How We Got Here and How We Get Out of Here →
Great analysis by Kenneth Lerer of the print journalism industry. Many of the examples and bits of advice apply more broadly than to only print journalism, and I’ve pulled a few of my favorite bits below:
While he didn’t mean this as a compliment, his comment did underscore a too-often ignored truth about Internet news, one that has been proven many times since. Web reporting is not a sideshow to print journalism. It breaks and creates — important news.
Part of the problem was that these assumptions were embedded into huge corporate structures that weren’t built for sharp turns. Years of media consolidation created a handful of conglomerates that now control enormous swaths of the media market. Some, like Disney, G.E., Viacom and Time Warner have bought up all types of media, from magazines and TV to movies and books. Newspaper companies followed the lead and expanded as well. News Corp., Hearst, and the New York Times Company now own over two hundred newspapers between them. This vertical integration left them with far less competition, so they were able to grow without innovation. But they also lost perspective. They doubled down on a business plan that seemed to work short term, and then stifled creativity by barricading themselves in a corporate echo chamber. So they kept expanding their control in the analogue world, even while the digital world was on the rise.
Clayton Christensen calls this The Innovator’s Dilemma. The problem, as he describes it, is that the best companies in any industry will eventually lose market dominance by doing everything that a good business should do. (By the way, if I were in charge of Columbia University I would make this required reading for every incoming student) Good businesses listen to their customers, they give them what they want, and because of this they ultimately fail.
So it’s not that newspapers didn’t notice the Internet. And it’s not that they didn’t hold to their original business model because they were stupid, or lazy, or because they had some sort of pathological aversion to technology. Newspapers are in trouble now because, ironically, they were very well run — for the world that was, not for the world that was coming to be.
If I owned a newspaper, I would move to a robust hybrid model very quickly. I would aggressively build out my online business and I would start planning my future without the printing press. By responding to consumer demands for greater engagement, I would take advantage of the changes the Internet has brought. I would open the door to citizen journalism and to small, local investigative units like the ones that we are seeing in many cities. I don’t mean to suggest that citizen reporters can replace the great work of journalists like Dexter Filkins or David Barstow, of the Times. But if newspapers pursue these new ways of newsgathering, it will help build their online community and that will, in turn, attract more users and that will make for a better business model.
It’s time the industry got comfortable with the idea that media today is a networked/ecosystem. It’s all about originating, aggregating, curating, linking, and spurring conversations. Why? Because users want it this way. For today’s newspapers to compete, they will have to offer their readers more chances to engage and discuss, to react and interact.
