The Economist writes about media’s analogue holdouts and how they may be missing out on some awesome digital benefits:

They have some good reasons. Online advertising is worth much less than television or print advertising. It is hard to persuade people to pay much (if anything) for digital content. Technology firms such as Amazon and Apple can often set retail prices. Digital products can be less beautiful than physical ones.

But such gripes are widespread in the media industry. They must be set against the fact that digital distribution is a low-cost way of reaching huge audiences. What is more, refusing to go online is a sure way to alienate many potential customers. So why do the analogue holdouts hold out?

It comes down to different strokes for different folks.

While an online presence may be “low-cost” in the overall scheme of things, cheaper than print, cheaper than smoke signals, etc, it still is a cost. You have to pay for the site and someone to maintain it, not just posting new content but policing any interactive areas. When ad revenue from websites is so much less than print, a firm has to decide if it can at the very least pay for itself but that comes after an initial investment that may not be worth the effort.

Beyond that, if you’re providing a product that is dependent upon sales in order to remain in operation, why are you doing to give it away online? This mainly applies to specialty products, niche targeted items that don’t provide services easily found elsewhere. Washington Post can’t afford to fall behind New York Times online in regards to its national coverage, but a women’s weekly magazine with a solid subscriber base can keep itself merely focused on print as long as it provides quality content unavailable elsewhere. Giving it away online in the hopes that someone will then decide to subscribe to the print (as the article suggests) is a frightening prospect when most companies would fear losing a number of already existing subscriptions to their now free online service.

Beyond news, the article suggests the Beatles could really benefit from a digital catalog and that whoever convinces them to do it will make a boatload of money. While true, the Beatles aren’t hurting for money or sales of the physical copies of their music. Here you’re talking about a brand that is so hugely popular that it has no need to go digital in order to reach masses it might not otherwise. Every music store carries the Beatles catalog and any number of “best of” compilations to saturate the market. If someone wakes up at 2 a.m. in a cold sweat because they just HAVE to hear Come Together or they’ll never sleep again, Walmart is right around the corner with three different CDs to choose from.

The internet is hardly one size fits all and not all people absolutely have to be in a rush to get online and digitize their content that they’d otherwise charge for. There’s a reason newspapers are flipping out over how to make money. In their rush to be ahead of the digital curve they completely removed their at one time profit base and helped breed a society now used to getting the news for free. To suggest others need to rush to do the same is drinking the digital Kool Aid without first having it pass the sniff test.

Interesting column from Gene Weingarten about how the new newsroom is different than the old and, in particular, the impact it has on headlines:

The only really creative opportunity copy editors had was writing headlines, and they took it seriously. This gave the American press some brilliant and memorable moments, including this one, when the Senate failed to convict President Clinton: CLOSE BUT NO CIGAR; and this one, when a meteor missed Earth: KISS YOUR ASTEROID GOODBYE. There were also memorably wonderful flops, like the famous one on a food story about home canning: YOU CAN PUT PICKLES UP YOURSELF.

Newspapers still have headlines, of course, but they don’t seem to strive for greatness or to risk flopping anymore, because editors know that when the stories arrive on the Web, even the best headlines will be changed to something dull but utilitarian. That’s because, on the Web, headlines aren’t designed to catch readers’ eyes. They are designed for “search engine optimization,” meaning that readers who are looking for information about something will find the story, giving the newspaper a coveted “eyeball.” Putting well-known names in headlines is considered shrewd, even if creativity suffers.

Headlines now have to not only boost SEO but summarize the article well enough to capture the reader. Creative titles that don’t practically tell the whole story are passed over. For some this is a challenge to get even more creative with headlines (see Skywalkers In Korea Cross Han Solo), but 9 times out of 10 it just leads to laziness. (via Kottke)

Wesley Donehue over at TechRepublican wonders what if newspapers explored the Hulu advertising model?

Let’s look at South Carolina as an example. The State’s John O’Connor and Gina Smith pumped out “must read” material for the nation during the Mark Sanford scandal. Unfortunately the only money they got from the increased readership was a hopeful increased click-through rate on the banner ads that polluted the page.

What if those banner ads weren’t there? What if, instead, a 30 second commercial popped up and you couldn’t move on to the story until you sat through the video? Sure, it’s a little annoying, just like on Hulu. But people will sit through 30 seconds of a commercial to get to solid content

Some news sites already do this, a splash coming up showing an advertisement with a small “click here to go to the article” link in the corner. It’d be interesting to see how that has impacted ad revenue compared to readership rates and whether this model works. But to date most of these ads have been standard flash advertisements and the opt through link at the top has made them not so mandatory.

The problem with forcing a 30 second or even 15 second commitment from a reader is a difference in how the medium is consumed. We are already used to commercials when watching television or video so three 30 second ads during a 30 minute Hulu broadcast doesn’t bother us.. Websites based on text content fall into a newspaper style of advertising in that it’s a matter of placement around the content, not interrupting the flow of it with something on a completely different level of interaction.

Could this use a change? Sure. But text is usually skimmed more than read and articles of 1200 words may only keep eyes on the site for an average of around 75 seconds. Tacking a 15 second hurdle on top of something before they’ve committed to it risks losing that reader. Interrupting their skimming after a few paragraphs with the same style of ad risks the same.

Brick/Brick Reloaded, a big media attempt at local alt-weekly-ness, will run it’s last issue next week.

People don’t pick up newspapers to read syndicated material. You will not last long doing that. And people don’t go to flimsy, finger-staining newspapers to read reviews of movies, books or music. The national stuff is all available everywhere on the Internet. You really need big local coverage from local writers who can infuriate and delight readers, sometimes at the same time.

Media General tried to enter a market that already is served by Style Weekly and RVA Magazine on the cheap and offered nothing to distinguish itself from either.

Cory Doctorow says that reports of blogging’s death are greatly exaggerated. Content’s just finding more appropriate mediums.

When all we had was the stage, every performance was a play. When we got films, a great lot of these stories moved to the screen, where they’d always belonged (they’d been squeezed onto a stage because there was no alternative). When TV came along, those stories that were better suited to the small screen were peeled away from the cinema and relocated to the telly. When YouTube came along, it liberated all those stories that wanted to be 3-8 minutes long, not a 22-minute sitcom or a 48-minute drama. And so on.

What’s left behind at each turn isn’t less, but more: the stories we tell on the stage today are there not because they must be, but because they’re better suited to the stage than they are to any other platform we know about. This is wonderful for all concerned – the audience numbers might be smaller, but the form is much, much better.

Blogging didn’t kill traditional websites, it just provided a new and easier way to push content quickly for those who wanted to. As Facebook and Twitter came along, some found that these services filled the need that blogging had to in the past since that was the best choice available at the time. Future services won’t kill Twitter or FB but will peel away users as these services better fit what users want for their content. Those left behind are those who find the tools best suited to what they need, and those are the people who will use them best.

Today’s Richmond Times Dispatch front page screams about how that evil devil music is leading kids to kill people left and right. Or, rather, how one kid may have been influenced by violent rap lyrics to murder four individuals:

Police: Lyrics may have played role in Farmville slayings

Investigators are trying to determine whether a suspect’s fascination with violent rap lyrics fueled the killings of four people found dead Friday in a Longwood University professor’s home.

Richard Samuel Alden McCroskey III (which is a pretty hoity name, if you ask me) was arrested at Richmond International Airport in connection with the killings. McCroskey was a big fan and singer/rapper or Horrorcore, which is different from regular rap in that it’s about doing awful things like killing people. Wait…

Anyways, the gem in the article is this:

One song attributed to McCroskey on one of his MySpace pages discusses committing murder in a rage, trying to get rid of the remains and driving a stolen vehicle.

So here’s what the RTD wants you to think.

McCroskey’s fascination with music, rap music in particular, horrorcore rap music specifically, may have led this guy to kill four people. Just look at the lyrics.

THAT HE WROTE!

Anyone else see a problem with that “logic”?

It’s like saying bad literature may have led Charles Manson to be crazy. JUST LOOK AT HIS OWN ATTEMPTS AT LITERATURE!

It’s an attempt at sensationalizing the story in a matter that appeals to base emotions.

Books lead to violence.

Movies lead to violence.

Video games lead to violence.

Music leads to sex, drugs, and more violence. It’s like a hat trick for the Devil!

OR.

Really messed up crazy kid’s violent writings showed a mind that could comprehend doing horrific acts.

Now, this is certainly a slipperly slope because it’s hard to say the lyrics showed a troubled youth who needed an intervention. I’m sure there are plenty of perfectly sane folks who are into horrorcore rap, so saying the lyrics are a sign of madness and anyone involved needs help is a bit of a leap.

Over the next few days and weeks I’m sure we’ll find out more about McCrosky and a lot more red flags will pop up aside from his facination with writing violent lyrics.

But, really, Richmond Times Dispatch? Really?

No wonder no one buys your rag.

UPDATE: Ryan Nobles at NBC12 discusses the chicken and the egg argument with VCU’s Robin Diehl.

Geoff Livingston over at The Buzz Bin makes a great analogy – Newspapers Are Like Department Stores:

For department stores, many chains found their death in a trojan horse — the mall. With the rise of the mall, department stores were asked to anchor these megaplexes. But inside the smaller stores were more nimble, better competitors who specialized in deeper lines of products. Electronics, women’s shoes, hardware, whatever it was, from big box to pretzels chains took shoppers away from many department stores.

Ironically, like the mall, the Internet was supposed to be the future of newspapers. But for some reason the 90s passed and the opportunity was never realized. Perhaps that crack known as print advertising was just too good to give up. Or maybe, change was really that hard.

And he’s right.  Department stores for decades was the jack of all trades families turned to for one-stop-shopping.  But then malls came along, inviting specialist stores who then competed within feet of one another for foot traffic and business.  Department stores couldn’t compete – sure J.C. Penney’s has a shoe department, but it’s no Foot Locker when it comes to selection, brands and sometimes price (well, maybe not price, but still).

Specialization and one-stop-shopping met at the mall.

For over ten years now that’s been happening with the news on the internet: newspapers have come to anchor media coverage online but other operations have set up that specialize and do some things better than those aiming to do all things.  Sure the New York Times has a sports section, but ESPN is just a dot-com away.

So it’s adapt or die.  But how to do that?

“Cover what you do best. Link to the rest. inkheart dvdrip download “

This changes the dynamic of editorial decisions. Instead of saying, “we should have that” (and replicating what is already out there) you say, “what do we do best?” That is, “what is our unique value?” It means that when you sit down to see a story that others have worked on, you should ask, “can we do it better?” If not, then link. And devote your time to what you can do better.

As I linked to in March (Newspapers: Adapt Or Die), Newsweek is already doing this

:

Newsweek is about to begin a major change in its identity, with a new design, a much smaller and, it hopes, more affluent readership, and some shifts in content. The venerable newsweekly’s ingrained role of obligatory coverage of the week’s big events will be abandoned once and for all, executives say.

“There’s a phrase in the culture, ‘we need to take note of,’ ‘we need to weigh in on,’ ” said Newsweek’s editor, Jon Meacham. “That’s going away. If we don’t have something original to say, we won’t. The drill of chasing the week’s news to add a couple of hard-fought new details is not sustainable.”

If you can’t make it your own, focus on what you can make your own and hat tip others for the rest of it.

For some that may not be enough.  Sarah Lacy has advice at TechCrunch that’s a bit more aggressive but sounds like a perfect business model for succeeding online and off:

There’s an obvious option for these magazines, and I’m surprised more people aren’t talking about it: Ruthlessly collapse the print and online staffs, run everything online as soon as they write it, except one or two cover-length, long-form glossy pieces. Those will anchor the print issue, rounded out by the best stories from online. Then cut the money spent on trying to court new subscribers, shifting the entire marketing budget to promote the Web or real-life conferences and branded events. You could even use reader comments to flesh the online pieces out more for the print edition, driving more engagement in both the print and online versions. Voila! One publication, not two pretending to be one. And guess what? One publication is a hell of a lot cheaper, even if it’s printed on dead trees.

Give them something online many times a day, save the meat for the print and utilize your audience for filler when the magazine/paper comes out.  Now a reader can participate and have a vested interest in the success and invest in the media accordingly.

Not only does this allow media to remain relevant but also supports newspapers and magazines doing what they can do better than most any other blogger out there: WRITE ACTUAL ARTICLES.  Real meat, investigative pieces that take up 5-10 pages and really involves some journalism the reporting that they are better trained, equipped and financed to do.  Get a handful of kids fresh outta college to do your online content for $25-30k a year a starting, pay a couple veterans the bigger bucks to deliver the meat, groom the kids to eventually be able to do the same, and suddenly you have yourself a working paper on the relatively cheap.

This isn’t the way newspapers have worked, nor is it how they’re adapting.  Instead they’re cutting the bigger bucks veterans, stocking up on prospects on the cheap, and leaving them with no one to learn the real ins and outs of journalism from.  At some point its unsustainable, the kids don’t know how to provide any real meat and the hemorrhaging of money continues without anyone with the know how to stick their thumb in the dike.

Papers are going to keep failing.  Even if some make the harsh adjustments, it may be too little too late.  Just as many department store chains are now long and gone, so will many papers.  Others will survive, linger on as a shell of their former selves, or maybe convert and become something different, something better.

1:00pm UPDATE:

David Simon, creator of The Wire, gets it wrong:

Simon told the Senate Commerce Committee today bloggers don’t go to city council meetings, or know what the hell is going on if they do — a clichéd, out of touch refrain common among newspapermen who can’t be bothered to do any reporting on the assertion. The Wall Street Journal published an op-ed from a Newark Star-Ledger columnist to this effect:

Don’t expect that Web site to hire somebody to sit through town-council meetings… a lot of bloggers will be found gasping for breath under piles of pure ennui. There is nothing more tedious than a public meeting.

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I found this argument odd, because as a newspaper reporter who spent a few years covering a town much like Baltimore — Oakland, California — I often found that bloggers were the only other writers in the room at certain city council committee meetings and at certain community events. They tended to be the sort of persistently-involved residents newspapermen often refer to as “gadflies” — deeply, obsessively concerned about issues large and infinitesimal in the communities where they lived.

The whole Gawker piece by Ryan Tate is good and has some fine examples of citizen journalism.

Jeff Jarvis challenges Journalists to ask themselves a tough question:

Journalism can’t afford repetition and production anymore.

Every minute of a journalist’s time will need to go to adding unique value to the news ecosystem: reporting, curating, organizing. This efficiency is necessitated by the reduction of resources. But it is also a product of the link and search economy: The only way to stand out is to add unique value and quality. My advice in the past has been: If you can’t imagine why someone would link to what you’re doing, you probably shouldn’t be doing it. And: Do what you do best and link to the rest. The link economy is ruthless in judging value.

The question every journalist must ask is: Am I adding value?

It’s a hard thing for a journalist or a media outlet to face.  In this age of infotainment presentation has become everything while the actual meat of the story takes a backstage for the sake of flash and bang and ratings.  But if you’re not adding anything of merit to the conversation it won’t spread, it won’t go very far and it’s hardly news.

This comes back to the continuing argument I make about newspapers as they continue to hemmorage subscriptions: specialization is key.  Do what you do well, leave the rest to the experts.  If you are able to cover something better than everyone else, if you’re really able to add value to the conversation, people will pay and reward you for it.

As Jarvis points out:

Bloggers have had to learn that, too. Just linking to and commenting on others’ reporting won’t get you much attention. Every blogger who does original reporting and tells the world something it doesn’t know but wants to know learns that this is how to get links and audience. Arianna Huffington told Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger in London months ago that she was hiring reporters because their stories get more traffic; it’s enlightened economic self-interest. This is a lesson we teach our journalism students at CUNY, when we have them add reporting to the conversations that are going on online.

Whether you’re a blogger or a new form of news organization, you’re going to have to ask with every move whether it will add value to the news ecosystem. If it doesn’t, you shouldn’t do it.

Metablogging (feeding links left and right) will only get you so far.  If you can bring something to the table, a take, some information, something that adds to the story, you’re in.  If you’re just passing folks along you’re nothing but a tollbooth on the way to something worthwhile.

Also see Jarvis’s “Cover what you do best. Link to the rest.“

Pew’s 2009 State Of The Media report is out in all its gory details.  You can read an overview here.

Charlie Gibson doesn’t get it either, really, and Mark Biggs calls him out on it:

Gibson began with a somber rehash of newspapers cutting jobs and going out of business. “The Seattle Post-Intelligencer is gone — gone,” he said with dramatic effect.

After blaming young people for getting their news online for free, he went on to blame Google (and his “good friend Eric Schmidt”) and even threw citizen journalists under the bus at one point.

Fortunately, during the Q&A, a couple of students resisted the star-struck approach of other questioners and asked him to account for such statements. One even asked Gibson to respond to Clay Shirky’s suggestion that we don’t need newspapers, we just need journalism. Gibson replied that Shirky is “full of crap” and that we are a “long way away” from any web site being able to provide the complete package of news and information in the form of a financially sustainable business like newspapers of the past 30 years.

Gibson is looking for an exact replica of the New York Times online that generates the same revenue as the print product did 15 years ago. He wants the complete package on one web site, apparently only able to recognize greatness by largesse. What if that same quality  journalism found on different sections of the Times web site today were actually separate web sites that were each profitable in their own right? How is that less important, effective or trustworthy than one organization that offers all of them?

I see a future where foreign reporting, local news, political coverage, business news, sports, arts coverage and more will thrive on separate sites, possibly under separate ownership. And this won’t be a problem for the user since aggregation makes it easy to get this as one package.

The other issue is Gibson doesn’t lay the blame where it belongs.

When the Seattle Post-Intelligencer goes web only they readily admit that any indepth reporting, any long exposes and real journalism will no longer happen at the SPI.  They’re all going to become bloggers.

But why?  It’s not because that’s what people want and will pay for on the web.  Hell, if that was the case J’s Notes would be making me tons of monies.

No, newspapers and other media, if you’re going to make money you have got to offer a product worth paying for and advertising on.  You guys can do the indepth reporting bloggers generally can not because you have the training and the resources.  Don’t imitate us, WE’RE NOT MAKING ANY MONEY!

Specialize, find what you do well and knock it out of the park.  Politico can make it work profitably, so can the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and even Charlie Gibson.

Sen. Chap Petersen chimes in on yesterday’s Washington Post coverage on the lack of journalists:

Should anyone care if news reporting dies out?

That’s a great question.  Not everyone is obsessed by the state legislature.  However, on a day-to-day basis, it has more impact on the lives of Virginians than any other political body.  We write  the criminal laws,  the health laws, the divorce laws.  We shape and fund public education.  We plan and build highways.

While press coverage dwindles in Richmond, the content inevitably “dumbs down.”

One could argue that the dumbing down came first.

What the Post and other media outlets seem to be trying to do is set the tone. You NEED these reporters, you NEED this coverage, so you NEED to either subscribe to us or bail us out.

The problem is, these reporters and this coverage isn’t cutting it these days. The current structure of newspapers is a failed business model that has failed to adapt over the last ten years as the Internet has exploded into their turf.  Newspapers need to prove themselves to the public if they can even hope to woo back the dollars they need to survive.  That involves a reevaluation of the way they do business, whether it’s changing how they measure the quality of their product (based on actual quality of content as opposed to sales) or whether it’s changing direction.

Newsweek is trying this.  In a NYTimes article, Newsweek editor Jon Meachum noted:

“There’s a phrase in the culture, ‘we need to take note of,’ ‘we need to weigh in on,’ ” said Newsweek’s editor, Jon Meacham. “That’s going away. If we don’t have something original to say, we won’t. The drill of chasing the week’s news to add a couple of hard-fought new details is not sustainable.”

Newsweek loses money, and the consensus within its parent, the Washington Post Company, and among industry analysts, is that it has to try something big. The magazine is betting that the answer lies in changing both itself and its audience, and getting the audience to pay more.

Newsweek is hoping that it’s more opinionated and stylized take will create a fresh product that people may be willing to pay more.  While this isn’t entirely new – new for weeklies, old for journals like Foreign Affairs and such – it’s different enough that it might work.

But it’s change, it’s adaptation, and it’s an attempt to do something other than business as usual given that business has failed.

Specialization may be the key.  In a time when print is supposedly dying, Politco has not only expanded its news operations but increased it’s print circulation from 27,000 to 32,000.  What Politico brings to the table isn’t just fresh ideas and content but a targeted market that appreciates the quality of their product.  Politico knows what it does well – inside the beltway political coverage – and capitalizes on it, not just in circulation but in advertising revenue as well.  It’s easier to woo a potential advertiser when you can easily help them target a specific market.

Newspapers on the other hand casts a wide net but generates no real bang in any one market enough to really capitalize.  The jack-of-all-trades mentality of newspapers of old isn’t working.  A newspaper is not an expert at all things and does not have the staff to pretend to be so.  The newspaper can no longer be a Swiss Army Knife of news in an era of specialized websites delivering better information from experts in a more timely manner.

Newspapers need to find their niche, their market, what they do well, and tweak accordingly.  Is sure isn’t going to be easy and it might not make as much money as papers once did, but evolution need to happen.

If newspapers don’t adapt, they’re going to die and they’ll have no one to blame but themselves.

The last week has seen a bombardment of articles from newspapers crying about how necessary they are for the sake of society and community.  Two recent examples out of The Washington Post point out that newspapers cover the police and the legislature better than anyone else can ever hope to.  In the latter, Marc Fisher writes:

Across the nation, it’s not just that fewer reporters are covering state government; newspapers and TV stations are also devoting far less space and time to that news.

Does that mean citizens are less well-informed? Do blogs and other new media fill in where old media are cutting back? Is it really a loss if reporters cover fewer legislative debates?

“We used to sit here and it was a typing contest,” Lewis says. “A lot of those process stories had a very small audience.”

“When we had four people here for AP, we covered every floor debate, every vote,” Stuckey says. “I’m not sure much quality was lost when we cut back to two people. We focused more on what it all means than on the daily politics.”

In one hour in the Virginia House the other day, I watched debates on raising the cost of vanity license plates (the No’s won), letting employers pay workers with debit cards rather than paychecks (Yeses won), and making it a felony to hang a noose on someone’s property (approved). Hardly earth-shattering issues, but each has an impact on people’s lives. Yet none got any press; a couple of years ago, they would have.

“The smaller the press corps gets, the more you see personality stories rather than pieces about what is at stake for people,” says Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine. “Smoking in restaurants is always going to get covered, but now, when we make big changes in mental health or foster care, nobody covers it. That has a real impact: It would be hard for campaigns to get even more superficial, but they might.”

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A combination of media revolution and economic collapse is dismantling our news infrastructure, especially at the state and local levels. “Someday, people will wake up to the depletion of the press corps,” Gibson says. “I don’t know if the result will be corruption or demagoguery, but the interests of the people are not being represented anymore.”

Which begs the question: Which came first, the declining subscription rates and income for the papers or the declining quality of product in the name of cost cutting and profit maximizing?

The title given Fisher’s piece, Bloggers Can’t Fill the Gap Left by Shrinking Press Corps, seems to want to take a shot at anyone who believes blogging will do the job.  But no one worth their salt is advocating blogs as being the new force to be reckoned with when it comes to covering the news, nor should anyone believe this is the case.

Bloggasm recently surveyed the front pages of Technorati’s top 10 blogs and found that original reporting only accounted for 13% of posts.  Bloggers rely upon newspapers and professional media for content.  Bloggers provide supplementary information to what the professionals quickly generate an overview of that is then presented as the “whole story”.

Not only that, the ability of bloggers to gain access to press pools or have the time, money or other resources to find the news in ways that journalists have been expected to in the past is severely limited.  Bloggers aren’t granted the same privileges by associations and organization that don’t view websites as legitimate news sources.  Certainly this may change over time, but bloggers are still severely limited by their lack of resources, support structure, and, yes, training to be actual journalists.

Not that journalists are getting the best training these days.  Many are coming fresh out of school being taught to trust what they see on the web. Email is a proper tool for interviewing sources now and, hey, if you need to describe an organization you can just check out the about page on their website. Nevermind that emails can’t replace actual face to face interactions (you know, the kind that verify the person behind the email address) or that about pages don’t tell the full story in an objective manner.

Many reporters and journalists are now expected to be a jack of all trades, writing and copy editing their stories, providing audio/video supplementary coverage, and needing to be able to edit and put it all on a website in a timely manner.  This lack of specialization in an effort to cut costs leads to a product of lower quality, something that any reader could get for free from going to, well, a blog.

Newspapers and their websites have a higher expectation of quality associated with their product.  As that quality diminishes, so does the ability to charge for it, whether you’re charging subscribers or advertisers.

Newspapers are afraid of the internet. As they should be. But that shouldn’t make them get defensive or ball up in the fetal position and cry until they die. It should force them to confront it and evolve.

Newspapers need to take a good hard look at what their purpose is. Are they public service tool or are they a profit minded business that puts income over content and quality? Can they continue to attempt to be a jack of all trades in terms of content or are they going to have to realize that there are some things they can do very well and do those, specialize accordingly, and let others cover what they can’t?

Radio didn’t kill newspapers. Television didn’t kill newspapers either. Both forced newspapers to reevaluate the way they did things and adapt accordingly. Newspapers should have been adapting for years, but now faced with tough economic times that are further drying up their advertising income, it’s do or die time.

Unfortunately for many, they may not be able to “do”.

UPDATE: How’s that for timing. As soon as I hit “publish” I see John Sarvay’s thoughts on the same articles:

The point here isn’t whether newspapers deserve to die, becuse they sort of do, having pissed away so much of their credibility over the past two decades of corporate stewardship. The point is that their death is going to fundamentally change our ability as citizens to stay connected, stay informed, and to hold our elected and appointed officials accountable.

A great example of just how topsy-turvy the inbalance is between government and an industry dedicated to covering it: There are more paid people working in City Hall pitching stories and spinning day-to-day policies than there are reporters covering City Hall for print, television, radio and Internet outlets combined.

And, so, if I were publisher of the Richmond Times-Dispatch and I were interested in reinventing my brand, I’d probably start asking myself (and everyone I met), “How can my paper position itself to be the catalyst for every important community conversation in the region?”

Not as technology but as communication:

At a New Organizing Institute presentation this morning, former Obama new media director Joe Rospars (last seen in these pages talking about the importance of good content to the campaign’s work) made a really significant point — his department was NOT a part of the campaign’s tech team. Instead, it was coequal with communications, field/grassroots, finance, etc., and was in fact just as much a client of the technology folks as, say, the press team was.

…

This also gets at a deeper issue in the online advocacy world — that political people often think of the internet as technology, when really it’s communications. Often, the problems political groups encounter in online outreach have nothing to do with hardware, software or websites, and everything to do with institutional systems and institutional structures. In other words, it’s not the tools, it’s the people and how they’re organized and directed to USE the tools.

It’s practically impossible to argue that Obama’s new/social media outreach wasn’t miles ahead of anything he opposed.  Maybe this is part of the reason why – a fundamental difference in how it was treated compared to other camps.

George W. Bush tries to go through a locked door – 9,480 articles point it out.

Barack Obama tries to go through a window – 1 article points it out.

Kudos.

(h/t Snapped Shot)

“Mr. Gorlin, 39, argued that Eisenstadt was no more of a joke than half the bloggers or political commentators on the Internet or television.”