Vin Crosbie, in his piece The Presses Will Be Outsourced Before Stopped:
These presumptions ignore the fact that newspaper readerships have been declining for more than 30 years and that approximately half of those declines occurred before the Internet was opened to the public or the public had any online access. Shouldn’t that give publishers a hint that the major cause of their readerships’ declines isn’t the Internet or their content not being online?
The bulk of the column is a response to Jon Fine’s recent suggestion that the San Francisco Chronicle, due to its heavy and continuing losses, may be the first big daily to take itself solely online. But the above comes from an interesting aside that points to the long decline in newspaper readership, and suggests turning to the ‘net isn’t the answer publishers need.
Vin points out it makes little sense for any newspaper to give up the expenses of printing and distribution when they are also giving up all the advertising revenue that goes with it. Outsourcing printing makes much more sense, he says.
But his little aside in the centre of the piece, which features the quote above, is what got me. It’s likely not platform, or delivery method, or additional storyforms that newspapers need to be paying attention to: it’s the content.
That rings true to me. I didn’t stop reading print editions of newspapers because they were inconvenient, or because the information was available elsewhere. I stopped reading because there was nothing in there that I really wanted or needed.
TAGS: NEWSPAPERS, CONTENT, BUSINESS
