Okay, so now we’re going to possibly bail out newspapers. Has Washington just lost their minds completely? I do not get this at all. When and where are you supposed to draw the line? If you didn’t see it, there was a video recently on the closing of the Rocky Mountain News that’s worth checking out. Two things in it jumped out at me and apply here.First, the managing editor announces at one point that they will be closing the paper. He tells the newsroom in an emotional speech that the reporters had done nothing wrong, and that factors outside the newspaper’s control had brought this all on.
Secondly, several of the reporters were later interviewed about their future plans, and they questioned whether there was a place for them because people would not be able to get real reporting anymore.
Cue Chris Walken in True Romance with Dennis Hopper: “Come again?”
I hate watching anyone lose their job, but those two statements pointed out the absolute hubris and denial present in traditional media right now.
It’s not us, it’s everyone else.
So now, because newspapers haven’t changed the way they make money, an equally clueless Congress will throw funds at them to continue doing the same things over and over? That’s not rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, that’s giving it a complete paint job as it’s going down.
One possible solution? TV.
It changes the way the news is reported, sure, but it doesn’t have to mean integrity takes a hit. (The long-running success of 60 Minutes proves this.) The TV option has always been there but I can only guess that The New York Times thought it was beneath them to try something that, in their eyes, diminished journalistic integrity. (I’m singling out the NYT here, but it could be any paper really.)
Why not try the NYT Channel?
If CNN can support an online presence with its TV ad revenue, then any major paper from around the country can survive on TV. People have local cable news shows just for the weather while getting news from multiple sources. The National Geographic expanded to TV successfully, as well as that other long-running print edition the Bible, which has spun off how many different religious shows?
If they can do it...
There’s enough cable channels to go around too. Even with 68 reality shows covering home improvement or 30 channels of World’s Greatest Animal Crashes, there’s enough bandwidth left for intelligent programming. Think about what top reporters would bring to the table. People complain now about a lack of fair and balanced reporting on TV, well, having a name like the NYT definitely addresses that issue.
They would do the type of reporting found on many cable shows now. No longer would you be limited to an in-depth look at sports from HBO or ESPN’s Outside The Lines because you could it in one place.
More competition is more better.
You’d also still have a secondary network in place consisting of many blogs currently depending on the major print and online media for their daily rants. That doesn’t go away simply because your paper is now a cable channel.
Or another idea is to try the Kindle as distribution system. Bundle the newspaper in a downloadable form with the reader for your particular market. Reporters could also send out Kindle-only stories not available anywhere else in edition to their blogs/columns online with a subscription model. Start out with a pilot program first.
Or, since Google already has a network in place, and the NYT name carries weight, hire former staffers as iReporters and pay them to report the news directly through a special partnership involving Google’s latest push into the territory.
Those are just three ideas that could easily work and salvage the concept of newspapers as people know them. Like record labels, the newspaper industry doesn’t have to go away, it just has to morph into something else more relevant.
Yeah, I could see how it’s been so hard for the newspaper industry to figure this stuff out. What with them probably out reporting real stories and all.
Or should newspapers have their hand out like all the others?
1 comment:
Why not the NYT Channel? Because when they did it, it didn't work. Few people remember the Times Discovery Channel because they never watched in the first place, and the Times pulled the plug on it.
It's been fifteen years since Knight-Ridder launched Inquirer News Tonight, a one-hour, nightly televised version of their Philadelphia paper. It's been fourteen years since it went tits up. Bad management had something to do with it, as well as Tony Ridder's journalistic commitment stopping any anything that took the profit margin below 12%. But it's more than that....
The cultural differences between print and broadcast are profound. Bridging the two has proved to be more difficult than it might first appear. That's not to say it can't or shouldn't be tried again, but right now it's a long shot.
and dude, 3:30am?
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