[lit-ideas] Re: Newspapers on paper and online
- From: "Andreas Ramos" <andreas@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 16 Mar 2005 09:49:30 -0800
> Most of a publication's revenues comes from advertising.
Most of a PRINTED newspaper's revenues comes from advertisting. But online
papers earn very
little on advertising.
The two most-widely-read "online newspapers" are Yahoo (http://news.yahoo.com)
and Google
(http://news.google.com). Yahoo's news is assembled from wire reports by
humans. Google's
news is assembled by a computer that scans 4,500 newspapers, magazines, and
wire services
(no humans are involved in selecting the stories).
Yahoo has news as parts of its general services to attract an audience. News is
not their
core business. It's just a give-away. Google's news software was written by a
software
engineer. News isn't a core business for Google as well. Google news is read
(or, better
said, "watched") by the White House and others in government.
It's remarkable that these two companies are able to offer news that is better
distributed
than any major newspaper or TV news division (incl. CNN), for whom news is
their core
business.
Another major problem for newspapers and TV news: their audience is getting
older. Most
readers/viewers are in the mid-50s to mid-60s (notice that the ads tend to
target that
audience). People under 35 simply won't read a newspaper nor watch the news on
TV. The most
popular TV news program is Jon Stewart's Daily Show, a comedy satire about the
news.
Basically, the news-delivery format of newspapers, TV news, and radio news just
doesn't work
anymore. The web is far better at delivery of short news items. The news
junkies go there
for the news.
Other formats however work better in print: the long articles in the New
Yorker, the New
York Review of Books, the London Review, and similar are easier to read in
print. These are
weekly or monthly magazines.
I would guess that in ten years, the New York Times and other newspapers will
turn into
weekly magazines, where they can offer fewer stories, but with indepth
coverage. However, we
won't need 50 weekly news magazines, so we'll see consolidation and closure.
By coincidence, last week I cancelled my printed newspaper. It's the first time
in my life
that I've not had a newspaper subscription. I've been considering this for two
years or so;
I noticed that I got very little news from the newspaper (a good example was
the tsunami,
which was widely misreported in the print and TV media). With Mozilla (a
browser), I can set
up a collection of newspapers and news sources in a folder, and then click a
single button
to open all of them simultaneously in tabs. In a few minutes, I can scan some
12 sources.
Google's news was recently updated to allow one to decide what news to see. In
another
button, I have RSS feeds from several blogs. Instead of a single personalized
newspaper
(often described as "The Daily Me"), I have a personalized collection of news.
yrs,
andreas
www.andreas.com
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