Newspapers are at the crossroads in their lifecycle – either they innovate or die a slow agonizing death.
(see videos at the bottom of this post)
Recently I spoke to Juan Senor of Innovation about the future of newspapers.
Juan Senor makes a living from telling news organizations the strategies they need to adopt to survive in this new world order. And from the discussions it is clear that he has told the newspapers that although they wont die they still need to innovate and change the way they do business if they want to survive competitively.
The message that Juan Senor is giving newspapers is that they need to proactively adjust to the current reality. Generic news is free, it is unlikely that anyone will pay to hear that there are protestors protesting fiercely and braving the icy cold conditions at the climate summit or that Michael Jackson is dead. For news organizations to make money they will have to rely increasingly on the journalistic skills of their employees.
They will have to start selling in-depth news and analysis along with tools that people can use in their daily lives. A case in point is the way http://www.desmoinesregister.com sells crime report to people buying houses in the city.
Should newspapers be in the breaking news business?
Well, they have always been in it; however, it was partly due to the fact that they had a monopoly over the distribution channels. This monopoly was not substantially affected by TV and Radio but the internet has surely taken it away for good.
Therefore the question that is most important is not “to charge or not to charge” rather “How to charge?’. In such a situation you can’t expect to make money from breaking news. What you need to do is to turn your ordinary journalists into “Journanalists”
As all good consultants, Juan Senor has a 2×2 matrix that explains this
A short bit about what news organizations need to do
It is surprising to see how only few people seem to understand how to adjust analog business models in a world where internet is the primary and most powerful medium. Juan Senor is one of those people I have met who does a great job of communicating as to what will happen and what needs to be changed to survive this tectonic shift due to the internet.
However, in terms of mindset he comes very close to news executives. He says that the biggest mistake of the past 50 years was to give content free online.
Needless to say that I disagree with this statement (this could be an interesting subject for an entirely different post). The fact remains that news organizations still need to adapt to current realities. It is only by innovation will the news organizations find a way to make money.
Embedded are the slideshare presentation of a recent talk he gave on the subject and two video interviews
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