We got our first television set when I was five. It was 1952, and we got a television so that we could watch the coronation of Elizabeth II. News was the reason. Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, and all that stuff from what we like to call The Golden Age of Television was a side benefit. Or so my father told us.
The news coverage of the coronation wasn't "live" in the sense that we know it today. The coronation was filmed and the film was rushed to the airport where it was placed aboard special planes equipped with developing labs. While the planes crossed the Atlantic, the film was developed.
We were treated to pictures taken with big, stationary cameras of motorcycle couriers whisking the film away from the airport, and then, a few moments later, roaring up to the television studio building and rushing inside with the film canisters.
Then we saw the coronation, not live, but recent, pictures preserved on film and telecast only hours after the actual events. It was television combining the immediacy of radio with the pictures that only print could offer before. It was television changing the nature of what we called "news" and challenging the newspapers that had reigned supreme in the "news" business since they began in the 17th century.
As technology improved, cameras got smaller and easier to use in the field. Satellite linkages made it possible to broadcast from remote locations. It's hard to remember that it wasn't always this way.
Listen to the famous Walter Cronkite announcement of the death of President John Kennedy. Usually we concentrate on the depth of emotion there, but when I heard it again recently something else caught my ear. Cronkite makes the announcement of the time of death and then gives the time of death in the Eastern Time zone. Then he says, "approximately thirty-eight minutes ago."
Those few words do more than just about anything in my recent experience to highlight the difference between news then and now. Ted Turner is responsible for many things, but one of the most important is that he changed our definition of what news is. Before CNN, news was what had happened recently. With CNN, news is what's happening now.
That was bad news for newspapers, who mostly only went to print once a day. Television news battered newspapers, and so did changing, busier lifestyles and increasing costs, especially for newsprint. For almost fifty years now more newspapers have been closing or consolidating than have been starting up, leading to a net loss of almost 300 papers since 1950. Readership has steadily trended down, too, dropping almost six percent in the last decade, according to the Newspaper Association of America.
Last week the Readership Institute at the Northwestern University Media Management Center released the results of an eighteen month study of ways that newspapers could reverse the downward trend in readership. The Institute looked at 100 newspapers throughout the United States comprising a mix of circulation, market size, and urban and rural markets. They analyzed survey the results of 37,000 twelve page questionnaires. And they came up with some findings and recommendations.
The recommendations come in two forms. First there are the recommendations about content. Increase the number of stories on science, food, and fashion. Make sure you've got ads for food, clothing, and health products, because ads are one reason folks read the paper. There are also recommendations for making papers easier to navigate and improving promotion.
Those are pretty easy to implement compared with some other recommendations. The Institute suggests that newspapers need to improve their brand image and replace the "change resistant cultures" it found at 80 percent of newspapers to more "adaptive" cultures. Sounds pretty strategic, huh?
But it's not. The problem with this study, as good as it is, is that it's tactical. Sure, readership is important and it may even be the most important issue facing newspapers today, but without looking at the competition and without addressing profitability a paper runs the risk of being easy to read, full of great information, and out of business.
Strategy for newspapers should provide a consistent approach to two things: long term competitive advantage and profitability. Readership improvements only address part of the situation.
When I work with clients on strategy, I start with an Industry Map that gives us an idea of who the players and forces are and what are their relative strengths. We're looking at who's got the power, and how much a threat there is of new competition and substitution.
For newspapers right now there are all kinds of competition. There's TV and radio news, of course. And the Web has brought a whole new kind of competition. Now electronic outlets, like television stations or CNN can have "printed" output on their website. Now, newspapers have to make decisions about how "immediate they need to be in terms of when they post new stories to their websites.
With a map of the competitive landscape in place, we can look at the Seismic Forces that disrupt that landscape. Chief among those, for newspapers are population trends and technology.
Generation Y, the Millennium Generation, is just moving into college, the workforce and news-reading age. There are forty million of them, and they've grown up with the net. That's their primary source for news. Two thirds of them go to the Net first for information, ahead of newspapers, according to the Round Table Group and supported by research by Brent Baker at the Boston University College of Communication.
It's not just the web on the technology front. There's also email, and an array of portable devices like cell phones, pagers and Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs). And there are combinations of media. CNN is actively working to " have convergence of its television assets and its Internet assets" That's already begun with a late afternoon (Eastern Time) news program that uses feedback through a CNN website to determine which stories get attention, as well as integrating email and chat room comments into several current news shows.
With all my clients, I use three guidelines for formulating an effective strategy. You build on your strength, allocate your resources to opportunity, and concentrate on value. Here's how they might play out in the newspaper business.
Newspapers have two key strengths and the go together. First there are journalists, folks who can create content for all manner of media. And then, there's local knowledge. When it comes to the hometown or region, no one knows more than the local reporters and editors. Readers think so, too. Research by NFO found that local newspaper websites were the prime choice of web users looking for local news and events.
What about the opportunities? There's major opportunities in delivery though multiple media. National papers like USA Today and the Wall Street Journal already distribute some of their content to digital phones, pagers and PDAs. Local papers should follow suit.
Newspapers should also latch on to the power of email and its ability to alert folks to news that matters to them. Email newsletters are turning out to be a powerful tool for papers that use them. Again, readers seem to like them, as well. At the Denver Post, there's a 90% retention rate for that papers 25,000 email subscriptions.
There are also the opportunities that come with having a physical presence in the community and a physical product. There's the opportunity to use the same sales force that sells print advertising to sell online advertising and print/online packages. There are multiple opportunities for cross-promotion.
Concentrating on value is the third key to effective strategy. Newspapers haven't done real well here, but it's not too late. Newspaper websites in general could be a lot easier to use. Most papers simply "re-purpose" content for the web, without giving much attention to the different ways folks read online compared with print. Few papers do a good job of using the web's ability to archive material and provide background and discussion.
It comes down to this. Improving readership alone will not be enough to make a newspaper successful in the Digital Age. But paying attention to a real strategy, building on strength, seizing opportunities, and delivering value can do the trick.
The clock is ticking though. And it's getting late.
This feature appeared on 16 April 2001
