “Mingle”?  Well, what you do is you get a username and create an Avatar.  It takes a picture of your face and places it on a stock body image… or you can upload YOUR body.  You then are in a Second Life-type world, where you choose the 3D room and you then charge admission into these rooms.  Or offer the tickets for free.

Malcolm Gladwell, recently had a mingle where they charged $60 per ticket, depending on how many were in the room, that would have been a nice haul.  The possibilities for this thing are enormous.

Two Weekly Mingles, we just set up to check out and get a community discussing topics in a new way:

• Monday Mingle ::: 9pm CST — Tech, Gadgets, Mobile, Local, Social Media in an Open Mastermind Forum. Experience MingleVerse with 25-50 of us talking and learning.
• Tuesday News Day Mingle ::: 2pm CST — We will discuss the impact of technology on the newspaper industry. And how online news sources are beating newspapers to a pulp. And to brainstorm on what journalists can do to protect themselves and what newspapers can do to innovate. We will talk about on how newspapers and journalists can make money and transition into this new virtual economy.   It is an open mingle at 2pm CST, first 50 to register get in.

Mingleverse also keeps track of how many carbon credits we save by not meeting in public.  I foresee many uses for this new technology. Virtual Video Conferencing free over VOIP. It’s such a fun way to communicate with people and talk to them with audio, but never exchanging phone numbers.

People want to read what these newspapers have to say.  People like informed opinions and news stories in the topics that they are interested in.  Well, you can find many different sources for intelligent thought and news in 2010.  So, the Newspaper industry is going to have to be creative and find interesting ways to add to their revenue.  

The journalist now is like a free agent that can be rendezvousing with many publications. You earn X amount per article. Now, the price is being driven down by low cost article producers on crowdsourcing websites. So, journalists are going to have to be creative. In 2010 and beyond, it’s all about personal branding.

If technologies like Mingleverse don’t help the newspaper industry, perhaps the iPad or other tablet based services will help. But, in the age of free, don’t expect many to jump on a subscription model. Obviously, with over 1/3 of people coming to newspaper online websites… the demand is there.  These large organizations need to learn to cut costs and move into this virtual space where costs are relatively low, where trees aren’t being cut down.  It’s a win-win.