Smart thoughts on newspapers
From an opinion piece by Andy Kessler, one-time Wall Street hedge-fund manager and all-around smart guy:
In the meantime, rather than just charge for content, I’d be licensing every type of newfangled software and Web service until I could come up with a tight community of interest around my newspaper, local or national.
Don’t just start the discussion, keep it. This means comments, reviews, personalized newsfeeds, social networks of like-minded readers, whatever. Give advertisers a little “link love” so they don’t stray to generic search engines. Google, Microsoft and others dropped over $10 billion to buy online ad-delivery companies in the last few weeks alone.
The value is there: Newspapers aren’t in the printing business, they’re in the ad business.
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(On May 25th, 2007 at 12:12 am)
I agree with Kessler. Most blogs source the facts about which they give their opinions from newspaper websites. Their asset is a vast organization of professional journalists accumulating facts and presenting facts. The newspapers just have to figure out a way to monetize that valuable asset.
I would add further, that the internet is a huge opportunity for newspapers both in terms of the asset they bring to the table (collecting and distributing facts, i.e providing *content*) and as a resource for finding talented journalists. A blogger, in a given local region, may be extremely popular. This is a sign of talent, and the newspaper should either buy the blogger out or offer him a job. The internet is a valuable way of recruiting journalistic talent.