Digital Future: More Bad News for Newspapers

The news for newspapers is getting worse, according to the Center for the Digital Future at the USC Annenberg School.

In its ninth annual "Digital Future Project" report, the Center continues to track reading and viewing trends, "watching as people move on-line and then move from modems to broadband. The project also carefully tracks those who drop off the net each year and whether they return and, if so, when and what brings them back. At the end of nine years, we also have an unparalleled view of the non-users who do not go on-line. We carefully examine why they are not users and whether they are likely to ever go on-line."

Among many other findings, its data illustrates the Web's contribution to the continuing free-fall decline of American daily print newspapers:

* The study found that as sources of information – their primary function – newspapers rank below the Internet or television. Only 56 percent of Internet users ranked newspapers as important or very important sources of information for them – a decrease from 60 percent in 2008 and below the Internet (78 percent), and television (68 percent).

* Even lower are the percentages of users who consider newspapers important as sources of entertainment for them, now considered important by 29 percent of Internet users, and down from 32 percent in 2008 – also last among principal media.

* Eighteen percent of Internet users said they stopped a subscription to a newspaper or magazine because they now get the same or related content online – down slightly from 22 percent in 2008, but nevertheless a strong indication that print newspapers can be sacrificed by a significant percentage of Internet users.

* Internet users were asked where they would go for information provided by their newspaper if the print edition ceased, 59 percent said they would read the online edition of the publication; only 37 percent said they would instead read the print edition of another newspaper.

* Twenty-two percent of users who read newspapers said they would not miss the print edition of their newspaper.

As they become more practical and affordable, e-readers and other handheld electronic devices (Kindles, iPads, etc.) are also spelling tragedy for print newspaper circulation.

Here's what Editor and Publisher has to say about it: "Newspapers Sink Below Internet and TV as Information Sources."

View highlights of the Digital Future report here (PDF).

The full Digital Future report is available for purchase here.

1981: The Beginning of the End?...

... or the end of the beginning?

Long before anyone had heard of the Internet, early home computer users could read their morning newspapers online ... sort of. Steve Newman's 1981 story was broadcast on KRON San Francisco.

Tip of the hat to The Wrap.

Big Ouch: Gannett Axes 1,400 Jobs

According to the Wall Street Journal:

Gannett Co., the largest U.S. newspaper publisher by daily circulation, will cut between 1,000 and 2,000 jobs out of its 41,500-person work force in response to continuing revenue declines, according to a person familiar with the company's thinking.

The cuts will come from the U.S. Community Publishing division, which consists of Gannett's more than 80 local dailies, the person said, and won't affect the company's flagship, USA Today.

AP Business Writer Andrew Vanacore provides a more specific number:

Newspaper publisher Gannett Co. plans to cut 1,400 jobs in the next few weeks, about 3 percent of the work force, as it faces a prolonged slump in advertising revenue.

Tellingly, the most likely place to find that AP story is not at a newspaper Website, but at Yahoo or Google News , neither of which pay for its use, but make money whenever someone views the story on their respective sites. And therein lies the problem.

4 New Strategies for Rescuing the News Business

As previously noted, RevenueTwoPointZero vowed to identify and propose four specific new strategies for funding journalism. Here are the new revenue models these enterprising newspaper employees have developed for media companies. See what you think:

* Display advertising solutions
(Converting homepages from digests to tables of content, and re-imagining story pages with one big bold 480x480 interactive ad, pictured)

* Classified solutions
(Beating Craigslist at its own game, and taking back classified ads)

* iPhone solutions
(Capturing an emerging audience on mobile platforms)

* Small-business solutions
(Re-thinking banner ads for small budgets)

Get the full report here.

Dad? What's a Newspaper?

Charlie Rose: The Future of Newspapers

Watch Charlie Rose discuss the bleak future of newspapers with:

* Walter Isaacson, former managing editor of Time, who wrote this week's cover story, "How to Save Your Newspaper"

* Robert Thomson, managing editor of the Wall Street Journal

* Mort Zuckerman, owner and publisher of The New York Daily News, and owner and editor-in-chief of U.S. News and World Report

Making it Easier to Find Good Video Stories

What makes our job at KobreGuide both challenging and valuable is that great videojournalism is so difficult to find -- and as for the little that exists, nobody hides it better than the media companies that produce it.

Although the situation has improved somewhat over the past couple years, most newspaper websites still treat their own video stories as bastard stepchildren -- relegating them to a bottom-tier ghetto section of their own website. If a viewer is fortunate enough to stumble into the off-the-beaten-path video annex at all, it is then an uninviting and often outright impossible task to stick around and look at other videos. Navigation is a nightmare. And good luck trying to find whatever text story might be related to the subject matter.

It's baffling enough for most web denizens that there is no industry standard when it comes to shape, size, and design of video players and their controls -- encountering each one anew requires embarking on yet another learning curve. Even those who proactively search for video stories on specific topics are stymied by the failure of search engines to find them.

Now we're starting to see the rise of companies such as ReelSEO that specialize in search engine optimization for videos. They've amassed an online series of tips and tutorials from the past year that's worth a look.

That's certainly one step in the right direction -- positioning and annotating your videos (e.g. with strategic keywords) so that people can locate them. But there's so much more work to be done with arranging, grouping and presenting online video so that it lures viewers and enables and even encourages them to see more. We are constantly amazed that even the titles assigned to projects that represent weeks or even months of preparation are so bland and uninspired.

Most newspapers got into the video business grudgingly, vaguely aware that this is the direction they should go because nothing else was working monetarily, and with the dim hope that it would somehow pay for itself someday. When that half-hearted approach didn't strike gold, some reacted by pulling back -- returning their videographers to the ranks of still photography, and making their print reporters relinquish their new vidcams and laptop editing software (often to the reporters' collective relief).

But others reacted by dipping a few more toes into the video pond, either out of hope or desperation, doubling down on their initial investment. Even so, embarassingly few have figured out how to put their wares on display -- newspaper video sections more closely resemble the jumbled shelves of a dusty pawn shop than an elegant Tiffany case.

Before a newspaper website can truly measure the value of its video, it first needs to bolster its quality, both journalistically and aesthetically, but then it also must candidly assess whether it's properly promoting its goods for maximum consumer appeal.

The Video Explosion

Charles Layton wrote an illuminating "state-of-the-art" roundup of the varying quality of newspaper-generated videojournalism for the American Journalism Review, with links to examples of the worst and best:

News video has been around for six or seven years on some newspaper Web sites, but in the past 12 to 18 months it has grown from a significant trend into a near stampede. Call up Web sites at random and you'll find a very large, very mixed selection, much of it disappointing, some so awful it makes you cringe, and some reasonably well executed but trivial... The bulk of online news video occupies a broad, gray middle ground in terms of quality, as the industry stumbles toward a goal it cannot yet quite perceive or articulate... But a small proportion is excellent by any standard...

Those "excellent" videos are especially difficult to locate -- and that's why we created the KobreGuide to the Web's Best Videojournalism!

Transition Questions

Does being a good photographer make you more likely to be a good videographer? Why or why not?

Does being a good photojournalist make you more likely to be a good videojournalist? Why or why not?

As newspaper photographers transition to online video, these questions are being asked more frequently. We have our own observations, thoughts and perceptions. But first we want to hear yours. Please comment below.

PBS Frontline's "News War" -- The Future of Journalism?

See part three of PBS Frontline's "News War," entitled "What's Happening to the News," segments 16-25. The series examines the mounting pressure for profits faced by America's network news divisions and daily newspapers, as well as growing challenges from cable television and the Internet.

Network executives, newspaper editors and publishers, bloggers, Wall Street analysts and key players at Google and Yahoo! discuss the battle for market dominance in a rapidly changing world.

The primary challenge to both newspapers and broadcast networks is the growing power of the Internet as a news distribution platform, pulling consumers and advertisers away from more traditional media.

But Internet news providers like Yahoo! and Google say that they are not in the business of creating content, relying instead on traditional news-gathering organizations.

If not newspapers, who will create content for the Internet news aggregators? Bloggers? Self-appointed pundits? Anyone with Internet access and an opinion, informed or otherwise?

This is clearly no longer traditional "reporting." But is this journalism?

Read about it here. View it online here. And start praying for the soul of the Fourth Estate.

Should Newspapers Get Out of the News Business?

Everyone presumes that newspapers will soon get out of the print business... and somehow make a go of it with online journalism. But maybe everyone's looking at the problem the wrong way.

Newspapers don't make money on news. They make money printing and distributing ads. News is what they LOSE money on -- even online. So, logically, newspaper companies should get out of the news business, and find something less expensive to fill that "editorial" space.

Besides, newspaper reporters, photographers and editors possess many invaluable skill sets, but shooting and editing video and telling multimedia stories, with audio and moving images, are not likely to be among them.

Which prompts some good questions: In your vision of the future, WHO will produce high-quality online journalism, WHAT will it look like, and HOW will it be commercially viable? We're all ears.