Tech & Biz

The Emperor's New Clothes and News biz

by biverson | April 9, 2007 at 10:41 am

670 views | 10 Recommendations | 1 comment

Ad revenue in most large newspaper markets will keep dropping 3-5% per year for the next five years. Real circulation — excluding the tons of papers dumped on schools, hotels and the constantly-churning “free ten-week trial” – will keep dropping 3-7% per year for the next five years.

So says Don Morgan in "Online Spin" an online set of blogs and feeds for marketing pros. Sometimes it is helpful to see your business through the eyes of an outsider. The comments on this post are good. Especially the ones from people who formerly worked at newspapers.

Make the mental leap from this story and the ideas in it to the story from NYTimes Business Day about HP (the printer company)
where senior VP of the printing division, V.I. Joshi quotes his kid,

one of his daughters, a college student, had told him, “I don’t need a printer.” Like many people of her generation, she lives online and finds it unnecessary or too difficult to put bits onto paper.

Paper isn't everyone's idea of the perfect solution or medium. In addition to the interesting bit about HP buying Tabblo, which I follow because it is powered by django, Adrian Holovaty's language of choice, don't walk away from the story without doing some thinking about what Mr. Joshi says,

H.P. may not really be in the printing business. “We are in the content consumption business,” he said.

And what might your business be? Mine? Ideas and links.

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Actual News Geezer

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 10:52 on April 9th, 2007

Calling all NP members with an interest in the future of News:

biverson posts an interesting article here about declining readership for dead tree news - and invites others to post their info / resources as comments.

Let 'er rip!