How to reinvent the newspaper business

Jason Sandford

Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.

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Quite a list here, from the former head of AOL, Ted Leonsis. The bottom line – change now, and be bold.

My Ten Point Plan to Reinvent The Newspaper Business
1. Get out of the newspaper business. Culturally, you can’t look and define your business as the delivery mechanism. The business is truly content and distribution across all pipes. The asset is journalists and the brand. A print-based property is just one of the many ways to distribute the digital bits. Most newspapers have in charge of their leadership “newspaper men”. They should turn over the reins to young execs, women and people with diverse backgrounds, who are web based and new consumer savvy and will NOT be wed and enamored with the print-based delivery system of the past. A true mind shift change is in order and an integrated plan for content delivery across TV, mobile, Web 2.0, print, radio, podcasts and syndication must be developed.

2. Give it away. Moore’s Law is the defining theorem of our generation: faster, better and cheaper until it is free. Free products are better than paid products on the web. Distribution is key. News is free and readily available; charging for it is old school. Eyeballs and keystrokes are the coin of the realm not paid circulation which will dwindle more and more over time. There need not be any registration either so ditch the sign-up at log-in etc. Look at the print property as a way to promote and support the online and syndication properties. Go from a subscription business with an ad business and digital business aside it to a digital ad business with a print business to promote it. Aggregate up other site’s news to get up the value chain and redefine circulation as syndication for Web 2.0.

3. Partner. I never understood why newspapers didn’t band together to create vertical online sites. A sports site that networked all pro teams across sports would be formidable. A political site that was national in scope with focus on local governments and politicians would work (see Politico.com). Even a Google news-like portal would roll up all of the assets. Then create a separate shared national sales force that sold across the network. Try again to create a Web 2.0 based classified service as well. Look to advertisers as partners. Look to competitors as partners. It is a new world.

4. Syndicate for Web 2.0. Atomize your online Web 1.0 site. Blow it to smithereens. Syndicate it all via widgets. Look to bloggers and social network pages as distributors for your content. It will never be cheaper and easier than it is today to get consumers to carry your info and reach their audiences as it is today. Make your brand a badge of social honor so that a local blogger for the Caps or Wizards wants to carry your scoreboard or your analysis via widget as examples. Look at what initially look like competitors and embrace them. Don’t be rude and expect someone to point to your site. Get your content baked into everyone’s site.
5. Create mini local third party networks. Embrace and extend your reach locally by building a great digital sales force and then network and ingest local unique visitors, page views and engagement from third parties. Do locally what Advertising.com has done nationally, superset the region by creating a network of affiliates and build up massive scale of local sites. Promote them in your print-based property. Write these affiliates checks to own the inventory and own the local market so you don’t die a death of a thousand cuts.

6. Be BOLD now. Take the Top 10 big newspapers and join together and then acquire something massive that can be shared. Why aren’t the newspaper companies banding together to acquire Yahoo as an example? Buy a big social networking site and launch a cross platform classifieds network within to compete with eBay and Craigslist. Acquire Twitter and create real time news and classified for sale network. Do something big and meaningful. Your shareholders will love you for it.

7. Re-purpose cash flow buy acquiring Web 2.0 companies in the rich media space. Go acquire a big podcasting business. Why didn’t a newspaper company acquire Audible as an example? Go acquire a video widget syndication business. You will need rich media assets in the new world.
Just having words won’t scale in the Web 2.0 environment. You must move up the value chain and get video and audio assets.

8. Get rid of senior editors. Turn them into algorithmic managers. Editors are passé. What is needed is a team of people that know how to work and create blog rolls and how to get the content up high into the algorithms so that when a consumer searches the newspaper’s content it comes up high in the rankings. Knowing statistically what content gets the best click through across all media is a key deliverable. Newspapers need math majors running big swaths of the organization. There are too many English majors in key positions in love with the sound of their own voices. Math is king in the new world order and having managers that understand the big algorithms in the sky will redefine journalism for our next generation and redefine circulation into syndication.

9. Embrace user generated content. Today a newspaper company looks at its readership with basic disdain. These organizations must learn how to turn their millions of readers into content generators by creating a national polling service; embracing message board posters as part of the network; finding ways to get consumers to become uploaders of information; and creating local real time YouTube-like applications. Everyone has a cell phone with a camera. Everyone has a cell phone with a video camera. Embrace this audience with services and even a way to get money back for their contributions. Make them a part of your network. Don’t preach to them. Activate them to add to the knowledge base.

10. Change the metrics of success and what is winning readership and reach over subscribers, context and distribution over Pulitzer prizes; search rankings over immediate cash flow; and worldwide syndication reach over newsstand sales. Make the big change all at once. Take the one time big write down. Admit that it is time to digitize or die. Cut the headcount dramatically. Take your company private so you are out of the Wall Street quarter to quarter bedlam. Embrace the change now before it is too late.