I'm a "techie" in the newspaper business and try to keep up on current technology and current trends online when I came across this article linked above in PC magazine by John Dvorak.
Dvorak is a longtime columnist for technology magazines. Sometimes his thoughts are out in left field and sometimes he hits a home run. Well he's right on the money with this article. He quotes this from an article at Wired Magazine entitled Newspapers Should Really Worry:
"Imagine what higher-ups at the Post must have thought when focus-group participants declared they wouldn't accept a Washington Post subscription even if it were free. The main reason (and I'm not making this up): They didn't like the idea of old newspapers piling up in their houses."
He goes on to explain other disturbing trends in the newspaper business and mentions how a free Community Website CriagsList has cost San Francisco Bay Area newspapers up to $65 million in employment advertising revenue. He cites this CNet article: Craigslist costing newspapers millions
The Classified section of the newspaper is one of the biggest revenue generating areas of the newspaper and hitting a newspaper in the classifieds is like scoring a "kidney punch" in a fight. It can bring a paper to it's knees.
As I mentioned, I work with the technology end of newspapers and the conventional wisdom in the newspaper world is that our printed material will eventually turn into some type of electronic delivery device to a tablet or some of the new electronic paper that is being worked on in the labs by Xerox.
The big assumption in all of there schemes is that people will continue to pay for news delivery and the big media companies will continue to supplement that delivery with advertising. I have heard this phrase come out of the mouth of corporate managers many times:
"Whoever controls the news, controls the ad revenue."
They are all assuming that there is always going to be one group of people (them) generating the news. But, I myself, don't see this holding true since the birth of free online news sites and all the thought provoking blogs. I am a voracious internet news & blog reader and much like the demographic cited in the Wired article even though I don't match the age profile.
I don't see newspapers looking anything like what they are today in as little as 5 years. The main reason is we don't have any young readers replacing our dying readers. I've seen the low stats from our call centers and also know that reader retention rates are getting worse. In 10 years we will
definitely be a distant memory.
