Recent Entries in Newspapers

sprout.jpgSpecific details are sparse, but has The Seattle Times cracked the code to staying profitable in 2009?
The morning after the election, as I ran through my morning routine, I thought I might pick up a copy of The New York Times on the way to the office, for posterity's sake.  After a week's worth of reporting, it's well known that newspapers were incredibly hard to find on the morning of November 5, 2008.  But over the course of that morning - until I could get online, that is - what I was experiencing was very singular and personal.

It wasn't until I was settled in the warm cozies of the Undercurrent office, sucking in news like a Dyson, did I realize what a shared experience even the aftermath of the election was having on us.  Which sounds obvious, since we had just elected a new leader of the free world.  But I'm thinking beyond just an insignificant morning whim.  The inability to find a copy of a newspaper is an ironic microcosm of the print industry itself.  In fact, the sweeping morning paper sales wasn't just a byproduct of the election: the election itself may have been the (second of two) tipping points that accelerates the end of the printed newspaper.

I point to two significant indicators: President-elect Obama's transition towards more transparency, openly communicative government, and the Christian Science Monitor shifting to a web-based strategy, the first newspaper to do so.  CSM transitioning online can be valued in and of itself, but when we look back, it will be recognized for it's role in the larger scheme.  And President-elect Obama's continued embrace of the internet for open information flow - and hopefully more community development online, like barackobama.com - means more people going first to the web for their information, since they can get it faster and with less filter.  If CSM was the snowball that kicked off the larger avalanche, then Obama's use of all things digital are the rocks and trees and slopes that shape the coming landscape.

Printed newspapers are fast becoming collectors items that stamp and date in history, and that's all.  The majority of those November 5, 2008 issues will end up in a mylar bag in a basement, like a first edition comic book.  It's hard to imagine institutions like the CS Monitor, the NY Times, and the Washington Post becoming so radically altered that they no longer physically exist, nevermind fathoming the entire newspaper print industry actually disappearing.  But the limbs - all of them - very well may need to be amputated if the head (reporting) is ever going to survive.
Okay, I realize this is the third post about the New York Times in two weeks.  But bear with me as I again rely on them as trusted pioneers in a noble-and-desperate industry.

It was announced this week that the Times is converging their media coverage into one consolidated desk [NY Observer].  What was once an aggregated collective between Business Day and Culture is melding into a new department that will "feed the news needs of both, as well as the feature wells of Sunday Business and Arts & Leisure".

Looking back at the Times' recent trend of digital exploration and execution, as well as its new media coverage, this is an interesting development for the paper.  While it continues to suffer the same industry setbacks - more layoffs and section consolidation / cut-backs - it is also innovating and redefining what a print newspaper can be in the digital era.

Here's how I see this playing out: The Times more readily covers new media and digital phenomena under this hybrid department, like last weekend's article on Twitter and ambient awareness.  Topics will be centrally identified ("Twitter"), but covered with broader cross-departmental insight and input.  The newspaper then more closely mirrors the way we converse about new media; from a general news / happening perspective ("I just joined Twitter; are you on?"), a business perspective ("How does Twitter stay afloat?" "Has anyone monetized Twitter yet?"), cultural and social perspectives ("I never follow people unless I know them." "I met my best friend on Twitter."), and of course a technological perspective ("Will Twitter ever add fake-following or at least fix their downtime issues?").

I wouldn't be surprised if the weekly Digital section of the paper expanded to daily within the next six months.  Nor would I be surprised to stumble on a rival organizations coverage of the Times' digital innovations.  Though the challenge of sufficiently monetizing remains...

Clive Thompson, a contributor to publications like The New York Times and Wired, has an excellent article in this weekend's Times Magazine covering "ambient awareness", called "I'm So Totally, Digitally Close to You".  It digs deep into the mentality and psychology behind users of digital social networks.  Get past the initial Facebook portion of the article, and you're rewarded with the most clear, articulate answer to the question, "Twitter - why?", I've ever seen in print.

Carve out 15 minutes and dig in.  If you don't use Twitter, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised at what you read.  And if you do use Twitter, as I do, there's some interesting self-reflected enlightenment for you as well.
You probably know about the dire situation that the newspaper industry is in.  With the rise of the internet, people have been getting their news online for free, and less and less people are buying and reading physical copies of newspapers.  Revenues are down, losses are up, whole departments are being let go.

What's interesting about the New York Times is ever since their redesign a couple years back, they've been putting up more and more interactive content.  It started with basic videos of news pieces and rich media slideshows.  Last week on their site, accompanying a basic article in the published paper about last stops on NYC subway lines, the Times put out a rich media, (somewhat) interactive complement for the article, with content you can only get online, like videos and high-quality color photography.  Some of the Times' interactive efforts are a little behind the curve, like their penchant for 3D panoramas; though they do provide a level of immersion flat photographs - online or in print - just don't match.

My favorite feature is video speeches with accompanying transcripts that allow you to click to any block of the speech text and jump to that segment of the video.  However you prefer to absorb the content - watching the video from beginning to end, reading the transcript from top to bottom, or jumping back and forth, queuing up only the segments you want to see & hear, and skimming through the rest - is there for you to use.  There's even a clickable outline to the overall speech (presumably for lengthier ones), so you can jump to full portions of the speech, creating a kind of 'powers of 10' feel.

A lot of these features may have been around with the Times for a while, and there may be even more in-depth efforts with other publications, like the Washington Post or the Wall Street Journal.  I wouldn't really know because a) I don't dwell on the Times' site as long as I might read a print edition (another of the newspapers' woes), and b) other than occasional guilty (and necessary) dabbling with the aggregation of the Drudge Report, my primary news source / brand preference is almost exclusively with the Times.

It's tough to see the newspaper industry struggle without clear solutions to adapting and monetizing to the digital world, but exclusive online features like these certainly help.  Here's hoping the Times is around long enough to see a turned tide.

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