How is it that smart men and women often miss the obvious? Richard Koman wrote an interesting piece in the SiliconValleyWatcher yesterday. With readership of tradintional newspapers declining each year and online readership growing, why is it that the newpaper executives continue to make decisions that hurt themseves rather than embracing the obvious trends. People are reading newspapers less and less. People spend more and more time at the computers. The production of newspapers is a costly and wasteful process. The cost of online media is very cheap and delivery is immediate. Why does a newspaper's website continue to be an extesion of the paper and not a freestanding business?
Protect the circulation numbers. Protect the Brand. It is unfortunate that the executives at the newspaper fail to recognize that the business is the delivery of the news not the delivery of newspapers. The future is online and these executives should realize that their profits will more and more come from online media and embrace that trend.
Read more what Richard has to say here. One suggestion he makes to the newspapers is below and I think a good one.
I would actually suggest that today's paper be available online not today but tomorrow and that the archive be given away for free. Everybody loves to talk about the Times, from the anti-MSM bloggers to Berkeleyites. The Times could encourage this, put itself out there as the source material for people to annotate, explore, deconstruct, etc. They could actually use technology to find ways to organize, display, link to the many ways bloggers interact with the content. They could sell advertising on all of this.
