6 Comments Add your own

• 1. Jason Parker  |  March 1st, 2007 at 6:22 am

  Watching this, I had a few thoughts. First, it seems that the market completely misunderstands the business of journalism. Journalism can be a very good business, but paradoxically, you can’t approach it with a prmary focus on profits. I can’t think of any other industry that regularly challenges, and possibly offends, its own customers, intentionally. I mean, you have to be willing to sacrifice short-term profits for the greater good, and, paradoxically, this will lead to a more profitable business. And what are they comparing newspapers with? The internet? Newspapers are making money. Lots of money. Internet sites make a fraction of that profit, they’re complately unproven from a profitability standpoint. Certainly, newspapers need to adapt, but the market seems to be completely overreacting to the threat posed by the internet. I think that journalism companies should probably stay or go private, if they can.

  Secondly, as it was pointed out, blogs spend very little on original journalism. News organisations need to figure out why people are going to the blogs for news rather than their site, which is acutally the source of the news. What are the blogs doing differently? How can news sites make their content more attractive to customers? It’s not the news, since that’s the same, so it must be in the delivery.

• 2. aidian  |  March 1st, 2007 at 8:29 am

  maybe it just shows what a nerd i am, but it seems that the episode just repackaged the conventional wisdom — albeit in an indepth, well researched and slickly produced tv format. That said, it’s got people in my newsroom talking, which is probably a good thing.

• 3. invitedmedia  |  March 1st, 2007 at 8:59 am

  if you’re a nerd like me, you’ll want to hear terry gross on npr ALL next week as she asks the question “what’s next for tv?”

  another promo seemed to indicate they will be asking the man on the street!

  hopefully it ain’t some old farts who never turned on a friggin’ computer.

• 4. Dave  |  March 1st, 2007 at 9:10 am

  The bigger issue is that news used to be a product of many products (including sports, talk, entertainment, etc). In this way, it could afford to be a public service write-off.

  Now, it’s the main product (especially on the local level). With increased competition including cable news and the internet, it’s no wonder profits are dropping.

  Locals need to begin developing multiple products; each targeting different demos / niches on the local level to bring in more revenue. This can be done progressively over time and implemented on-air and online.

  Easy example, General Mills doesn’t just make Cheerios (a top seller). They make different flavors of Cheerios as well as Wheaties, Chex, Trix, etc.

• 5. David Johnson  |  March 1st, 2007 at 12:40 pm

  Dave,

  You’ve hit the head of the nail for the very successful strategy at the Virginian Pilot and Hampton Roads. Chris Kouba delivered an excellent presetntation on it at the NAA connections conference recently. The whole conference was live blogged, so there may be more information online at their site.

  -daj

• 6. kzsdetrquc  |  June 21st, 2007 at 2:49 am

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