The death and life of newspapers
While researching for my dissertation, I stumbled across this great analysis. Below is an excerpt.
“Most managers in the [newspaper] industry have reacted to the collapse of their business model with a spiral of budget cuts, bureau closings, buyouts, layoffs, and reductions in page size and column inches. Since 1990, a quarter of all American newspaper jobs have disappeared.
The columnist Molly Ivins complained, shortly before her death, that the newspaper companies’ solution to their problem was to make “our product smaller and less helpful and less interesting.” That may help explain why the dwindling number of Americans who buy and read a daily paper are spending less time with it; the average is down to less than fifteen hours a month.
Only nineteen per cent of Americans between the ages of eighteen and thirty-four claim even to look at a daily newspaper. The average age of the American newspaper reader is fifty-five and rising.”
Out of print — Eric Alterman | The New Yorker
Later edit – another quote from the same article from Arianna Huffington:
“Traditional media just need to realize that the online world isn’t the enemy. In fact, it’s the thing that will save them, if they fully embrace it.”
I think that’s an interesting analysis that can be applied to a lot of industries.
At the first sign of trouble, the priority is streamlining and cutbacks. However, as the corporate news industry started to dwindle, perhaps it was investment and expansion into new ideas and technologies which was/is required.
To keep a product going you need to keep it fresh and regularly updated, not just strip it away until you’re left with sweet FA.