Hey Newspapers, Howabout’cha Listen up?

sxc.hu

I’ve lost count of the number of newspapers which have gone under since the beginning of the year. We’re not even through the first quarter of the year and yet, many (except those in the business who are desperately staying on top of every single death)  have simply stopped counting the number of traditional news outlets that have disappeared.

The latest in the series of death knells is the Rocky Mountain News – Denver’s 150-year-old daily newspaper. They are shutting the doors today and limping off into the sunset.

There’s lots and lots of people who are jumping up and down and claiming either that the traditional newspaper is not dead yet goddammit!!! or that it is! and that we should all just give up, pack up and never print anything on paper, ever again.

So ok, where’s the actual truth? I think it’s somewhere in between. Yes, advertising revenue – the old standby that kept many print editions afloat – is on a rapid decline. Newspapers are losing money and many are still adamant that they’re not ready or able to make the leap to an entirely digital format. That would require a complete overhaul of their entire business model, from top to bottom and would also likely create quite a dip in revenue that they’d have to dig out of.

I’m still waiting for the actual solution, if they don’t want to do either.

Time Magazine printed an article recently about whether or not the Newspaper industry needed a bail out. I say hell no, they don’t, what they need is a swift kick in the ass to move forward into the now and to listen to what their customers want!

When was the last time you bought an actual newspaper? We stopped daily delivery of the paper about 6 years ago. I, and most of my peers get all of our news online and from friends. Even the venerable Pew Industry recently released a report that says for the first time in history, more people say they get their national and international news from the internet.

The Daily Beast has a fantastic suggestion from yesterday’s column:

Forget the newspaper industry. Let’s launch the News Industry. Say hello to News Inc. Let’s do what every industry does: Identify consumer demand and meet it.The good news is that consumers are just learning all the new ways they can get news and are still figuring out what works best for them. There is still time for those of us in the news industry to work with them and find out at the same time. [source]

Hear hear! There’s a lot more room to move in a News Industry than there is in the newspaper industry. Think about it.

Yes, it will require a drastic change to how the news industry is run, and yes, it’ll probably bleed money for the first little while, but every other industry can adapt and change to consumer demands, why can’t the news industry adapt?