I’m working on a talk that I hope will become the canonical link to my essential message about the business rules and realities of news. I continue to be astonished at the economic naiveté I hear in discussions of the business of news. (Look at this comment thread and and this one.) Here is my answer, the basis of a talk — to be delivered in tweets, in the model of John Paton — and a lesson for my classes. Work in progress. Thoughts so far; please join in….
RULES FOR BUSINESS MODELS
* Tradition is not a business model. The past is no longer a reliable guide to future success.
* “Should” is not a business model. You can say that people “should” pay for your product but they will only if they find value in it.
* “I want to” is not a business model. My entrepreneurial students often start with what they want to do. I tell them, no one — except possibly their mothers — gives a damn what they *want* to do.
* Virtue is not a business model. Just because you do good does not mean you deserve to be paid for it.
...REALITY CHECKS FOR NEWSPAPERS
* Circulation will continue to decline. There can be no doubt.
* Cutting costs will reduce product quality and value, which will further reduce circulation, which will further reduce ad revenue. A vicious, unstoppable cycle.
* Low-cost competitors and abundance will continue to reduce the price of advertising.
...There is huge growth potential in increasing engagement. Facebook gets roughly 30 times the engagement of newspaper sites, Huffington Post’s engagement is also a multiple of newspapers’. If we are truly community services, then we must rethink our relationship with the public, becoming more a platform for our communities, and that will multiply engagement and, with it, audience, traffic, and data. We have not begun to extend and exploit the full potential of the value news organizations can have in relationships with their communities: more people, more value, more engagement equals more value to extract.
* Tradition is not a business model. The past is no longer a reliable guide to future success.
* “Should” is not a business model. You can say that people “should” pay for your product but they will only if they find value in it.
* “I want to” is not a business model. My entrepreneurial students often start with what they want to do. I tell them, no one — except possibly their mothers — gives a damn what they *want* to do.
* Virtue is not a business model. Just because you do good does not mean you deserve to be paid for it.
...REALITY CHECKS FOR NEWSPAPERS
* Circulation will continue to decline. There can be no doubt.
* Cutting costs will reduce product quality and value, which will further reduce circulation, which will further reduce ad revenue. A vicious, unstoppable cycle.
* Low-cost competitors and abundance will continue to reduce the price of advertising.
...There is huge growth potential in increasing engagement. Facebook gets roughly 30 times the engagement of newspaper sites, Huffington Post’s engagement is also a multiple of newspapers’. If we are truly community services, then we must rethink our relationship with the public, becoming more a platform for our communities, and that will multiply engagement and, with it, audience, traffic, and data. We have not begun to extend and exploit the full potential of the value news organizations can have in relationships with their communities: more people, more value, more engagement equals more value to extract.
and much more at:
http://www.buzzmachine.com/2011/04/25/hard-economic-lessons-for-news
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