Tue, April 29, 2008
With so much money spent on advertising in print for live entertainment, I saw this article to be particularly interesting.
In what I would suspect will be an increasing trend, The Capital Times, one of Wisconsin’s leading daily newspapers, will suspend its daily printed newspaper and move its operations almost exclusively online. According to the article, “the staff will also produce two print products: a free weekly entertainment guide inserted in Madison’s remaining daily newspaper, The Wisconsin State Journal, and a news weekly that will be distributed with the paper.) While the business plan is still really being created for the move, it’s clear that they are proactively trying to address what, to me, seems like the critical issue being faced by daily newspapers - remaining relevant.
Let’s start with the basic fact that the news that goes to print is way-too-often old news by the time it hits newsstands. The news (aside from feature stories) has to be posted throughout the day on publishers websites if they expect their editorial to remain relevant. The speed of news reaching consumers moves faster than ever – publications have to break the news on their website first if they expect to survive. In addition, news in print that you pay for is available for free online. Both of these points are, in many ways understandably, self-inflicted wounds.
So, when you add up the fact that consumers have less time in their day, more options to consume media and less disposable income why would a consumer pay for a daily newspaper if they can get the same content online when they want it, in a quicker way and for free?
I don’t think the distribution channel is necessarily the big issue. I think plenty of people read newspapers (our Dot project showed many Sunday Times readers) – they just don’t rely on it as much for daily news. Same goes for the nightly news on TV - it’s painful to watch as it feels like a wrap-up to news you’ve already heard about from 10 different sources that day.
Times are changing rapidly and I think this move by The Capital Times is just the start of what is yet to come. If this is a good thing or a bad thing, I'm not sure.
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