Adnerds

It might not happen to young dads today, but in a few years from now this question might pop up once in a while. When browsing through some old pictures or when cleaning out the attic, your son or daughter might just find something you have already long forgotten that it once was so omni-present: a newspaper. That day you will only find newspapers from the day you were born (all yellow and bleached by the sun) in small niche antique stores. Anyway, if you are lucky, your kids stops right there. If you’re not, your kid will make fun of you. Because you were the dumb ass that waited a day to read the news from the day before. You were the one that couldn’t instantly search what was happening, right now. You couldn’t find back with ease something you read and sharing a newspaper item with a colleague meant tearing up your copy, let alone you couldn’t share it with a friend on the other side of the country (I left using a copier and fax out for dramatization). And if you forgot your printed version, you had nothing to read in the train?

You have to admit: newspapers are dumb.

Well, not only newspapers, everything that is not made of digits, is dumb. It has no intelligence behind it and never will have. But let’s stick to newspapers for now…

Today, news media, especially the traditional, printed ones have a hard time staying alive. Many go bankrupt, many others take action and focus on online. Or at least they are looking at online business models since most of us are already reading the news over there. Most of the newspapers are too relaxed… for now. OK, they redesign their websites, but apart from an occasional ’share this story’, ‘comment here’ or ’send it to a friend’ button little is happening. Vandaag.be, a PebbleMedia initative (Telenet, Concentra and VAR joined forces) has Facebook Connect build in and publishes stories to your Facebook newsfeed, but all this change is still focused on how things are done now (and how they always have been done).

There are however some obvious advantages newspapers encounter today: people buy less paper, but the hunger for news is bigger than ever. People are using social platforms on a daily basis, interacting with each other more than ever before. They like sharing and it doesn’t stop at sharing music or entertainment, they share news (search for Obama, earthquake or other recent news facts on Twitter). It’s true there are challenges (I wouldn’t want to minimize this), and they are big, but they can be overcome.

Step 1: What business are you really in?

Well, I will tell you. You are not in the distributing business, nor are you in the manufacturing business. You are not even in the information business, as information can be so easily commodified. You are no Facebook, so you are not in the community business either. Are you in the knowledge business? Not quite (yet), you know little about your readers and the knowledge you have is certainly not unique. But you can be a news-network.

Instead of walking the same walk the dieing music labels went by suing every blogger or competitor who shares quotes and links back to your articles (like the Associated Press does), make the smarter choice. Experiment, try, test. You are dying anyway so any cure will do, right?

Step 2: Change a dying business

Open up, let your news be aggregated, have people link to it. Even better: help people link to it. Build an API (and in the same time an additional advertising network on external websites) like the Guardian does. Make money from crowdsourced materials – I bet everyone featured in the “Capture Cincinatti” has bought the book and made some friends buy it as well. Build and leverage your community of readers, let them interact, share, build groups like the NYTimesPeople initiative (probably why Gannett Inc bought Ripple6, a community expert) or build a complete new community site for your local readers like Bakotopia a niche local nightlife community by The Bakersfield Californian and spread a monthly (free) magazine with more expensive adspace. Use Twitter for live coverage like the Boston Globe and Mail did a few times now, have people give your authors input on who and what to ask (like Yoosk? offers).  Go local and cover the news no one else is covering instead of trying to outperform competition in being the first to beat the (same) news – and if you cannot do it yourself, have a company like Outside.in do the job for you (they maintain content on NBCChicago.com). Btw, did you know that giving all NY Times subscribers a Kindle and taking the jump to a pure online publishing business costs half of printing the NY Times?

Step 3: You do not always have to monetize what you are good at.

But eventually you have to monetize something. Remind yourself in what business you are. And think twice where your money will come from. It does not have to be what you are best at. Google is best in class when it comes to search, but they make money from being an advertising platform. But they can only sell those adspaces because they happen to be the best websearch ever. The Cinicinatti Enquirer sold books at a much higher price than it sells daily newspapers, even to many times the people it has subscribed users. And they aren’t the best book publishers in town.

Step 4: Buy the car you have always dreamt of.

Hey, we are in advertising, don’t blame us. And we are working for Mercedes, Volvo and Chrysler/Jeep/Dodge. So if you earned yourself some money, at times of crisis, there is no better investment than to spend it right away. I personally like the GL a lot ;-).

PS: since it worked last time with Truvo –> if you are a newspaper (and you admit you are dying) and are willing to rethink your business model thorough, give us a tweet or contact us the way you like and we will be glad to help you out.