My Humble Suggestion (Take All Weekend to Read It)

[Will Seberger]

From the trenches: A working journalist's vision for the future of print journalism

In the beginning, there was profit...

The news publishing industry is perhaps one of the greatest business symbioses in human history. Or, it was for a long time. It was at once a voice of democracy, enlightenment and entertainment to its readers, and the best delivery vehicle for mass marketing available at the time.

Whether the journalism we see in our communities today is good or garbage, Britney or Sarkozy, it is worth less monetarily than it ever has been. And it is so partly because readership has declined massively, but it is more so because the advertising/distribution system is dated circa 1950.

A failure to update the business model has resulted in a shortage of capital and an inability diligently report the news. The result is a dying industry that was at once profitable for its masters and beneficial to its readership.

A college journalism professor used to remind all his journalists-in-situ that they served no business purpose other than filling the white space in the paper, that is, the space not filled by ads by holding government and business accountable, and by enlightening and entertaining its readers in those noble endeavors. Now, there are fewer ads, more white space and less money and people to gather and report the news.

Sadly, in these times a better article or photo does not necessarily make the ad appearing next to it worth more to the advertiser. If people are not reading the paper anymore, or are doing so on the Web with fewer ads, why spend the money on generating good stories and pictures if cheaper or free hand-outs and PR rewrites are to be had? The boards of directors whom so many newsroom denizens report to know this, and are gutting newsrooms to make room for cheaper wire sources and reader-generated content.

The problems facing the industry are a cyclical domino effect: Fewer readers result in fewer advertisers which result in fewer resources to develop fewer stories which result in fewer readers and so on.

Before the cycle can be broken, the causality needs to be understood. After all, and understanding of the past leads to better preparation for the future.

Issues of audience

In the days where newspapers were the first thing the public saw in the morning, print ads were worth gold to companies such as auto manufacturers, because they wanted to make everyone aware of their newfangled horseless carriage. And everyone read the paper.

National department stores were thrilled to buy ads in papers everywhere because, rich or poor, everyone needs underwear and socks. And again, everyone read the paper.

The biggest shortfall in attracting new advertisers is that newspapers are viewed by diverse and unpredictable demographics; and in shrinking numbers.

Just as militaries have gone from carpet-bombing to precision strikes to reduce cost and maximize effect, many companies have gone from advertising their product or brand to everyone in sight, to aggressively marketing to the people most likely to buy.

Perhaps national department stores will continue buying ads just because everyone buys underwear and socks, but there are not enough companies like that to sustain the industry any longer.

Even large, broadly advertising companies cannot be depended on to buy ads for much longer, given the gutting of U.S. businesses brought on by slouching economies worldwide. Those few big domestic regulars will likely find themselves with less to spend for quite some time.

Nearly every advertising vehicle has specialized its product or delivery to optimize the value of its ad space – except newspapers.

Network television runs relatively inexpensive reality shows because they reduce production overhead thereby maximizing ad revenue profits and because they generally appeal to middle and lower America. The biggest companies in America can effectively market their newest products to the group with the most buying power and influence: 18-60 year-old women.

Cable channels specifically target markets in demand to advertisers by segregating their viewership. There are channels dedicated to gay life, home repair, shopping, history, science and just about every other subject in the human experience. These stations can accurately tell any given advertiser which demographic is watching which station and when; thereby increasing the value of the ad space.

The picture is not all doom-and-gloom, however. Print media still has at least one definite advantage over broadcast ads. Production cost for a newspaper ad is dramatically less than costs associated with creating and maintaining a television ad. If ad performance can be had more cheaply and better tracked, the advantage clearly goes to print.

Magazines, like cable channels, mostly serve niche markets. Advertisers bank on people reading Sailing magazine being both affluent and interested in water sports. Big companies like Polaris and Arctic Cat will likely do much better advertising jet-skis in Sailing than they will in the New York Times.

The biggest challenge to magazines is timeliness. To an advertiser, paying magazine ad rates to gain one impression per month may not be worth the high price. Certainly, advertisers cannot effectively advertise small sales and special events in magazines.

For the readers, typically magazines update content as infrequently as monthly or quarterly, and have boring, locked-up Web sites offering nothing new, and therefore provide no incentive for readers to log on and see more ads between issues.

Alternately, direct-mail advertising can be the most effective per dollar spent. Newspapers, and even some magazines, in so many markets have fallen so much in quality that there is no longer a prestige to advertising in print. With direct-mail, advertisers can reach specific households, neighborhoods or other demographics for a similar or cheaper pricepoint and on their own schedules.

Despite heavy competition for ad dollars, newspapers still have a lot of potential to be a great vehicle for advertising, the biggest revenue stream in the industry. The industry, however, will need to undertake great change in both the newsroom and the ads office to capitalize on the opportunities still ahead.

Breaking the cycle

The industry has tended towards stagnation, while longing for the days when it was the only game in town for advertisers. Like other industries facing trouble, it failed to grow with and adapt to a changing marketplace.

And like so many other businesses over time, during eras of prosperity, too many in the industry were lax, thinking 20 percent to 30 percent margins would be the norm forever. Rather than looking to the future, the industry was too focused on counting money already earned. Now times are tough, cash is short, investors are angry and new leaders like Sam Zell are squaring off against photographers and beat writers.

Now is a time to refocus energies on strategic and constant, albeit cautious, evolution. Just as ignoring the Internet and the market it created for the last 10 years was not a good idea, scrambling off in many different directions without a plan will not improve the situation either.

A new newsroom

Editors, writers and photographers need to look at the basics of their job in a new way, and make their roles relevant again.

The benefits of improving content are twofold. First, it will reduce the erosion of our audience much as planting seeds on the side of a cliff help keep the dirt intact. Print media cannot hope to grow its audience without slowing and reversing the public's loss of interest. There is still a demand for good stories and compelling journalism. Secondly, it will demonstrate the industry's value as a necessary ingredient in democracy.

At the very least, if the business cannot turn things around otherwise, seeing quality journalism will compel charitable foundations and rich families to prop print journalism up after all the investors and corporate parents are gone.

Attitudes about deficiencies need to be examined and changed. Newspapers need to take advantage of their publication cycle, rather than condemning it. Newspapers no longer need to, and certainly cannot afford to, run stories about everything everywhere in print.

Accept that almost no one turns to the newspaper these days to read yesterday's news. Drive readers to the Web for up-top-the-minute traffic, weather and sports scores. Deploy a revamped, possibly smaller, print edition to give in-depth focus to the broader issues facing readers.

Certainly not every story needs to be a multi-thousand word piece, but nearly every piece should look at the bigger picture rather than playing catch-up with TV news, gossip taken for news and Internet updates.

Print journalism is only seen as 'dead trees versus online' because the industry has declared it so. Print media still has at least one huge advantage: photographers. Readers love looking at pictures. Give them dramatic, big pictures that cannot be run as large online due to limits on available screen space.

Print media can better afford talented, trained, ethical and reliable photographers that can make excellent pictures at the scene. Independent, private bloggers cannot. If the staff is not big enough, spread out work to trusted freelancers. So doing is generally cheaper and keeps fresh minds out looking for stories. Freelancers can also help clear up newsroom 'groupthink.'

Use photographers and videographers to show the world around them as news unfolds. So many stories that appear in the paper today could run as a large photo and an extended caption and be equally, if not more effective. Put high-quality video on the Web to round out coverage.

Photographers of both varieties can handle what day-to-day storytelling needs to be done to keep a story in the news, while leaving reporters more time to develop contacts and flesh out longer-term projects.

The world would much rather see the excellent photos coming from Iraq courtesy of professional photographers over poor-quality cell phone photo or video captured by someone who may or may not be ethically trustworthy or aware.

Refrain from handing out cheap video cameras to untrained reporters and instead train entire photo staffs to shoot video well, or hire a few videographers. Send both to assignments.

Newsrooms also have more and better trained writers than the fly-by-night blogs blamed for devaluing papers. Where a small blog may cover a limited beat, and partly or largely by borrowing from mainstream outlets, newspapers have staff and freelance writers available to aggressively pursue leads, and become true experts in their fields.

Making money while 'giving away' content

Concurrently with reinventing the newsroom, the industry needs to restructure the delivery method, and make ad space more valuable to potential advertisers given today's marketing strategies.

The Internet has given people the mindset that information should be free. And companies like Google are proving free content can be profitable.

Why not create a publication that both prints and publishes online with a set of ads specifically targeted to each reader or neighborhood, and is available for free in either format to whoever wants it?

People have demonstrated that they are willing to give away significant amounts of personal information to use a service for free, or to be 'rewarded'.

Gather as much information as possible from each unique reader. Give print/Web subscriptions away to people who fill out detailed household or personal demographic information once or twice a year. Of course, we are or should be ethically and/or legally bound to “not be evil”, to borrow from Google's vernacular, with that data. However, possessing that data and being able to precisely deliver specific ads to specific readers or groups ups the value of the space dramatically.

Different editions of the paper could be printed for different demographic subsets of the readership. There would essentially be a rich neighborhood edition with one set of ads, a middle class neighborhood edition with another set of ads and a poor neighborhood edition with a third set of ads. All would have the same non-ad content (or maybe not). As printing technology advances, in the near future it may be possible to actually print every unique subscriber his own paper.

For people logging on to the site to read, get everyone to turn over the same demographic information, and give advertisers the opportunity to hit them, specifically. Since it's electronic, and database driven, every unique user could actually see personalized ads in his own online edition. In fact, if they were ads for products and services the reader would be interested in purchasing, he would likely look at them too.

Again, an example: A potential advertiser's company offers several different types of moisturizing lotions.

SilkyFlower is a moisturizer that uses cutting edge technology to keep skin soft, and it comes in a frilly pink bottle. The product is targeted at women, but due to its cutting-edge technology, it is pricey.

BeautifulYou is a moisturizer that features scents similar to designer fragrances, but at a much lower cost. It is also targeted at women, but women in a lower income demographic than SilkyFlower.

NoStinkPro is a moisturizer and deodorant designed for men; a wide demographic of men. It is reasonably priced, comes in simple packaging and can be used to cover up gym-stink, as a hair cream or even as a shaving gel.

To effectively advertise these in a national paper in today's industry, the company either needs to buy one ad to advertise its existence in general, or can collage all three products into one ad. Alternately, it could buy three ads and put NoStinkPro in the sports or business section, BeautifulYou in the shopping section, and the more expensive and chic SilkyFlower in the Arts section. Three ads would be great for the paper, but too expensive for the company.

The lotion business, and a lot of real-life businesses, would jump at the chance to buy one single ad space, but advertise each product to a specific subset of readers or even unique individuals.

In print subscriptions going to known affluent households, the company would run ads for the more expensive fragrance. If the company knew an electronic subscription was going to George Doe, a male, it would run the ad for the male product.

That specialization in advertising is worth a lot of money.

Future revenue streams

In the future newspapers might actually be able to pay readers for subscribing. Maybe filling out the bare essentials of a survey would garner someone a free print and Web subscription, but filling out extra questions, or visiting a certain number of advertisers' Web sites would give them a cash rebate? People are willing to overspend on their credit cards to get 'cash back' or other rewards. Why wouldn't they jump at the chance to read and make money doing so?

The possibilities for profit, performing a valuable service and growing readership are just around the corner. It will take visionary leadership to get there, but history indicates that with great risk comes great reward.

The end?

Times are tough indeed. An ailing economy does not make life any easier for the industry. All that remains to be said is that perhaps some of these ideas will work. Maybe none of them will. But this is a dialog that the industry needs to have amongst itself and with the public often.

Every day that real innovation is passed over to maintain the status quo, every day that the industry fails to innovate, is one day closer to the temporary or permanent failure of one of the cornerstones of a healthy democracy: a free and balanced press.

About the writer: Will Seberger is a freelance photo/journalist based in Tucson, Arizona. His experience in the news industry spans writing and making pictures for newspapers and magazines large and small; from local to international. He can be reached at [e-mail]