So, when are we going to stop talking about "online newspapers?" Few if any newspapers simply slap the day's paper up on the web and call it a day. They are breaking news online, fleshing out features, and posting exclusive content, including multimedia to the web. Calling it the online newspaper sells it short, but it also may be a sign that we haven't yet made the mental leap necessary to adapt the print-centric model that is suffering so badly right now. My fear is that this resistance ("The print version doesn't work so we'll do the same thing on the web") will stifle the ability of a well-established industry to make the changes necessary to survive.
What's that? Newspapers are dead, you say? Well, my point here is that newspapers really weren't ever about newspapers. They're about content. Newspapers grew by using the best media (a press-based mass content packaging and distribution network) available to connect people with information they needed. Heck. Almost sounds like the Internet!
A new faster, cheaper model has emerged so it's time to adapt the content to fit the new container (an old favorite of mine). The newspaper itself has always been limited by the cost of production and the availability of ads. The Internet doesn't work that way. Content is only limited by its quality and consistency because that's how folks decide whether or not to consume it.
This study by Pew shows that, between 2006 and 2008, daily newspaper readership among Americans has dropped 7 percentage points, from 34% to 27%. And, they note that, "since the early 1990s, the proportion of Americans saying they read a newspaper on a typical day has declined by about 40%." Not good for the news biz... maybe. The same study showed that a slim majority (51%) of Americans now "graze" for their news, checking in at multiple points during the day. Goes back to that whole more efficient network thing. The ritual of reading the dailiy, authoratitive newspaper (or two) over coffee each morning may be waning, but the appetite for relevant, interesting news doesn't appear to be going away. In fact, the robust availablility creates more of an appetite for content -- just not the structured kind that fit the newspaper mold.
Web content is no more an online newspaper than a train is an iron horse. It's an evolutionary change to the medium that still serves the same primary purpose.
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