To Newspaper Moguls: You Blew It

The Newspaper Association of America is meeting in San Diego this week and they're preaching up at their own choir loft with angry, self-righteous fire and brimstone about their plight. They need to hear a new message, a blunt message from the outside. Here's the speech I think they should hear:

You blew it.

You've had 20 years since the start of the web, 15 years since the creation of the commercial browser and craigslist, a decade since the birth of blogs and Google to understand the changes in the media economy and the new behaviors of the next generation of - as you call them, Mr. Murdoch - net natives. You've had all that time to reinvent your products, services, and organizations for this new world, to take advantage of new opportunities and efficiencies, to retrain not only your staff but your readers and advertisers, to use the power of your megaphones while you still had it to build what would come next. But you didn't.

You blew it.

And now you're angry. Well, gentlemen - and that's pretty much all I see before me: angry, old, white men - you have no right to anger. Instead, you are the proper objects of anger. The public should be angry with you for the poor stewardship you have exercised over the press and its service to society. Your journalists are angry at you for losing their jobs. Your pressmen and drivers and classified-ad takers are angry at you for the same reason (and at the journalists for paying attention only to their own plight). Your advertisers were angry at you for using your monopolistic power to overcharge them and for providing inefficient platforms and bad service for so long. But they're not angry anymore because they left you for better advertising vehicles and better prices in a competitive marketplace.

But you're the ones who are acting angry.

Yesterday, you delivered a foot-stomping little hissy fit over Google and aggregators. How dare they link to you and not pay you? Oh, I so want Eric Schmidt to tell you today that you're getting your wish and that Google will no longer link to you. Beware what you wish for. You'd lose a third of your traffic overnight. If other aggregators (I work with one) and bloggers (I am one) and Facebook all decided to follow suit, you'd lose half your traffic. On most of your sites, only 20 percent of the audience in a day ever sees your homepage and its careful packaging; 4 of 5 readers instead come in through search and links. In the link economy - instead of the outmoded content economy in which you operate - Google and aggregators and bloggers are bringing value to you; they should be charging you for the value they bring. You should rise up today and give Mr. Schmidt a big thank you for not charging you. But you won't, because you've refused to understand this new business reality.

You blew it.

Your Google snits don't even address your far more profound problem: the vast majority of your potential audience who never come to your sites, the young people who will never read your newspapers. You all remember the quote from a college student in The New York Times a year ago, the one that has kept you up at night. Let's say it together: "If the news is that important, it will find me." What are you doing to take your news to her? You still expect her to come to you - to your website or to the newsstand - just because of the magnetic pull of your old brand. But she won't, and you know it. You lost an entire generation. You lost the future of news.

You blew it.

You had a generation to reinvent the business but you did too little. I by all means include myself in that indictment because I spent my career in our industry: Guilty. I didn't raise loud enough alarms (it felt as if they were too loud already) or accomplish enough change (not nearly enough). I blew it, too. But no last-minute hail-Mary passes will make up for our failings. Having not taken advantage of the last two decades to reinvent the news business, you're not going to manage a rescue in two months, before the creditors come calling. That was your worst hail Mary: stoking up on debt and hoping to milk these cows for years to come. Mad cash-cow disease, that's what too many of you had. Your other desperate moves: suddenly fantasizing that you can fix everything by going behind a wall (to tell with Google and its billions of readers!) and charging us because you think we "should" pay. Since when is a business plan built on "should?" I haven't seen a sensible P&L justifying this dream from any of you. If you have one, please stand up show us now..... I thought so. Other desperation moves: fantasies of white knights from foundations buying you and letting you stay just the way you are.... government subsidies (do we even have to discuss the danger?).... switching to not-for-profit, as if that suddenly takes away the need to sustain the business still... misguided, self-righteousness thinking that Google or cable companies owe you money, as if you have a God-given right to the revenue and customers you lost..... No, none of this will save newspapers and in your subconscious, at least, you know it. You know the truth.

You blew it.

So what can you do? Two years, even a year ago, I would have said that you had time to build the networks and frameworks and platforms that would support the ecosystem of news that will come next. I would have said you could retrain your staff to take on new responsibilities: organizing and supporting that ecosystem, curating the best, training people to be the best. I would have advised you to offer your staff members the opportunity to join that ecosystem, setting them up in business. I would have told you to take advantage of the efficiencies the web allows (do what you do best, link to the rest, I used to say). I would have argued that we need to invent new forms of marketing help for an entire new population of businesses-formerly-known-as-advertisers. I did say that. But the financial crisis only accelerated your fall. It didn't cause the fall, it accelerated it. So now, for many of you, there isn't time. It's simply too late. The best thing some of you can do is get out of the way and make room for the next generation of net natives who understand this new economy and society and care about news and will reinvent it, building what comes after you from the ground up. There's huge opportunity there, for them.

You blew it.

Comments

[Tedstr]

The only exception is that actually most major newspapers have been on the internet since the beginning or close to it. Many have built interesting digital businesses. Who can deny, WashPo, NY Times, SFgate, Boston.com, and many others have been doing well for 10 years on the web.

The problem is less to do with the publishers not responding to the web, but that their fundamental monopoly over local news and particulalry local classifieds is over and there is little that can be done about that. The leverage of the major media business on the way up has made it a fantasic business and great career for 50 years. On the way down, not so much. That same leverage is crushing on the way down and nothing can change that.

The march of ever lower cost technology has lowered the cost of publishing and broadcasting and broken down the gates to entry forever...­ultimately a great thing for society.

The smug self righteous left leaning editorial of the news media is only hastening their decline, but it is not the cause.

[RButler]

I can't wait till the millionaire celebrity anchors and commentors on the networks and cable are the next to go. For all their talking, talking, talking they've missed so many stories till after the fact. The more they talk the muddier the issue becomes instead of getting clearer and more factual.

[newunderground]

I LOVE newspapers. I grew up in the industry, my dad being the editor of a " major metroplitan daily, and I couldn't agree more with you. Like the greedy myopic recording industry, they are clinging to an outdated business model, that no amount of tantrums,whining or anger will change.

[mikonyc]

could not disagree more with jarvis. blogs, online "news" may be the new way people receive information, but to me, it is not really news. i read it, but mostly entertainment stuff, who could believe the information that comes out so quickly, with little verification. even on huffpo, most articles have constant updates, updates, updates. newspapers, in your hand, is the way to go, especially if you want any analysis. who cares if you get information in print on day two, instead of hour two after an event happens.

[RumiSouth]

Print is dead.

Long live the internet!

[cadsuch]

I won't have a newspaper delivered to my house that puts its opinion items on the front page and in the headlines and trys to pretend that its's news. If all it is, is prejudicial, bigoted, idiological crap, how can you expect anyone to pay you for it.

[vant]

Fact is, newspapers are less "biased" in their coverage than ever. But people have been brainwashed by the right wingers into thinking all media is "liberal" simply because it doesn't conform to their particulular biases.

[ChuckWhite]

From early 1982 until about 1998 my big brother told me I was tech-obsessed crazy man. At one point, he worked in marketing for a mortgage lender while I computerized the same operation into something relatively paperless (for a mortgage lender). All the while he "explained" to me that I was pursuing a hobby, not a business need.

Finally, shortly before he passed away ... he said it to me. He said (must have been a weak moment), "You know, you had that tech thing right and I was wrong."

For any of you with a sales-oriented, big brother ... you can imagine what a confirming moment that was. :-)

[robert234]

Big Government, Big Media,and Big Business---There simply wasn't a bed BIG enough for all of them. Too much butt kissing broke the headboard and blew out the mattress

[Adrienne Walsh]

Brilliant, Robert234, just brilliant.

[Isis N]

Exactly, Jeff. Well said.

[EricPrentis]

Jeff Jarvis, Amen!

[TexasGiant]

Well written and on the mark.

Sadly, the job of understanding your product and how it fits into the rapid (and sometimes slow-motion) changes to the social and economic landscape is proving too difficult for the money men that run most larger American companies.

[Quetelet]

Yes they did. By the way, its true as much in my country India as it is in the US. Mind you, with Government subsidised newsprint India has the cheapest newspapers in the world . But the editorial input, spirit of investigative journalism and a cause linked culture evaporated somewhere along the way

To our friends in conventional media :

- We say “No repetition without value addition”
- We say “ No answers without asking the right questions first”
- We say “ Report on Indian politics with a global perspective”
- We say “Opine but don’t inhale”
- We say “ Be independent, inclusive, informative, intense”

I say “Amen”

One recent attempt to put another nail in the coffin http://indiapoliticalreport.blogspot.com/

[mjwca]

They didn't just blow it by failing to adjust their business model. In fact, that is secondary. They blew it by sacrificing their integrity, the public's trust in their independence, and most of all by doing less and less of what newspapers do best - in depth reporting of hard new, both local and international. They jazzed up the look, they added lighter entertainment fare, they got rid of their own reporters and replaced them with generic news that everyone has from wire services. The truth is that whether you are in print, online, on TV or in any of the other new media, you had better have something better or at least different than what is available everywhere. Because otherwise, the public (young, old, male, female, smart, dumb), says: Who Cares!

[Lemastre]

I agree with every point you make. And my local daily claims it does too, with continual trumpetings of how in-depth and local, etc., it will be. But at the same time it's laying off 200 more employees (no supervisory, just reporters and production folks). And the ad lineage goes down and down. So I think they're still not getting it, sitting in their big offices in their ancient granite building with the flags waving from the dome and the tons of old German presses in the basement. All this stone and steel seems so permanent, it just can't be obsolete, can it?

[Trittydi]

The mainstream media - including the newspapers - have completely failed America. Their failure is self-indulgent, egregiously rapacious - and treasonous.

On the critical issues of the day they have been notably absent and morally tainted by their own self interests, self-serving agendas and unchecked greed.

We stopped watching television over 15 years ago - NO exceptions. We stopped buying the newspapers soon after. There was simply no point to exposing ourselves to any of it.

Here in the Chicago area - the very conservative Chicago Tribune has been force-feeding the public their self-serving, deceitful and bilious propaganda for decades.

I am happy to see them slowly choke to death - and I will dance on their graves.
*

[NYCPub]

Wholeheartedly agree with the premise that the mainstream media has abondoned any interest in news and shifted to infotainment, HOWEVER, i do disagree that the last thing the content providers (traditional media) should do is expect some compensation from Google or the aggregators. You only examine what would happen to online newspaper sites if Google and the aggs stopped linking to them. But ask yourself what would happen to aggregators and Google.

Firstly, removing the hard-news links from Google searches would cut Google's potency by 90%. Can you imagine what you would get were you to remove all the mainsteam news organization content while googling "Iraq" or "George Clooney"? It's laughable. Overnight Google would become useless, unless of course you value a bunch of blogs and free content. And again, take away the traditional media content from aggregators and they're out of business-- period. Remove all the AP and traditional media from this site and you've got a blog. Sure, there's some own reporting here but it would fill up 1/500th of what this site currently is.

So yes, it is fun to poke these idiots while they're down, and they've surely squandered lots of opportunities, but they still CREATE something that Google and aggs don't, and yes, the cat got out of the bag 15 years ago when we decided that eyeballs were cash, but that doesn't mean it's right.

[NYCPub]

Oh yeah, by the way, I've taken your years of research that went into your book What Would Google Do? and reprinted your book word for word in my new book called What Would Google Do Two. Royalties for using your content? Sorry, those are the old rules. The new rules mean i get to take whatever content i want from anywhere and repackage it for my own profit.

Your argument is that people are not going to pay for stuff so newspapers and other content providers should just suck it up and work for nothing. Your suggestion that they go about innovating and retraining etc. is somewhat empty. Sure, you can teach your reporters to twitter and have facebook pages and to streamline the business to keep costs low, but at the end of the day, no one is going to pay for content. Period.

So there was nothing they could do. They create product, and no one is going to pay for content. We're worse off for it, to be sure.

[Donegal]

You are absolutely right on all counts. Google and the aggregator sites like this one will be limping along without newspapers and other print media which supply a significant percentage of their content. I logged onto Huff Post today just to find stories I'd read a few moments before in the New York Times. When they have to start generating the news, they'll have to start paying, and suddenly they'll be facing the same problems as print. Writers are not going to work for nothing forever, especially when they re-discover that what they do is valuable to someone.

[runfastandwin]

So what's your point?

[ofcoursejesusisblack]

Totally agree. Many take newspapers for granted. The blogosphere would implode, YES IMPLODE, if there was no news content to link to and comment about.